Chapters 4 and 5

I would like to quickly say something back to Jasmine's post. You mentioned that you are a person who would rather know certain things, like a cheating spouse, rather than not know them. I think to that, Lynch would say that he admires your spirit and your courage, but that not everyone is as equiped as you to handle such a truth! In keeping with his idea of truth being valuable, but people's emotions and mental state also being valuable, it being good for someone to know about a cheating spouse is definately prima facie good.

I was glad to see that Lynch goes out of his way to talk about the value of other aspects to life in addition to truth. Essentially, my interpretation was that "Anything worth doing is worth doing, but not to excess." Doing what is good is always good, but taking care of yourself is also good. You can't persue many of the truths you might want if you don't have your own life in order.

I found Lynch's information in chapter 4 to be the most compelling. Doing what is the highest on his list of prima facie good is a good idea to me in concept, but I think there would be a lot of violent disagreement between people on which was the prima facie good. For example, someone who's really sick and attending a friend's program. Some people would split this decision more closely than the example with the drowning child. Which is the greater good? Making your body physically better by sleeping in, or not letting a good friend down? In this case, either those from the outside would disagree about the answer, or the person who is sick would hold all the cards. People from the outside can't quantify how ill the person is per say, and they can't quantify exactly how good a friend you are. In this sense, it's hard for someone to necessarily pick the prima facie good because it's so subjective. Because I'm the only one who knows just how sick I am, no one can really say my decision is wrong, so what I felt was the prima facie good is entirely my subjective opinion.