For Evil! [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

pendell

2017-04-28, 08:19 AM

WRT evil advancing the cause of human progress, I would refer you to Frediric Bastiat's excellent essay What is seen and what is not seen (http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html)

A quick sample, with bolding added by me:

Have you ever been witness to the fury of that solid citizen, James Goodfellow,*1 when his incorrigible son has happened to break a pane of glass? If you have been present at this spectacle, certainly you must also have observed that the onlookers, even if there are as many as thirty of them, seem with one accord to offer the unfortunate owner the selfsame consolation: "It's an ill wind that blows nobody some good. Such accidents keep industry going. Everybody has to make a living. What would become of the glaziers if no one ever broke a window?"

1.7
Now, this formula of condolence contains a whole theory that it is a good idea for us to expose, flagrante delicto, in this very simple case, since it is exactly the same as that which, unfortunately, underlies most of our economic institutions.

1.8
Suppose that it will cost six francs to repair the damage. If you mean that the accident gives six francs' worth of encouragement to the aforesaid industry, I agree. I do not contest it in any way; your reasoning is correct. The glazier will come, do his job, receive six francs, congratulate himself, and bless in his heart the careless child. That is what is seen.

1.9
But if, by way of deduction, you conclude, as happens only too often, that it is good to break windows, that it helps to circulate money, that it results in encouraging industry in general, I am obliged to cry out: That will never do! Your theory stops at what is seen. It does not take account of what is not seen.

1.10
It is not seen that, since our citizen has spent six francs for one thing, he will not be able to spend them for another. It is not seen that if he had not had a windowpane to replace, he would have replaced, for example, his worn-out shoes or added another book to his library. In brief, he would have put his six francs to some use or other for which he will not now have them.

1.11
Let us next consider industry in general. The window having been broken, the glass industry gets six francs' worth of encouragement; that is what is seen.

1.12
If the window had not been broken, the shoe industry (or some other) would have received six francs' worth of encouragement; that is what is not seen.

1.13
And if we were to take into consideration what is not seen, because it is a negative factor, as well as what is seen, because it is a positive factor, we should understand that there is no benefit to industry in general or to national employment as a whole, whether windows are broken or not broken.

1.14
Now let us consider James Goodfellow.

1.15
On the first hypothesis, that of the broken window, he spends six francs and has, neither more nor less than before, the enjoyment of one window.

1.16
On the second, that in which the accident did not happen, he would have spent six francs for new shoes and would have had the enjoyment of a pair of shoes as well as of a window.

1.17
Now, if James Goodfellow is part of society, we must conclude that society, considering its labors and its enjoyments, has lost the value of the broken window.

1.18
From which, by generalizing, we arrive at this unexpected conclusion: "Society loses the value of objects unnecessarily destroyed," and at this aphorism, which will make the hair of the protectionists stand on end: "To break, to destroy, to dissipate is not to encourage national employment," or more briefly: "Destruction is not profitable."

In other words, evil -- the harming of other humans -- may have advanced human civilization, true, but it has done at great cost and expense. By bringing us a good (that which is seen) it has also deprives us of a great number of unseen goods -- what all those people would have contributed if they had not been robbed, cheated, enslaved and sold as a sexual toy, or murdered.

Evil in human society fundamentally comes from taking stuff that doesn't belong to you, because it's easier to rob and pillage than it is to build something. That means that, regardless of whatever good it brings, evil causes a tremendous loss in terms of books (library of alexandria), in terms of capital (a city looted and burned can take generations to recover), in terms of genius people murdered (Archimedes, slain by a Roman soldier).

It's quite possible human society would be a lot further along if we didn't have to be constantly arming and preparing for war. It would have grown in different ways, yes, but that doesn't mean it would be a worse place.

So ... evil may being some obvious benefits (that which is seen) but that means we are robbed of what could have otherwise been done if people hadn't been stolen from, cities burned and sacked, etc. (that which is not seen) .

That's not including the obvious damage and destruction done by evil for these gains. If I could, I'd put you on a time machine to Flanders Fields, to the gas masks and the trenches and an entire generation of European boys, Tolkiens and Lewises and totally ordinary people, all turned into nothing but fertilizer. A century on, shells from that war are still killing farmers.

Walk that. Smell the stench. Bury the corpses. Nurse those still screaming their lives out behind the lines. And tell me then what argument there is for evil.

I hope the person arguing this won't take this personally, because I truly mean no harm, but I have to say this : It seems to me that an argument for evil is an expression of -- dreaded word! -- privilege. It implies that the only way one can argue for evil on a visceral level is if one has never experienced much evil personally, but has had much evil done on their behalf by family or one's society. For me, I'm the beneficiary of much evil, living on land stolen from the original inhabitants, fed by slave labor in the third world, wearing clothes woven and made by slaves.

That is not a reason, to my mind, to say that evil is a good or necessary thing. It is a cause of grief.

Evil rarely seems such a good thing when the shoe is on the other foot. I say this literally and without exaggeration: I've been tortured. I've been robbed. I've been assaulted sexually. And y'know what? It's no fun at all!

Thus I believe the argument fails. And I suggest that anyone who wants to argue about evil being a necessary thing should do so after they've experienced the worst society has to offer, not before.

Now, if you were to argue that a degree of selfishness, within bounds, is not evil but can bring good, I would agree. And if you were to argue that evil is a part of human nature we can't escape from, so we should leverage it as best we can for constructive uses rather than simply wish it away, I might agree. But that doesn't make evil good or necessary. It simply makes it, like a handicap, an unavoidable part of the human experience we must deal with as best we can.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

T-Mick

2017-04-28, 09:21 AM

Can you define Evil first? Because I don't even know if Evil is actually a thing.

Disgusting.

"Evil is directly experienced and directly intuited. A young woman is beaten; an old man is mugged; a child is raped; a terrorist rips a plane apart in midair; a great nation bombs a civilian population. Those whose minds are not bent by personal or societal madness immediately respond to such actions with justifiable anger. You do not make abstract calculations in ethical philosophy when you see a baby being beaten. At the most fundamental level, evil is not abstract. It is real and tangible."

S@tanicoaldo

2017-04-28, 09:31 AM

Are...you being serious or are you being ironic? Because honestly...I can't tell.

It's a common conspiracy theory. The pharmaceutical industry is evil and only seeks profit. It was a joke.

Shamash

2017-04-28, 10:02 AM

I'm devoting this to an honest argument for the cause of evil. Obviously, the world would be awful if everyone was evil, and I don't want that to happen. However, I would say that evil is a necessary part of human society. Much of our modern technology is based on military technology. No evil, no war, no radios or advanced aircraft. Also, evil provides jobs for police, security officers, or guards. No evil, no police necessary, more unemployed. Evil pushes us to move forward as a civilization, whether in the form of a certain person or a force that can't be blamed as easily, like war. Depending on how evil is defined, the line between evil, good, and motivation becomes very thin. Is killing evil? Is killing an evil person evil? Is it better to stand aside? If they go out and kill a thousand others, was standing aside evil? Was it better to let them live?

War is certainly not a good thing, but I don’t see it as inherently evil, if you are fighting to protect your country and your family it can be seen as honorable.

Small towns that have almost no crime still need the police to keep the order just in case or for other more trivial things. Besides in a perfect world with no need for the police I can't see what the problem is, no one is crying over the lack of Morse code translators.

I still don't see one example where evil was a good thing for the world.

Brother Oni

2017-04-28, 10:44 AM

It's a common conspiracy theory. The pharmaceutical industry is evil and only seeks profit. It was a joke.

As someone who works in the pharmaceutical industry, I encounter an alarming number of people who seriously believe this, so it's very hard to see whether people are joking or not.

In addition, big pharma is a very different beast to small/speciality pharma - some of the criticisms and arguments common in such 'pharmaceutical industry is evil' beliefs are legitimate and the behaviour/comments of certain big pharma companies are certainly indefensible.

War is certainly not a good thing, but I don’t see it as inherently evil, if you are fighting to protect your country and your family it can be seen as honorable.

