I'm always in favor of any discourse and exchange of ideas, but people should keep in mind that this question is one of "the big ones" in moral philosophy and there exist libraries upon libraries of arguments dating back literally thousands of years on the topic, both secular and religious. Opinions are, of course, well and good - but do keep in mind that moral absolutism is part of a dialectic that if anything proves that you cannot in any way just decide this matter at a glance.
In fiction? Probably, depends on its setting. But in reality...? I am of the mind that neither good nor evil exists. Not even slightly good and slightly evil. And especially not the absolute, ultimative, omnipotent kind of *insert alignment here*. For nothing is intrinsically moral or immoral.
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.
Well said if only pointless - demagogues do not care for any logic.
My opinion: no, because good and evil are subjective. There can't really be an absolute for something that's subjective.
For example: slavery. We all agree here that it's evil, but back in the days of the Roman Empire, when everybody owned slaves, nobody thought of themselves as evil for doing what was, to them, completely normal. We might think of ourselves as good, but 100 years in the future, some highly evolved race will pick a practice that we simply see as normal and say "wow, I can't believe humans used to abuse electrons by firing them at CRT screens for their own entertainment!" or whatever.
It also depends on other factors. Tigers killing deer, for example... an act of murder, or simply doing what they need to to survive? We'd consider it an act of evil if we did it, but we don't see the tiger as evil for doing it because he doesn't have the intelligence to know the concept of evil.
So no, because a) it's not objective and b) there are too many caveats.
These "all good and evil are subjective" arguments kind of fall apart unless someone really wants to argue why rape, murder, and torture are good.
Incoming religious answer: Yes there is objective good and evil.
My personal philosophy: at its most basic elements, good and evil are selfless and selfish respectively. eg. killing a person purely for personal pleasure is wrong, while killing a person who kills for pleasure in order to protect others is good. Intent plays a part, but will not always sway an action from evil to good or vice versa.
Something being complicated does not preclude objective determination, it simply requires more care. I also find it hilarious that people like to tell someone that they are absolutely wrong, but then use a relativistic philosophy to do so. Self defeating arguments and all.
For example: slavery. We all agree here that it's evil, but back in the days of the Roman Empire, when everybody owned slaves, nobody thought of themselves as evil for doing what was, to them, completely normal. We might think of ourselves as good, but 100 years in the future, some highly evolved race will pick a practice that we simply see as normal and say "wow, I can't believe humans used to abuse electrons by firing them at CRT screens for their own entertainment!" or whatever.
What I find interesting is that whenever people use this argument they only address what they think the slave owners might have believed. They never actually address what they think the actual slaves might have believed. As if when it comes to moral or ethical matters that the people being acted upon in such ways are of no consequence.
These "all good and evil are subjective" arguments kind of fall apart unless someone really wants to argue why rape, murder, and torture are good.
No, they do not. If someone claims some objective value, then onus probandi falls on them. Denial does not require any positive proof.
I also find it hilarious that people like to tell someone that they are absolutely wrong, but then use a relativistic philosophy to do so. Self defeating arguments and all.
It seems like you mistake relativism in ontology with relativism in semantics and logics.
Slavery and serfdom were at their core merely other forms of employment. That in itself is neither evil nor good. The important question is how the employees are treaded by their employers. The same problems which plagued Ancient Rome's less fortune population are still present even in First World countries. The only difference is we now have different names for it. Abuse in the temporary staffing industry being one example.
These "all good and evil are subjective" arguments kind of fall apart unless someone really wants to argue why rape, murder, and torture are good.
No, they do not. If someone claims some objective value, then onus probandi falls on them. Denial does not require any positive proof.
I also find it hilarious that people like to tell someone that they are absolutely wrong, but then use a relativistic philosophy to do so. Self defeating arguments and all.
It seems like you mistake relativism in ontology with relativism in semantics and logics.
Whoops, there we go again. Its subjective and yet I'm wrong.
Judging from the link you provided, your question is in the context of DnD. I believe absolute Good and Evil exist in their respective planes, but not for mortals.
Slavery and serfdom were at their core merely other forms of employment. That in itself is neither evil nor good. The important question is how the employees are treaded by their employers. The same problems which plagued Ancient Rome's less fortune population are still present even in First World countries. The only difference is we now have different names for it. Abuse in the temporary staffing industry being one example.
How they're treated doesn't provide the full picture, though. It is also important to know how employees perceive and experience their treatment.
Also, I would argue that slavery is not merely another form of employment. Slavery is ownership of human beings, which is quite distinct from other forms of employment, and will likely have a profound impact on how slaves perceive and experience their so-called employment.
There's no need to defend slavery or slave ownership here. We know it was a bad idea.
