God and Goodness

I want to approach the issue of the relationship between God (i.e. the foundation of the BE) and goodness.morality from a different angle than the one approached in the book by Rasmussen; an angle that I think will get us pretty much to the same place, but an angle that I think is equally instructive and illuminating. 

One thing that I think about a lot is the connection between various things. Think about this: words, phrases, and sentences have a kind of meaning; smoke, big dark clouds, and rings in a tree have a kind of meaning; and human lives have or at least aspire to have a kind of meaning. Did you hear that common term in each of those examples: meaning. Is there a connection? I think that is one, but I won’t go over that here. Now consider these: good trees, good animals, good books, good meals, good lungs, good people and good actions. Did you hear that common term in each of those examples? Of course, you did. It was the term ‘good’. Is there is a connection? In other words, is there a connection between good trees, good animals, good lungs, good people, and good actions? 

Wouldn’t it be exceedingly strange if there were not a connection? In that case, the term ‘good’ would be equivocal between each use of it. But it sure does not seem to mean something completely different in each case. Even though trees, animals, organs, people, and acts have little in common, when each one of them is good they have something in common, namely, their goodness. 

But even that is strange. After all, a good lung and good book seem very different. What makes the former thing good is its ability to oxygenate the blood in such and such a way, while what makes the latter thing good is its ability to say something interesting and say it interestingly or whatever. But that already tells us something. When something is good it's being good seems to be dependent on the kind of thing it is. Lungs are good only if they do what lungs are supposed to do by their nature, books are good only if they do what books are supposed to do by their nature, trees are good only if they do what trees are supposed to do by their nature and so on. So the goodness of a thing depends on the kind of thing it is. 

I now want to suggest that this points quite strongly to the foundation of the BE being good as well. If goodness is as I have briefly suggested a function of things nature so that x is a good K if and only if x does what Ks are supposed to do, then the foundation of the BE is good if the foundation of the BE does what foundations of the BE are supposed to do. Now, what on earth could that be? Well, foundations are supposed to be stable are dependable and explanatory. At least with respect to those features, the foundation of the BE could not be better. For it is as stable as possible, as dependable as possible and as explanatory as possible. Nothing could be more stable, dependable, or explanatory than the foundation of the BE. So at least along with those criteria the foundation is not only good it is the best possible foundation. 

Notice an interesting consequence of this: the foundation's goodness is not to be confused with the goodness of things that depend on the foundation. That is, it would be a major mistake, a category error, in fact, to think that that the foundation's being good is the same as tigers being good or a trees being good or you or I or any other created thing being good. 

Notice another consequence of this: the foundations goodness can still explain on this alternative account of things (alternative to the account in the book) the goodness of anything else. How so? Well, because the goodness of anything else is a function of its nature and since the foundation of the BE explains whatever else exists it explains the fact that beings with a lung-nature, a tree-nature, an animal-nature, and a human-nature exist. In this wa,y it explains how it is possible for there to be good trees and whatnot because it explains how it is possible for there to be trees and whatnot. 

Notice yet one more consequence of this: what is good for humans and what is good for trees differs on this account presicely because trees and humans differ and being a good tree depends on the nature of a tree while being a good human depends on the nature of human. So, being a good foundation depends on the nature of the foundation. But this implies that we should not confuse the standards of being a good human with the standards of being a good foundation. They are very different kinds of things and different kinds of things have different natures which implies, on this account, different standards of goodness. So, while it is true that humans can be moral or immoral, can be good or bad, and can perform actions that are right or wrong, we should be careful about applying those same categories to the foundation. 

Now you may be wondering about one other thing. In the chapter we read, Rasmussen argues that the fact that we have moral experiences and the fact that the universe has moral features are best explained by the foundation’s being moral or good. So, he gives us a kind of moral argument for the existence of a foundation of morality. But it does not look like the account I am offering here gives us an argument for there being a foundation of goodness. 

I think there is a very cool argument for there being a foundation of goodness, but it is kind of tricky. Here is goes. There are (or at least can be) good trees, good animals, good actions, good organs, good humans. The goodness of these very different kinds of things is either equivocal, univocal, or analogous. It is not equivocal (the goodness of each kind of thing is related). It is not univocal (while the goodness of each kind of thing is related it is not identical goodness since it depends on the nature of the thing and the nature are different). So, the goodness of these very different kinds of things is analogous. But in order for something to be analogous, it must be analogous to something  that is itself not analogous(more technically: if x and y are analogously F, then there must be some z that is non-analogously F). The only thing that is not analogously good is goodness itself. Hence, goodness itself exists, and goodness itself explains the goodness of all other things that are (or can be) good. Hence, there is a foundation of all good things that is itself good.