I still don't see one example where evil was a good thing for the world.

The problem is with war, is that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

As an example of what could be regarded as 'necessary evil' - animal testing of medicines. All medicines must be tested first on animals so that indications of its toxicity is available before it can be put into people (typically this is on at least two animal species, one of which must be a non-rodent).
On the surface, causing undue suffering of animals by poisoning them, then euthanising and dissecting them afterwards would be regarded as an evil act, but if you look at the events that caused the legislation for animal testing to be introduced (primarily the Elixir sulfanilamide mass poisonings (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elixir_sulfanilamide)), you can see why it's a necessity.

Aliquid

2017-04-28, 11:52 AM

Disgusting.

"Evil is directly experienced and directly intuited. A young woman is beaten; an old man is mugged; a child is raped; a terrorist rips a plane apart in midair; a great nation bombs a civilian population. Those whose minds are not bent by personal or societal madness immediately respond to such actions with justifiable anger. You do not make abstract calculations in ethical philosophy when you see a baby being beaten. At the most fundamental level, evil is not abstract. It is real and tangible."If you make a special effort to provide a detailed example of an extremely 'evil' act, I'm sure that you can get 99% of the population to agree with you that the behavior is evil.

But as your examples become less extreme, less people will agree with you. There is a MASSIVE grey area of what is or isn't evil, and you will never be able to create a definition that people will agree upon.

Even with your quoted examples above, I can find holes.
- What if the old man being mugged was a full out "robin hood" type of act? Maybe he was hording wealth and food while others starved.
- What if the young woman being beaten was in the process of killing an innocent child, and it was the enraged mother who was beating her?
etc

T-Mick

2017-04-28, 12:27 PM

If you make a special effort to provide a detailed example of an extremely 'evil' act, I'm sure that you can get 99% of the population to agree with you that the behavior is evil.

But as your examples become less extreme, less people will agree with you. There is a MASSIVE grey area of what is or isn't evil, and you will never be able to create a definition that people will agree upon.

Even with your quoted examples above, I can find holes.
- What if the old man being mugged was a full out "robin hood" type of act? Maybe he was hording wealth and food while others starved.
- What if the young woman being beaten was in the process of killing an innocent child, and it was the enraged mother who was beating her?
etc

Sophistry. I'm sick of "grey areas" being brought up to discredit the real existence of evil.

"As your examples become less extreme, fewer people will agree with you?" No, actually. The reverse is true. The list is in ascending order of magnitude. Maybe I can get everyone to agree that mugging an old man is evil, but what about bombing civilians? What about exploding planes in the name of terror, or something else? Those are much worse, and those are the ones people can't seem to agree on.

Violent assault? Mugging? Rape? These are the little things, let's be honest. Happens every day. Hundreds of times. And the plea against evil is that "it could be Robin Hood?" No. I'm sorry. What you want to call a "massive grey area" is a footnote.

I have no interest whatsoever in defining evil. That's for philosophers. It's like hardcore pornography: I know it when I see it. And so does everyone whose minds, I repeat, "are not bent by personal or societal madness." Directly experienced, directly intuited, real and tangible.

Trekkin

2017-04-28, 12:46 PM

I have no interest whatsoever in defining evil. That's for philosophers. It's like hardcore pornography: I know it when I see it. And so does everyone whose minds, I repeat, "are not bent by personal or societal madness." Directly experienced, directly intuited, real and tangible.

Looking to intuition for morality and rejecting any more rational approach as the product of madness hardly seems like a sustainable path to a workable definition of Evil from which we can come to a consensus regarding its societal necessity.

Perhaps I am mad. Actually, I know I'm quite mad. But I'd rather act with insane deliberation than unwarranted and subjective certitude.

T-Mick

2017-04-28, 01:13 PM

Looking to intuition for morality and rejecting any more rational approach as the product of madness hardly seems like a sustainable path to a workable definition of Evil from which we can come to a consensus regarding its societal necessity.

Perhaps I am mad. Actually, I know I'm quite mad. But I'd rather act with insane deliberation than unwarranted and subjective certitude.

Sophistry again. It's never the biggest evil, but it's the one I hate the most, because it has its hands in all the other big ones.

I'm not interested, here, in morality. I do not reject rational approaches to evil. But I spit on the refusal to recognize evil.

A "workable definition of evil" is a fine thing. When we get it, let me know. In the meantime, I know it when I see it. That's the standard we'll be judging our definition by, isn't it? "Does this accord with my intuition? Yes or no?"

Your last point: I won't choose between two kinds of insanity when I can act reasonably and quickly on a measured intuition.

Aliquid

2017-04-28, 01:36 PM

Sophistry. I'm sick of "grey areas" being brought up to discredit the real existence of evil. Ok, to be fair, I am not using "grey areas" to discredit the existence of evil. I personally believe that there is such thing as an evil act, and an evil person. I was arguing that it is impossible to define what is and what is not evil.

"As your examples become less extreme, fewer people will agree with you?" No, actually. The reverse is true. The list is in ascending order of magnitude. Maybe I can get everyone to agree that mugging an old man is evil, but what about bombing civilians? What about exploding planes in the name of terror, or something else? Those are much worse, and those are the ones people can't seem to agree on.And what about the people who you refer to that argue these examples are not much worse. Are you suggesting that your interpretation of what is and isn't evil is the only true and correct interpretation? Those who disagree with you are simply wrong because your intuitive interpretation of evil is more accurate than theirs?

Violent assault? Mugging? Rape? These are the little things, let's be honest. Happens every day. Hundreds of times. And the plea against evil is that "it could be Robin Hood?" No. I'm sorry. What you want to call a "massive grey area" is a footnote.It isn't a plea against evil. It is an argument that you can't define an evil act by the act alone, there is always context, which is what makes the subject so complicated.

I have no interest whatsoever in defining evil. That's for philosophers. And after more than 2,000 years of debating the subject, philosophers still can't describe what is and what isn't evil.

It's like hardcore pornography: I know it when I see it. And so does everyone whose minds, I repeat, "are not bent by personal or societal madness." Directly experienced, directly intuited, real and tangible.That's where I have the biggest problem with your argument. "I know it when I see it". Unfortunately I can't provide examples, due to board rules... but there are hundreds of examples where person A will say "that is clearly evil, I know evil when I see it", and person B will say "no it isn't, don't impose your distorted sense of values on me"

But at the same time, your perspective has a certain truth to it that speaks to the overall problem. Evil is better understood through an intuitive gut feeling rather than logical thought. Studies have shown that sociopaths are in general more logically gifted than the average person... yet they are capable of greater evil. It is that gut feeling or right and wrong that they are missing (literally missing, their brain doesn't process it).

The problem is, that most people's "gut feelings" don't exactly line up with each other. Maybe we just focus on the overlap.

Elderand

2017-04-28, 01:45 PM

The problem is, that most people's "gut feelings" don't exactly line up with each other. Maybe we just focus on the overlap.

The problem is that people keep insisting so called gut feeling are a real innate thing when they are anything but. "gut feeling" are the result of education, cultural value and so on.If you've been raised to think a certain way, and society in general agrees, your gut feeling will align itself with said education and society. Otherwise, acts that are considered evil today would not have lasted for hundreds or thousands of years virtually unchallenged.

And that's not even getting into the whole issue of quantifiably good things that people are violently opposed to because they consider it evil.

Aliquid

2017-04-28, 01:53 PM

The problem is that people keep insisting so called gut feeling are a real innate thing when they are anything but. "gut feeling" are the result of education, cultural value and so on.If you've been raised to think a certain way, and society in general agrees, your gut feeling will align itself with said education and society. Otherwise, acts that are considered evil today would not have lasted for hundreds or thousands of years virtually unchallenged.

And that's not even getting into the whole issue of quantifiably good things that people are violently opposed to because they consider it evil.Many things are culturally learned, but thee are also certain things that are hard-wired into our brains as being morally unacceptable (vague concepts, not specific examples)

pendell

2017-04-28, 03:01 PM

Here is my rule-of-thumb, quick-n-dirty definition of evil:

If it's something that you would be screaming with anger about if it happened to you or a close family member, then that's a good first argument that the behavior is evil.