A demagogue is (among other things) inherently an orator presenting an argument which s/he expects will convince others to follow. S/he's necessarily quite concerned by the internal logic of that argument because s/he's seeking to persuade, even if the logic may (and often does) turn out to be false when carefully analysed.
I've carefully refrained from the assertion of moral generalisations, and pointed out that others would be wiser to do likewise, instead of making fools of themselves by displaying their lack of logic. This was an exercise in personal humility (since I do hold views on morality, which I'm nevertheless refraining from expounding here), and a recommendation of similar humility in others. This is nothing like demagoguery, indeed almost the opposite.
What I spoke of hadn't to do anything with defending slavery or serfdom though. But more about how similar forms of such employment nontheless legally exist in all countries around the globe even to this day. Just under different names. So, yes, all problems of old concerning this subject are still very much prevailing within the industry.
And I think you're oversimplifying things to define "ownership of people as if they were property" as nothing different from typical employment. It's not, and there's no defensible way to frame it as if it is. There's no way to frame slavery as a form of employment without an implied defense of the institution - and that is because such a framing is basically sugar-coating it.
And yes, there is actual slavery in the world today.
Because we already made some progress in the original, and starting all over = to much effort, I am just gonna copy and paste from the originator thread.
Also, we are walking around in circles, so this is maybe maybe my last post in this matter (but probably not). I mean, you either get it or you dont...
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.
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).
Only partly true. For instance, when calculating the acceleration of a F1 car, we generally do not include the drag coefficient of time - not including it makes no difference unless you have like 10 numbers behind the comma. Likewise, rape and murder and torture and so on are clear cut cases of evil, regardless whether stealing your sister candy bar is or is not. Almost all statements have boundaries between which they are valid, for instance;
"That which does not kill me makes me stronger!"
Do you become stronger from ending up in a coma? No, obviously not, yet equally obvious, there are times and places where the statement is true. So, the fact that you can come up with a scenario where a statement becomes untrue does not invalidate the statement, it merely seeks the outer edges of when and where a statement is a valid.
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.
The sound observer is clearly defined. No mental illnesses. Normal or higher levels of empathy, compassion and passion. No personal stakes in the outcome.
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.
Yes please. It is called phylogenetic memories, and / or instincts. Lets put it this way; if I gave everyone in this thread a jigsaw puzzle, you would all put it together the same way, because the pieces only fit one way, at least if the motive is to make sense. Likewise, with the, uh, neurotypical (is that the right word?) brain certain simulatory clues will elicit the same response.
You even said it yourself; for a (non wacko) human to be fine with (obvious case of) rape you NEED mental conditioning. This, I never disagreed with. To the contrary, RL human specimens who are fine with rape and other assorted evil are almost always fundamentalist in some way, be it militarism, or religion, or the free market. HOWEVER, they are "fine" with it in a detached, or controlled, way. Even though they are supposed to be fine with whatever the fuck they are not really. For instance, you took the greeks as an example of people perfectly fine with keeping sex slaves. Well, Alexander the Great, while on a mission to punish traitors from some earlier war, sacked a town whose ancestors supposedly were traitors. According to the greeks laws and moral perception and what nots they had every right in the world to sack that village. However, one of Alexander chroniclers spend a substantial amount of space trying to justify the deed, while the other chronicler decided to not even mentioned it at all. Like I already stated, you cannot take the human out of the human equation.
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.
No. Not back and forth. You construe my argument as circular. It is not. For instance, the medical classifying of anti-social behavior is independent of local culture, much in the same way the classification of cancer is independent on the proximity to an asbestos mine.
Finally, three quick points: 1. Ethics (which includes notions of right and wrong) is different from good and evil. For instance, a fox hunts a rabbit. If the rabbit is caught, it will die. If the rabbit escapes, the fox will hunger, and if enough rabbits escape, it will die. In a sense, the rabbit is doing the right thing, by escaping. In another sense, the fox is doing the right thing, for it does not deserve to starve no more than the rabbit deserves to die. Regardless, the death of the rabbit and the starvation of the fox are evils both. 2. The sound observer is most definitely different from some manner of popular vote, for reasons I have already explained. 3. I have at least tried to be mention basic good and evil as often as I could. There are near infinite situations where circumstance makes acts diffuse along a scale of good and evil. Better to define only clear cut situations of evil - such as unprovoked murder - and of good - such as sharing food with a starving stranger - that all sound observes can agree upon.
A demagogue is (among other things) inherently an orator presenting an argument which s/he expects will convince others to follow. S/he's necessarily quite concerned by the internal logic of that argument because s/he's seeking to persuade, even if the logic may (and often does) turn out to be false when carefully analysed.
I've carefully refrained from the assertion of moral generalisations, and pointed out that others would be wiser to do likewise, instead of making fools of themselves by displaying their lack of logic. This was an exercise in personal humility (since I do hold views on morality, which I'm nevertheless refraining from expounding here), and a recommendation of similar humility in others. This is nothing like demagoguery, indeed almost the opposite.
