Yes exactly. Rape have severly negative consequences - it is an eternal evil. No amount of rhetoric manure can cover this simple truth. And I do not care what amuses Hume. When witnessing the distress of a rape victim, individuals with normal levels of compassion will instinctively feel resentment towards the rapist, recognizing if not him then at least the act as evil.
If we're going to discuss real life ethical issues, I should remind everyone of a standard policy on the Beamdog forums: Criticize ideas all you like, but leave other forumites alone.
If you strongly disagree with another poster, make sure your comment is directed at the subject at hand, and not at them.
Yes exactly. Rape have severly negative consequences - it is an eternal evil.
So does being struck a lightning. Is this an eternal evil as well? If you were closed in the room and exposed to loud noises and flashing images, you would possibly experience trauma as well. You are taking things that clearly do not have immanent intentional nature, and project them onto morality, that has substantial connection with intentionality. This is clearly fallacy of equivocation: you mistake "bad" (as negative for person, like PTSD is a source of negative, broadly speaking, experiences) with "evil" (bad in a moral sense). If pacifist was thrown into trenches and had to listen to bombaring every day, and wonder if he will survive till sunset, he would develop PTSD, because of his "bad" experiences, but there is no necessity of "evil" coming into play. That bombardment could be asteroids, or anything natural. Negative biological experience is not stable indicator of evil, nor any kind of moral compass.
No amount of rhetoric manure can cover this simple truth. And I do not care what amuses Hume.
*sigh* It's like talking with radical christian: "I know God loves me, and has plan for me, and you will end up in lake of fire, and no amount of rhetoric manure will cover that!". Have you consider that your feeling of certainty isn't convincing evidence of something true? Well, I do recommend reading Hume. He has way of debunking things.
When witnessing the distress of a rape victim, individuals with normal levels of compassion will instinctively feel resentment towards the rapist, recognizing if not him then at least the act as evil.
And there we are, going back and forth. Why is rape evil? Because individuals with normal levels of compassion will feel resentment towards the rapist. How do we know individual has normal level of compassion? Because individual feels resentment towards rapist. Circulus vitiosus at its finest. But let's break this down. First of all, you mix up epistemology with ontology - and this is possibly biggest problem with that "sound observer": to justify was something is evil you basically say "because everybody says that!". But we know that there are - alas - people, who would argue, so you hide behind some imaginary sage, who ultimately will *know*. And since we are aware no single person could pretend to be that sage, you go level higher and project that observer unto society. But this leaves us with morality terribly reduced and mutilated. If those individuals with normal levels of compassion were Aztecs, they probably wouldn't feel resentment seeing human sacrifice - because how otherwise are we going to delay end of the world? Hetairoi of the Great Alexander wouldn't see anything wrong with treating women as sexual slaves, because in their culture women were perceived as something close to non-human, and they wouldn't really care about fate of Briseis. It is not possible to construct some class of "normal humans", who would serve as "sound observers". If you want to attempt that, then you need to at least present set of beliefs that every human would know and share, regardless of time and place they were born in.
DISCLAIMER: I do thing rape is evil, and cannot think of circumstances that would justify it. I simply believe that we can do better than to just scream out "IT'S EVIL!".
I tend to prefer simple definitions for abstract concepts. It offers a little wiggle room.
I'd just define evil as knowingly causing suffering. That covers a lot of the stuff we normally consider evil, like violent crime and theft and such, while excluding stuff we normally don't, like accidentally stepping on somebody's toe, or a rock falling on your head, or a spider giving you a fatal bite.
(You can exempt certain acts that cause suffering, like a dentist performing a painful procedure, on the grounds that they prevent more suffering than they cause)
I'm not going to get involved with this whole moral debate but there are two points I really want to make to @DrakeICN because I think they lack some perspective.
1) "So, what is a reasonable individual? The romans solved this issue rather neatly: they had a jury of a houndred men or more. Yes yes, some people will be convinced the subject is innocent regardless of the mountain of evidence stacked against him / her, but if 3 jurors think he is innocent and 97 think he is guilty, then those thinking he is innocent are unreasonable." You're assuming that all of those people are reacting logically and without bias but people often don't. Just because a large number of people think one way doesn't necessarily make it the right way of thinking. To put it in better perspective there are a lot of people that think that being gay is a sin and/or wrong. Just because 97/100 people think that doesn't make that opinion right. The "collective intelligence" needs to be challenged or else it creates a self-perpetuating circle of narcissism that says "I'm right because no one disagrees" and also silences all disagreement.
2) "Likewise, a mental disease is anything that cause discomfort or hampers general functionality, except not in a physical way but in a mental way. Such as extreme OCD, whereby one might take 2 hours to exit the house, as one runs back and forth from the stove to the front door, just ensuring "one" extra time that the house wild not burn down. Mild OCD however, is managable simply through an effort of will to ignore the impulse, is not therefore not a mental disease. Personality disorders thus are quirks that cause discomfort (due to awkwardness) or hampers functionality in society." You are trivializing mental health here by removing the individual element from it and being incredibly dismissive of the daily struggle of other people. I have a friend who has SEVERE depression and anxiety (it's medically diagnosed and she's trying to find the right antidepressants and everything) but she gets through most days because she is strong. Her strength does not make her mental disease weak. Both are strong but she is stronger. If you only classify disease by the outcome then you're really ignoring the conflict that goes on inside. Her depression (and my own mental health struggles) are not personality quirks just because we are functional.
Oh, I certainly do not believe in mob rule. What I am saying is that a sound observer is an excellent way of evaluating the chain of evidence in a trial - when done the roman way, at least. Likewise, it is also a good way of establishing the basic eternal moral values. You see, no sound observer *actually* have a problem understanding what is meant by the word evil, they merely respond to the lack of tangible definitions. For instance, the very problems brought up as arguments against the word suggest he who brought up actually very well knows what it means, or he would have picked another example. For instance, if I try to describe an apple, but do it poorly, and someone holds up a pear and smirks "is this what you meant?" that in actuality indicates he did know I did not mean a pear - yet he *pretends* he might of thought that. Likewise, you bringing up gay as a sin much indicates you know it is not. See what I am saying here? Thus, a sound observer can be trusted upon to make basic distinctions of what is good and what is evil.