There's a bit more to it than that of course. It's only a first-order approximation. Some people have phobias or what not such that they would scream in fear and loathing if someone offered them buttered toast. I know one such person in my immediate circle (extremely butter and fat intolerant).

Other times something may be necessary for all of society , but some individual person is going to be the loser for it. Example: We need a superhighway from point A to point B. That's going to be a great benefit to everyone, but not to the person who happens to have his house smack in the middle of the prospective road.

But even so, a good rule of thumb, which has stood the test of time, is "that which is noxious or harmful to you, do not do unto your neighbor". From which follows a useful corrollary: "Brown-skinned people in third world countries are every bit as much your neighbor as your own flesh and blood."

To me, the best and quickest summation of evil is Jaime Lannister talking to Cersei, in Game of thrones: "F*** everyone who isn't us".

The Lannisters love their own, do anything for them, sacrifice anything, put up with anything for the sake of the family. But this kindness and self-sacrifice stops pretty sharply at their own bloodline. Other families or commoners are either work-units to be exploited or rivals to be crushed by any means necessary.

Imagine the entire world is full of families with that attitude and you understand why there is so much strife, pain, suffering and grief. Quite above that which life inflicts on us without humans putting their own nastiness into the mix.

And yes, the world is full of people screwing over other people and finding ways to rationalize it.
So evil is a real thing, and it starts when we treat other human beings not as fellow-beings, not as brother and sisters, but as prey to be hunted or slaves to be exploited.

ETA: When I say "evil is real" , I think of evil not as an abstract thing as in D&D, but more as a description of human relationships -- when one human is preying on, targeting or exploiting another, that is evil. The exact details change depending on context but the essential act remains the same.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

2D8HP

2017-04-28, 03:32 PM

I haven't read most of the thread yet, but here's my two coppers:

Most of the evil that most of us do is so we may pay the rent.

The good that comes from are evil actions keeps us (and our loved ones) sheltered.

As I write this post, I'm about to go up to the Jail on the seventh floor to unclog a sewage pipe, so my continued employment depends on acts of evil.

Thankfully now that I work for the City my continued employment does not require telling lies like my private sector employers demanded of their employees.

Probably the most consciously evil thing I do today is drive an automobile to work day after cursed day.

Donnadogsoth

2017-04-28, 05:36 PM

Evil is the reduction of man. Anything that harms man's ability to act effectively in transforming the Universe is evil. This includes the entire Fallen world as a mutating evil environment that harms man's sensibilities through its ugliness, as typified by Nature red in tooth and claw.

Yet, reduction of man's powers can be a source of pleasure, even happiness. Without escape from total efficiency man wilts and longs for death. Without happiness there is no reason to continue. Does this mean evil is necessary?

No, it means that an alternating current of work and recreation is needed. The key is finding the balance between creative potency and recreational restoration. Between survival as a species and happiness as an individual.

This means that evil as reduction of man must be fought, and recreation must be challenged to expunge from itself those parts that reduce man, that that is false happiness. True happiness and survival are thus on the same side of the ledger. Evil is unnecessary error, detracting from both happiness and survival.

Razade

2017-04-28, 05:58 PM

It's a common conspiracy theory. The pharmaceutical industry is evil and only seeks profit. It was a joke.

Yeah. That's why I asked.

Evil is the reduction of man. Anything that harms man's ability to act effectively in transforming the Universe is evil. This includes the entire Fallen world as a mutating evil environment that harms man's sensibilities through its ugliness, as typified by Nature red in tooth and claw.

Yet, reduction of man's powers can be a source of pleasure, even happiness. Without escape from total efficiency man wilts and longs for death. Without happiness there is no reason to continue. Does this mean evil is necessary?

No, it means that an alternating current of work and recreation is needed. The key is finding the balance between creative potency and recreational restoration. Between survival as a species and happiness as an individual.

This means that evil as reduction of man must be fought, and recreation must be challenged to expunge from itself those parts that reduce man, that that is false happiness. True happiness and survival are thus on the same side of the ledger. Evil is unnecessary error, detracting from both happiness and survival.

What does...any of that mean without the filter of psuedo-intellectual philosophy. The whole quote is just one Deepity after another.

Trekkin

2017-04-28, 06:38 PM

This includes the entire Fallen world as a mutating evil environment that harms man's sensibilities through its ugliness, as typified by Nature red in tooth and claw.

Well, if the entire world is evil, then yes, evil is necessary. Nature particularly so.

Then again, by your standards, gravity is evil because it reduces my ability to alter the Universe by throwing things into orbit. So is friction, without which engines would be much more efficient. I would argue that both are necessary for civilization as we know it to persist.

Razade

2017-04-28, 06:39 PM

Well, if the entire world is evil, then yes, evil is necessary. Nature particularly so.

Then again, by your standards, gravity is evil because it reduces my ability to alter the Universe by throwing things into orbit. So is friction, without which engines would be much more efficient. I would argue that both are necessary for civilization as we know it to persist.

By Don's definition every single person who has lived is big E evil because no single person alive to the present day has "transformed the Universe".

Trekkin

2017-04-28, 06:43 PM

By Don's definition every single person who has lived is big E evil because no single person alive to the present day has "transformed the Universe".

And, given that the observable (and interactable) Universe is less than the entire Universe given its expansion, one could argue that the Hubble constant is the greatest evil of all, as it means we are reduced to only manipulating 1031 cubic light years. Curse the evils of causality!

Knaight

2017-04-28, 06:58 PM

Also, evil provides jobs for police, security officers, or guards. No evil, no police necessary, more unemployed.

I'm not going to touch other parts of this thesis (except to say that I consider it ludicrous), but this sort of argument is made often enough to be irritating - the whole idea that there is some innate number of jobs out there is ridiculous. It changes with population sizes, it changes with particular policies, it changes with all sorts of things, and if you take out the need for police, security officers, and guards that's more people that can be doing something else. Are there complexities in allocation? Yes. That doesn't mean that the underlying principle is valid.

Razade

2017-04-28, 06:59 PM

Trekkin

2017-04-28, 07:11 PM

Well to be fair he didn't say altering the Cosmos was Good, so maybe he just means the observable Universe. I don't think he needs to be taken literally on the whole Universe word though. There's so much else that's questionable about what he's said that we don't even need to nit pick the science.

Oh, I wasn't trying to nitpick. I was pointing out that saying that literally anything that somehow limits us is Evil, explicitly including the entire world and nature, calls a lot of things Evil that are generally considered not to have morality at all, so I don't think it's a useful definition for our purposes. Physics was just the most obvious case for that.

Donnadogsoth

2017-04-28, 08:26 PM

Well, if the entire world is evil, then yes, evil is necessary. Nature particularly so.

Then again, by your standards, gravity is evil because it reduces my ability to alter the Universe by throwing things into orbit. So is friction, without which engines would be much more efficient. I would argue that both are necessary for civilization as we know it to persist.

The entire world is not evil, but it contains many evils for us, to be overcome. It's not ideal but that's how she's cut.

Donnadogsoth

2017-04-28, 08:29 PM

What does...any of that mean without the filter of psuedo-intellectual philosophy. The whole quote is just one Deepity after another.

Can you name anything that reduces man that is not evil?

Razade

2017-04-28, 08:51 PM

Can you name anything that reduces man that is not evil?

Can you ask a question that isn't question begging?

First what does it mean to "reduce" man?

Donnadogsoth

2017-04-28, 09:29 PM

Can you ask a question that isn't question begging?

First what does it mean to "reduce" man?

To detract from man's capacity to master the Universe.

JeenLeen

2017-04-28, 09:37 PM

Oh, I wasn't trying to nitpick. I was pointing out that saying that literally anything that somehow limits us is Evil, explicitly including the entire world and nature, calls a lot of things Evil that are generally considered not to have morality at all, so I don't think it's a useful definition for our purposes. Physics was just the most obvious case for that.