Should you stop at "generalization is bad" part I would not say anything (it is bad, in general ) but you used examples, proving only the wish to sway discussion out of any logical path - seriously, saying "doctors make patients suffer hence by your logic they are evil" is nothing but deliberate misinterpretation of "intentional harm" definition (just in case - patients suffer from illnesses, this is why they come to the doctors, that, in turn, cure those illnesses and remove suffering. Doctors do not cause suffering - illnesses do).
This is about examples. As of "generalization": unless you can come up with the positive justification for rape/murder/torture - not "accepting necessary evil" but making those things "not evil" - you are already accepting "universally bad extremes". All we have to do is find where you draw the line between "universal/relative".
I don't mean to muddy the water too much - but when one talks about history, people don't often do things on a society-wide basis for centuries just to be cruel. Slavery, and by extension, serfdom, were primarily a means of keeping people in a large concentration for a prolonged period - because they wouldn't do so willingly. In general, if land was freely available, it was often a better option to just go and farm on said land for yourself. But you encounter a few problems: when somebody decides they want that land too, or when you need to feed/supply a large urban population. Eventually, slavery became a brake on development, because there were people available and perfectly willingly to do the work without being forced to do so in bondage, once the best agricultural land had been occupied by others.
This is particularly salient in medieval development in Europe, where for the most part (outside of what I'll just call Russia for simplicity's sake), serfdom and outright slavery were highly irregular (they happened, but were by no means the norm) until very near to the end of that period of history (loosely speaking) when traditional heritable authority was threatened and required more resources to continue to exist. In Russia slavery and serfdom were far more common, simply because it was extraordinarily difficult to get anybody to stay in the same place outside of free communes because there was a tremendous amount of free land that one could begin farming with virtually no one noticing - but escape from bondage was difficult due to the harsh weather, and low population density (it would be easy to find you since it could be miles and miles before any other person could be found). That's why for example, although Native Americans were enslaved in the so-called "New World", they were, in general, very unpopular slaves because they typically knew how to survive on their own, and knew generally where people who could help them escape resided, so they could take advantage of the large amount of land available. Whereas the African populations that supplanted them had no idea where they were, and had no knowledge of local flora and fauna nor weather patterns, so escape was much more difficult because they wouldn't know where they were going, nor would they necessarily know what was safe to eat, and could leave at the wrong time of year and find themselves completely without anything to eat.
The salient point for morality, is that the last hold out of for slavery, in the Western World, was the USA and although most modern folks would agree with the Abolitionists, they were outright reviled in their own time - even by relatively anti-slave populations in the North. It certainly wasn't employment, but whether it was a good idea or not was very much up in the air until well after the Civil War.
That's why for example, although Native Americans were enslaved in the so-called "New World", they were, in general, very unpopular slaves because they typically knew how to survive on their own, and knew generally where people who could help them escape resided, so they could take advantage of the large amount of land available. Whereas the African populations that supplanted them had no idea where they were, and had no knowledge of local flora and fauna nor weather patterns, so escape was much more difficult because they wouldn't know where they were going, nor would they necessarily know what was safe to eat, and could leave at the wrong time of year and find themselves completely without anything to eat.
On top of that, the natives had a habit of dying of disease when in European settlements, while the Africans did not. Europeans also thought the Africans were physically stronger than the natives.
An additional problem for the Africans was that they were kidnapped from tribes all over the African interior, and few of them even spoke the same language as their fellows. Banding together was not entirely feasible.
The salient point for morality, is that the last hold out of for slavery, in the Western World, was the USA and although most modern folks would agree with the Abolitionists, they were outright reviled in their own time - even by relatively anti-slave populations in the North. It certainly wasn't employment, but whether it was a good idea or not was very much up in the air until well after the Civil War.
True. Abolitionists at the time were viewed largely as extremists. Most slavery opponents didn't advocate immediate abolition; they had various, more "moderate" schemes, the most prominent being the resettlement plan, in which the slaves would all be shipped back to Africa for fear that abolition would lead to a genocidal race war of revenge.
I wonder what those people thought when the slaves went free, but did not exact vengeance?
Should you stop at "generalization is bad" part I would not say anything (it is bad, in general ) but you used examples, proving only the wish to sway discussion out of any logical path
Quite the opposite (again). I offered an example to show that your previous argument led immediately to an absurd conclusion, and was therefore illogical. This was obviously an encouragement to get discussion onto a logical path, not off it.
- seriously, saying "doctors make patients suffer hence by your logic they are evil" is nothing but deliberate misinterpretation of "intentional harm" definition
That's not what I said. Are you deliberately misquoting me to mislead our readers? That's a typical technique of demagoguery.