Lets call it the least common nominator (minus the wackos and the jackasses). I hope I make more sense now? For instance, which sound observer, when reading governing moral axiom #2 thinks "Aww hell no, we should be allowed to kill innocent people to harvest their organs, more people will live this way, thanks to transplantation?" However, by your very act of bringing up the problem of some people thinking homosexuality is a sin, you prove that many sound observers would object to that statement.
For the second part of your argument, I am sorry that "mentally ill" is often seen as perjoratory when it is in fact descriptive. For instance, I am diseased, for I have asthma, yet noone thinks lower of me because of it. But mentally ill is none the less the proper descriptive term, so it is what I must use - the fact that your friend must struggle means that yes, it is hampering and therefore it is a disease. But I do not believe I suggested that having one makes you weak? If I did, I apologise.
You misunderstand what I'm getting at. I am saying there is no such thing as a sound observer that can make these decisions. What you consider morally objective is subjective to someone else. I brought up homosexuality because I *am* gay and thus know it's not but I have had to listen to people talk about being gay like it's a gross sin. I am presenting you with two kinds of people who follow moral codes and both think they are right. Which one is the sound observer? Who decides? Our view of right and wrong is heavily created by the environment in which we live. There are countries where people think being gay is wrong and thus someone talking about equality would be seen as a not-sound observer. You speak of moral objectivity and simply say, "well it must be so because we instinctively recognize good and evil" which is something I strongly disagree with. We are taught different definitions of good and evil depending on where we live. I feel like the "sound observer" notion is more fantasy than reality.
Regarding my second point, you are completely sidestepping my issue with what was said. I utterly detest the idea that if it does not have a significant impact on a person's daily life then it is a personality quirk. A mental disease is a mental disease regardless of the perceived magnitude. I never had an issue with you using the words "mentally ill" and I never thought your statement implied she was weak. I thought your statement trivialized the daily struggle with which she lives.
I don't disagree but what we consider evil comes down to the mental conditioning of our societies. Cannibalism is considered a major no no but many tribes of humans used to eat other humans. Some would eat the brains of their enemies to gain their knowledge. Eating dogs and other humans was not even questioned. It's not civilization that made us realize we shouldn't do it. Our civilizations choose to force that notion on itself and separated itself from that behavior. It is wrong to us but if we were not conditioned to think that way it wouldn't matter. If your mother cooked up dog head every night since you were a little kid you wouldn't question it. It's perfectly acceptable to eat the corpses of most other life in our society but again, the average man has been so far removed from the reality of nature and what it takes to actually survive without slaughter houses to kill and service employees to serve it up on a pretty little bun that they are no longer confronted by death at every turn and have become fearful of it.
Many racist people learn it from their parents or close friends. They are much more prone to being racist because of the their immediate tribe. The military train soldiers to kill other humans. Many soldiers of war become traumatized but others actually adapt and become desensitized to human suffering. Some soldiers feel guilty and some don't. The tribe they follow doesn't look down on death and destruction because it is part of there everyday training. However, the society these soldiers are raised in does look down on it and so it is the job of military institutions to reprogram the mind for a different set of morals and standards. Survival is the key, in our society, a civilian has no fear of immediate death other than self inflicted death from drugs and gang violence. Our sense of right and wrong is pushed on us through 20 years of institutionalized "education". Religion can sometimes add or conflict with the propaganda machine and we see it blow up politically on the tele.
Corporations would not pay 200 million dollars for 60 seconds of commercial space during the Super Bowl if it didn't work. The truth is, the mind can be persuaded to make the body hungry and even push a person toward a certain brand of food by displaying patterns of colored pixels correctly on your TV. You should eat 3 meals a day and make sure it is a balanced meal each time so the fruit and vegetable farmers as well as the animal breeders all get their money. Then you can pay for a gym membership to burn off all of that unnecessary energy you just consumed. Nothing like running in a wheel like a hamster. Don't believe me? By a book about it...I am sure there is a book for every personality that will reaffirm what you were already thinking or argue against it, whatever you are in the mood for.
Our morality is based on what is most profitable. Humans as resources have been that focus for a long time. Thanks to automation we have seen a shift in priorities but I feel that how humans behave will not be altered too much. Most likely we will be encouraged to breed less because we become dangerous when we are not distracted and robotic automation produces results without wages. Global warming, providing power to a million people is no problem but supplying it to 7 billion people becomes dangerous right? The air is going bad, the water is running out, get abortions, use contraceptives. Sound familiar?
I'm afraid there's not a perfect consensus even on rape. I regret to say that I've heard of one person who specifically said it was completely acceptable.
Don't know where on earth someone would get those ideas, though.
If a person is left alone with no outside influence and nothing but thoughts, you never know what kind of crazy thoughts might slip in an alter the mindset. If a family out in the middle of nowhere has a cult religion that believes in and encourages incest or rape I could see it going on unquestioned as long as no outside influence is interfering with them for generations. That is almost impossible in some areas of the earth like the U.S. but not all places. Germany was at the forefront of civilization and they accepted a policy of genocide less than 100 years ago. BTW, I'm not criticizing or arguing, I am just saying that the human mind is pretty chaotic. Ego, chemical imbalances in the brain, emotion, can set a human mind on a very odd path that goes against the mental conditioning that gives most of us a clear indication of what is right and wrong, good and evil.
Different people different standards. You cannot standardise the concept of evil (which is what all y'all have been trying to do). The objective and subjective are very difficult to separate in delicate issues such as this.
The thing that discourages me from playing evil in Baldur's Gate is that the evil companions will always be jerks to you. Yes you're evil, but does that mean we can't be friends? An evil crew all together?