I think I've read some real-world philosophy/theology that goes with that definition of Evil, as well as concepts of freedom from such (at a personal though not societal level). But I completely agree it's not relevant for this topic of conversation. Just wanted to give an admittingly small bit of oomph to the non-nitpick by a vague reference to real-world stuff that's not appropriate to mention in detail or by name.

Can you name anything that reduces man that is not evil?

The answer I'm about to give feels unsatisfying, but I'm hoping the concept behind it could work in a "good comes from (what seems) evil". Basically, idea of something bad being good because it makes the person better.

For example, maybe I lose my job (let's says it's more random chance than a boss being an evil jerk for the sake of seeing me suffer), but that forces me to take a job I wouldn't like and find somewhat demeaning. I'm reduced with options (less money to do stuff with), happiness (dislike new job), and feel like my social standing was hurt. However, maybe I find I really like the work, it's healthier than a desk job, and it helps me in the end set a better example of 'hard work' for my family--i.e, in some way become a better spouse and parent.

The initial was a reduction, but the end is a gain.
Perhaps this is outside the scope of your question, and please note that I am not truly to justify things like rape, genocide, socipathic torture, etc. as a "good may come of it". I'm more speaking to... well, more every-day (in the sense that the majority of people experience it fairly regularly or are at risk of experiencing it) 'evils' one might suffer.

I'm also aware this conversation can become circular, since that good could have happened without the evil, though I can say I'm lazy enough I probably wouldn't strive for such personal growth without the motivation of avoiding some inconveniences ('evils'). So, in at least the example of me, good could come that wouldn't otherwise. But maybe that becomes a circle back to the evil of sloth/laziness.

EDITING IN SINCE I WAS NINJA'd by this post

To detract from man's capacity to master the Universe.
This assumes that the best good of man is to be master of the Universe. I'm not refuting that (though I personally disagree with it), but that is an assumption driving your argument, so either that assumption should be discussed or (which is likely more fruitful) we can take it as a given and discuss assuming that is true.

Also, do you mean 'man' in the singular or as the collective that is humanity?

Razade

2017-04-28, 09:42 PM

To detract from man's capacity to master the Universe.

So I guess the answer to my first question is no. You define evil as detracting from man's capacity to master the Universe and anything that reduces man is evil. As far as circular reasoning goes...two points is pretty dang bad.

Drinking beer by your definition "reduces mankind" and it's not evil. Feeding a starving child by your definition "reduces mankind" and it's not evil. Except it is because you define evil as anything that detracts our ability to master the Universe so...there ya go.

Dienekes

2017-04-28, 09:54 PM

Razade

2017-04-28, 09:58 PM

Wouldn't, by this definition, all forms of entertainment be considered evil? Since, by their nature they are taking time that could be better used attempting to master the universe.

Doing this has created a definition so broad, you've made everyone evil who isn't a scientist or directly supporting a scientist.

Well, he tried to get around that by saying that mastering the Universe is only good because it allows us to be happy but then says we need to "expunge" the elements of entertainment that detracts from mastering the universe so...it's all goobeldygook of the highest order.

It also gets into some very strange theoretical situations. For example, say, if you sacrifice 1000 people you could colonize outside the solar system 10x faster. Would doing that be good or evil? By your definition, that would be good. While I would see it as evil.

This one gets it.

Now, I understand that this is a very ridiculous situation that will hopefully never happen. But if a definition of good or evil can't survive a theoretical situation that took all of 1 minute to come up with, I don't think it's a very good one.

It's not a good one for a ton of reasons. Lack of any discriptive ability is only one of them. It being a viciously circular argument is another one.

Trekkin

2017-04-28, 10:31 PM

The entire world is not evil, but it contains many evils for us, to be overcome. It's not ideal but that's how she's cut.

Then I don't understand how this:

Evil is the reduction of man. Anything that harms man's ability to act effectively in transforming the Universe is evil. This includes the entire Fallen world [...]

Is to be read, except as a contradiction.

That said, I think I can answer the original question posed in the thread with an unqualified "Yes, Evil is necessary." Not because of war's effect on technology or because people can have jobs reducing crime, but because we don't know what Evil is well enough to define it. We can, as T-Mick has apparently done, abandon all hope of doing so objectively and claim that any attempt to rationally explore morality is itself fallacious and somehow evil. Conversely, we could go with Donnadogsoth's frankly abstruse definition that makes physics evil but apparently allows some quantity of murder in the name of interplanetary colonization.

I'm not trying to single them out except to say that I vehemently disagree with both, but I acknowledge that my own definition of evil would make a lot of people unhappy too. However, we can at least attempt to arrive by consensus at a definition of evil that most people have the least strenuous objections to -- but not if we attempt to stamp out Evil so thoroughly that we permanently lock everyone into doing the most good thing they could possibly be doing at the time.

In order words, let us assume that humans are imperfect. It follows that our ability (as individuals and as groups) to identify Evil is also imperfect. Squashing all Evil completely freezes that definition, since the people arguing that such-and-so isn't Evil are promulgating "evil" sophistry instead of doing whatever job we've decided is Best for them to do. Further, we have the benefit of hindsight -- we become continually better-informed as to the societal consequences of our decisions as we keep making decisions and looking at what happens, accumulating ever more historical data on which to base our policies.

So, if there were ever a best time to freeze everything and declare our consensus moral code to be perfect, it would logically be infinitely far in the future. We aren't there yet, so the capacity to do what we now call Evil but may later recognize as somehow virtuous or necessary is logically vital to our ability to continue to improve. As long as those freedoms exist, some people will abuse them, and thus Evil is necessary at least as a side effect of free people working out how to be Good.

danzibr

2017-04-28, 10:41 PM

Disgusting.

"Evil is directly experienced and directly intuited. A young woman is beaten; an old man is mugged; a child is raped; a terrorist rips a plane apart in midair; a great nation bombs a civilian population. Those whose minds are not bent by personal or societal madness immediately respond to such actions with justifiable anger. You do not make abstract calculations in ethical philosophy when you see a baby being beaten. At the most fundamental level, evil is not abstract. It is real and tangible."

Sophistry. I'm sick of "grey areas" being brought up to discredit the real existence of evil.

"As your examples become less extreme, fewer people will agree with you?" No, actually. The reverse is true. The list is in ascending order of magnitude. Maybe I can get everyone to agree that mugging an old man is evil, but what about bombing civilians? What about exploding planes in the name of terror, or something else? Those are much worse, and those are the ones people can't seem to agree on.

Violent assault? Mugging? Rape? These are the little things, let's be honest. Happens every day. Hundreds of times. And the plea against evil is that "it could be Robin Hood?" No. I'm sorry. What you want to call a "massive grey area" is a footnote.

I have no interest whatsoever in defining evil. That's for philosophers. It's like hardcore pornography: I know it when I see it. And so does everyone whose minds, I repeat, "are not bent by personal or societal madness." Directly experienced, directly intuited, real and tangible.
Sounds like we think a lot alike.

Razade

2017-04-29, 12:11 AM

Dienekes

2017-04-29, 01:44 AM

Totally missed this. Yeah, wouldn't call those evil. Wrong? Absolutely. Evil? Naw. The "Disgusting." was a nice tough though. 10/10 on that.

Oh I'd definitely call raping a child evil. While the exact philosophical meaning of evil can be debated forever, as can the definitions of most words that aren't just physical objects, at it's core it just means very very immoral.

And of course then we go down what immoral means, then what naughty means, then what bad means, and on and on and on.

But, at the end of the day, if we're not willing to just say "yeah raping children, that's pretty ****ed up. I'm ok using a word to describe a negative morality situation" then we're missing the point of language entirely.

Razade

2017-04-29, 01:48 AM

But, at the end of the day, if we're not willing to just say "yeah raping children, that's pretty ****ed up. I'm ok using a word to describe a negative morality situation" then we're missing the point of language entirely.

