Preface of Philosophical Essays by Bertrand Russell. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Landon D.C. Elkind at the University of Iowa in Coralville, Iowa. Philosophical Essays by Bertrand Russell. Preface. The following essays, with the exception of the last, are reprints, with some alterations, of articles which have appeared in various periodicals. The first three essays are concerned with ethical subjects, while the last four are concerned with the nature of truth. I include among the ethical essays the one on the study of mathematics, because this essay is concerned rather with the value of mathematics than with an attempt to state what mathematics is. Of the four essays which are concerned with truth, two deal with pragmatism, whose chief novelty is a new definition of truth. One deals with the conception of truth advocated by those philosophers who are more or less affiliated to Hegel, while the last endeavors to set forth briefly, without technicalities, the view of truth which commends itself to the author. All the essays, with the possible exception of the one on the monistic theory of truth, are designed to appeal to those who take an interest in philosophical questions, without having had a professional training in philosophy. I have to thank the editor of the New Quarterly for permission to reprint the study of mathematics, and sections 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 of the essay on the elements of ethics. And for section 4 I have to thank the editor of the Hibbert Journal. My acknowledgments are also due to the editors of the Independent Review, the Edinburgh Review, the Albany Review, and the proceedings of the Aristotelian Society for permission to reprint the essays 2, 4, 5, and 6 respectively. In the 6th essay, as originally printed, there was a third section, which is now replaced by the 7th essay. Oxford, July 1910. Post Script The death of William James, which occurred when the printing of this book was already far advanced, makes me wish to express what in the course of controversial writings does not adequately appear, the profound respect and personal esteem which I felt for him, as did all who knew him, and my deep sense of the public and private laws occasioned by his death. For readers trained in philosophy, no such assurance was required, but for those unaccustomed to the tone of a subject in which agreement is necessarily rarer than esteem, it seemed desirable to record what to others would be a matter of course. October 1910. End of Preface Chapter 1 of Philosophical Essays by Bertrand Russell This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Landon D.C. Elkind at the University of Iowa in Coralville, Iowa. The Elements of Ethics, Footnote 1. What follows is largely based on Mr. G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica, to which the reader is referred for fuller discussions. Parts 1 and 2 of the following essay are reprinted from the New Quarterly, February 1910, Part 3 from the New Quarterly, May 1910, Part 4 from the Hibbert Journal, October 1908, and Parts 5 and 6 from the New Quarterly, September 1910. End of Footnote 1. Part 1, The Subject Matter of Ethics. Section 1. The study of ethics is perhaps most commonly conceived as being concerned with the questions, what sort of actions ought men to perform, and what sort of actions ought men to avoid. It is conceived, that is to say, as dealing with human conduct and as deciding what is virtuous and what vicious among the kinds of conduct between which, in practice, people are called upon to choose. Owing to this view of the province of ethics, it is sometimes regarded as the practical study to which all others may be opposed as theoretical. The good and the true are sometimes spoken of as independent kingdoms, the former belonging to ethics, while the latter belongs to the sciences. This view, however, is doubly defective. In the first place, it overlooks the fact that the object of ethics, by its own account, is to discover true propositions about virtuous and vicious conduct, and that these are just as much a part of truth as true propositions about oxygen or the multiplication table. The aim is not practice, but propositions about practice, and propositions about practice are not themselves practical, any more than propositions about gases or gaseous. One might as well maintain that botany is vegetable or zoology animal. Thus, the study of ethics is not something outside science and coordinate with it, it is merely one among sciences. Section 2 In the second place, the view in question unduly limits the province of ethics. When we are told that actions of certain kinds ought to be performed or avoided, as for example, that we ought to speak the truth, or that we ought not to steal, we may always, legitimately, ask for a reason. And this reason will always be concerned, not only with the actions themselves, but also with the goodness or badness of the actions likely to follow from such actions. We shall be told that truth speaking generates mutual confidence, cements friendships, facilitates the dispatch of business, and hence increases the wealth of the society which practices it, and so on. If we ask why we should aim at increasing mutual confidence, or cementing friendships, we may be told that obviously these things are good, or that they lead to happiness, and happiness is good. If we still ask why, the plain man will probably feel irritation, and will reply that he does not know. His irritation is due to the conflict of two feelings, the one that whatever is true must have a reason, the other that the reason he has already given is so obvious that it is merely contentious to demand a reason for the reason. In the second of these feelings, he may be right. In the first, he is certainly wrong. In ordinary life, people only ask why when they are unconvinced. If a reason is given, which they do not doubt, they are satisfied. Hence, when they do ask why, they usually have a logical right to expect an answer, and they come to think that a belief for which no reason can be given is an unreasonable belief. But in this, they are mistaken, as they would soon discover if their habit of asking why were more persistent. It is the business of the philosopher to ask for reasons as long as reasons can legitimately be demanded, and to register the propositions which give the most ultimate reasons that are attainable. Since a proposition can only be proved by means of other propositions, it is obvious that not all propositions can be proved, for proofs can only begin by assuming something. And since the consequences have no more certainty than their premises, the things that are proved are no more certain than the things that are accepted, merely because they are obvious, and are then made the basis of our proofs. Thus, in the case of ethics, we must ask why such and such actions ought to be performed, and continue our backward inquiry for reasons until we reach the kind of propositions of which proof is impossible, because it is so simple or so obvious that nothing more fundamental can be found, from which to deduce it. Section 3. Now when we ask for the reasons in favor of the actions which moralists recommend, these reasons are usually that the consequences of the actions are likely to be good, or if not wholly good, at least the best possible under the circumstances. Hence, all questions of conduct presuppose the decision as to what things other than conduct are good, and what bad. What is called good conduct is conduct which is a means to other things, which are good on their own account. And hence the study of what is good on its own account is necessary before we can decide upon rules of conduct, and the study of what is good or bad on its own account must be included in ethics, which thus ceases to be concerned only with human conduct. The first step in ethics, therefore, is to be quite clear as to what we mean by good and bad. Only then can we return to conduct, and ask how right conduct is related to the production of goods and the avoidance of evils. In this, as in all philosophical inquiries, after a preliminary analysis of complex data, we proceed again to build up complex things from their simpler constituents, starting from ideas which we understand, though we cannot define them, and from premises which we know, though we cannot prove them. The appearance of dogmatism in this procedure is deceptive, for the premises are such as ordinary reasoning unconsciously assumes, and there is less real dogmatism in believing them after a critical scrutiny than in employing them implicitly without examination. Part 2. The meaning of good and bad. Section 4. Good and bad, in the sense in which the words are here intended, which is, I believe, their usual sense, are ideas which everybody, or almost everybody, possesses. These ideas are apparently among those which form the simplest constituents of our more complex ideas, and are therefore incapable of being analyzed or built up, out of other simpler ideas. When people ask, what do you mean by good, the answer must consist not in a verbal definition, such as could be given if one were asked, what do you mean by pentagon, but in such a characterization as shall call up the appropriate idea to the mind of the questioner. This characterization may, and probably will, itself contain the idea of good, which would be a fault in a definition, but is harmless when our purpose is merely to stimulate the imagination to the production of the idea which is intended. It is in this way that children are taught the names of colors. They are shown, say, a red book, and told that this is red, and for fear that they should think red means book, they are shown also a red flower, a red ball, and so on, and told that these are all red. Thus the idea of redness is conveyed to their minds, although it is quite impossible to analyze redness, or to find constituents which compose it. In the case of good, the process is more difficult, both because goodness is not perceived by the senses, like redness, and because there is less agreement as to the things that are good, than as to the things that are red. This is perhaps one reason that has led people to think that the notion of good could be analyzed into some other notion, such as pleasure or object of desire. A second reason, probably more potent, is the common confusion that makes people think they cannot understand an idea unless they can define it. Forgetting that ideas are defined by other ideas, which must already be understood if the definition is to convey any meaning. When people begin to philosophize, they seem to make a point of forgetting everything familiar and ordinary. Otherwise their acquaintance with redness, or any other color, might show them how an idea can be intelligible where definition, in the sense of analysis, is impossible. Section 5 To explain what we mean by good and bad, we may say that a thing is good when on its own account it ought to exist, and bad when on its own account it ought not to exist. If it seems to be in our power to cause a thing to exist or not to exist, we ought to try to make it exist if it is good, and not exist if it is bad. When a thing is good, it is fitting that we should feel pleasure in its existence. When it is bad, it is fitting that we should feel pain in its existence. But all such characterizations really presuppose the notions of good and bad, and are therefore useful only as a means of calling up the right ideas, not as logical definitions. It might be thought that good could be defined as the quality of whatever we ought to try to produce. This would merely put ought in the place of good as our ultimate undefined notion, but as a matter of fact, the good is much wider than what we ought to try to produce. There is no doubt that some of the lost tragedies of Aeschylus were good, but we ought not to try to rewrite them because we should certainly fail. What we ought to do in fact is limited by our powers and opportunities, whereas the good is subject to no such limitation. And our knowledge of goods is confined to the things we have experienced or can imagine, but presumably there are many goods of which we human beings have absolutely no knowledge because they do not come within the very restricted range of our thoughts and feelings. Such goods are still goods, although human conduct can have no reference to them. Thus, the notion of good is wider and more fundamental than any notion concerned with conduct. We use the notion of good in explaining what right conduct is, but we do not use the notion of right conduct in explaining what good is. Section 6 A fairly plausible view is that good means the same as desired, so that when we say a thing is good, we mean that it is desired. Thus anything is good, which we either hope to acquire or fear to lose. Yet it is commonly admitted that there are bad desires, and when people speak of bad desires, they seem to mean desires for what is bad. For example, when one man desires another man's pain, it is obvious that what is desired is not good, but bad. But the supporter of the view that good means desired will say that nothing is good or bad in itself, but is good for one person and perhaps bad for another. This must happen, he will say, in every case of a conflict of desires.  