According to Gordon Davis (Associate Professor, Philosophy), the concept of what is “good” figures in phrases like:
- “the good life”
- “feels good”
- “a good explanation”
- “a good researcher”
- and “doing good” (or more sceptically, “do-gooder”)
Is this one concept or many? And, in the last of these usages, do we see evidence that the fundamental meaning of “good” is tied to the idea of a well-formed (if not moral) intention? Or is the goodness of intentions in some sense derivative from the goodness of consequences? And would this be the intended consequences of intended acts, or actual consequences?
In his presentation Counting consequences while “doing good,” Gordon will address these and related questions that connect an underlying—and often misunderstood—notion, that of “normativity,” to both ethics and epistemology.