Oh, will totally go along with saying that. I know saying that it's "wrong" doesn't particularly give it the gravity it deserves but I'd be right along any rational human being saying that it's beyond "pretty ****ed up". Is it big E Evil though? I'm not willing to go that far.

Dienekes

2017-04-29, 01:51 AM

Brother Oni

2017-04-29, 02:27 AM

To detract from man's capacity to master the Universe.

By that standard, ethics committees are evil as they limit the ability of scientists to experiment how they want as they attempt to expand human knowledge for the betterment of mankind.

Off the top of my head, both Unit 731's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731) and Joseph Mengele's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Mengele) experiments are examples of unfettered science.

Donnadogsoth

2017-04-29, 08:44 AM

By that standard, ethics committees are evil as they limit the ability of scientists to experiment how they want as they attempt to expand human knowledge for the betterment of mankind.

Off the top of my head, both Unit 731's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731) and Joseph Mengele's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Mengele) experiments are examples of unfettered science.

How can man develop his potential by destroying his potential, as by destroying innocent human life?

Donnadogsoth

2017-04-29, 08:49 AM

Donnadogsoth

2017-04-29, 09:00 AM

To detract from man's capacity to master the Universe.

Wouldn't, by this definition, all forms of entertainment be considered evil? Since, by their nature they are taking time that could be better used attempting to master the universe.

Doing this has created a definition so broad, you've made everyone evil who isn't a scientist or directly supporting a scientist.

It also gets into some very strange theoretical situations. For example, say, if you sacrifice 1000 people you could colonize outside the solar system 10x faster. Would doing that be good or evil? By your definition, that would be good. While I would see it as evil.

Now, I understand that this is a very ridiculous situation that will hopefully never happen. But if a definition of good or evil can't survive a theoretical situation that took all of 1 minute to come up with, I don't think it's a very good one.

But then, there aren't really any good definitions of good or evil.

I made my attempt at one up thread, but I'm sure it could have holes poked in it pretty easily as well.

To take away all recreation is to harm men, by depriving them of the means of restoration. The question is what is harmful recreation and what is not.

Sacrificing people for the sake of progress would be begging the question of who is the progress for. The implicit answer is that we will have set up a class system whereby some people are benefiting from progress while others are being murdered for it. That does not serve humanity's interests, diminishing its justice and dignity. Healthy humanity in the whole does not exist without the health of its parts.

Frozen_Feet

2017-04-29, 09:02 AM

Oh, will totally go along with saying that. I know saying that it's "wrong" doesn't particularly give it the gravity it deserves but I'd be right along any rational human being saying that it's beyond "pretty ****ed up". Is it big E Evil though? I'm not willing to go that far.

I'm confused about what degree of separation you think there is between calling something (morally) wrong and calling something evil.

To me those are one and the same. As they would be to most of the "philosophers" lampooned in this thread.

(In general, if someone thinks philophers haven't been able to come up with a working definition of evil, they are clueless about philosophy. The actual problem almost opposite: philosophers have come up with several working definitions of evil. What they have not been able to do is make all humans agree on a single one.)

Donnadogsoth

2017-04-29, 09:07 AM

So I guess the answer to my first question is no. You define evil as detracting from man's capacity to master the Universe and anything that reduces man is evil. As far as circular reasoning goes...two points is pretty dang bad.

Drinking beer by your definition "reduces mankind" and it's not evil. Feeding a starving child by your definition "reduces mankind" and it's not evil. Except it is because you define evil as anything that detracts our ability to master the Universe so...there ya go.

Whether drinking beer may be a useful form of recreation has yet to be determined.

Feeding starving people benefits man.

Donnadogsoth

2017-04-29, 09:15 AM

The answer I'm about to give feels unsatisfying, but I'm hoping the concept behind it could work in a "good comes from (what seems) evil". Basically, idea of something bad being good because it makes the person better.

For example, maybe I lose my job (let's says it's more random chance than a boss being an evil jerk for the sake of seeing me suffer), but that forces me to take a job I wouldn't like and find somewhat demeaning. I'm reduced with options (less money to do stuff with), happiness (dislike new job), and feel like my social standing was hurt. However, maybe I find I really like the work, it's healthier than a desk job, and it helps me in the end set a better example of 'hard work' for my family--i.e, in some way become a better spouse and parent.

The initial was a reduction, but the end is a gain.
Perhaps this is outside the scope of your question, and please note that I am not truly to justify things like rape, genocide, socipathic torture, etc. as a "good may come of it". I'm more speaking to... well, more every-day (in the sense that the majority of people experience it fairly regularly or are at risk of experiencing it) 'evils' one might suffer.

I'm also aware this conversation can become circular, since that good could have happened without the evil, though I can say I'm lazy enough I probably wouldn't strive for such personal growth without the motivation of avoiding some inconveniences ('evils'). So, in at least the example of me, good could come that wouldn't otherwise. But maybe that becomes a circle back to the evil of sloth/laziness.

EDITING IN SINCE I WAS NINJA'd by this post

This assumes that the best good of man is to be master of the Universe. I'm not refuting that (though I personally disagree with it), but that is an assumption driving your argument, so either that assumption should be discussed or (which is likely more fruitful) we can take it as a given and discuss assuming that is true.

Also, do you mean 'man' in the singular or as the collective that is humanity?

“Man” as in mankind, but there is a paradox: mankind is made of men, and men strive for happiness. Ideally, mastery and happiness are one, for without mastery, man will die, and without happiness, men would rather die. So, there is an almost-Aristotelian mean to be struck.

Anyone can die happy. Just go down to the street corner and buy a syringe off that man over there. What metric is there to decide whether this course of action is good if not to analyse it in terms of mankind's mission of mastery?

Your example of a job that turns out well, call that a dialectical advancement. The ends do often justify the means. Consider the prospect of surgery on children.

Frozen_Feet

2017-04-29, 09:59 AM

Looking to intuition for morality and rejecting any more rational approach as the product of madness hardly seems like a sustainable path to a workable definition of Evil from which we can come to a consensus regarding its societal necessity.

If we take large enough sample of what people intuitively feel is evil and sort it statistically, it's fairly trivial to form a working definition of evil. Medical professionals have already done this exact thing with pain and several other emotions. They also found out the answers are remarkably similar across cultures and countries.

So T-mick might has a point. Analytical, slow thinking acts differentlty than intuitive, fast thinking. Give people enough time and they can come up with and rationalize any number of definitions for good and evil. It doesn't mean these rational constructs have anything to do with what they intuitively feel and how they intuitively act when push comes to shove.

Dienekes

2017-04-29, 10:07 AM

To take away all recreation is to harm men, by depriving them of the means of restoration. The question is what is harmful recreation and what is not.

Sacrificing people for the sake of progress would be begging the question of who is the progress for. The implicit answer is that we will have set up a class system whereby some people are benefiting from progress while others are being murdered for it. That does not serve humanity's interests, diminishing its justice and dignity. Healthy humanity in the whole does not exist without the health of its parts.

Not at all. This whole sections requires quite a lot of technology to function. In pre-Industrial times class systems, unfair distribution of wealth, and the poor taking on far higher burden in terms of starvation, disease, and so forth was frankly necessary to society to flourish.

There's a reason why all the great empires and kingdoms either ran on slave labor or various enforced class systems that by their nature would see a certain portion of the class system die due to to hardships.

The only ones who can, sometimes, avoid this are those that get stuck in the hunter-gatherer or pastoral nomads part of societal development. And the only pastoral nomads who made any significant leaps in technology, as far as I know, are the ones who were rather vicious slavers. I don't know of any hunter-gatherer society that made significant leaps in technology outside of those first couple great ones that allowed for farming, and with farming, slaves, and unequal distribution of labor, and the much greater losses in the lower class goes pretty much hand-in-hand.

But let's ignore history for a bit.