But the sense of good and bad, which is needed in ethics, is not in this way personal, and it is quite essential in the study of ethics to realize that there is an impersonal sense. In this sense, when a thing is good, it ought to exist on its own account, not on account of its consequences, nor yet of who is going to enjoy it. We cannot maintain that for me a thing ought to exist on its own account, while for you it ought not. That would merely mean that one of us is mistaken, since in fact everything either ought to exist or ought not. Thus the fact that one man's desire, maybe another man's aversion, proves that good, in the sense relevant to ethics, does not mean the same as desired. Since everything is in itself either good or not good, and cannot be at once good for me and bad for you. This could only mean that its effects on me were good, and on you bad. But here good and bad are again impersonal. Section 7. There is another line of argument, more subtle, but more instructive, by which we can refute those who say that good means desired, or who propose any other idea, such as pleasure, as the actual meaning of good. This line of argument will not prove that the things that are good are not the same as the things that are desired, but it will prove that if this were the case, it could not be proved by appealing to the meaning of the word good. So far it might be thought that such an argument could only have a purely logical importance, but in fact this is not so. Many ethical theories happen based upon the contention, that good means so and so, and people have accepted consequences of this contention, which if they had relied upon inspection untrammeled by false theory, they would almost certainly have rejected. Whoever believes that good means desired will try to explain away the cases where it seems as if what is desired is bad. But if he no longer holds this theory, he will be able to allow free play to his unbiased ethical perceptions, and will thus escape errors into which he would otherwise have fallen. The argument in question is this, if anyone affirms that the good is the desired, we consider what he says, and either assent or dissent. But in any case, our assent or dissent is decided by considering what the good and the desired really are. When on the contrary, someone gives a definition of the meaning of a word, our state of mind is quite different. If we are told a pentagon is a figure which has five sides, we do not consider what we know about pentagons, and then agree or disagree. We accept this as the meaning of the word, and we know that we are getting information not about pentagons, but merely about the word pentagon. What we are told is the sort of thing that we expect dictionaries to tell us. But when we are told that the good is the desired, we feel at once that we are being told something of philosophical importance, something which has ethical consequences, something which it is quite beyond the scope of a dictionary to tell us. The reason of this is that we already know what we mean by the good, and what we mean by the desired. If these two meanings always applied to the same objects, that would not be a verbal definition, but an important truth. The analog of such a proposition is not the above definition of pentagon, but rather a pentagon defined as above is a figure which has five angles. Whenever a proposed definition sets us thinking whether it is true, in fact, and not whether that is how the word is used, there is reason to suspect that we are not dealing with a definition, but with a significant proposition, in which the word professively defined has a meaning already known to us, either as simple or as defined in some other way. By applying this test, we shall easily convince ourselves that all hitherto suggested definitions of the good are significant, not merely verbal propositions, and that therefore, though they may be true in fact, they do not give the meaning of the word good. The importance of this result is that so many ethical theories depend upon the denial of it. Some have contended that good means desired, others that good means pleasure, others again, that it means conformity to nature or obedience to the will of God. The mere fact that so many different and incompatible definitions have been proposed is evidence against any of them being really definitions. There have never been two incompatible definitions of the word pentagon. None of the above are really definitions. They are all to be understood as substantial affirmations concerning the things that are good. All of them are, in my opinion, mistaken, in fact, as well as in form. But I shall not here undertake to refute them severally. Section 8 It is important to realize that when we say a thing is good in itself and not merely as a means, we attribute to the thing a property which it either has or does not have, quite independently, of our opinion on the subject, or of our wishes or other peoples. Most men are inclined to agree with Hamlet, quote, there is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so, end quote. It is supposed that ethical preferences are a mere matter of taste, and that if X thinks A is a good thing and Y thinks it is a bad thing, all we can say is that A is good for X and bad for Y. This view is rendered plausible by the divergence of opinion as to what is good and bad, and by the difficulty of finding arguments to persuade people who differ from us in such a question. But difficulty in discovering the truth does not prove that there is no truth to be discovered. If X says A is good and Y says A is bad, one of them must be mistaken, though it may be impossible to discover which. If this were not the case, there would be no difference of opinion between them. If in asserting that A is good, X meant merely to assert that A had a certain relation to himself, say of pleasing his taste in some way, and if Y in saying that A is not good meant merely to deny that A had a like relation to himself, then there would be no subject of debate between them. It would be absurd if X said, I am eating a pigeon pie, for Y to answer, that is false, I am eating nothing. But this is no more absurd than a dispute as to what is good if, when we say A is good, we mean merely to affirm a relation of A to ourselves. When Christians assert that God is good, they do not mean merely that the contemplation of God rouses certain emotions in them. They may admit that this contemplation rouses no such emotion in the devils who believe and tremble. But the absence of such emotions is one of the things that make devils bad. As a matter of fact, we consider some tastes better than others. We do not hold merely that some tastes are ours and other tastes are other peoples. We do not even always consider our own tastes the best. We may prefer bridge to poetry, but think it better to prefer poetry to bridge. And when Christians affirm that a world created by a good God must be a good world, they do not mean that it must be to their taste, for often it is by no means to their taste. But they use its goodness to argue that it ought to be to their taste. And they do not mean merely that it is to God's taste, for that would have been equally the case if God had not been good. Thus good and bad are qualities which belong to objects independently of our opinions, just as much as round and square do. And when two people differ as to whether a thing is good, only one of them can be right, though it may be very hard to know which is right. Section 9 One very important consequence of the indefinability of good must be emphasized. Namely, the fact that knowledge as to what things exist, have existed, or will exist, can throw absolutely no light upon the question as to what things are good. There might, as far as mere logic goes, be some general proposition to the effect, whatever exists is good, or whatever exists is bad, or what will exist is better or worse than what does exist. But no such general proposition can be proved by considering the meaning of good. And no such general proposition can be arrived at empirically from experience, since we do not know the whole of what does exist, nor yet of what has existed or will exist. We cannot therefore arrive at such a general proposition unless it is itself self-evident, or follows from some self-evident proposition, which must, to warrant the consequence, be of the same general kind. But as a matter of fact, there is, so far as I can discover, no self-evident proposition as to the goodness or badness of all that exists or has existed or will exist. It follows that, from the fact that the existent world is of such and such a nature, nothing can be inferred as to what things are good or bad. Section 10. The belief that the world is wholly good has nevertheless been widely held, and has been held either because, as a part of revealed religion, the world has been supposed created by a good and omnipotent God, or because, on metaphysical grounds, it was thought possible to prove that the sum total of existent things must be good. With the former line of argument, we are not here concerned. The latter must be briefly dealt with. The belief that, without assuming any ethical premise, we can prove that the world is good, or indeed any other result containing the notion of good, logically involves the belief that the notion of good is complex and capable of definition. If, when we say that a thing is good, we mean, for example, that it has three other, simpler properties, then by proving that a thing has those three properties, we prove that it is good, and thus we get a conclusion involving the notion of good, although our premises did not involve it. But if good is a simple notion, no such inference will be possible. Unless our premises contain the notion of good, our conclusion cannot contain it. The case is analogous to the case of elements and compounds in chemistry. By combining elements or compounds, we can get a new compound, but no chemical operation will give an element which was not present in the beginning. So if good is simple, no propositions not containing this notion can have consequences which do contain it. As a matter of fact, those who have endeavored to prove that the world as a whole is good have usually adopted the view that all evil consists wholly in the absence of something, and that nothing positive is evil. This they have usually supported by defining good as meaning the same as real. Spinoza says, footnote one, ethics part two, definition six, end of footnote one, quote, by reality and perfection, I mean the same thing, end quote. And hence it follows with much less trouble than metaphysicians have usually taken in the proof that the real is