Is a dog with three legs a bad dog? Is a triangle with two sides still a triangle or is it a defective triangle? Perhaps if we just expand the definition of triangle a bit we can have square triangles.<\/p>\n
There is a point of view that holds that to define something we must say something definitive about it and that to say that we are expanding or changing a definition makes no sense if we don’t know what it is that is being changed.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It is of the essence or nature of a Euclidean triangle to be a closed plane figure with the straight sides, and anything with this essence must have a number of properties, such as having angles that add up to 180 degrees. These are objective facts that we discover rather than invent; certainly it is notoriously difficult to make the opposite opinion at all plausible. Nevertheless, there are obviously triangles that fail to live up to this definition. A triangle drawn hastily on the cracked plastic sheet of a moving bus might fail to be completely closed or to have perfectly straight sides, and thus its angles will add up to something other than 180 degrees. Even a triangle drawn slowly and carefully on paper with an art pen and a ruler will have subtle flaws. Still, the latter will far more closely approximate the essence of triangularity than the former will. It will accordingly be a better<\/strong> triangle than the former. Indeed, we would naturally describe the latter as a good<\/strong> triangle and the former as a bad<\/strong> one. This judgment would be completely objective; it would be silly to suggest that we were merely expressing a personal preference for straightness or for angles that add up to 180 degrees. The judgment simply follows from the objective facts about the nature of triangles. This example illustrates how an entity can count as an instance of a certain type of thing even if it fails perfectly to instantiate the essence of that type of thing; a badly drawn triangle is not a non-triangle, but rather a defective triangle. And it illustrates at the same time how there can be a completely objective, factual standard of goodness and badness, better and worse. To be sure, the standard in question in this example is not a moral standard. But from the A-T point of view, it illustrates a general notion of goodness of which moral goodness is a special case. And while it might be suggested that even this general standard of goodness will lack a foundation if one denies, as nominalists and other anti-realists do, the objectivity of geometry and mathematics in general, it is (as I have said) notoriously very difficult to defend such a denial.<\/p>\n
– Edward Feser. Being, the Good, and the Guise of the Good<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This raises a number of interesting questions, by no means limited to the following:<\/p>\n
What is the fact\/value distinction.<\/p>\n
Whether values can be objective.<\/p>\n
The relationship between objective goodness and moral goodness.<\/p>\n
And of course, whether a three-legged dog is still a dog.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile:<\/p>\n
One Leg Too Few<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Is a dog with three legs a bad dog? Is a triangle with two sides still a triangle or is it a defective triangle? Perhaps if we just expand the definition of triangle a bit we can have square triangles. … Continue reading