Let's say, we get what I shall call the "Robot Pill" using the Robot Pill allows the worker to no longer need entertainment, scrubs most of their personality and emotions away, but lets them be pretty damn perfect for whatever job is put in front of them. Automatons of logic. This proves so useful that law is passed that everyone must take the Robot Pill. Those who don't will be caught, given the pill, and returned to the work force.

This to you, is good. This pretty much guarantees the most efficient allocation of resources to master the universe.

To me this is horrifying, destroying everything that makes life worth living in order to further a goal I really don't care that much about.

Frozen_Feet

2017-04-29, 10:31 AM

To briefly tackle the topic of "necessary evil":

A necessary evil is anything we might consider evil in normal circumstances, but might have to do to ensure our own survival, either because we know of no alternatives or because those alternatives are worse.

Let us take as an example the act of man-slaughter, of killing a human in heat of the moment. Do this without provocation, and most will judge you evil. But what if the man you killed was trying to kill you? If we find you had no realistic option save for killing or being killed, most will excuse you, as dead things have feeble moral value.

Self-defense, hence, is a necessary evil. But an observant reader will notice that necessary evils stem from unnecessary ones earlier down the line. Moral agents are forced to take immoral measures because the world is full of immoral actions.

But there are cases which fall outside this paradigm. They mostly have to do with limited resources. Often in nature, one must die in order for another to live. Both may wish to avoid this situation, but it is inescapable given their conditions. Those are the true necessary evils, stemming from human inability. We can strive to overcome them, to break our limitations, but each step along the way has its own pitfalls, and it is never given we will reach a world without them. A world without necessary evils is a tenet of faith.

But this (the existence of necessary evils) doesn't mean there aren't unnecessary evils, or even unacceptable evils. A lot of evil acts are frankly pointless save for momentary gratification of an individual's urges. They are acts of greed, lust, wrath, laziness etc. with no rationalization nor beneficial side-effects. They may even be self-destructive.

Donnadogsoth

2017-04-29, 11:27 AM

Not at all. This whole sections requires quite a lot of technology to function. In pre-Industrial times class systems, unfair distribution of wealth, and the poor taking on far higher burden in terms of starvation, disease, and so forth was frankly necessary to society to flourish.

There's a reason why all the great empires and kingdoms either ran on slave labor or various enforced class systems that by their nature would see a certain portion of the class system die due to to hardships.

The only ones who can, sometimes, avoid this are those that get stuck in the hunter-gatherer or pastoral nomads part of societal development. And the only pastoral nomads who made any significant leaps in technology, as far as I know, are the ones who were rather vicious slavers. I don't know of any hunter-gatherer society that made significant leaps in technology outside of those first couple great ones that allowed for farming, and with farming, slaves, and unequal distribution of labor, and the much greater losses in the lower class goes pretty much hand-in-hand.

But let's ignore history for a bit.

Let's say, we get what I shall call the "Robot Pill" using the Robot Pill allows the worker to no longer need entertainment, scrubs most of their personality and emotions away, but lets them be pretty damn perfect for whatever job is put in front of them. Automatons of logic. This proves so useful that law is passed that everyone must take the Robot Pill. Those who don't will be caught, given the pill, and returned to the work force.

This to you, is good. This pretty much guarantees the most efficient allocation of resources to master the universe.

To me this is horrifying, destroying everything that makes life worth living in order to further a goal I really don't care that much about.

On the contrary, science, social development, and technology only really took off in those societies that moved closer towards the recognition of man's inherent dignity. Slave societies don't want progress of any kind, unless it helps them win wars. Tyranny is antithetical to human interest, both in terms of mastery and happiness.

If you took your Robot Pill you would care about the goal so that's not a strong objection. "If you take this pill you will care about mankind and work sedulously for its benefit." Sounds great. But, if it stripped the emotions, including love, there would be no motivation or capacity for men to advance man. They would become robots (your word) and thus be reduced to the level of bipedal ants. This does not serve man and therefore should be eschewed.

Devils_Advocate

2017-04-29, 11:31 AM

I was going to link to the parable of the broken window (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window) with a comparison to things that others had already posted, but I see that pendell already made the reference.

As an example of what could be regarded as 'necessary evil' - animal testing of medicines. All medicines must be tested first on animals so that indications of its toxicity is available before it can be put into people (typically this is on at least two animal species, one of which must be a non-rodent).
On the surface, causing undue suffering of animals by poisoning them, then euthanising and dissecting them afterwards would be regarded as an evil act, but if you look at the events that caused the legislation for animal testing to be introduced (primarily the Elixir sulfanilamide mass poisonings (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elixir_sulfanilamide)), you can see why it's a necessity.
In what sense? Something is only literally necessary if it's impossible for it not to happen, in which case it kind of ceases to be a issue. Trekkin actually addresses the idea that evil is necessary in the sense that it's unavoidable, but that seems to be the exception in this context. But then, in what non-literal way is some evil held to be "necessary"?

To briefly tackle the topic of "necessary evil":

A necessary evil is anything we might consider evil in normal circumstances, but might have to do to ensure our own survival, either because we know of no alternatives or because those alternatives are worse.
This doesn't seem to fit the way in which the term is often used. It may be one thing that is sometimes meant by the phrase, but I doubt that it's even the most common.

Here is my rule-of-thumb, quick-n-dirty definition of evil:

If it's something that you would be screaming with anger about if it happened to you or a close family member, then that's a good first argument that the behavior is evil.

There's a bit more to it than that of course. It's only a first-order approximation. Some people have phobias or what not such that they would scream in fear and loathing if someone offered them buttered toast. I know one such person in my immediate circle (extremely butter and fat intolerant).
Well, if you know that about someone and offer that person toast, that's evil, right? It's about respecting others' preferences. If you're not willing to do that, it's a bit hypocritical to get outraged if someone else doesn't respect yours.

Other times something may be necessary for all of society , but some individual person is going to be the loser for it. Example: We need a superhighway from point A to point B. That's going to be a great benefit to everyone, but not to the person who happens to have his house smack in the middle of the prospective road.
This is exactly the sort of thing that people usually mean when they talk about "necessary evil", isn't it?

But even so, a good rule of thumb, which has stood the test of time, is "that which is noxious or harmful to you, do not do unto your neighbor". From which follows a useful corrollary: "Brown-skinned people in third world countries are every bit as much your neighbor as your own flesh and blood."

To me, the best and quickest summation of evil is Jaime Lannister talking to Cersei, in Game of thrones: "F*** everyone who isn't us".

The Lannisters love their own, do anything for them, sacrifice anything, put up with anything for the sake of the family. But this kindness and self-sacrifice stops pretty sharply at their own bloodline. Other families or commoners are either work-units to be exploited or rivals to be crushed by any means necessary.

Imagine the entire world is full of families with that attitude and you understand why there is so much strife, pain, suffering and grief. Quite above that which life inflicts on us without humans putting their own nastiness into the mix.

And yes, the world is full of people screwing over other people and finding ways to rationalize it.
So evil is a real thing, and it starts when we treat other human beings not as fellow-beings, not as brother and sisters, but as prey to be hunted or slaves to be exploited.

ETA: When I say "evil is real" , I think of evil not as an abstract thing as in D&D, but more as a description of human relationships -- when one human is preying on, targeting or exploiting another, that is evil. The exact details change depending on context but the essential act remains the same.
Brian, my problem with what you've written is that you basically identify evil as treating only a limited group as deserving of consideration, and then go on to suggest that only the mistreatment of humans is evil. Even if you aren't directly contradicting yourself, I feel that there are sentiments in play here that are pretty much fundamentally at odds with each other.

This is not a trivial point. Wikipedia lists animal welfare as one of the three main areas of concern in effective altruism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism). And, well... I'm far from an expert on either, because they're really unpleasant things to learn about, but it's unclear to me that the ways in which non-humans are treated as property are, overall, better for those non-humans than the ways in which humans have been treated as property have been for those humans. And if there's even a significant chance that something is even somewhere close to as bad as slavery, that should promote it to the level of major cause for concern, shouldn't it? Honestly, I should probably be way more worked up about this than I am.