perfect. This is the view in Abbott-Vogler, quote, the evil is null, is not, is silence implying sound, end quote. Whenever it is said that all evil is limitation, the same doctrine is involved. What is meant is that evil never consists in the existence of something which can be called bad, but only in the non-existence of something. Hence everything that does exist must be good, and the sum total of existence, since it exists most, must be the best of all. And this view is set forth as resulting from the meaning of evil. The notion that non-existence is what is meant by evil is refuted exactly as the previous definitions of good were refuted. And the belief that as a matter of fact, nothing that exists is evil is one which no one would advocate except a metaphysician defending a theory. Pain and hatred and envy and cruelty are surely things that exist and are not merely the absence of their opposites. But the theory should hold that they are indistinguishable from the blank unconsciousness of an oyster. Indeed, it would seem that this whole theory has been advanced solely because of the unconscious bias in favor of optimism, and that its opposite is, logically, just as tenable. We might urge that evil consists in existence and good in non-existence. That, therefore, the sum total of existence is the worst thing there is, and that only non-existence is good. Indeed, Buddhism does seem to maintain some such view. It is plain that this view is false, but logically, it is no more absurd than its opposite. Section 11. We cannot then infer any results as to what is good or bad from a study of the things that exist. This conclusion needs chiefly, at the present time, to be applied against evolutionary ethics. The phrase, survival of the fittest, seems to have given rise to the belief that those who survive are the fittest in some ethical sense, and that the course of evolution gives evidence that the latter type is better than the earlier. On this basis, a worship of force is easily set up, and the mitigation of struggle by civilization comes to be deprecated. It is thought that what fights most successfully is most admirable, and that what does not help in fighting is worthless. Such a view is wholly destitute of logical foundation. The course of nature, as we have seen, is irrelevant in deciding as to what is good or bad. A priori, it would be as probable that evolution should go from bad to worse as that it should go from good to better. What makes the view plausible is the fact that the lower animals existed earlier than the higher, and that among men the civilized races are able to defeat and often exterminate the uncivilized. But here the ethical preference of the higher to the lower animals and of the exterminators to the exterminated is not based upon evolution, but exists independently and unconsciously intrudes into our judgment of the evolutionary process. If evolutionary ethics were sound, we ought to be entirely indifferent as to what the course of evolution may be, since whatever it is, is thereby proved to be the best. Yet if it should turn out that the Negro or the Chinaman was able to oust the European, we should cease to have any admiration of evolution. For as a matter of fact, our preference of the European to the Negro is wholly independent of the European's greater prowess with a maximum gun. Broadly, the fact that a thing is unavoidable affords no evidence that it is not an evil, and the fact that a thing is impossible affords no evidence that it is not a good. It is doubtless foolish in practice to fret over the inevitable, but it is false in theory to let the actual world dictate our standard of good and evil. It is evident that among the things that exist, some are good, some bad, and that we know too little of the universe to have any right to an opinion as to whether the good or the bad preponderates, or as to whether either is likely in the future to gain on the other. Optimism and pessimism alike are general theories as to the universe which there is no reason whatever for accepting. What we know of the world tends to suggest that the good and the evil are fairly balanced, but it is of course possible that what we do not know is very much better or very much worse than what we do know. Complete suspense of judgment in this matter is therefore the only rational attitude. Part 3. Right and Wrong. Section 12. The ideas of right and wrong conduct are, as we have seen, those with which ethics is generally supposed to be concerned. This view, which is unduly narrow, is fostered by the use of the one word good both for the sort of conduct which is right and for the sort of things which ought to exist on account of their intrinsic value. This double use of the word good is very confusing and tends greatly to obscure the distinction of ends and means. I shall therefore speak of right actions, not of good actions, confining the word good to the sense explained in section 11. The word right is very ambiguous and it is by no means easy to distinguish the various meanings which it has in common parlance. Owing to the variety of these meanings, adherence to any one necessarily involves us in apparent paradoxes when we use it in a context which suggests one of the other meanings. This is the usual result of precision of language, but so long as the paradoxes are merely verbal, they do not give rise to more than verbal objections. In judging of conduct, we find at the outset two widely divergent methods, of which one is advocated by some moralists, the other by others, while both are practiced by those who have no ethical theory. One of these methods, which is that advocated by utilitarians, judges the rightness of an act by relation to the goodness or badness of its consequences. The other method, advocated by intuitionists, judges by the approval or disapproval of the moral sense or conscience. I believe that it is necessary to combine both theories in order to get a complete account of right and wrong. There is, I think, one sense in which a man does right when he does what will probably have the best consequences, and another in which he does right when he follows the dictates of his conscience, whatever the probable consequences may be. There are many other senses which we may give to the word right, but these two seem to be the most important. Let us begin by considering the second of these senses. Section 13. The question we have to ask ourselves is, what do we mean by the dictates of the moral sense? If these are to afford a definition of right conduct, we cannot say that they consist in judging that such and such actions are right, for that would make our definition circular. We shall have to say that the moral sense consists in a certain specific emotion of approval towards an act, and that an act is to be called right, when the agent, at the moment of action, feels this emotion of approval towards the action which he decides to perform. There is certainly a sense in which a man ought to perform any act which he approves, and to abstain from any act which he disapproves, and it seems also undeniable that there are emotions which may be called approval and disapproval. Thus this theory, whether adequate or not, must be allowed to contain a part of the truth. It is, however, fairly evident that there are other meanings of right conduct, and that, though there is an emotion of approval, there is also a judgment of approval, which may or may not be true. For we certainly hold that a man who has done an action which his conscience approved may have been mistaken, and that in some sense his conscience ought not to have approved his action. But this would be impossible if nothing were involved, except an emotion. To be mistaken implies a judgment, and thus we must admit that there is such a thing as a judgment of approval. If this were not the case, we could not reason with a man as to what is right, what he approves would be necessarily right for him to do, and there could be no argument against his approval. We do in fact hold that when one man approves of a certain act, while another disapproves, one of them is mistaken, which could not be the case with a mere emotion. If one man likes oysters, and another dislikes them, we do not say that either of them is mistaken. Thus there is a judgment of approval, footnote one. The judgment of approval does not always coincide with the emotion of approval. For example, when a man has been led by his reason to reject a moral code which he formerly held, it will commonly happen, at least for a time, that his emotion of approval follows the old code, though his judgment has abandoned it. Thus he may have been brought up, like Muhammad's first disciples, to believe it a duty to avenge the murder of relations by murdering the murderer, or his relations. And he may continue to feel approval of such vengeance after he has ceased to judge it approvingly. The emotion of approval will not be again in question in what follows, end of footnote one. And this must consist of a judgment that an act is, in a new sense, right. The judgment of approval is not merely the judgment that we feel the emotion of approval, for then another who disapproved would not necessarily hold our judgment of approval to be mistaken. Thus in order to give a meaning to the judgment of approval, it is necessary to admit a sense of right other than approved. In this sense, when we approve an act, we judge that it is right, and we may be mistaken in so judging. This new sense is objective, and in the sense that it does not depend upon the opinions and feelings of the agent. Thus a man who obeys the dictates of his conscience is not always acting rightly in the objective sense. When a man does what his conscience approves, he does what he believes to be objectively right, but not necessarily what is objectively right. We need therefore some other criterion than the moral sense for judging what is objectively right. Section 14. It is in defining objective rightness that the consequences of an action become relevant. Some moralists, it is true, deny the dependence upon consequences, but that is to be attributed, I think, to confusion with the subjective sense. When people argue as to whether such and such an action is right, they always adduce the consequences which it has, or may be expected to have. A statesman who has to decide what is the right policy, or a teacher who has to decide what is the right education, will be expected to consider what policy or what education is likely to have the best results. Whenever a question is at all complicated and cannot be settled by following some simple rule, such as thou shalt not steal or thou shalt not bear false witness, it is at once evident that the decision cannot be made except by consideration of consequences. But even when the decision can be made by a simple precept, such as not to lie or not to steal, the justification of the precept is found only by consideration of consequences. A code such as the Decalogue, it must be admitted, can hardly be true without exception if the goodness or badness of consequences is what determines the rightness or wrongness of actions. For in so complex a world, it is unlikely that obedience to the Decalogue will always produce better consequences than disobedience. Yet it is a suspicious circumstance that breaches of those of the Ten Commandments which people still hold a duty to obey do, as a matter of fact, have bad consequences in the vast majority of instances and would not be considered wrong in a case in which it was fairly certain that their consequences would be good. This latter fact is concealed by a question begging addition of moral overtones to words. Thus, for example, thou shalt do no murder would be an important precept if it were interpreted, as Tolstoy interprets it, to mean thou shalt not take human life. But it is not so interpreted. On the contrary, some taking of human life is called justifiable homicide. Thus murder comes to mean unjustifiable homicide. And it is a mere tautology