of Definition
"Good is a noun. That was it. That was what Phaedrus had been looking for. That was the homer over the fence that ended the ballgame." —Robert M. Pirsig
"How should we define goodness?"
— Title of an article (pdf) available online from Harvard.
This article (Journal of Theoretical Biology 231 (2004) 107–120), examines goodness in the light of evolutionary dynamics as it involves altruism and social reputation, and concludes that goodness as an evolved social trait has two characteristics: those with good reputations are helped, those with bad reputations are not helped. This is expressed as follows. (English is apparently not the native language of the authors, from Kyushu University in Japan.)
"One [feature of goodness] is that a player interacting with good persons are assessed by what he does. Cooperation with good individuals should be good and defection against good ones should be bad. The second feature should we consider with much emphasis: a good player who refused to help a bad person must be labeled good. This enables players facing cheaters to refuse help without worrying about the influence of the action on their own good reputation."
In other words,
"… a person in good standing falls into bad if and only if he fails to cooperate with an opponent in good standing. Even if he refuses to help an individual in bad standing, he does not lose his good standing. This is because the refusal is interpreted as punishment against a selfish individual (for studies on punishment, see Brandt and Sigmund (2003), Fehr and Gachter (2000), Fehr and Rockenbach (2003), and Henrich and Boyd (2001))."
See also Harry Truman and Hiroshima, on this date in 1945.
Related material:
Hitler's Still Point:
A Hate Speech for Harvard
The 5 Log24 entries ending
with "Three in One" on
December 30, 2002