Especially when your NPC has 18 charisma. I want to be able to charm my evil friends into working together: making Eldoth act unselfishly, inspiring cogency in Tiax, loyalty in Edwin! I want the option of joining the Zhentarim with Xzar and Monty, to counter the outworn Khalid and Jaheira Harper path! Maybe the evil NPCs will be more accepting, even happy, with my Bhaal heritage, while good-aligned NPCs are worried by it. Little details like that.
Instead, they all desert me in SoD, act like they don't know me in BGII (if they appear at all)...it's enough to make a man give up on evil altogether. Of course I know the game is 20 years old and it's wrong to criticise it from a more advanced perspective, still I thought I'd give my reasons here.
@DrakeICN , About the video you posted, I don't think @Ravenslight 's point was that she found playing that kind of evil difficult in the sense of not understanding how to do it. I think her point was that she couldn't stomach it (I can't stomach it, either), and her question was, "How does anybody play a game like that, as the evil people? What do you get out of it? What is it doing for you, exactly?" And I am very interested in those questions as well, because I sometimes have a hard time trusting the basic goodness of a person who likes to fantasize about and play out atrocities, even in games. (Assuming that they are mature adults as opposed to immature children or teenagers acting out their aggressive and dark impulses without thought.)
I don't disagree but what we consider evil comes down to the mental conditioning of our societies. ....
Have to disagree on the basic here. "Does not count as an evil act by the person doing it" and "not evil" are different things. I do -strongly- believe that there is an objective evil as well as subjective, of course. Even if you take it as a norm - like slavery, for example - it does not mean the thing is good.
You are trying to say that some things are beyond moral judgement, but history shows that even those everyday things when they are evil require constant strong reinforcement for them to still be counted as "norm". Someone (religious figures or traditions - also mostly kept by religious figures) has to constantly remind people that what they are doing is not evil but a necessary thing. Same with criminals that will find you thousand reasons why they had to commit even the most atrocious crime, but not one of them will admit that they simply want to do something bad.
This is why society is changing and evolving - at every next step of development it can allow itself to get rid from yet another obviously evil but existing thing. Animals are beyond moral - they are following natures law. Sentient social creatures develop the moral judgement as a mean to coexist together.
I tend to prefer simple definitions for abstract concepts. It offers a little wiggle room.
I'd just define evil as knowingly causing suffering. That covers a lot of the stuff we normally consider evil, like violent crime and theft and such, while excluding stuff we normally don't, like accidentally stepping on somebody's toe, or a rock falling on your head, or a spider giving you a fatal bite.
(You can exempt certain acts that cause suffering, like a dentist performing a painful procedure, on the grounds that they prevent more suffering than they cause)
The jury's still out on dentists. Have you seen Steve Martin in Little Shop of Horrors?
I tend to prefer simple definitions for abstract concepts. It offers a little wiggle room.
I'd just define evil as knowingly causing suffering. That covers a lot of the stuff we normally consider evil, like violent crime and theft and such, while excluding stuff we normally don't, like accidentally stepping on somebody's toe, or a rock falling on your head, or a spider giving you a fatal bite.
(You can exempt certain acts that cause suffering, like a dentist performing a painful procedure, on the grounds that they prevent more suffering than they cause)
Unfortunately, substitution is not a solution (let alone an elegant one) for definition problems. "Evil is knowingly causing suffering" is not a simple, objective argument; both "knowingly" and "suffering" are highly debatable concepts in and of themselves. Extending the argument by "unless it's to prevent more suffering" is an even more slippery slope, because of problems of scope and perspective (let alone the issue of it being essentially a circular argument since the vague term "suffering" is both used in the condition and the exception/solution).
There is, in general, a reason why these concepts (good, evil, suffering, etc.) elude clear-cut definitions and find a definition only within the discourse surrounding them. They are eminently connected to the human condition and the difficulties associated with plumbing that depth. Philosophies and its various related or derived disciplines (e.g. ethics, metaphysics) have been struggling with definitions of such terms for literally thousands of years - indeed some might define philosophy itself as the act of trying to define such terms. And that's not even touching on the theological dimension of these terms, which carries with it an entirely different set of paradigms.
Since it's pretty obvious it can't just be decided like that for our "real" world (or philosophers would've been out of a job long ago), I find it much more interesting to explore the question in a setting like D&D, where certain crucial context parameters are markedly different. For example, deities are unquestionably real in D&D. The afterlife is a proven (and in some cases even tangible) fact. Souls exist. Rewards and punishments appear on an entirely different scale. And so on. That changes so many fundamental assumptions of "real-world" philosophy it's extremely difficult to naively transfer concepts and judgments like good, evil, justice, etc. Though admittedly naive is exactly how it is handled in many cases, because complex ethical elaborations just don't make for very compelling reading material given the intended audience
Unfortunately, substitution is not a solution (let alone an elegant one) for definition problems. "Evil is knowingly causing suffering" is not a simple, objective argument; both "knowingly" and "suffering" are highly debatable concepts in and of themselves. )
You mean, for you it's a "highly debatable concept" whether or not you would like to be raped, tortured or murdered?
There's a huge amount of crap being talked here about RL good and evil, with naive generalisations of personal opinion being invalidly asserted as immutable principles.
Some of the world's greatest thinkers have struggled to develop a coherent secular moral philosophy over the last 3000 years, and indeed have made a certain amount of progress, one little piece at a time, but it remains a very difficult and disputed and incomplete subject. It's easier if you start from a religious position, with a set of commandments laid down by faith rather than derived by reason, but even then theologians have still struggled and disagreed about many of the implications.
If you're not up to speed with this complex and difficult subject (which you're not, unless you've spent several years concentrating on this at university level - "Well, I once read a book" is not adequate grounding), then you'll probably just make a fool of yourself by writing drivel (as some people already have in this thread).