to say, thou shalt do no unjustifiable homicide. That this should be announced from Sinai would be as fruitless as Hamlet's report of the Ghost's message, quote, there's narrow villain dwelling in all Denmark, but he's an errant nave, end quote. As a matter of fact, people do make a certain classification of homicides and decide that certain kinds are justifiable and certain others unjustifiable. But there are many doubtful cases, tyrannicide, capital punishment, killing in war, killing in self-defense, killing in defense of others, are some of these. And if a decision is sought, it is sought usually by considering whether the consequences of actions belonging to these classes are on the whole good or bad. Thus the importance of precepts, such as the Ten Commandments, lies in the fact that they give simple rules, obedience to which will, in almost all cases, have better consequences than disobedience. And the justification of these rules is not wholly independent of consequences. Section 15. In common language, the received code of moral rules is usually presupposed, and an action is only called immoral when it infringes one of these rules. Whatever does not infringe them is regarded as permissible, so that on most of the occasions of life, no one course of action is marked out as alone right. If a man adopts a course of action which, though not contrary to the received code, will probably have bad consequences, he is called unwise rather than immoral. Now, according to the distinction we have made between objective and subjective rightness, a man may well act in a way which is objectively wrong, without doing what is objectively wrong, that is, what his conscience disapproves. An act, roughly speaking, I shall return to this point presently, is immoral when a man's conscience disapproves it, but is judged only unwise or injudicious when his conscience approves it, although we judge that it will probably have bad consequences. Now, the usual moral code is supposed, in common language, to be admitted by every man's conscience, so that when he infringes it, his action is not merely injudicious, but immoral. On the other hand, where the code is silent, we regard an unfortunate action as objectively but not subjectively wrong, that is, as injudicious, but not immoral. The acceptance of a moral code has the great advantage that, insofar, as its rules are objectively right, it tends to harmonize objective and subjective rightness. Thus, it tends to cover all frequent cases, leaving only the rarer ones to the individual judgment of the agent. Hence, when new sorts of cases become common, the moral code soon comes to deal with them. Thus, each profession has its own code concerning cases common in the profession, though not outside it. But the moral code is never itself ultimate. It is based upon an estimate of probable consequences, and is essentially a method of leading men's judgment to approve what is objectively right and disapprove what is objectively wrong. And when once a fairly correct code is accepted, the exceptions to it become very much fewer than they would otherwise be. Because one of the consequences of admitting exceptions is to weaken the code, and this consequence is usually bad enough to outweigh the good resulting from admitting such and such an exception. This argument, however, works in the opposite direction with a grossly incorrect code. And it is to be observed that most conventional codes embody some degree of unwarrantable selfishness, individual, professional, or national, and are thus, in certain respects, worthy of detestation. Section 16. What is objectively right, then, is in some way dependent on consequences. The most natural supposition to start from would be that the objectively right act, under any circumstances, is the one which will have the best consequences. We will define this as the most fortunate act. The most fortunate act, then, is the one which will produce the greatest excess of good over evil, or the least excess of evil over good, for there may be situations in which every possible act will have consequences that are, on the whole, bad. But we cannot maintain that the most fortunate act is always the one which is objectively right, in the sense that it is what a wise man will hold that he ought to do. For it may happen that the act which will in fact prove the most fortunate is likely, according to all the evidence at our disposal, to be less fortunate than some other. In such a case it will be, at least in one sense, objectively wrong to go against the evidence in spite of the actual good result of our doing so. There have certainly been some men who have done so much harm that it would have been fortunate for the world if their nurses had killed them in infancy. But if their nurses had done so their action would not have been objectively right, because the probability was that it would not have the best effects. Hence it would seem we must take account of probability in judging of objective rightness. Let us then consider whether we can say that the objectively right act is the one which will probably be most fortunate. I shall define this as the wisest act. The wisest act, then, is the one which, when account is taken of all available data, gives us the greatest expectation of good on the balance, or the least expectation of evil on the balance. There is, of course, a difficulty as to what are to be considered available data, but broadly we can distinguish, in any given state of knowledge, things capable of being foreseen from things which are unpredictable. I suppose account to be taken of the general body of current knowledge, in fact the sort of consideration which people expect when they ask legal or medical advice. There is no doubt this brings us nearer to what is objectively right than we were when we were considering the actually most fortunate act. For one thing it justifies the unavoidable limitation to not very distant consequences, which is almost always necessary if a practical decision is to be reached. For the likelihood of error in calculating distant consequences is so great that their contribution to the probable good or evil is very small, though their contribution to the actual good or evil is likely to be much greater than that of the nearer consequences. And it seems evident that what is quite impossible to know cannot be relevant in judging as to what conduct is right. If, as is possible, a cataclysm is going to destroy life on this planet this day week, many acts otherwise useful will prove to have been wasted labor. For example, the preparation of next year's nautical almanac. But since we have no reason to expect such a cataclysm, the rightness or wrongness of acts is plainly to be estimated without regard to it. Section 17. One apparent objection at once suggests itself to the definition. Very few acts are of sufficient importance to justify such elaborate and careful consideration, as is required for forming an opinion as to whether they are the wisest. Indeed, the least important decisions are often those which it would be hardest to make on purely reasonable grounds. A man who debates on each day which of the two ways of taking exercise is likely to prove most beneficial is considered absurd. The question is at once difficult and unimportant, and is therefore not worth spending time over. But although it is true that unimportant decisions ought not to be made with excessive care, there is danger of confusion if this is regarded as an objection to our definition of objective rightness. For the act which in the case supposed is objectively wrong is the act of deliberation, not the act decided upon as the result of deliberation. And the deliberation is condemned by our definition, for it is very unlikely that there is no more beneficial way of spending time than in debating trivial points of conduct. Thus, although the wisest act is the one which after complete investigation appears likely to give the most fortunate results, yet the complete investigation required to show that it is the wisest action is only itself wise in the case of very important decisions. This is only an elaborate way of saying that a wise man will not waste time on unimportant details, hence this apparent objection can be answered. Section 18 One further addition is required for the definition of the objectively right act, namely that it must be possible. Among the acts whose consequences are to be considered, we must not include, such as are either physically impossible to perform, or impossible for the agent to think of. This last condition introduces difficulties connected with determinism, which are discussed in Part 4. Ignoring these difficulties, we may say that the objectively right act is that one which, of all that are possible, will probably have the best consequences. Section 19 We must now return to the consideration of subjective rightness, with a view to distinguishing conduct which is merely mistaken from conduct which is immoral or blame-worthy. We here require a new sense of ought, which it is by no means easy to define. In the objective sense, a man ought to do what is objectively right. But in this objective sense, which we have now to examine, he sometimes ought to do what is objectively wrong. For example, we saw that it is often objectively right to give less consideration to an unimportant question of conduct than would be required for forming a trustworthy judgment as to what is objectively right. Now, it seems plain that if we have given to such a question the amount and kind of consideration, which is objectively right, and we then do what appears to us objectively right, our action is, in some sense, subjectively right, although it may be objectively wrong. Our action could certainly not be called a sin and might even be highly virtuous in spite of its objective wrongness. It is these notions of what is sinful and what is virtuous that we have now to consider. Section 20 The first suggestion that naturally occurs is that an act is subjectively right when it is judged by the agent to be objectively right and subjectively wrong when it is judged to be objectively wrong. I do not mean that it is subjectively right when the agent judges that it is the act which, of all that are possible, will probably have the best results, for the agent may not accept the above account of objective rightness. I mean merely that it is the one towards which he has the judgment of approval. A man may judge an act to be right without judging that its consequences will be probably the best possible. I only contend that when he truly judges it to be right, then its consequences will probably be the best possible. But his judgment as to what is objectively right may air, not only by a wrong estimate of probable consequences, or by failing to think of an act which he might have thought of, but also by a wrong theory as to what constitutes objective rightness. In other words, the definition I gave of objective rightness is not meant as an analysis of the meaning of the word, but as a mark which in fact attaches to all objectively right actions and to no others. We are to consider, then, the suggestion that an act is moral when the agent approves it and immoral when he disapproves it, using moral to mean subjectively right and immoral to mean subjectively wrong. This suggestion, it is plain, will not stand without much modification. In the first place, we often hold it immoral to approve some things and disapprove others. Unless there are special circumstances to excuse such approval or disapproval. In the second place, unreflecting acts in which there is no judgment either of approval or disapproval are often moral or immoral. For both these reasons, the suggested definition must be regarded as inadequate. Section 21. The doctrine that an act is never immoral when the agent thinks it right has the drawback, or the advantage, that it excuses almost all the acts which would be commonly condemned. Very few people deliberately do what, at the moment, they