I carefully specified dentists and surgeons, to make a point which is obvious about them, although not about doctors in general (because it doesn't necessarily apply to someone prescribing pills for an infection).
(just in case - patients suffer from illnesses, this is why they come to the doctors, that, in turn, cure those illnesses and remove suffering. Doctors do not cause suffering - illnesses do).
This is a feeble attempt to set up a straw man fallacy, arguing against something which isn't which I said. That's another typical technique of demagoguery. Falsely accusing me (in your previous) of demagoguery, to divert attention from your own flawed argument, is yet another typical demagogic technique.
Turning now to what I actually said, dentists and surgeons carve up living bodies. Recuperation is almost always painful (sometimes very much so), which is undoubtedly a harm (well, unless the patient is a severe masochist, I suppose), general anaesthesia (if applicable) can be risky, and missing body parts are often a functional harm. Obviously dentists and surgeons carve people up deliberately, so the harms are intentional.
Of course everyone realises that dentists and surgeons usually act out of medical necessity (although cosmetic surgeons may be more ethically questionable on this point), to prevent greater harm by inaction. However, you specifically disallowed necessity as a justification - that was the particularly foolish part of your definition. The judgment of greater harm by inaction implicitly accepts that there is a lesser harm (yet still a harm) caused by the surgical intervention.
By denying necessity as a justification, you have indeed condemned all dentists and surgeons as automatically evil, which shows that your definition is absurd.
Up to a point, yes. Any number of examples in favour of a hypothesis aren't proof, but a single counter-example against a generalised assertion is disproof - you then need a better hypothesis to accommodate the demonstrated exception. That's how logic works.
As of "generalization": unless you can come up with the positive justification for rape/murder/torture - not "accepting necessary evil" but making those things "not evil" - you are already accepting "universally bad extremes".
No, sadly this is just more demagoguery to confuse the reader and avoid logic.
The relevant acts (of sex/killing/pain-infliction) are called rape/murder/torture only if they've already been judged to be unjustified. When there's some acceptable justification, we call those acts by other names (e.g. love/defence/dentistry). Therefore it's automatically impossible to offer justification for rape/murder/torture, else they wouldn't be rape/murder/torture.
Nevertheless, there are obviously many circumstances in which the exact same actions might be entirely justified. If someone yanks out a tooth, is he a dentist, or is he a torturer? The circumstances matter! The issue about which there's room for reasonable debate is how we decide what circumstances constitute adequate justification, but once you've called it rape/murder/torture then you've already decided and there's nothing to discuss.
When you don't even allow necessity as a justification, let alone the more marginal or nuanced considerations about which other people would argue (how is it affected by consent? coercion? duress? mercy? natality? authority?), then you're not even beginning to have a place in the serious discussion of how morality works.
@Gallowglass. One man fires a gun in a target range. Another man fire a gun at an innocent. In both acts, a gun was fired THUS THEY ARE PERFECTLY EQUAL!!!
@Gallowglass. One man fires a gun in a target range. Another man fire a gun at an innocent. In both acts, a gun was fired THUS THEY ARE PERFECTLY EQUAL!!!
Duh? I can't see why this is addressed to me, nor why anyone would say anything so asinine.
However, if that's really what you believe, then we should all hope that the men in the white coats catch up with you before you start practicing what you preach.
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).
Only partly true. For instance, when calculating the acceleration of a F1 car, we generally do not include the drag coefficient of time - not including it makes no difference unless you have like 10 numbers behind the comma. Likewise, rape and murder and torture and so on are clear cut cases of evil, regardless whether stealing your sister candy bar is or is not. Almost all statements have boundaries between which they are valid, for instance;
"That which does not kill me makes me stronger!"
Do you become stronger from ending up in a coma? No, obviously not, yet equally obvious, there are times and places where the statement is true. So, the fact that you can come up with a scenario where a statement becomes untrue does not invalidate the statement, it merely seeks the outer edges of when and where a statement is a valid.
There still seems to be some misunderstanding about the core problem. The question isn't "is rape/torture/murder/whatever evil?", the questions are "what *is* 'evil'?" and, once we can answer that, "is there such a thing as absolute/objective/inherent/intrinsic evil?" (the same of course is true for 'good', respectively).
Examples where people may commonly agree on usage of the term does NOT equal a definition of the term. In fact, common usage of words is often a very intuitive thing subject to many biases and subjective distortion effects that simply do not become readily apparent in everyday situations. Once you go into a more fundamental discussion, however, you cannot simply gloss over the problems with such 'definitions' and pretend they don't exist.
The reason why the question of what 'evil' actually *is* is so important is that defining it is a big step towards finding out whether it can exist in the abstract, as an inherent, objective property decoupled from subjective (human) judgments. Religion solves it the easy way by introducing an absolute metric by which to measure (i.e. the respective deity/religious system), a measure that is usually outside of the possibility of being otherwise comprehended by human capacities.
