Response to @baerdric: There Can Be No Good

I am going to follow up on an excellent article Hive account@baerdric posted last week. I will attempt to summarize his argument about the existence of (or lack thereof) “Good”

There Can Be No Good

Here’s the basics, and keep me honest if I miss the mark:

If Good does exist, we would be able to remove good until we have bad. 
What actually happens when we remove good is a neutral state.
Therefore you cannot remove Good to get Bad

If Good does exist, we would be able to add something to increase good
There is no good to be added that is always good independent of circumstance.
Therefore, Good is not something that can be increased by adding more good.

We can increase bad by adding something to a neutral state. 
As we decrease bad, we build a positive state.
Therefore, what we call “Good” is actually the removal of bad.


There is no intrinsic Good.

To get the full effect of this argument, you’ll need to check out the original post here: https://steemit.com/philosophy/@baerdric/there-can-be-no-good

There Can Be No Bad

While discussing this point with Hive account@baerdric, I suggested that perhaps this same line of argument could be used to claim that there can be no bad. His suggestion is that Harm is something that can be added to any system and it increases bad and reduces good. I posit that there is not a definition of harm that shows the existence of bad.

Let us try the most obvious definition of harm: that which causes physical or psychological pain. Someone who punches me in the face surely causes harm, and has disturbed my existence in a way that is unpleasant to me. Is this bad? It depends. Was I assaulting someone else when I was punched or was it unjustified? Did I enter into a consensual boxing match or was I simply assaulted? Perhaps I requested a punching out of a personal fetish. The Harm in this situation is just the harm, it cannot be said to be intrinsically bad.

Are harsh words that cause psychological harm bad? Again, it depends. Is this schoolyard bullying or mutual hazing? Is it abuse from a parent? Did I agree to be roasted on stage? The words are just words and cannot be said to be inherently bad.

What about theft and invasion of privacy? I would argue that these forms of harm cannot be said to be intrinsically bad until the whole circumstance is considered. For example, if I steal five bucks from Elon Musk I cannot be said to have caused any harm. If I invade the privacy of someone conspiring to harm others in order to stop him/her, I have netted less harm than had I not invaded privacy.

So what?

If I parallel the logic Hive account@baerdric uses to dismiss Good, I can also dismiss Bad. This is not an attempt to argue for the good, rather it is an observation of an interesting extension of this logic. We end at value judgements as “relative”. That’s right, “It’s all relative” for the win!