believe to be wrong. Usually they first argue themselves into a belief that what they wish to do is right. They decide that it is their duty to teach so-and-so a lesson, that their rights have been so grossly infringed that if they take no revenge, there will be an encouragement to injustice. That without a moderate indulgence, in pleasure, a character cannot develop in the best way, and so on and so on. Yet we do not cease to blame them on that account. Of course, it may be said that a belief produced by a course of self-deception is not a genuine belief, and that the people who invent such excuses for themselves know all the while that the truth is the other way. Up to a point, this is no doubt true, though I doubt if it is always true. There are, however, other cases of mistaken judgment as to what is right, where the judgment is certainly genuine, and yet we blame the agent. There are cases of thoughtlessness, where a man remembers consequences to himself, but forgets consequences to others. In such a case, he may judge correctly and honestly on all the data that he remembers. Yet if he were a better man, he would remember more data. Most of the actions commonly condemned as selfish probably come under this head. Hence, we must admit that an act may be immoral, even if the agent quite genuinely judges that it is right. Unreflecting acts again in which there is no judgment as to right or wrong are often praised or blamed. Acts of generosity, for example, are more admired when they are impulsive than when they result from reflection. I cannot think of any act which is more blamed when it is impulsive than when it is deliberate. But certainly many impulsive acts are blamed, for example, such as spring from an impulse of malice or cruelty. In all these cases where reflection is absent, and also in the case of inadequate reflection, it may be said that blame does not belong properly to the act, but rather to the character revealed by the act, or if to some acts, than to those previous deliberate acts by which the character has been produced, which has resulted in the present act. The cases of self-deception would then be dismissed on the ground that the self-deceiver never really believes what he wishes to believe. We could then retain our original definition that a moral act is one which the agent judges to be right. While an immoral one is one which he judges to be wrong. But I do not think this would accord with what most people really mean. I rather think that a moral act should be defined as one which the agent would have judged to be right if he had considered the question candidly and with due care. If, that is to say, he had examined the data before him with a view to discovering what was right, and not with a view to proving such and such a course to be right. If an act is unimportant, and at the same time not obviously less right than some obvious alternative, we shall consider it neither moral nor immoral. For in such a case, the act does not deserve careful consideration. The amount of care which a decision deserves depends upon its importance and difficulty. In the case of a statesman advocating a new policy, for example, years of deliberation may sometimes be necessary to excuse him from the charge of levity. But with less important acts, it is usually right to decide even when further reflection might show the present decision to be erroneous. Thus, there is a certain amount of reflection appropriate to various acts, while some right acts are best when they spring from impulse, though these are such as reflection would approve. We may therefore say that an act is moral when it is one which the agent would judge to be right after an appropriate amount of candid thought, or in the case of acts which are best when they are unreflecting, after the amount and kind of thought requisite to form a first opinion. An act is immoral when the agent would judge it to be wrong after an appropriate amount of reflection. It is neither moral nor immoral when it is unimportant, and a small amount of reflection would not suffice to show whether it was right or wrong. Section 23 We may now sum up our discussion of right and wrong. When a man asks himself what ought I to do, he is asking what conduct is right in an objective sense. He cannot mean what ought a person to do who holds my views as to what a person ought to do for his views as to what a person ought to do are what will constitute his answer to the question, what ought I to do? But the onlooker, who thinks that the man has answered this question wrongly, may nevertheless hold that, in acting upon his answer, the man was acting rightly in a second subjective sense. This second sort of right action we call moral action. We held that an action is moral when the agent would judge it to be right after an appropriate amount of candid thought, or after a small amount, in the case of acts which are best when they are unreflecting. The appropriate amount of thought being dependent upon the difficulty and the importance of the decision. And we held that an action is right when, of all that are possible, it is the one which will probably have the best results. There are many other meanings of right, but these seem to be the meanings required for answering the questions, what ought I to do, and what acts are immoral. End of the first half of chapter one.


Welcome to the April 24th, 2023 edition of Rochester Select Board meeting. This time Dune is not attending, so I'm back, we get two of us again. We have posted this agenda in three different places and the website. So we are conforming to the open meeting law and it has been emailed to all interested parties as well. Due to the fact that I was in attendance but only listening in I had a poor signal when I was away. So my iPad didn't work, so I was using the phone so I did not participate as a Select Board member in that meeting, our last meeting and Dune is now away. We're gonna skip the prior meeting minute approval until next time when all of us are here. That would be the meeting from April 10th. Do we have Martha Slater here? Yep, she's here, you're on mute, Martha. Hi, is this the time for me to talk about Fourth of July? You might as well get it going. Okay, great, thank you. This is my annual formal request for permission from the Select Board to have the Fourth of July celebration, some of it I organize and then some of it I just sort of oversee, you know. Anyway, it will be on Tuesday, July 4th and what I have organized so far is that the this year's theme will be hometown happiness and it will include the Independence Day Dash, 5K Run, which the Ridgeline Collective and Pierce Hall Community Center are going to co-anchor and the tennis tournament down on the town tennis courts that the Proximas, Evelyn Walt Proxima are going to organize and then of course the parade and Crystal Lapel has let me know that the fire department will be doing the fire, the traffic control at either end of the village during the parade and also after the parade, along with the barbecue on the park, there's going to be the whoever shows up jam band is going to play on the band stand and Linda Anderson has volunteered to organize games for kids like she did last year. So there'll be things like this happening throughout the village and I'm hoping that the slick board is okay with that and the only thing it will cost the town is the usual things where I asked them the money comes from the Recreation Committee budget and Julia Kristen has, I send the bill to them as far as the paper and envelopes and stamps for sending out the invitation letters and also ordering the three trophies and that's it for first, second, and third place. So I'm hoping that that's okay with everybody and I checked to make sure that it will definitely be on, because it's on a Tuesday, I checked to make sure that it won't be on a Monday because sometimes government holidays are on Monday. So I called the post office being that they're a government organization and they told me that their schedule from the government came that they were supposed to be open on Monday the third and closed on Tuesday the fourth. So I went with that hoping because of course it is the fourth of July, it should be on the fourth. So anyway, sorry. Okay, so yeah, with no surprises, it being very routine as far as expenses are concerned. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if any of those costs have gone up from last year, but I think the stamps are a little more than they were last year. I think postage stamps have gone up a little, but anyway. Yes, correct. Okay, sorry. I move that we allow Martha to spend her parade budget. Second it. All in favor? All right. All right, there you go, Martha. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. It's been over 20 years that I've been doing this. So I've gotten, so I know what I'm doing, but still. Thank you. We definitely appreciate your efforts. Thank you. We did up that budget last year to accommodate the cost. Increases. Okay. Speaking of Martha Slater, let's move on to the second thing on our new business. It's Slater Skate Space Land Transfer. Correct. Hi, Dean. Been a busy week in that department. I called Evan today and he's not on Zoom because Cricket and I have come up with a different plan, creating an easement between two already surveyed posts that basically severs all of the land that has been built on her, the property that's the Skate Space that part that has been built on her property and also the drainage that is included, which is what we need for Skate Space and creating an easement. Can I hop in? Go. Just to be super clear, it's Martha's land, so it's Martha's decision. I chatted with Martha about an easement probably six, eight months ago. I think it was last summer. We had a nice talk. She was amenable to an easement, sounded like a good plan. Hadn't really heard too much of what was going on since. Dean looped me in this week and said, hey, everybody's thinking about a land transfer. And I said, really, okay, what's that? But then sounded like the cost, which is understandable of a land transfer as one, I'm not sure what Martha feels and she's the one that gets to decide. It's her land. And two, it's a lawyer on each end. It's another survey. I kind of said, well, where did the easement idea go? And Dean also discussed talking about actually even trying to get the paid part of the Skate Space off of Martha's land, which is certainly an option that's on the table. But I mentioned that doesn't actually solve the entire problem because there's drainage structures for the Skate Space that are still on Martha's land. Even if you take the asphalt part away, there's still some infrastructure that goes with the Skate Space that would still. So I took a quick peek back at Martha's survey that Norm Smith did when they parsed off the Skate Space from Martha's lot and noticed some two already defined points. Basically the back corner of Marv's lot and the back corner of the adjacent lot on the south side. And those are certainly already defined points recorded in that survey, recorded in the land records of the adjacent survey. So it would be really quite simple as far as I could tell to kind of just define the land west of those points in a paragraph or two paragraph easement that gets recorded just like you record easements for septic disposal. Actually the town store line is in that area too. So there's all sorts of, I've got some other pictures here too. There's all sorts of kind of town infrastructure that occurs on that little trapezoid part of the Skate Space obviously that the town store line is there which obviously has its own separate easement. Some of the drainage structures for the Skate Space run across there. And it also kind of that line basically follows the toe of the slope which is something Martha and I had talked about as being kind of a topographic defining feature as you know that lower terrace versus the upper terrace. And she had said you know that lower terrace