Using examples to delineate the concept in question is a crutch employed primarily because an objective definition is so elusive and difficult. It's a heuristic rooted in the empirical, intuitive understanding we have developed as part of our socialization - extreme cases like e.g. rape have the advantage of being very widely understood across cultural/language barriers. However that heuristic is also its most glaring shortcoming, as consensus tends to be a fairly narrow overlap for a few extreme cases and quickly devolves into a patchwork of exceptions and fringe cases that confuse more than they would ever clarify.
"Rape is evil" is not a statement I could logically see myself making - and before someone comes along and misconstrues this as "rape is totally okay, guys!", I am not talking about judgment of the act here at all. I am talking about the ability to make logical assertions, or the inability to make them. I don't know what "evil" is, therefore I cannot in good conscience apply the term beyond its heuristic value within a particular social context; i.e. if I use the term "evil" naively, then it is with the expectation that people who share a large part of my socialization background will understand it in similar ways, and that is who I am trying to communicate with and what I am trying to communicate. To differentiate PROPERLY in case of the initial statement, all I could say is, perhaps, "rape is considered evil by many cultures"; or, if I am trying to simply convey a personal conviction, "rape is something I find reprehensible". Naturally this is fairly artificial in terms of everyday use, which is where we go back to the general heuristic usage of complicated terms. This here is a discussion about those terms, however, and in great detail - it is important not to confuse naive usage with proper terminology.
As for the objectivity question, I find myself unable to answer it, of course. Is there objective evil? Can there be objective evil? The ontological implications alone are immense, let alone the theological ones. However, given the very fact that people found themselves forced to even invent illogical (by which I mean: not subject to the rules of logic) solutions to the dilemma in order to cope I am inclined towards the side of relativism. That does not, by the way, mean that I think "there are scenarios in which rape is totally cool, guys!". It's not about applicability to a concrete, finite context; it is about logic and argumentation.
@Gallowglass. One man fires a gun in a target range. Another man fire a gun at an innocent. In both acts, a gun was fired THUS THEY ARE PERFECTLY EQUAL!!!
Duh? I can't see why this is addressed to me, nor why anyone would say anything so asinine.
However, if that's really what you believe, then we should all hope that the men in the white coats catch up with you before you start practicing what you preach.
Are you trolling right now? YOU JUST SAID EXACTLY THAT!!! Exchange "fire a gun in a target range" with "sex", and "fire at an innocent" with "rape" and it is your words exactly.
@DrakeICN Well, no. If you're referring to the dentist/torturer example let's look at it a bit closer
1) A "torturer" yanks out a tooth 2) A dentist yanks out a tooth
To use a guns example, it's more like
1) A "murderer" shoots an unarmed black kid 2) A police man on duty shoots an unarmed black kid
If there is inherent evil in purposefully inflicting harm on another person, both are evil. However, it seems in the US only one event is morally reprehensible.
@DrakeICN - Er ... no, I didn't say that, and you can't construe that from my words.
What you could construe by such a substitution into what I originally wrote is that firing a gun is the same a firing a gun (d'oh!), but the circumstances (of whether it's at a target range or at an innocent) is exactly what matters.
You're being entirely ridiculous and are obviously just trying to get a rise out of people by offensive distortions ... and we all know there's a word for that.
@DrakeICN - Er ... no, I didn't say that, and you can't construe that from my words.
What you could construe by such a substitution into what I originally wrote is that firing a gun is the same a firing a gun (d'oh!), but the circumstances (of whether it's at a target range or at an innocent) is exactly what matters.
You're being entirely ridiculous and are obviously just trying to get a rise out of people by offensive distortions ... and we all know there's a word for that.
No, it is exactly what you said. Sex is sex, just sometimes it doesnt involve consent. Fireing a gun is fireing a gun, it's just that sometimes someone stands in the way of the bullet trajectory. I absolutely cannot see how the two statements are different. You can pretend they are essentially different all you want, but really they are not.
"The relevant act (fireing a gun) is called murder only if they've already been judged to be unjustified. When there's some acceptable justification, we call those acts by other names (fireing at a target range). Therefore it's automatically impossible to offer justification for murder, else they wouldn't be murder."
Yeah. Because the actions ARE DIFFERENT. Not because of the ethics of the individual, but because there are real, tangible, measureable differences. You have no argument!
In fact, lets try it again; "The relevant object (something red) is called a red ferrari only if they've already been judged to be a ferrari. When there's some acceptable justification, we call red objects by other names (red apple). Therefore it's automatically impossible to call a ferrari an apple, else they wouldn't be a ferrari!"
