subjective good

ok, so i recently (and by recently i mean, four or five weeks ago) got into an arguments with my philosophy class about subjective good, and objective good, and personal good and universal good and blah blah blah.

basically, we were arguing about the origins of rights. and it all boils down to claims, how people act towards those claims, and their infringements of those claims. for example. i have a claim against you that you stay the hell off of my property. and if you come on to my property, you have infringed a claim, and that is bad.

but what if i never knew, or found out that you had stepped foot on my property? did a bad thing occur? obviously, i wasnt harmed in any way. maybe, you had to cross my property to get a sick kid to the hospital. did you still commit some sort of wrong by trespassing?

in other words, if noone ever knows that you have infringed a claim of theirs, and they never find out (or for that matter, they never find out that you did them a service) could we say that what you did was good or bad? can we place a value judgement on an action that noone ever finds out about.

I believe that it is the reasoning behind what you do that decides if something is just or not. For example the saving a child thing, crossing the property line was the moral thing to do because it was done to save a life. I will even go as far to say that if someone is trying to save a person but kills them in the process, then their actions were moral.

Some would say that the outcome of an objective is what determines if it was "right" or "wrong". But I just cant force myself for the life of me to belive this.

And you also need to go back to the origins of the claim to keep the person off your property. Was it well founded and reasonable? Then it's likely valid. If unreasonable, then not valid.

If the claim is reasonable, and someone violates it unbeknowest to you, then they are in violation of that claim and it could technically be seen as a "bad" act. -edit- IF they are aware of it. -end edit- I agree with sivic that it's the intent of the violator; but as mentioned previously, the claim must be valid for a bad act to occur, from an objective standpoint. From the person making the initial claim, whether it is reasonable or not is not an issue; it is valid to that person and any violation will be a bad act.

On the other hand, a good act is independent of claims, for by definition it is well intentioned. However a good act could be perceived as a bad act, by those that did not understand the act(disciplining a child for thier own good), or by those whose culture disallows the act (providing medical care to an Arab Muslim woman in certain circumstances)

Stir the pot, baby.

ok, so both are you are saying intent is what constitues labeling something "good" or "bad". gotcha, but lets say, i intend to shoot the bloke holding up the mickey-d's but instead shoot the kid behind the counter. my intentions were good, but the actual action itself, bad.

intentions cant count for everything.

lets say, for example, that im walking down the road, and a brick is about to fall on my head. you catch said brick, without me ever knowing it was there. did something good just happen to me? (note: i did not ask if you did something good, but rather if I experienced a good thing)

OK so the McD's is being held up (nevermind they can afford the money) and your good intentioned shot hits the kid behind the counter. Your intentions were good, it was your aim that was bad. The action (firing) was intended to be good but there was a bad result. Also, did you get the bad guy with the 2nd shot? Did the kid make it? Lots of variables.

For the brick example, you're saved from getting hit with the brick. So instead of experiencing a negative thing, you experienced nothing. Math and the perception of others says that you had something good (or lucky) happen to you, but from your perspective nothing happened, either good or bad, since you weren't aware of what happened.

Definitely though, catching the brick was a good intentioned act, which saved you from getting hit with the brick.

in the first example your intentions were good so the act was moral. If you had shot up the entire resturaunt killing everyone except the shooter your actions would still be moral. Granted your gun should probably be taken away from you if you managed to get everyone besides the shooter, but still.

The brick situation again the actions were right and moral, just because no one knows that something is happening doesnt mean that it is not right. You experienced nothing, and you just have no knowledge of the good deed that was just performed. If a brick was going to fall on a mouse and I stop it that makes my actions just even though the mouse never had any idea that he was about to die and no one will ever know about it, its all a personal thing.