I think I've read some real-world philosophy/theology that goes with that definition of Evil
"Natural evil", in contrast but also in comparison to "moral evil", yes.

And why reserve the term "evil" for the latter? It strikes me that the social function of calling something "evil" is to advocate opposing that thing.* To the extent that that's the case, reserving the word "evil" for moral evil is kind of coming out most strongly against evil behavior out of all the bad things in the world. But that's kind of a messed up position to take, not just because it means that you're relatively fine with bad things happening to people so long as no one is responsible, but also because you're saying that it's especially important to act against people who behave evilly. Doesn't that actually seem kind of backwards, if you're trying to come from a position opposed to acting against people? Moral evil at least serves someone's desires; that's why anyone does it. And it's bad that that positive outcome comes at the cost of a greater negative outcome for someone else, but isn't that better than the negative thing without the positive thing?

This might sound pretty far out there, but I'm not convinced that this specificity of word usage doesn't have a corresponding attitude, on a societal if not a personal level. Like... It seems to me almost like people only get really upset about a tragedy if it's the result of misbehavior on someone's part. And that, as a result, assigning blame is often about getting people riled up about something, maybe even getting yourself riled up, rather than about figuring out how to fix the problem at hand. But that's pretty awful, not only because it means that people need someone to blame, even when no one is really responsible, but because it then becomes about punishing the guilty, which might not even be the best way to deal with the problem, and might not even serve to deal with the problem at all in some cases.

Anyone else think that there might be at least a grain of truth to that? I dunno, maybe I'm imaging things.

Honestly, it seems to me better to worry about whether something is bad than whether it is "evil". Assuming that we can all agree that raping children is super bad, does it really matter whether it's also "evil"? I mean, we're mostly debating semantics at that point. Which isn't even to say that the definitions of certain words aren't important, just that they're a lot less important than their potential referents.

*If you doubt this, can you think of an example of something evil that you don't advocate opposing in some way? It seems to me that even if you say that your own behavior is evil, that you are effectively saying that it would be right for someone to stop you.

On the other hand, it is probably not all that rare to advocate opposition to a thing that one does not regard or attempt to present as evil. To use "evil" to refer to anything that you oppose in any way for any reason is probably not normal... although it might be the case for a large minority, come to think. So this does not work as a definition, because even if this condition is necessary for one's usage of the term to accord with common usage, it is not sufficient.

Frozen_Feet

2017-04-29, 11:40 AM

[In response to pendell]

This is exactly the sort of thing that people usually mean when they talk about "necessary evil", isn't it?

No, that's "for the Greater Good" rationalization.

It only doubles as "necessary evil" when the alternatives are proven worse or non-existent.

The two concepts overlap but are not the same.

Devils_Advocate

2017-04-29, 12:47 PM

Brother Oni

2017-04-29, 12:56 PM

How can man develop his potential by destroying his potential, as by destroying innocent human life?

Disseminating the learnt information enriches the whole of humanity, developing the whole potential by more than the loss of potential. In other words, give a little, gain a lot.

In what sense? Something is only literally necessary if it's impossible for it not to happen, in which case it kind of ceases to be a issue. Trekkin actually addresses the idea that evil is necessary in the sense that it's unavoidable, but that seems to be the exception in this context. But then, in what non-literal way is some evil held to be "necessary"?

You don't agree that poisoning animals and then killing them once you're finished watching and recording their suffering is not at all evil?

We've seen what happens if you don't test unknown compounds for their toxicity, so unless you force people to take your medicines and see if there's a therapeutic effect and/or they die (which is most definitely an evil act, even if it's for the greater good), you're not going to have modern medicines.

Doing away with modern medicine is really not an option - take diphtheria in the US for example. In 1921, there were 206,000 recorded cases resulting in 15,520 deaths (mostly children). Vaccines have massively reduced the prevalence of the disease - from 2004 to 2015 there were 2 recorded cases of diphtheria in the US.

Unless of course, you're advocating a return to natural selection by disease on the human populace.

danzibr

2017-04-29, 01:51 PM

Totally missed this. Yeah, wouldn't call those evil. Wrong? Absolutely. Evil? Naw. The "Disgusting." was a nice tough though. 10/10 on that.
A nice tough though?

Oh, will totally go along with saying that. I know saying that it's "wrong" doesn't particularly give it the gravity it deserves but I'd be right along any rational human being saying that it's beyond "pretty ****ed up". Is it big E Evil though? I'm not willing to go that far.
Oh my...

And I am. I guess this will just be where we disagree.
Indeed.

It's interesting, learning the people on the forum whose views you will no longer put any stock in. I don't mean to be rude, but this thread made me realize how just different we can be, especially regarding things which I thought were universal. Raping a child not Evil? Disgusting indeed.

Dienekes

2017-04-29, 02:16 PM

On the contrary, science, social development, and technology only really took off in those societies that moved closer towards the recognition of man's inherent dignity. Slave societies don't want progress of any kind, unless it helps them win wars. Tyranny is antithetical to human interest, both in terms of mastery and happiness.

By what margin? Science had numerous periods of vast development when compared to what was before: the previously mentioned agricultural revolution which did wonders for stripping man of inherent dignity, the Romans did vast wonders in engineering and construction technology that dwarfed anything before them, and that was entirely a slave society (and yes I do know some agricultural and steam advancements occurred in this period and were ignored because slave labor was cheaper, but that is only a small part of the advancements in the Roman period, and it ignores that these things were discovered first and foremost in this slave based society centuries before they'd be picked up afterwards) the "Enlightenment" comes up as a hugely important moment for mankinds understanding of science, that period was almost completely dominated by the expansion of Western societies into Africa and the Americas were some of the worst human rights violations in history took place, if we compare them to modern day morals. It does wonders to assuage societal guilt when you don't consider the people you're enslaving truly people. But that does not change that these periods of advancement were done on the backbone of mistreat, slave labor, and death. That's just how the world worked.

Now, once all of that nastiness laid a foundation for technological knowledge we were able to advance past it, sort of. But I'm not going to get into modern day politics.

If you took your Robot Pill you would care about the goal so that's not a strong objection. "If you take this pill you will care about mankind and work sedulously for its benefit." Sounds great. But, if it stripped the emotions, including love, there would be no motivation or capacity for men to advance man. They would become robots (your word) and thus be reduced to the level of bipedal ants. This does not serve man and therefore should be eschewed.

I wouldn't take the pill, meaning I would be standing in direct opposition to advancement. Emotion is not the sole reason behind advancement, logic also is. And logic is a powerful tool. Attempting to figure out how to do something because it will one day be needed for society.

But let's make this more interesting, because I want to see where our paths divide. Let's say it doesn't get rid of all emotions, but gets rid of the ones that get in the way of your desired advancement: hatred, anger, lust, the desire to just sit and relax and do nothing for a few hours. While churning everyone's innate sense of desire to learn and advance tech up to unparalleled levels. Is this good or bad to you? Because to me this is still horrifying.

Indeed.

It's interesting, learning the people on the forum whose views you will no longer put any stock in. I don't mean to be rude, but this thread made me realize how just different we can be, especially regarding things which I thought were universal. Raping a child not Evil? Disgusting indeed.

There was a thread awhile back which was basically "what would you do for immortality?"

Several members of this board mentioned genocide. Which I thought was the most pathetic, cowardly thing I had ever heard.

Shamash

2017-04-29, 02:22 PM

Can we just agree that the whole premise of Evil brings evolution is both false and silly?

Trekkin

2017-04-29, 02:42 PM

This might sound pretty far out there, but I'm not convinced that this specificity of word usage doesn't have a corresponding attitude, on a societal if not a personal level. Like... It seems to me almost like people only get really upset about a tragedy if it's the result of misbehavior on someone's part. And that, as a result, assigning blame is often about getting people riled up about something, maybe even getting yourself riled up, rather than about figuring out how to fix the problem at hand. But that's pretty awful, not only because it means that people need someone to blame, even when no one is really responsible, but because it then becomes about punishing the guilty, which might not even be the best way to deal with the problem, and might not even serve to deal with the problem at all in some cases.