Comments
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/65040/the-allure-of-evil/p1
If you wanted my OPINION, I would say yes based on my religious beliefs, but I am under no illusions that such an opinion is based on facts.
For example: slavery. We all agree here that it's evil, but back in the days of the Roman Empire, when everybody owned slaves, nobody thought of themselves as evil for doing what was, to them, completely normal. We might think of ourselves as good, but 100 years in the future, some highly evolved race will pick a practice that we simply see as normal and say "wow, I can't believe humans used to abuse electrons by firing them at CRT screens for their own entertainment!" or whatever.
It also depends on other factors. Tigers killing deer, for example... an act of murder, or simply doing what they need to to survive? We'd consider it an act of evil if we did it, but we don't see the tiger as evil for doing it because he doesn't have the intelligence to know the concept of evil.
So no, because a) it's not objective and b) there are too many caveats.
Incoming religious answer: Yes there is objective good and evil.
My personal philosophy: at its most basic elements, good and evil are selfless and selfish respectively.
eg. killing a person purely for personal pleasure is wrong, while killing a person who kills for pleasure in order to protect others is good. Intent plays a part, but will not always sway an action from evil to good or vice versa.
Something being complicated does not preclude objective determination, it simply requires more care. I also find it hilarious that people like to tell someone that they are absolutely wrong, but then use a relativistic philosophy to do so. Self defeating arguments and all.
These "all good and evil are subjective" arguments kind of fall apart unless someone really wants to argue why rape, murder, and torture are good.
No, they do not. If someone claims some objective value, then onus probandi falls on them. Denial does not require any positive proof.
It seems like you mistake relativism in ontology with relativism in semantics and logics.
Sorry, I don't have time nor inclination to teach you basic distinctions and terms in philosophy. You are on your own.
Also, I would argue that slavery is not merely another form of employment. Slavery is ownership of human beings, which is quite distinct from other forms of employment, and will likely have a profound impact on how slaves perceive and experience their so-called employment.
There's no need to defend slavery or slave ownership here. We know it was a bad idea.
I've carefully refrained from the assertion of moral generalisations, and pointed out that others would be wiser to do likewise, instead of making fools of themselves by displaying their lack of logic. This was an exercise in personal humility (since I do hold views on morality, which I'm nevertheless refraining from expounding here), and a recommendation of similar humility in others. This is nothing like demagoguery, indeed almost the opposite.
And yes, there is actual slavery in the world today.
Also, we are walking around in circles, so this is maybe maybe my last post in this matter (but probably not). I mean, you either get it or you dont... Yey, someone who gets it!!! Only partly true. For instance, when calculating the acceleration of a F1 car, we generally do not include the drag coefficient of time - not including it makes no difference unless you have like 10 numbers behind the comma. Likewise, rape and murder and torture and so on are clear cut cases of evil, regardless whether stealing your sister candy bar is or is not. Almost all statements have boundaries between which they are valid, for instance;
"That which does not kill me makes me stronger!"
Do you become stronger from ending up in a coma? No, obviously not, yet equally obvious, there are times and places where the statement is true. So, the fact that you can come up with a scenario where a statement
becomes untrue does not invalidate the statement, it merely seeks the outer edges of when and where a statement is a valid. The sound observer is clearly defined. No mental illnesses. Normal or higher levels of empathy, compassion and passion. No personal stakes in the outcome. Yes please. It is called phylogenetic memories, and / or instincts. Lets put it this way; if I gave everyone in this thread a jigsaw puzzle, you would all put it together the same way, because the pieces only fit one way, at least if the motive is to make sense. Likewise, with the, uh, neurotypical (is that the right word?) brain certain simulatory clues will elicit the same response.
You even said it yourself; for a (non wacko) human to be fine with (obvious case of) rape you NEED mental conditioning. This, I never disagreed with. To the contrary, RL human specimens who are fine with rape and other assorted evil are almost always fundamentalist in some way, be it militarism, or religion, or the free market. HOWEVER, they are "fine" with it in a detached, or controlled, way. Even though they are supposed to be fine with whatever the fuck they are not really. For instance, you took the greeks as an example of people perfectly fine with keeping sex slaves. Well, Alexander the Great, while on a mission to punish traitors from some earlier war, sacked a town whose ancestors supposedly were traitors. According to the greeks laws and moral perception and what nots they had every right in the world to sack that village. However, one of Alexander chroniclers spend a substantial amount of space trying to justify the deed, while the other chronicler decided to not even mentioned it at all. Like I already stated, you cannot take the human out of the human equation. No. Not back and forth. You construe my argument as circular. It is not. For instance, the medical classifying of anti-social behavior is independent of local culture, much in the same way the classification of cancer is independent on the proximity to an asbestos mine. Are you in good faith claiming you believe that emotions play no role in our perception of ethics?