Tip: if you don't want to look like an idiot, leave this subject to actual experts.
Unfortunately, substitution is not a solution (let alone an elegant one) for definition problems. "Evil is knowingly causing suffering" is not a simple, objective argument; both "knowingly" and "suffering" are highly debatable concepts in and of themselves. )
You mean, for you it's a "highly debatable concept" whether or not you would like to be raped, tortured or murdered?
I'm not sure how you construe that statement from what I said, and quite frankly I am very troubled that you did.
I most vehemently stress that I am not saying anything of the sort. What I am saying is that "suffering" is not something you can easily define. It is a very subjective term covering an entire spectrum of emotional and sensory states, some of which are more easily agreed upon by a majority, but most of which are very much subject to individual interpretation. Something similar is true for "knowingly", encompassing many different states of awareness; it is not without reason that many legal proceedings very often hinge on determining what someone could have known, anticipated, deduced, or expected (all of which are elements that could apply here, plus many more). For that matter, "cause" is also a culprit in a similar vein, covering a vast array of causality chains that very often cannot simply be reduced to "A leads to B".
Keep in mind that it's easy to determine extreme cases with very few variables; but that a good definition (of anything) must hold true in general if it is to be of any actual use. It is the DIFFICULT cases first and foremost that make all this so troublesome to decide, the grey areas where people do NOT simply agree on everything because it's 'so obvious'.
Unfortunately, substitution is not a solution (let alone an elegant one) for definition problems. "Evil is knowingly causing suffering" is not a simple, objective argument; both "knowingly" and "suffering" are highly debatable concepts in and of themselves. )
You mean, for you it's a "highly debatable concept" whether or not you would like to be raped, tortured or murdered?
I'm not sure how you construe that statement from what I said, and quite frankly I am very troubled that you did.
I most vehemently stress that I am not saying anything of the sort. What I am saying is that "suffering" is not something you can easily define. It is a very subjective term covering an entire spectrum of emotional and sensory states, some of which are more easily agreed upon by a majority, but most of which are very much subject to individual interpretation. Something similar is true for "knowingly", encompassing many different states of awareness; it is not without reason that many legal proceedings very often hinge on determining what someone could have known, anticipated, deduced, or expected (all of which are elements that could apply here, plus many more). For that matter, "cause" is also a culprit in a similar vein, covering a vast array of causality chains that very often cannot simply be reduced to "A leads to B".
Keep in mind that it's easy to determine extreme cases with very few variables; but that a good definition (of anything) must hold true in general if it is to be of any actual use. It is the DIFFICULT cases first and foremost that make all this so troublesome to decide, the grey areas where people do NOT simply agree on everything because it's 'so obvious'.
I did not mean any offense, but any time I hear about "oh, "evil" is such a relative term" - it's always from someone enjoying (if in dreams) specifically those extremes. Might be a coincidence, of course, and my bias here since "romantisation of evil" is my long developed pet peeve.
Now, the discussion we have here is about Faerun, where - as comical and caricature as it is - evil is defined quite clearly and not so different from definition of our moral judgment. Therefore "suffering" - is when someone suffers. Usually, when one is suffering it's quite obvious and I do not see any "grey areas" here. No matter if it is a physical torture or emotional distress, the person who causes it intentionally is performing an evil deed.
Killing someone not out of self-defense is evil. Teasing your fat sister about her weight till she collapses in tears - is evil as well. The degree is different, obviously, and one can say to that fatso "don't be such a baby, at least you a alive" but the deed, the act of teasing remains an evil act. It harms someone.
As of "knowingly" - again, we are in Faerun, and moral is a pretty much universal here. Children might not understand the consequences of their action, but that's what adults are here for - to teach and explain. Your "known, anticipated, etc" are law terms bound to degree of punishment, nothing else. They do not deny the evilness of the act.
Intentional harming is evil in any universe. You can proclaim necessity of some particular evil or simply declare it as part of the nature law and enjoy, but it remains to be evil.
Intentional harming is evil in any universe. You can proclaim necessity of some particular evil or simply declare it as part of the nature law and enjoy, but it remains to be evil.
See, this is exactly the sort of error I described earlier, a naive generalisation being asserted as a general principle ... which it isn't.
If what you said were true, then (by your reasoning) dentists and surgeons would indeed be automatically evil! Likewise, obviously, so would be all sorts of other people with perfectly valid reasons for doing things which undoubtedly do cause suffering, since you explicitly rule out the (often wholly valid) excuse that what they do is necessary.
As I've already suggested, defining general moral principles is not an exercise for muddled amateurs, who will succeed only in looking foolish.
I don't disagree but what we consider evil comes down to the mental conditioning of our societies. ....
Have to disagree on the basic here. "Does not count as an evil act by the person doing it" and "not evil" are different things. I do -strongly- believe that there is an objective evil as well as subjective, of course. Even if you take it as a norm - like slavery, for example - it does not mean the thing is good.
You are trying to say that some things are beyond moral judgement, but history shows that even those everyday things when they are evil require constant strong reinforcement for them to still be counted as "norm". Someone (religious figures or traditions - also mostly kept by religious figures) has to constantly remind people that what they are doing is not evil but a necessary thing. Same with criminals that will find you thousand reasons why they had to commit even the most atrocious crime, but not one of them will admit that they simply want to do something bad.
This is why society is changing and evolving - at every next step of development it can allow itself to get rid from yet another obviously evil but existing thing. Animals are beyond moral - they are following natures law. Sentient social creatures develop the moral judgement as a mean to coexist together.
Good and evil are words used to describe indescribable chemical imbalances in the brain. They are like love, hate, faith ect. They are subjective. How many people do you know that were in love and yet some how got a divorce? My definition of Love doesn't allow that so I guess my definition of love is different than many other peoples right?
