3. The Better: Logic, Desire, and Comparative Goodness

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Lecture Notes

Main Topics #

• Reviewing the Nature of Good: Recapitulation of the established principle that desire is an effect of goodness, not its cause
• The Concept of “The Better” (Melius): Moving from understanding what is good to understanding comparative goodness
• Conditional Logic Applied to Goodness: Using if-then statements to reason about the better
• The Question of Desire and the Better: Can something be better merely because we want it more?
• Introduction to Plato’s Dialogues: Understanding how the Meno, Euthyphro, and Apology relate to questions of good and better
• Three Kinds of Human Goods: Brief introduction to goods of soul, body, and exterior goods

Key Arguments #

The Inductive Method Reviewed #

• Enumeration of fundamental goods: Food, water, sleep, and their corresponding desires
• The key insight: In each case, the thing is good apart from the desire for it; nature gives us the desire because the thing is good
• Example: A person who is sick and has lost appetite still recognizes the need to eat, demonstrating that food’s goodness exists independently of desire for it

Addressing Remaining Objections #

Objection 1 - Good without desire: “If good causes desire, why is something not always wanted even when it’s good?”

• Response: Goodness must be known to arouse desire; knowledge is a necessary mediating cause between the good and desire
• Example: Romeo would not have desired Juliet had he never seen her; wisdom is not desired by those ignorant of its excellence

Objection 2 - Bad things being desired: “How can people want something bad if good causes wanting?”

• Response: The bad is never wanted as such; it is wanted only insofar as it resembles or contains some real good
• Examples:
  • Poisonous mushrooms are desired because they resemble good ones; the senses are deceived by likeness
  • A delicious poison is desired for its good taste and smell, not for its poisonousness
• Key distinction: The distinction between “as such” (per se) and “by happening” (per accidens)

The Logic of Conditional Statements (If-Then Reasoning) #

Structure of if-then statements:

• An if-then statement is true when the consequent necessarily follows from the antecedent
• The truth of the if-then statement does NOT depend on whether the simple statements it contains are true
• Example of true if-then with false components: “If I am a dog, then I am a four-footed animal” is true even though both parts are false
• Example of false if-then with true components: “If I am a man, then I am white” is false even though both parts are true

Application to reasoning:

• When we have a true if-then statement AND we know the antecedent is true, we can validly conclude the consequent is true (modus ponens)
• We can also reason in reverse: if we know the consequent is false, we can conclude the antecedent is false (modus tollens)

The Central Argument: Wanting More Does Not Make Something Better #

The if-then structure:

• Premise 1 (if-then): If something is not good because you want it, then it is not more good/better because you want it more
• Premise 2 (fact): Something is not good because you want it (established from previous lecture)
• Conclusion (modus ponens): Therefore, something is not more good/better because you want it more

Illustration with analogous example:

• “Is something sweet because it’s white? No.”
• “Then is it sweeter because it’s whiter? No.”
• This shows the logical parallel to the goodness argument

Alternative reasoning (modus tollens):

• “If you say something is sweeter because it’s whiter, then something would be sweet because it’s white”
• “But something is not sweet because it’s white”
• “Therefore, something is not sweeter because it’s whiter”

Application to common objection:

• Someone says: “You want more steak, I want more chicken, so steak’s better for you and chicken’s better for me”
• This implies something is better because we want it more
• But if something is better because we want it more, then something would be good because we want it (same cause, more effect)
• Since we’ve established something is NOT good because we want it, it cannot be better because we want it more

Important Definitions #

• The good (bonum): What all desire; what all want (definition by effect)
• The better (melius): More good; that which is more desired; that to which something is for the sake of
• Desire (appetitus): The effect of perceiving or understanding something as good; follows upon knowledge of the good
• Knowledge (cognitio): The mediating cause between goodness in a thing and desire for it; without knowledge of the good, the good does not arouse desire
• As such (per se): The intrinsic, direct, or primary character of something
• By happening (per accidens): Incidentally; when something accompanies a thing but is not its intrinsic character

Examples & Illustrations #

From philosophy and literature:

• Meno dialogue: Socrates questions a young man about virtue; Anytus (a later accuser) becomes angry, anticipating charges against Socrates
• Romeo and Juliet: Romeo did not desire Juliet until seeing her; knowledge came first

From everyday experience:

• The poisoned drink: A drink that smells and tastes good (good qualities actually present) but is poisonous (a quality the senses don’t perceive); we are attracted to the real good we perceive, not the bad we don’t perceive
• Poisonous mushrooms: People gather them thinking they are good ones; the resemblance to good mushrooms is what triggers desire, not any desire for the poisonous properties
• Baseball reference: Discussion of St. Louis and American/National League baseball serves as analogy for understanding chains of reasoning (“a chain is no stronger than its weakest link”)
• Sweet and white: Sweetness is not caused by whiteness; therefore sweetness is not increased by whiteness (parallel to goodness-desire relationship)

Notable Quotes #

“The good as such is what is wanted. The bad as such is not wanted.”

“That’s an important distinction between as such and by happening.”

“If something is not good because we want it, then it cannot be more good, better, because we want it more.”

“Notice how basic this is—to know what good is, what bad is. But then also to know what better is.”

“A chain is no stronger than its weakest link.”

“You have to understand good well, and continue to understand it well, to understand better.”

Questions Addressed #

1. How can we explain situations where people want something that turned out not to be good for them?

   • Answer: The good must be known to arouse desire; senses or reason can be ignorant or deceived about what is truly good

2. How can people want things that are bad for them if good causes desire?

   • Answer: The bad is never wanted as such; it is wanted only insofar as it resembles the good or contains some real good that deceives the senses

3. What is the relationship between a true if-then statement and whether its component statements are true?

   • Answer: The truth of the if-then statement depends on whether the consequent necessarily follows from the antecedent, not on the truth-value of the components themselves

4. Can we validly reason from an if-then statement to draw a conclusion about reality?

   • Answer: Yes, but only when we add a second premise stating that the antecedent (or denying the consequent) is actually true

5. Is something better for us merely because we want it more?

   • Answer: No; if something is not good because we want it, then by the same logic it cannot be better because we want it more

Pedagogical Structure #

The lecture follows a teaching arc:

1. Review: Recapitulating the established conclusion about good from the previous class
2. Objection and Response: Systematically addressing remaining objections to the goodness-causes-desire position
3. Logical Introduction: Teaching the structure of conditional (if-then) statements as a new tool
4. Application: Using the logical tool to analyze the question of “the better”
5. Setup: Introducing Plato’s dialogues and the disagreement between Socrates and the Athenians, which will frame discussion of which goods are better