Let me try to dissuade you:
Finally, three quick points:
1. Ethics (which includes notions of right and wrong) is different from good and evil. For instance, a fox hunts a rabbit. If the rabbit is caught, it will die. If the rabbit escapes, the fox will hunger, and if enough rabbits escape, it will die. In a sense, the rabbit is doing the right thing, by escaping. In another sense, the fox is doing the right thing, for it does not deserve to starve no more than the rabbit deserves to die. Regardless, the death of the rabbit and the starvation of the fox are evils both.
2. The sound observer is most definitely different from some manner of popular vote, for reasons I have already explained.
3. I have at least tried to be mention basic good and evil as often as I could. There are near infinite situations where circumstance makes acts diffuse along a scale of good and evil. Better to define only clear cut situations of evil - such as unprovoked murder - and of good - such as sharing food with a starving stranger - that all sound observes can agree upon.
This is about examples. As of "generalization": unless you can come up with the positive justification for rape/murder/torture - not "accepting necessary evil" but making those things "not evil" - you are already accepting "universally bad extremes". All we have to do is find where you draw the line between "universal/relative".
This is particularly salient in medieval development in Europe, where for the most part (outside of what I'll just call Russia for simplicity's sake), serfdom and outright slavery were highly irregular (they happened, but were by no means the norm) until very near to the end of that period of history (loosely speaking) when traditional heritable authority was threatened and required more resources to continue to exist. In Russia slavery and serfdom were far more common, simply because it was extraordinarily difficult to get anybody to stay in the same place outside of free communes because there was a tremendous amount of free land that one could begin farming with virtually no one noticing - but escape from bondage was difficult due to the harsh weather, and low population density (it would be easy to find you since it could be miles and miles before any other person could be found). That's why for example, although Native Americans were enslaved in the so-called "New World", they were, in general, very unpopular slaves because they typically knew how to survive on their own, and knew generally where people who could help them escape resided, so they could take advantage of the large amount of land available. Whereas the African populations that supplanted them had no idea where they were, and had no knowledge of local flora and fauna nor weather patterns, so escape was much more difficult because they wouldn't know where they were going, nor would they necessarily know what was safe to eat, and could leave at the wrong time of year and find themselves completely without anything to eat.
The salient point for morality, is that the last hold out of for slavery, in the Western World, was the USA and although most modern folks would agree with the Abolitionists, they were outright reviled in their own time - even by relatively anti-slave populations in the North. It certainly wasn't employment, but whether it was a good idea or not was very much up in the air until well after the Civil War.
An additional problem for the Africans was that they were kidnapped from tribes all over the African interior, and few of them even spoke the same language as their fellows. Banding together was not entirely feasible. True. Abolitionists at the time were viewed largely as extremists. Most slavery opponents didn't advocate immediate abolition; they had various, more "moderate" schemes, the most prominent being the resettlement plan, in which the slaves would all be shipped back to Africa for fear that abolition would lead to a genocidal race war of revenge.
I wonder what those people thought when the slaves went free, but did not exact vengeance?
I carefully specified dentists and surgeons, to make a point which is obvious about them, although not about doctors in general (because it doesn't necessarily apply to someone prescribing pills for an infection). This is a feeble attempt to set up a straw man fallacy, arguing against something which isn't which I said. That's another typical technique of demagoguery. Falsely accusing me (in your previous) of demagoguery, to divert attention from your own flawed argument, is yet another typical demagogic technique.
Turning now to what I actually said, dentists and surgeons carve up living bodies. Recuperation is almost always painful (sometimes very much so), which is undoubtedly a harm (well, unless the patient is a severe masochist, I suppose), general anaesthesia (if applicable) can be risky, and missing body parts are often a functional harm. Obviously dentists and surgeons carve people up deliberately, so the harms are intentional.
Of course everyone realises that dentists and surgeons usually act out of medical necessity (although cosmetic surgeons may be more ethically questionable on this point), to prevent greater harm by inaction. However, you specifically disallowed necessity as a justification - that was the particularly foolish part of your definition. The judgment of greater harm by inaction implicitly accepts that there is a lesser harm (yet still a harm) caused by the surgical intervention.
By denying necessity as a justification, you have indeed condemned all dentists and surgeons as automatically evil, which shows that your definition is absurd. Up to a point, yes. Any number of examples in favour of a hypothesis aren't proof, but a single counter-example against a generalised assertion is disproof - you then need a better hypothesis to accommodate the demonstrated exception. That's how logic works. No, sadly this is just more demagoguery to confuse the reader and avoid logic.
The relevant acts (of sex/killing/pain-infliction) are called rape/murder/torture only if they've already been judged to be unjustified. When there's some acceptable justification, we call those acts by other names (e.g. love/defence/dentistry). Therefore it's automatically impossible to offer justification for rape/murder/torture, else they wouldn't be rape/murder/torture.