My opinion of what is evil is different than yours. In my opinion, humanity are no different than animals. They eat, sleep and breed uncontrollably just like any other animal. They get territorial and kill each other over food, land, and lovers. Sometimes they flip out and eat their own families. I don't label it or judge it, they are just that way. Like when a lion eats another animal or a tiger eats it's cubs.
Coexistence is fine with me but I don't consider it evil when a predator eats it's prey. If a certain species does not evolve and they get left behind, they die out. Nurturing the weak and encouraging them to spread like a virus is not a good thing in my opinion. It increases suffering and will slowly eat us up in the end because it goes against the natural order of things. When a population breeds out of control it starves to death as a result. That is a consequence of being out of tune with the environment. In an attempt to avoid bearing witness to death, society has created a way to go against nature.
Mankind used to evolve based on intelligent decision making and strength. Usually the strong will survive but those rules no longer apply in modern society. We mass slaughter the animals to allow the weak to survive. The strong give them money to keep the basics going so that the elite can use them like slaves for financial gain. As a result the most irresponsible people breed the most because they don't die out from their poor decisions. So now you have a larger part of the population without skills or morals doing drugs and pooping out kids left and right. Then they turn to killing each other in the streets over drugs and territory. Most people who are responsible know when to let go and have no interest in subjecting themselves to that kind of misery so they die out. What is left behind is misery. What is more evil? Allowing humanity to go extinct or watching your neighbors die in the street? Not very fun thing to think about and it never should have been allowed to get to this point.
Personally, I couldn't care less what society thinks is right or wrong. I follow rules and regulations because that is part of living in a society. Agreeing to live by a certain code. When people decide to drive drunk or shoot people for drugs they are going against the agreement they have with the society they live in. Might as well throw them to the wolves for all I care. What I think is correct and moral is not what I see in others when I leave the house but there is nothing I can do about it and it's none of my business. Our systems and technology have allowed the human race to balloon out to the point where the world can no longer take it. We can stop evolving and kill all of our technology rather than get our population under control but it won't fix the problem. When a certain species of creatures go extinct I don't consider it good or evil. It's part of nature. There is just us and the world and how you treat others ultimately has no real meaning, only consequence.
Intentional harming is evil in any universe. You can proclaim necessity of some particular evil or simply declare it as part of the nature law and enjoy, but it remains to be evil.
See, this is exactly the sort of error I described earlier, a naive generalisation being asserted as a general principle ... which it isn't.
If what you said were true, then (by your reasoning) dentists and surgeons would indeed be automatically evil! Likewise, obviously, so would be all sorts of other people with perfectly valid reasons for doing things which undoubtedly do cause suffering, since you explicitly rule out the (often wholly valid) excuse that what they do is necessary.
As I've already suggested, defining general moral principles is not an exercise for muddled amateurs, who will succeed only in looking foolish.
But you generally understand what they mean when they say this. This comment smacks of finding exemption only to show how "surperior" your philosophy is. Which is hilariously ironic, using shades of relativistic philosophy and denying defined morals to tell someone that they are absolutely wrong.
I think you are doing unnecessary reduction here, @the_sextein.
Good and evil are words used to describe indescribable chemical imbalances in the brain. They are like love, hate, faith ect. They are subjective. How many people do you know that were in love and yet some how got a divorce? My definition of Love doesn't allow that so I guess my definition of love is different than many other peoples right?
Those are different things altogether. Deeds can be good and evil, and they are clearly not inside the brain. They are state of things, or events. Unless we fall into abyss of solipsysm, or commit into some serious mereology, we can agree that those deeds are objective. Our judgement of them can vary, sure, but it's a different story. Truth be told, I don't believe things like love can be reduced to chemistry. I mean, I can make you feel great, but also terrible. The same things is with faith, or hate. So how can we differentiate between them, without talking intentional factor into account?
In my opinion, humanity are no different than animals. They eat, sleep and breed uncontrollably just like any other animal. They get territorial and kill each other over food, land, and lovers. Sometimes they flip out and eat their own families. I don't label it or judge it, they are just that way. Like when a lion eats another animal or a tiger eats it's cubs.
That seems to be plainly untrue. Humans do things no other part of our kingdom is able to do. It is not just matter of scale; religion or art has no equivalence among animal activities. Hell, what we are doing are here (philosophing, that is ) has no equivalence.
Coexistence is fine with me but I don't consider it evil when a predator eats it's prey. If a certain species does not evolve and they get left behind, they die out. Nurturing the weak and encouraging them to spread like a virus is not a good thing in my opinion. (...) That is a consequence of being out of tune with the environment. In an attempt to avoid bearing witness to death, society has created a way to go against nature.
So "good" means to behave according to one's nature?
That seems to be plainly untrue. Humans do things no other part of our kingdom is able to do. It is not just matter of scale; religion or art has no equivalence among animal activities. Hell, what we are doing are here (philosophing, that is ) has no equivalence.
That is typically what humans think but animals have been shown to be capable of art; painting monkeys and elephants for instance and birds building beautiful nests fall in the same category. And who says sheep do not dream of electric androids? Elephants are for instance fully aware of death and ancestry.
Humankind thinks it is superior and is the only knowing species out there, but is it really?
Deeds are deeds, good and evil are labels you put on deeds inside your head. By labeling things this way the mind can be shepherded into doing things through association of words. If I help feed the poor, I don't consider it a good deed. I simply helped feed the poor. In my opinion, if we follow modern societies example of "good" it will lead us to extinction.
Humanity is very full of itself. A lion can do things that a camel can't. That doesn't make a lion more or less of an animal does it? We are made up of space dust like everything else and we live by the same rules as all life or we will cease to live.
That is typically what humans think but animals have been shown to be capable of art; painting monkeys and elephants for instance and birds building beautiful nests fall in the same category. And who says sheep do not dream of electric androids? Elephants are for instance fully aware of death and ancestry.
Humankind thinks it is superior and is the only knowing species out there, but is it really?
So you think that monkeys and elephants are consiously and intentionally attempting to make a painting? With a goal of it being a separated whole with no other value but aesthetical? I doubt that.
