Ahh yes the golden rule. Well you have certainly done a good job at giving me an example of goodness but you have yet to actually tell me what goodness is and you certainly didn't tell me a fundamental characteristic of it.
well i mean, goodness is man made so there is nothing fundamental about that because it obscenely varies from person to person. This question is moot.
I wouldn't be so quick to blame the question. I would have to disagree that goodness is man made. Im sure it was here way before man arrived. It is something more than just a thought you see.
what are you talking about the only reason we think something is good or bad is because people tell us. Your telling me that the concept of good and evil(according to man) extended before the time of man? So you think god got mad at the dinosaurs cause they were bad and killed them or something what?
I don't base my ideas of good and bad on what people tell me firstly. Secondly yes that is exactly what i'm saying. Well not the dinosaur part.. but how did man even come up with goodness? How did it come to exist? My guess is that is was always there man just picked up on it. Ill admit i could be wrong on this one but you haven't given me any good reasons to think so.
I would blame the question. In many cases, we are really talking about the same things, it's just we use loaded words. There is not a single poster who reads this, who would welcome the idea of me removing their hands with a butcher knife. I am confident of this. I would say we would all describe this as "bad" or "not good". Sure, people love a good argument, and there are tricks to be played when speaking about objectively true things. One may argue "Oh yeah? Well what if I have just been stung by the most venomous spider on my pinky? I would welcome you removing my hand to save my life, so that the poison does not travel to my heart!" or "You're wrong! I lost my hands when I was 19 years old in Afghanistan, so your example is not relevant to me!" but these are merely tricks, posturing, and time wasted. Goodness is so broad, you're going to need to be more specific. You phrase the question as "the" suggesting there is one fundamental characteristic of goodness. What is -the- fundamental characteristic of greed? These questions are pretty silly.
I knew you'd find your way in here Argo and im glad you did. My question was lacking but let me try to rephrase it. What seems to be the underlying characteristic to all "good" things? In any given situation how do we know what is the "right" choice and what is the "wrong" choice? Lets use your example of cutting someone's hands off. I agree with you that most people would say thats essentially wrong. But WHY is this so unanimous? Is it because of our conscious? Is goodness engrained into our human minds when we are born? We do get a "feeling" when we know we are doing something wrong. So its possible that we had no choice in the matter and that goodness was always here even when we were not. Anyway thats just an idea. Im just rambling now....
The questions you asked now are more specific, and much easier to discuss. You asked why it was so unanimous that we would all not want our hands removed by a butcher knife. I think the best way to answer this question, but certainly not the only way, is to say that we desire happiness. But in order to be happy, we must also avoid suffering. There are very few contexts in which I remove your hands with a knife that result in your happiness. I gave an example where me removing your hands could be a desirable option, but even if stuck in such a scenario to, say, prevent death; even such a scenario makes us cringe-- also unanimously. Our physiology makes it easy for us to avoid suffering, which is understandable; we have evolved to this point over billions of years; slowly becoming more and more adept at avoiding suffering and seeking happiness. There was a time when organic life could feel no pleasure or pain, but slowly this changed, over a span of time so vast that a majority of our neighbors have trouble grasping it accurately. Indeed, goodness is a concept which is independent of humanity and relies on context. The most irritating way people abuse context in discussions of goodness, when asked something straightforward like "Is the torture and eventual murder of children good?", answer in the vein of: "Well ,it all depends on what you mean by good. This may be extremely pleasant to the murderer. Who is to be the judge of what is good?" Indeed, answers that define goodness like this: ...fall into the category, at best, of ideas that have not been considered before they were written. The thinking these types of people display is the bane of human progress. They suggest there is no clear way for us to express condemnation of even the most cruel, sick, twisted act you can imagine because everything is relative and/or everyone benefits from social interactions no matter how grotesque they may be. Perhaps the father who handcuffed and raped his daughter really believed he was doing the best thing, after all. It concerns me deeply when I see hesitation or failure to take a position on even the most simple subjects to make claims about, these people are not even participating in reality. Back to the point though.. I admit it is difficult to speak of what is good when discussing contexts devoid of the consideration for anything sentient. People often want to know what our purpose is, or the purpose of life. This misses the point because it assumes we have a purpose. It's safer to say purpose is possible when sentience exists. Could sentience occur through a gradual process like evolution? It certainly could, and did, it appears, and this is the most reliable view our world has offered us so far. Certainly it could be mistaken, but to suspect this is the case, one needs extraordinary evidence and follow a process where this could be demonstrated to everyone else, otherwise is appears like you are a lunatic.