Nevertheless, there are obviously many circumstances in which the exact same actions might be entirely justified. If someone yanks out a tooth, is he a dentist, or is he a torturer? The circumstances matter! The issue about which there's room for reasonable debate is how we decide what circumstances constitute adequate justification, but once you've called it rape/murder/torture then you've already decided and there's nothing to discuss.
When you don't even allow necessity as a justification, let alone the more marginal or nuanced considerations about which other people would argue (how is it affected by consent? coercion? duress? mercy? natality? authority?), then you're not even beginning to have a place in the serious discussion of how morality works. I've already said that I'm refraining from expounding my own moral schema, this is not the place.
[Edit: typo.]
However, if that's really what you believe, then we should all hope that the men in the white coats catch up with you before you start practicing what you preach.
Examples where people may commonly agree on usage of the term does NOT equal a definition of the term. In fact, common usage of words is often a very intuitive thing subject to many biases and subjective distortion effects that simply do not become readily apparent in everyday situations. Once you go into a more fundamental discussion, however, you cannot simply gloss over the problems with such 'definitions' and pretend they don't exist.
The reason why the question of what 'evil' actually *is* is so important is that defining it is a big step towards finding out whether it can exist in the abstract, as an inherent, objective property decoupled from subjective (human) judgments. Religion solves it the easy way by introducing an absolute metric by which to measure (i.e. the respective deity/religious system), a measure that is usually outside of the possibility of being otherwise comprehended by human capacities.
Using examples to delineate the concept in question is a crutch employed primarily because an objective definition is so elusive and difficult. It's a heuristic rooted in the empirical, intuitive understanding we have developed as part of our socialization - extreme cases like e.g. rape have the advantage of being very widely understood across cultural/language barriers. However that heuristic is also its most glaring shortcoming, as consensus tends to be a fairly narrow overlap for a few extreme cases and quickly devolves into a patchwork of exceptions and fringe cases that confuse more than they would ever clarify.
"Rape is evil" is not a statement I could logically see myself making - and before someone comes along and misconstrues this as "rape is totally okay, guys!", I am not talking about judgment of the act here at all. I am talking about the ability to make logical assertions, or the inability to make them. I don't know what "evil" is, therefore I cannot in good conscience apply the term beyond its heuristic value within a particular social context; i.e. if I use the term "evil" naively, then it is with the expectation that people who share a large part of my socialization background will understand it in similar ways, and that is who I am trying to communicate with and what I am trying to communicate. To differentiate PROPERLY in case of the initial statement, all I could say is, perhaps, "rape is considered evil by many cultures"; or, if I am trying to simply convey a personal conviction, "rape is something I find reprehensible". Naturally this is fairly artificial in terms of everyday use, which is where we go back to the general heuristic usage of complicated terms. This here is a discussion about those terms, however, and in great detail - it is important not to confuse naive usage with proper terminology.
As for the objectivity question, I find myself unable to answer it, of course. Is there objective evil? Can there be objective evil? The ontological implications alone are immense, let alone the theological ones. However, given the very fact that people found themselves forced to even invent illogical (by which I mean: not subject to the rules of logic) solutions to the dilemma in order to cope I am inclined towards the side of relativism. That does not, by the way, mean that I think "there are scenarios in which rape is totally cool, guys!". It's not about applicability to a concrete, finite context; it is about logic and argumentation.
I do agree with the asinine part, though.
1) A "torturer" yanks out a tooth
2) A dentist yanks out a tooth
To use a guns example, it's more like
1) A "murderer" shoots an unarmed black kid
2) A police man on duty shoots an unarmed black kid
If there is inherent evil in purposefully inflicting harm on another person, both are evil. However, it seems in the US only one event is morally reprehensible.
What you could construe by such a substitution into what I originally wrote is that firing a gun is the same a firing a gun (d'oh!), but the circumstances (of whether it's at a target range or at an innocent) is exactly what matters.
You're being entirely ridiculous and are obviously just trying to get a rise out of people by offensive distortions ... and we all know there's a word for that.
"The relevant act (fireing a gun) is called murder only if they've already been judged to be unjustified. When there's some acceptable justification, we call those acts by other names (fireing at a target range). Therefore it's automatically impossible to offer justification for murder, else they wouldn't be murder."
Yeah. Because the actions ARE DIFFERENT. Not because of the ethics of the individual, but because there are real, tangible, measureable differences. You have no argument!
In fact, lets try it again;
"The relevant object (something red) is called a red ferrari only if they've already been judged to be a ferrari. When there's some acceptable justification, we call red objects by other names (red apple). Therefore it's automatically impossible to call a ferrari an apple, else they wouldn't be a ferrari!"