So yeah, humankind is superior and the only knowing species. So far.
While it's straying a bit off topic, the anthropocentric nature of good/evil is an interesting debate. There are some very interesting case studies with certain animals that might call it into question. Chimpanzees, for example, have been known to engage in behaviors that could be called murder, war, and even psychopathy - and they were met with social and physical repercussions and consequences within the respective groups. There's also things like play, where many different animals can be said to have been observed in behaviors that have no obvious utilitarian purpose (i.e. not play as training, such as when young offspring practice hunting playfully). While this isn't exactly "art" as we understand it, it does fall into a similar category of behaviors that have no apparent purpose other than (non-physical) pleasure/gratification - and that is something that is often put forward as an exclusively human characteristic.
Still a leap from a universal dialectic of good/evil, of course, but food for thought.
The moment I hear someone telling me to go prove myself worthy of the honor being a noble champion of justice, imma like "go screw yourself"
You know this reminds me of Oblivion, more specifically the Knight of the Nine expansion. The first time the Prophet asked me what made me worthy of becoming the Divine Crusader my instinctive reaction has been to leave Anvil, do the Dark Brotherhood questline, then come back and tell him "I'm the Listener".
So you think that monkeys and elephants are consiously and intentionally attempting to make a painting? With a goal of it being a separated whole with no other value but aesthetical? I doubt that.
So yeah, humankind is superior and the only knowing species. So far.
I think humankind glorifies itself too much. In the animal kingdom, being unique is the main thing that attracts mates. Though having clear purpose it is still an art in itself. Humans are not very different.
I think humankind glorifies itself too much. In the animal kingdom, being unique is the main thing that attracts mates. Though having clear purpose it is still an art in itself. Humans are not very different.
Still, it doesn't say that animals are able to consiously create art, to do philosophy, and so on. That kind of reductionism seems naive to me, as it gives no explanation to rich variety of human activities - besides pretty crude reduction to mating mechanisms.
Humanity deserves every bit of gloryfication it can get - if for no other reason, then at least because humanity came up with concept of "nature" as something worth protecting.
Humanity deserves every bit of gloryfication it can get - if for no other reason, then at least because humanity came up with concept of "nature" as something worth protecting.
Mostly from themselves, so there's some irony for ya
But for real, this is veering dangerously off topic. I agree that RL good/evil discussions can get too problematic and require a much larger scope than a casually constructed fictional world could (or necessarily should) provide. Still, it's always good to keep the relativisms in mind because snap judgments are a dangerous affair in most cases and casual settings lend themselves easily to making them.
Personally I like moral ambiguity, and I applaud it when writers introduce more than the usual good vs. bad trot. BG isn't exactly groundbreaking in that respect, I fear.
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So does being struck a lightning. Is this an eternal evil as well? If you were closed in the room and exposed to loud noises and flashing images, you would possibly experience trauma as well. You are taking things that clearly do not have immanent intentional nature, and project them onto morality, that has substantial connection with intentionality. This is clearly fallacy of equivocation: you mistake "bad" (as negative for person, like PTSD is a source of negative, broadly speaking, experiences) with "evil" (bad in a moral sense). If pacifist was thrown into trenches and had to listen to bombaring every day, and wonder if he will survive till sunset, he would develop PTSD, because of his "bad" experiences, but there is no necessity of "evil" coming into play. That bombardment could be asteroids, or anything natural.
Negative biological experience is not stable indicator of evil, nor any kind of moral compass.
*sigh* It's like talking with radical christian: "I know God loves me, and has plan for me, and you will end up in lake of fire, and no amount of rhetoric manure will cover that!". Have you consider that your feeling of certainty isn't convincing evidence of something true?
Well, I do recommend reading Hume. He has way of debunking things.
And there we are, going back and forth. Why is rape evil? Because individuals with normal levels of compassion will feel resentment towards the rapist. How do we know individual has normal level of compassion? Because individual feels resentment towards rapist. Circulus vitiosus at its finest.
But let's break this down. First of all, you mix up epistemology with ontology - and this is possibly biggest problem with that "sound observer": to justify was something is evil you basically say "because everybody says that!". But we know that there are - alas - people, who would argue, so you hide behind some imaginary sage, who ultimately will *know*. And since we are aware no single person could pretend to be that sage, you go level higher and project that observer unto society.
But this leaves us with morality terribly reduced and mutilated. If those individuals with normal levels of compassion were Aztecs, they probably wouldn't feel resentment seeing human sacrifice - because how otherwise are we going to delay end of the world? Hetairoi of the Great Alexander wouldn't see anything wrong with treating women as sexual slaves, because in their culture women were perceived as something close to non-human, and they wouldn't really care about fate of Briseis.
It is not possible to construct some class of "normal humans", who would serve as "sound observers". If you want to attempt that, then you need to at least present set of beliefs that every human would know and share, regardless of time and place they were born in.
DISCLAIMER:
I do thing rape is evil, and cannot think of circumstances that would justify it. I simply believe that we can do better than to just scream out "IT'S EVIL!".
I'd just define evil as knowingly causing suffering. That covers a lot of the stuff we normally consider evil, like violent crime and theft and such, while excluding stuff we normally don't, like accidentally stepping on somebody's toe, or a rock falling on your head, or a spider giving you a fatal bite.
(You can exempt certain acts that cause suffering, like a dentist performing a painful procedure, on the grounds that they prevent more suffering than they cause)
Regarding my second point, you are completely sidestepping my issue with what was said. I utterly detest the idea that if it does not have a significant impact on a person's daily life then it is a personality quirk. A mental disease is a mental disease regardless of the perceived magnitude. I never had an issue with you using the words "mentally ill" and I never thought your statement implied she was weak. I thought your statement trivialized the daily struggle with which she lives.