definitely just let it continue to be used in perpetuity as it's being used by the town. So I guess my just guidance to Dean was why throw the easement option away so quickly for a more expensive land transfer option if Martha's okay with an easement and the town's okay with an easement. It certainly seems like a good option to me. So I guess I was just reintroducing that option into the mix cause I don't think it's nearly as pricey as a full land transfer. It doesn't require a survey. I think it's a decent option but certainly it's up to Martha. The benefit being we don't have to have two lawyers in a survey. We don't have to subtract any part of Skate Space. Martha doesn't have to subtract from her lot. Right. And it's, I did talk to Evan and the reason he's not on Zoom is that I basically said to him, let us figure this out. And then you know, and he is offered if the board decides to do the land transfer to do it at a reduced rate. That's not what we want to do anymore. We would rather have the easement. And I think Martha, she and I have talked about it. Right. And her decision is really the ultimate end of what she wants to do. Well, excuse me. Do I understand, Dean, that you agree with Cricket that the easement is probably the better way to go in your opinion? Yes. Okay. Well, I agree with that as well and I'm perfectly willing to agree to it. I was very glad to give that land for the Skate Space all those years ago. And I love looking down there, whatever the season and seeing kids and families down there. I mean, it gets quite a bit of use. It really does even though, of course, it needs some work right now, but it's still in usable shape and it gets used and kids really like it, you know? I'm perfectly willing to sign. You know, I assume I have to sign something for an easement or whatever when you get it written up or whatever, I'm not sure, but I'm willing to agree to it. Yeah, that's how I remember chatting with you about it, Martha, and I really appreciated our chat, but I'm always one to kind of try to figure out the lowest cost, simplest solution that achieves everybody's goals. And I think an easement does that. So I, and if Martha feels that way too, then I don't know why making it more expensive and more complicated is necessarily worth it. If the goals are achieved by an easement and it's simple and low cost, then. A couple of points to make here. Town doesn't own the school property, so you really need to be having this discussion with the school. This isn't school property. This is the town, this is the skate space, yeah. Okay. It has nothing to do with school property. Okay. It's the town property that actually, I talked with Julie about it was still sort of on the parcel map part of, that was another mistake that had been made at the parcel mapping level, but she got that corrected that it was still sort of shown as part of Martha's law, but Julie now the parcel map consultant, and I think they fixed that to show it as two separate lines. I just, I got a question about it too. As board, we had mentioned that we thought that we preferred to keep it clean and have a land transfer rather than an easement. Martha will be paying property taxes on a piece of property that she's allowing someone else to use when she goes to sell her property someday. She will have that easement, that blemish of an easement on her deed. Those are just all factors that need to be revealed to all the parties because we don't have lawyers to inform people when you're just going for an easement. Oh, go ahead, I'm sorry.  I was just gonna say, I hadn't thought about that. I mean, I will agree to either one, but just because I want the skate space to be there and be used and I certainly don't need that piece of property. I hadn't thought about the fact that someday if I sell the property, I've owned it for 38 years, so I keep forgetting. You know, anyway, I'll agree to whatever the board and Dean and Chris come up with and can agree on. My concern about the land transfer is wasted to you this week or last week, that there's money that needs to come out and come into this. It basically, if it's a land transfer, my understanding is that the town needs a lawyer, Martha needs a lawyer, and we need it surveyed. And Martha shouldn't have to pay. And so she was very adamant in donating this long ago that I've donated this property. I don't feel like she should. Absolutely not. Right. So it also comes down to where the funds are going to come from to pay two lawyers and a surveyor. I just got one question on the original. Maybe Martha can answer this and maybe you can. I don't know. On the original gift, was there ever any clause put in there that it reverts back to the original landowner if it's no longer used as a skate space? It's an entirely new lot on the survey. Right, I realize that. But was there anything ever, do you know? I mean, I don't know. I'm just wondering, and if you go with an easement, I would think that that would be a clause that you'd want to put in there. I think it was already gift to the town, as I understand it, but I don't know. That could be, I don't know. I was just asking that question. And the other thing, if you do go with an easement, I think that it would be permanent as long as that space was used as a skate space, and then it would revert back to Martha as her land or whoever owned the house. Yeah, the language of the easement would be important. Yeah, I mean, the language that you use here is going to be important down the road, I think. I don't recall anything that Frank, you know, in the original paperwork that we did all those years ago, I don't recall anything about it reverting although maybe it was, I haven't got that paperwork in front of me, I'm sorry. You're right. No, that's quite all right, Martha. I was just questioning that. I was wondering if there was a revert back to you if it was no longer used as a recreational area for the community, that was always just a question. But maybe if we go with an easement, that should be put in there, that that part would be reverts back to her use or that lot itself. You know what I'm saying, Dean? Yeah, I actually, I think the wording that I would use, I'm not a lawyer, but the easement of the use of the recreation area in perpetuity, basically, that it continues to the next owner. That easement. Is there an answer or a line easement going right at this point? Yeah. That's, I think. What I'm saying is if it's no longer a skate space, say 30 years down the road, skate space is gone. Right. That it just reverts back to her, I would think that the easement would no longer be an issue. I would think that, that's an Evan question, but it could probably be written into that. I would think something like that should be written in there for that case, and then there's no gray area on that in the future. But I think the easement would work fine. I want to be clear too that I don't want to muddle the water. So if the town and Martha, who are the two parties that are, if they prefer the land transfer, that's fine. I just wanted to bring the easement option back up as a low cost. To be, to tell you the truth, an easement is my preferred thing, but I wasn't going to disagree with the other if that's what everybody else wanted. Okay. I'm from discussions with her personal discussions. Yeah. So Frank, are you saying that the entire parcel would revert back to Martha? No, I was asking the question of whether or not it was ever put out that way because Martha donated the property for use, for recreational use, towards escape space, basketball court, whatever you want to call it. If there was anything in the original agreement that stated it would revert back to her law if it was no longer used in that way. And that was all I was asking. I don't, Not that I care. I mean, I just was wondering if that was the case. I think the original was a true land transfer where it was that down place. It was totally gifted to the town. As far as I can. I mean, in that way, okay. But I would think if- But moving forward, I think that's an important language if you went with the easement option. Right. You should write in it. Easements, the language of them does matter greatly. What is it being used for in continued use and perpetuity of that use, you define that existing use and you define all of the existing infrastructure that's on it and repair replacement maintenance of that infrastructure, but no more. Things like that. Yeah. Make it super clear. So it doesn't encumber it more, encumber that property more than it needs to. Right. And that's what I'm getting at, Cricket. I'm not trying to- Yeah. And I mean, for Martha's, you know, there is, you could say it all, it's a stain on the property, but I mean, reducing it in size by almost a half is, it's totally up to Martha. I would go with her preference. She's the one with the original generosity to get from. I don't have a problem with that. And to tell you the truth, when I bought that house in 1985, I was astonished to find out after I signed the paperwork that I owned that field down there, because it doesn't look like it belongs to the property and no one had mentioned it to me when I was shown it by the real estate agent or anything. So, and for a number of years, I had little kids in three jobs and it was very hard to get down there to mow it. So it didn't get mowed as often as it should have. That's back when I could mow things. And so I didn't have a real problem with giving it to someone who would take care of it and in honor of that little girl who died, et cetera. That seemed like a good use for the property, much better than I could do with it. So. Who writes up the easement? You have to have Evan do what I've done. I can reach out. I mean, if that is the decision to do the easement, then I would, because he's offered, you know. And you have those funds to cover that. I think it would still have to come out of the art books. Yeah. It would just be a lesser amount. Right. So instead of five or 7,000 for two lawyers in a surveyor, we're dealing with one lawyer. If that. Yeah. Right. So when you talk to Evan, just make sure that that language is in there, that it reverts back to that lot. If no longer he is. He should sit with Martha and figure out exactly what she wants for language. Because we should protect that. Protect her for that. Exactly. I mean, I think that just be a good thing. He's offered JC because she lives close by. And maybe I can set up a meeting with JC and Martha and be a part of that and kind of. Yeah, let me know. You need me to be there with you. Okay. Yeah, I think a representative from the town and Martha and Evan and a rep for Rick. And just to make sure that Martha's covered there. Exactly. And then when, if it's no longer used as a skates base, it can revert back to her.  And you'd be more than welcome to come to my house or whatever you would like to do. I think we'll probably come to your house, Martha. Okay. Just give me a call and let me know when you guys figure out what you're planning to do. I thank you very much. Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you. Yeah, town. Thank you too, Martha. Thank you, Martha. Wonderful. You're welcome. Thank you, Cricket. Okay. We have a path. Yes. Okay. Let's move on. We have a driveway permit for 2,600 North Hollow Road. That is a vacant lot. Just beyond the North Hollow Farm. In the dip there. Oh, yeah. And so we have an opinion from John Champion. And so I propose that we accept this unless you have discussion. John was good with it. So I second the motion. All in favor? All right. All right. I don't know whether this ever gets signed or anything, but it is publicly accepted. And yeah, another driveway cut. We have, this one is a double. It's a two. It is two lots that are located near and or on the Greyhawk Access Road. And John has a letter with that one, too. John Champion has lent his opinion. Let's wait on that back here. About. Instead of hands-gratching, we can read it. And I will read it. The two proposed driveway cuts off the Access Road. I found the town ditch is adequate for stormwater runoff, but it is not adequate to accept a 15-inch culvert. The applicant will have to ditch the town road in order to make the stormwater runoff system work properly. I think they're requesting an 18-inch culvert. I think that's gonna be the standard from now on anyway. So with those notes, we can go ahead and approve these two. You may want to mention that those lots don't border the town road, and they did receive permission from the Greyhawk Owners Association back in 2004. They granted 30-foot access points for those lots. It's part of the subdivision. Mm-hmm. So I move that we approve both of these driveway access permits. I second it. All in favor? Aye. Takes care of driveways for tonight. Next on our list is a letter from Jan McCann. She is wearing her shelter team hat tonight, and she is requesting funds for a volunteer recognition celebration. Recognizing volunteers for their work and commitment is important to all organizations. The shelter team leaders want to acknowledge the diligence, loyalty, and willingness of the volunteers that serve our community. We also want to acknowledge all the diligence, loyalty, and willingness of the volunteers. But at this time, we're not exactly sure where we would be able to pull the funds for a meal, volunteer recognition meal for 12 people. So I'm gonna kind of look into this a little bit later, but we would be more than happy to possibly plug it into a future budget if that's something that is requested to be done on an annual basis. But at this point in time, we just don't have anything pinpointed in any of our budgets for this. So I'm going to forward this, do a little research, but I'm not quite sure in these tough budget times that we're going through if we're gonna be able to plug out a $250 monetary donation for volunteer recognition. Not that we don't love our volunteers, we certainly do. Excuse me, Kat. Excuse me, would it be correct for me to write that the board will look into a possible source for funds for this and table the issue till later? You got it. Okay, thank you. Pat, I have a question. Yes, ma'am. Is this request specifically for the shelter team or does this include all volunteers in the town? No, 12 people. So I'm assuming that's all just the shelter team. Next on our list, we have a request as started a couple meetings ago about changing the name of what is now called a road off of Sky Hollow. It's called Valley View Road, and it is a dead end. So the definition of a road is a thoroughfare that connects two points. And since this one is not, the landowners on that road are claiming that they have a lot of people driving on it because they see it as a road, but then they decide, they determine that it doesn't go anywhere, so they turn around and go back. So they have a lot of drive-bys. So they're asking to change the road, Valley View Road to Valley View Drive.  And it was interesting, this could fall under the category of a drive or a terrace, but drive would work for it. And so I'm not quite sure if we've done all of our research, if we have to warn this or not. I don't believe so because I think it's a private road, it's not a town road. Yeah, it's not even a public road. It's not a public road. I think they want to change the name for Valley View Drive, and I don't think there's any. And they would be responsible for putting up a new sign on themselves. So I move that we accept this, change from Valley View Road to Valley View Drive. I would second that. All in favor? All right. So we will drop a letter to Mary Ellen and Sandy Webster, and let them know that we do not have a problem with that. Now, they also do have a responsibility to report this to the 911 address so that the ambulance does not go to the wrong spot, and they are aware of all of the particulars they need to do to make this stick. We cleared out Dengus anyway. Yeah, I think we did. So that is it for our new business, and we will move on to our departmental reports, and the first one on that list is the library. You're up, Tony. Well, do you want to start with this? Well, I assume Pat, you and Frank, read the letter that was sent, and basically we just want to keep you appraised on what the current thinking is on what can and cannot be included in this capital projects grant. I know Frank was at the meeting here at Pierce Hall last week where they were talking about the municipal energy grants that are going to be available, and perhaps the work that Jeff has talked about would be appropriate for that grant, but that's also federal money. So it's looking like any sort of replacement of the cladding and the weatherization projects wouldn't probably be funded by either of those, so that may have to come from town funds or some other way to fund that, but it doesn't look like federal money via state grants would be an appropriate way to go. Do you have funding to cover the new roof? That would be an appropriate part of a capital projects grant. So that is definitely would be a green light for you since it's been deemed that the roof is in the need of serious care, and we've recommended that standing seam would be a good replacement for it historically. Yes. We've gotten one of two estimates we asked for, and the estimate that came in at this point is $79,000, so that would be something we would certainly put in the capital projects grant. Also looking at that sagging area there on the second floor, topping off the insulation once the roof is replaced, and probably replacing all those fancy wooden posts for the ADA ramp which are failing, and fixing more of them just doesn't make financial sense. We've spent over $100 a post already on the ones that have been replaced. So those are the things right now that look appropriate for that grant, but doing the things that we talked about the last time we met with you doesn't look like they would be approved. So. I would go back to Greg and see if he could recommend a contractor that specializes in historic preservation to see if you could get an opinion from that person. At one time, we had such a contractor right in our valley, but no longer, but yeah. Are you talking about someone that would mill, custom mill clay? Someone that would understand what Greg is looking for and what you're looking for. Someone that could make it work so that the cloud boards are either still the same or exactly what you had. There are contractors out there that specialize in historical buildings. So maybe I would take Greg to the next level and see if he can help you meet his adverse effects problems. We didn't ask, but as his letter states, they're fairly comfortable that the moisture problem I saw that has been solved by the flashing we did last year. But we still have rock to address and repair, correct? Well, the rod is primarily three windowsills and that would go into the grant. That's about it. But just a paint job would not be approved as part of a capital project. I haven't had a chance after I got Doreen's letter. I haven't had a chance to talk with Jeff. Jeff has his hand up. He does, yeah. Let him speak then. I haven't had a chance to talk with him. What say you, Jeff? Lower my hand first. There were a number of things that I would take issue with with the report from the architect for the preservation trust folks. You know, I have found someone who can mill the decorative mill work for the building. No pricing has been provided on that yet. The real difficulty with fixing those windows in place is how to flash the window opening so that we don't have water running behind a weather-resistive barrier. The, you know, if the cladding had to stay the same and I really don't see why clabbered is acceptable on a first floor and not on a second or vice versa. But the thing that is really against the current building practice and building science is to smush two pieces of wet wood together and hope for the best. And that's what we have in that building right now. We really need to create a separation so that the physics can work and the cladding, wets and dries at roughly the same rate on the inside and the outside. So I, you know, my thought was that I would go back to that estimate and adhere as closely as I can to their recommendations, but I don't want to compromise on creating whether an appropriate drainage plan for that building, it just kicks a can down the road at great cost. So maybe since there's a weatherization aspect to that part of the plan, maybe that would be more appropriate to go into the municipal energy grants that are at about the same time and not put it in the capital projects grant, get the roof taken care of and those other things and put the whole cladding, insulating part in the municipal energy grant. Who owns the library? Trust these. I did reach out to two rivers, Otakwichi this week and ask them where we are, how we go about level two audit to get some of this, the, it was the Merck grants that would require a level two audit, which is essentially on what it's similar to what the library's had twice before, yet the duration in time that has passed means that those audits will not work for this current grant application, we'd have to do it over again. I was also counseled that we would likely only get support from the state for one project and that I should be looking at prioritization there. Frustrating thing is that the library is not one of our big energy users. If we were going for bang for the buck, we'd be looking at the garage and the town office, but of course the town office is kind of entwined in the high school and versus the office and the office versus the high school. So there's a lot of places I could work. I continue to look at the library and also I think we should come up with numbers for a fix to the town garage. I also sat in on the seminar that was presented last week for Merb and ERP and a question was asked and answered where these buildings have to be municipal town-owned buildings. Someone was pretty specific about their library and they said that if it's not owned by the town, it wouldn't qualify for this particular grant. Well, since our library is a municipal town building, shouldn't be an issue. Okay, it's not owned by the trustees. No, no. No, there have been multiple legal opinions. It's every year it's in the town report under what the town owns, the library and the contents. It's insured under the town building's insurance policy and you can't insure a building you don't own. We can take that to the state when we apply for the grant. And Dune knows, maybe you guys need to talk with Dune. I know we just did a hundredth of thousands of dollars worth of work to the library just 10 years ago. So I'm just saying what was discussed in this meeting. They also did say that they, like Jeff mentioned, that they would give priority to old leaky buildings first. I don't know who wants to compete for that prize. And they also had an analysis on all the municipal buildings in every one of the towns and Rochester was in the middle, not super efficient and not super inefficient. So that was interesting that Big Brother has been watching our utility bills. Yeah, so anyway, just wanted to clarify what the thinking is right now. If whoever the library director is, is gonna be writing the grant, what we have found out so far from Vermont historic preservation folks, the state librarian, what would be approved and what would not be approved. Just wanna keep you in the loop. Okay, well, if we get a new roof, that'd be a big plus, okay? And then we'll see what we can do to work out the rest of it. The other part of this though, was the inspection of the roof, not everything that was supposed to be done was done. Don't know where to go with that. We didn't contract it. So I'm not quite, well, we didn't hire them. We signed the contract. We agreed when you hired them to promise to pay them. So you're asking us to get in touch with them and ask them why they didn't do what they were asked to do. You're asking