Many racist people learn it from their parents or close friends. They are much more prone to being racist because of the their immediate tribe. The military train soldiers to kill other humans. Many soldiers of war become traumatized but others actually adapt and become desensitized to human suffering. Some soldiers feel guilty and some don't. The tribe they follow doesn't look down on death and destruction because it is part of there everyday training. However, the society these soldiers are raised in does look down on it and so it is the job of military institutions to reprogram the mind for a different set of morals and standards. Survival is the key, in our society, a civilian has no fear of immediate death other than self inflicted death from drugs and gang violence. Our sense of right and wrong is pushed on us through 20 years of institutionalized "education". Religion can sometimes add or conflict with the propaganda machine and we see it blow up politically on the tele.
Corporations would not pay 200 million dollars for 60 seconds of commercial space during the Super Bowl if it didn't work. The truth is, the mind can be persuaded to make the body hungry and even push a person toward a certain brand of food by displaying patterns of colored pixels correctly on your TV. You should eat 3 meals a day and make sure it is a balanced meal each time so the fruit and vegetable farmers as well as the animal breeders all get their money. Then you can pay for a gym membership to burn off all of that unnecessary energy you just consumed. Nothing like running in a wheel like a hamster. Don't believe me? By a book about it...I am sure there is a book for every personality that will reaffirm what you were already thinking or argue against it, whatever you are in the mood for.
Our morality is based on what is most profitable. Humans as resources have been that focus for a long time. Thanks to automation we have seen a shift in priorities but I feel that how humans behave will not be altered too much. Most likely we will be encouraged to breed less because we become dangerous when we are not distracted and robotic automation produces results without wages. Global warming, providing power to a million people is no problem but supplying it to 7 billion people becomes dangerous right? The air is going bad, the water is running out, get abortions, use contraceptives. Sound familiar?
Don't know where on earth someone would get those ideas, though.
Especially when your NPC has 18 charisma. I want to be able to charm my evil friends into working together: making Eldoth act unselfishly, inspiring cogency in Tiax, loyalty in Edwin! I want the option of joining the Zhentarim with Xzar and Monty, to counter the outworn Khalid and Jaheira Harper path! Maybe the evil NPCs will be more accepting, even happy, with my Bhaal heritage, while good-aligned NPCs are worried by it. Little details like that.
Instead, they all desert me in SoD, act like they don't know me in BGII (if they appear at all)...it's enough to make a man give up on evil altogether. Of course I know the game is 20 years old and it's wrong to criticise it from a more advanced perspective, still I thought I'd give my reasons here.
You are trying to say that some things are beyond moral judgement, but history shows that even those everyday things when they are evil require constant strong reinforcement for them to still be counted as "norm". Someone (religious figures or traditions - also mostly kept by religious figures) has to constantly remind people that what they are doing is not evil but a necessary thing. Same with criminals that will find you thousand reasons why they had to commit even the most atrocious crime, but not one of them will admit that they simply want to do something bad.
This is why society is changing and evolving - at every next step of development it can allow itself to get rid from yet another obviously evil but existing thing. Animals are beyond moral - they are following natures law. Sentient social creatures develop the moral judgement as a mean to coexist together.
There is, in general, a reason why these concepts (good, evil, suffering, etc.) elude clear-cut definitions and find a definition only within the discourse surrounding them. They are eminently connected to the human condition and the difficulties associated with plumbing that depth. Philosophies and its various related or derived disciplines (e.g. ethics, metaphysics) have been struggling with definitions of such terms for literally thousands of years - indeed some might define philosophy itself as the act of trying to define such terms. And that's not even touching on the theological dimension of these terms, which carries with it an entirely different set of paradigms.
Since it's pretty obvious it can't just be decided like that for our "real" world (or philosophers would've been out of a job long ago), I find it much more interesting to explore the question in a setting like D&D, where certain crucial context parameters are markedly different. For example, deities are unquestionably real in D&D. The afterlife is a proven (and in some cases even tangible) fact. Souls exist. Rewards and punishments appear on an entirely different scale. And so on. That changes so many fundamental assumptions of "real-world" philosophy it's extremely difficult to naively transfer concepts and judgments like good, evil, justice, etc. Though admittedly naive is exactly how it is handled in many cases, because complex ethical elaborations just don't make for very compelling reading material given the intended audience
Some of the world's greatest thinkers have struggled to develop a coherent secular moral philosophy over the last 3000 years, and indeed have made a certain amount of progress, one little piece at a time, but it remains a very difficult and disputed and incomplete subject. It's easier if you start from a religious position, with a set of commandments laid down by faith rather than derived by reason, but even then theologians have still struggled and disagreed about many of the implications.
If you're not up to speed with this complex and difficult subject (which you're not, unless you've spent several years concentrating on this at university level - "Well, I once read a book" is not adequate grounding), then you'll probably just make a fool of yourself by writing drivel (as some people already have in this thread).
Tip: if you don't want to look like an idiot, leave this subject to actual experts.
I most vehemently stress that I am not saying anything of the sort. What I am saying is that "suffering" is not something you can easily define. It is a very subjective term covering an entire spectrum of emotional and sensory states, some of which are more easily agreed upon by a majority, but most of which are very much subject to individual interpretation.
Something similar is true for "knowingly", encompassing many different states of awareness; it is not without reason that many legal proceedings very often hinge on determining what someone could have known, anticipated, deduced, or expected (all of which are elements that could apply here, plus many more).
For that matter, "cause" is also a culprit in a similar vein, covering a vast array of causality chains that very often cannot simply be reduced to "A leads to B".
Keep in mind that it's easy to determine extreme cases with very few variables; but that a good definition (of anything) must hold true in general if it is to be of any actual use. It is the DIFFICULT cases first and foremost that make all this so troublesome to decide, the grey areas where people do NOT simply agree on everything because it's 'so obvious'.
Now, the discussion we have here is about Faerun, where - as comical and caricature as it is - evil is defined quite clearly and not so different from definition of our moral judgment. Therefore "suffering" - is when someone suffers. Usually, when one is suffering it's quite obvious and I do not see any "grey areas" here. No matter if it is a physical torture or emotional distress, the person who causes it intentionally is performing an evil deed.