us to do that? Yes, I mean, nobody at the library signed the contract. We didn't pay them. I'm just letting you know that when I spoke with the estimator, the things that I spoke to the estimator about that were supposed to be done, the things that were not done, making sure that you're aware. That was the Vermont Construction Company. Right, so they did not go into the attic to locate the leak and fix the simple leak as was discussed with the estimator. So although they inspected, and let us know that all of the fasteners are old and brittle and in jeopardy, they didn't locate where the ones that were actually gone that are letting moisture into the attic and plug the holes. Okay, Vermont Construction Company, thank you. Yeah, I think that was like a $1350 bill or something. Yeah, it's under $1500. I don't know if that's already been paid, if there's any leverage to... I think we paid it already. I think it was paid last month. And is this the appropriate time to thank you for your service? Yep, not a couple months, I'm happy. A couple months, I don't have that time. You will talk to you later. Not at first. We'll talk to you again, I'm sure. Thank you. Okay, highway not here? We're assuming things are going well? Yeah, things are, he's getting ready for starting to scrape roads and waiting for it. To clean ditches? Yeah, he likes to get them done here pretty soon. He's scraped some, but he hasn't done the actual really scraped job that he wants to do because he's a little early yet. Yeah, yeah. So he's kind of waiting. I remember when we had the April 15th flood and the trucks were driving up and down the street. It was too early for them, that was for sure. Okay. Anybody ever wondered why the May 15th exists? Yeah, that's why. I saw it myself. Energy coordinator, utilities operator is not here while swimming that water. I did speak with him and the walk around went well. Good. Things went really well, it was great. They had the buggy to bop around the village and saved a lot of time, a lot of walking around. So everything looked good. He did have a conversation about thinking about getting some new valves, but after looking at things over and talking with some other folks that have the same type of equipment that we have, that our valves are in as good a shape as anybody else's and that they've got a lot longer life left in them than what he thought originally. So he was happy with that and he wasn't looking it forward to anything else, so. Perfect. He felt good about it. I think we have Jeff on the line. Yeah, I'm on the line. Basically giving you the report, I have it off for a little over a week here, so just getting caught back up. So, everything's good then. We're good. Grant updates? I don't have anything to speak. Good. We did get that one for the Rogers Brook 56. Culvert number 37. Yep. Yep, 56,000, we were granted that. And we are waiting to see if we get a class two grant to couple that with for the Bethelmound Road. And if we do get the two combined, we'll be doing that work this summer. Where's Culvert number 37? Rogers Brook on Bethelmound, Camp Brook Road. And we'll be looking at daytime shutdown for that for probably a week. We don't know when we'll do it or if we will do it this year or next year, but if it's gonna happen and because traffic control is just so expensive, it just costs so much. Right, and it does delay the project quite a bit. So we'd close, shut it down for six, seven hours a day and then open it for the evenings and commuting times. But that'll come later, we're not sure if that's gonna happen this year or not. Okay, under all business, we do have the emergency plan from Larry Pleasant. We're going to forward that until we have a full board and we'll take a look at it and sign it. There's also a couple of things that Larry Pleasant has to also do to present it to us. He needs a certification. So we're moving that a little further down the road. Excuse me, Pat. LEMP, the acronym there, what does that stand for? For some reason I can't remember. Local Emergency Management Plan. Okay, thank you. And am I correct that the following item, road name change was the thing you already discussed? Yes. Okay, thank you. And that Local Emergency Management Plan needs to be updated every year, I believe. Yeah, every year. And now we're ready for some public comment, new business, concerns, discussions. Well, I did do one thing. I called for the fertilizer on the park and that should be getting here. They said they'd do it this week so hopefully they'll show up. If you see some action, just let me know so I can let John know that put the picnic tables out on the benches. I told him not to do it until after it was fertilized. So we'll get that out after. And I also wanted to make a note. We have a vote coming up on May 2nd. So everybody, plan on coming out on May 2nd and voting for the school budget. We have a vote for whether or not the town would like to have cannabis retail in town. So there's lots of neat things to vote for. So come on out here. We'll see you on May 2nd. Anybody else? I've got four things. Step right up, here we go. I don't know if this is the appropriate place to bring everything. Okay, so if I could just run through my quick list and then we can go back. I have, the four things are number one, the use of cones by private individuals in front of their homes, orange cones. Is that something, I find it confusing when neighbors put orange cones in the middle of the road, if it's not town related, if the town didn't put those cones out, if they're just trying to slow traffic. The second one are neon signs. I don't know what our local rules are about neon signs, but I feel like there's more recently at our skip mark. I just don't know what the rules are, and especially with signage in Vermont and how we like to try to keep it to a minimum. I question that. This is sort of a bigger thought. I'm wondering about the health of our forests and trees in general. On top of Hawk Mountain where I live, even in my own yard, I find that the tree health seems poor. And I'm not sure if that's monitored by our town and in the event that there was a fire, how quickly that would spread on top of the mountain if the tree health isn't good. So that's just a concern I have. And then the last one I have is about Airbnb's and what rules exist for them right now. I have someone looking at property directly across the street from me. As potentially a second home. He already has another home here too, Yurt up in the mountain somewhere. And during COVID it was extremely stressful. The number of places that were being run as Airbnb's and the people that came in and abused them, the noise level, just the number of vehicles. Does our town have any policies regarding Airbnb's? I spoke to a gentleman who has property in Hancock and is being forced to have sprinklers put into his place. Do we require that of our Airbnb's that they have sprinklers installed? And then also use of fireplaces and outdoor fires. So those are my things. Do you live in Hawk? I do. Okay, well Hawk has some pretty specific bylaws. So to address some of them, if private homeowners are putting cones into the town roads or the town rideways, it should be noted to the town and the town crew will definitely be addressing it. So if you did see that happening, you could call Frank, you could call the office. You don't. He's the road commissioner. Yeah, it's a, unless the town does it, it's not appropriate to do. I'm not sure if there's any rules against it, but I would have to look at that. But it's not opposed. People aren't, you're supposed to do that, but occasionally somebody might just slow people down if they're having a group of people around or something like that. But other than that, it's not supposed to be out there. As far as the forest goes, that's really not anything we monitor. There's a lot of national forest around here and the Forest Service keeps a pretty good eye. We do have a forest warden. As far as fires go, that you have to get a burning permit at certain times a year depending on the weather. Air BNB, we don't have any rules per se as a town at this point. We've talked about it, but we haven't addressed it. Neon signs, there is a sign ordinance that's monitored by the zoning board. So that would be the planning commission would have jurisdiction over signs. There's also state rules on signage as well. But the town does have its own sign ordinance in neons. There is an issue with them, I believe, in town notice.  I believe, I don't know for a fact, but you'd have to check with the sign ordinance that you can get a copy of that in the town office. It's in the town plan, in the zoning regs. So regarding the Air BNBs, is that something we're going to look at as a town? Can we help? We've talked about it, we're kind of on the fence about it because it's a hard thing to try to come up with rules about because it's a gray area for everyone. I mean, there's, to me, it's issues of, you make people that have hotels and everything go through all these fire codes and the fire marshals and they have to do inspections and all that, but these Air BNB people, they don't have to do that. There's a whole, so it's a gray area for towns that I think every town is wrestling with the same thing at this time. We're kind of hoping the state kind of steps in and does some monitoring on that. So we've discussed it some, but we haven't really figured out any path forward with that. So I don't know what to tell you on that. In a lot of the places around here, that's what's happened is people have bought them and used them for Air BNBs. And Great Hawk has had discussions on this issue as well. It's kind of a, it's a state problem, but yet every town is dealing with it and with the same question marks. I mean, some towns have tried to deal with it, I think, but there's a, it's a really a kind of a gray area of trying to make rules on what people can do with their house if they have a house, if they want to have somebody stay in it and run it out that way. Martha has her hand up. Yeah. Martha. Oh, I'm sorry, I can't tell who it was who was the lady who asked all those questions just now. I didn't recognize the voice and I can't see her on Zoom. So who is that? She's very shy. Is me what? Stay your name. I'm Anjanette Lemak. What? Anjanette Lemak? Jeanette. And what's the last name? Anjanette. Say Anjanette. Lemak. Carl, Carl, Kristen, tomorrow and she'll scream out, Martha. Yeah, I can help you tomorrow, Martha. I'll talk, oh yeah, thank you. Thank you, sorry to bother you. Those are great, great questions. Yeah. Also the state of Vermont is looking into the Airbnb issue. It's being debated in the legislature. If someone's gonna do build something by land intentionally across the street for me to build something like that, I don't wanna stay. I wanna start looking for somewhere else. Well, Hock has a bunch of covenants there, too, that you have to have an approved building. But still, right? It's still, it's still. But yeah, I understand what you're saying. We could all find ourselves in the same situation next door. I have two Airbnbs in my neighborhood, so. And you're getting a new one too, right? Yeah, my dogs are, you know, they have to discover new friends. And then the next weekend, there's more new friends. City of Burlington just passed an ordinance on it. There, the state of Vermont is starting, their first step is to do a registry. And that way, if you were doing a long or short-term rental, you will need to register it with the state of Vermont. That way, they can take a look at what they have out there and start taking steps towards what they wanna do is free up housing so that there are apartments and houses for rent for people that wanna live in Vermont all the time. So, there's different entities looking at all of this to see, you know, is this hurting or helping what is this doing for our state? I think we've got it. Let's wrap it up. Anybody else going once? Anybody twice? So. Thank you for attending on me.