Killing someone not out of self-defense is evil. Teasing your fat sister about her weight till she collapses in tears - is evil as well. The degree is different, obviously, and one can say to that fatso "don't be such a baby, at least you a alive" but the deed, the act of teasing remains an evil act. It harms someone.
As of "knowingly" - again, we are in Faerun, and moral is a pretty much universal here. Children might not understand the consequences of their action, but that's what adults are here for - to teach and explain.
Your "known, anticipated, etc" are law terms bound to degree of punishment, nothing else. They do not deny the evilness of the act.
Intentional harming is evil in any universe. You can proclaim necessity of some particular evil or simply declare it as part of the nature law and enjoy, but it remains to be evil.
If what you said were true, then (by your reasoning) dentists and surgeons would indeed be automatically evil! Likewise, obviously, so would be all sorts of other people with perfectly valid reasons for doing things which undoubtedly do cause suffering, since you explicitly rule out the (often wholly valid) excuse that what they do is necessary.
As I've already suggested, defining general moral principles is not an exercise for muddled amateurs, who will succeed only in looking foolish.
Good and evil are words used to describe indescribable chemical imbalances in the brain. They are like love, hate, faith ect. They are subjective. How many people do you know that were in love and yet some how got a divorce? My definition of Love doesn't allow that so I guess my definition of love is different than many other peoples right?
My opinion of what is evil is different than yours. In my opinion, humanity are no different than animals. They eat, sleep and breed uncontrollably just like any other animal. They get territorial and kill each other over food, land, and lovers. Sometimes they flip out and eat their own families. I don't label it or judge it, they are just that way. Like when a lion eats another animal or a tiger eats it's cubs.
Coexistence is fine with me but I don't consider it evil when a predator eats it's prey. If a certain species does not evolve and they get left behind, they die out. Nurturing the weak and encouraging them to spread like a virus is not a good thing in my opinion. It increases suffering and will slowly eat us up in the end because it goes against the natural order of things. When a population breeds out of control it starves to death as a result. That is a consequence of being out of tune with the environment. In an attempt to avoid bearing witness to death, society has created a way to go against nature.
Mankind used to evolve based on intelligent decision making and strength. Usually the strong will survive but those rules no longer apply in modern society. We mass slaughter the animals to allow the weak to survive. The strong give them money to keep the basics going so that the elite can use them like slaves for financial gain. As a result the most irresponsible people breed the most because they don't die out from their poor decisions. So now you have a larger part of the population without skills or morals doing drugs and pooping out kids left and right. Then they turn to killing each other in the streets over drugs and territory. Most people who are responsible know when to let go and have no interest in subjecting themselves to that kind of misery so they die out. What is left behind is misery. What is more evil? Allowing humanity to go extinct or watching your neighbors die in the street? Not very fun thing to think about and it never should have been allowed to get to this point.
Personally, I couldn't care less what society thinks is right or wrong. I follow rules and regulations because that is part of living in a society. Agreeing to live by a certain code. When people decide to drive drunk or shoot people for drugs they are going against the agreement they have with the society they live in. Might as well throw them to the wolves for all I care. What I think is correct and moral is not what I see in others when I leave the house but there is nothing I can do about it and it's none of my business. Our systems and technology have allowed the human race to balloon out to the point where the world can no longer take it. We can stop evolving and kill all of our technology rather than get our population under control but it won't fix the problem. When a certain species of creatures go extinct I don't consider it good or evil. It's part of nature. There is just us and the world and how you treat others ultimately has no real meaning, only consequence.
Those are different things altogether. Deeds can be good and evil, and they are clearly not inside the brain. They are state of things, or events. Unless we fall into abyss of solipsysm, or commit into some serious mereology, we can agree that those deeds are objective. Our judgement of them can vary, sure, but it's a different story.
Truth be told, I don't believe things like love can be reduced to chemistry. I mean, I can make you feel great, but also terrible. The same things is with faith, or hate. So how can we differentiate between them, without talking intentional factor into account?
That seems to be plainly untrue. Humans do things no other part of our kingdom is able to do. It is not just matter of scale; religion or art has no equivalence among animal activities. Hell, what we are doing are here (philosophing, that is
So "good" means to behave according to one's nature?
And who says sheep do not dream of electric androids? Elephants are for instance fully aware of death and ancestry.
Humankind thinks it is superior and is the only knowing species out there, but is it really?
Humanity is very full of itself. A lion can do things that a camel can't. That doesn't make a lion more or less of an animal does it? We are made up of space dust like everything else and we live by the same rules as all life or we will cease to live.
I doubt that.
So yeah, humankind is superior and the only knowing species. So far.
Still a leap from a universal dialectic of good/evil, of course, but food for thought.
In the animal kingdom, being unique is the main thing that attracts mates. Though having clear purpose it is still an art in itself. Humans are not very different.
In the animal kingdom, being unique is the main thing that attracts mates. Though having clear purpose it is still an art in itself. Humans are not very different.
Still, it doesn't say that animals are able to consiously create art, to do philosophy, and so on. That kind of reductionism seems naive to me, as it gives no explanation to rich variety of human activities - besides pretty crude reduction to mating mechanisms.
Humanity deserves every bit of gloryfication it can get - if for no other reason, then at least because humanity came up with concept of "nature" as something worth protecting.
But for real, this is veering dangerously off topic. I agree that RL good/evil discussions can get too problematic and require a much larger scope than a casually constructed fictional world could (or necessarily should) provide. Still, it's always good to keep the relativisms in mind because snap judgments are a dangerous affair in most cases and casual settings lend themselves easily to making them.
Personally I like moral ambiguity, and I applaud it when writers introduce more than the usual good vs. bad trot. BG isn't exactly groundbreaking in that respect, I fear.