Anyone else think that there might be at least a grain of truth to that? I dunno, maybe I'm imaging things.

I would agree, and it's at the core of why I find intuitive concepts of "evil" so disturbing.

When people defend the contention that Evil is some inherently recognizable thing that must be fought, their examples have a common thread. Mugging, sexual violence, child abuse...they're all the sort of thing into which we can imagine inserting ourselves, flaming sword of justice in hand, to injure and maim and kill Bad People to widespread acclaim by all the Good People. "Fighting Evil" seems, too often, to wind up with "evil" heads spiked on the castle walls and grand stories about the time adrenaline and emotion drove us to do a Good Thing. We invent high and unassailable ideals for ourselves to explain why our violent tendancies are good and Theirs are bad. We, you see, are acting in the name of Justice and Right and Duty and Honor, which always seem to justify violence far more often than they advise caution.

In short, direct causation is a hell of a drug, especially when constantly mainlined in combination with confirmation bias. We long for a simple world amenable to our simplest impulses, one where everything we don't like is the result of bad wrong people doing things for no reason.

Me, though, I'm one of those apparently broken madmen whose compassion extends even to people who have done things I'd rather they didn't. I don't see Justice and Honor and Duty and Right and Wrong; I see seven billion people and counting doing what they do out of incomplete information run through error-prone processors, and I wonder how to adjust the underlying equilibria to durably predispose them to act in ways I'd approve of more, despite all the random noise complicating the systems. Yes, perhaps at its basest level Evil is tangible and real and so forth, but if you follow the threads back you quickly get tangled in things you can't stop by getting tough and going with your gut and trusting your own moral fortitude. It's easy to sieze the moral high ground, but it's down in the trenches where decisions actually need to be made.

All of which is to say that if we're going to figure out whether we need Evil, it's perhaps in our best interest for our definition of Evil to be falsifiable, so we can ask not only "what if we're wrong?" but also "what would our being wrong look like?" That's philosophy, sure, but it's also statistics and sociology and a bunch of detail-oriented nitpicking of everything to death to make sure we've got it not only right but enduringly, flexibly, messily in accordance with data. I don't trust to a societal level any definition of Evil without associated p-values, let alone one that "just sounds right".

It's interesting, learning the people on the forum whose views you will no longer put any stock in.

It certainly is.

Frozen_Feet

2017-04-29, 02:44 PM

I mean, what you're saying makes sense. In a situation where there has to be some amount of natural and/or moral evil, the least evil is the literally necessary amount of evil, even if that particular evil isn't necessary (although this definitely gets into the difficulty of quantifying evil). It just seems like calling something a necessary evil is generally treated more as synonymous with saying that it's for the greater good, or that the ends justify the means.

I guess this is one of those prescriptivism vs. descriptivism (http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/know-your-linguistic-philosophies) issues, like "begging the question" or "the exception that proves the rule". I agree that it's better to limit use of the phrase to cases where there is no better alternative to the evil deemed "necessary".

I agree with your assessment. Natural language is fuzzy and people use phrases wrongly all the time. Sometimes, what begins as faulty use becomes the accepted standard use.

As I'm treating this as a (relatively) serious philosophical discussion, at occasion I must give more exact definitions than what you usually see, even if they seem off compared to normal use.

As for quantifying evil - if you take a page from Robert A. Heinlein's book and define "moral action" as "acts with promote survival" and then apply that definition in the context of rule utilitarianism and Kohlberg's levels of moral development, you can quantify moral actions fairly straight-forwardly. (Ie., you look at how many people there and how healthy & happy they look at the end of the day)

The "problem" with this, as with most other rational theories of morality strictly applied, is that it sometimes promotes solutions to ethical dilemmas which feel intuitively wrong. Of course, it is a feature of moral dilemmas that there doesn't seem to be an intuitive correct answer. My own interpretation is that ethics is more complex than second-degree logic, meaning ethical dilemmas arise from Gödel's incompleteness theorem.

Or in other words: a system of ethics can't be both complete and perfectly consistent. Any sufficiently expansive moral theorem will have corner cases where the proposed solution seems to contradict rest of the system or just feels intuitively wrong somehow, but you can't prove it wrong or right within that theorem.

Donnadogsoth

2017-04-29, 02:53 PM

Disseminating the learnt information enriches the whole of humanity, developing the whole potential by more than the loss of potential. In other words, give a little, gain a lot.

Akin to cutting off your ear so it won't be itchy.

Donnadogsoth

2017-04-29, 03:15 PM

By what margin? Science had numerous periods of vast development when compared to what was before: the previously mentioned agricultural revolution which did wonders for stripping man of inherent dignity, the Romans did vast wonders in engineering and construction technology that dwarfed anything before them, and that was entirely a slave society (and yes I do know some agricultural and steam advancements occurred in this period and were ignored because slave labor was cheaper, but that is only a small part of the advancements in the Roman period, and it ignores that these things were discovered first and foremost in this slave based society centuries before they'd be picked up afterwards) the "Enlightenment" comes up as a hugely important moment for mankinds understanding of science, that period was almost completely dominated by the expansion of Western societies into Africa and the Americas were some of the worst human rights violations in history took place, if we compare them to modern day morals. It does wonders to assuage societal guilt when you don't consider the people you're enslaving truly people. But that does not change that these periods of advancement were done on the backbone of mistreat, slave labor, and death. That's just how the world worked.

Now, once all of that nastiness laid a foundation for technological knowledge we were able to advance past it, sort of. But I'm not going to get into modern day politics.

Slavery was not and is not necessary to human development. Slavery held back Rome, Greece, the Islamic world and the American South, it didn't benefit them, at least in the sense of having a government for the people and not vice versa. It's looting and decimating human potential. Less people thinking means more progress? If slavery could have been eradicated earlier our trajectory towards modernity and its epitomising symbol of success, the Apollo project, would have been that much steeper and earlier. What marvels the world would have if not for slavery and the mentality that produces it!

That said, it may not have been possible to eradicate slavery so quickly, but this is not because slavery was “the backbone” of advancement, but because the Fallen condition of the world presents us with what amounts to a salvage operation on a reef-wrecked sailing ship. It takes time, effort, and Providence to develop a culture of freedom. Picking the tick out of your skin might destroy skin cells but there is no other way. This does not mean you need the tick to have healthy skin.

I wouldn't take the pill, meaning I would be standing in direct opposition to advancement. Emotion is not the sole reason behind advancement, logic also is. And logic is a powerful tool. Attempting to figure out how to do something because it will one day be needed for society.*

But let's make this more interesting, because I want to see where our paths divide. Let's say it doesn't get rid of all emotions, but gets rid of the ones that get in the way of your desired advancement: hatred, anger, lust, the desire to just sit and relax and do nothing for a few hours. While churning everyone's innate sense of desire to learn and advance tech up to unparalleled levels. Is this good or bad to you? Because to me this is still horrifying.

First, logic is not reason. Logic is a machine process, something computers do well. Reason is higher, allowing creative hypothesis. The Robot Pill would have to preserve reason, which is associated with agapic love. I don't think that any kind of brain alteration would destroy the other emotions without destroying the potential for agapic love itself. I think the other emotions are secondary, a result of perturbations of the primary emotion. So, on this basis all I can do is reject the Robot Pill because I think it would destroy our minds.

Razade

2017-04-29, 03:22 PM

I'm confused about what degree of separation you think there is between calling something (morally) wrong and calling something evil.

It's mostly the baggage associated with it.

To me those are one and the same. As they would be to most of the "philosophers" lampooned in this thread.

Sure, and if we're just using little e evil. As in a colloquial way of using the word I don't really have a problem with it.

Whether drinking beer may be a useful form of recreation has yet to be determined.

Drugs have given us the greatest art, music and forms of expression mankind has ever seen. That's not a place we can quibble over. There's no debate. It's a fact.

Feeding starving people benefits man.

Does it? Giving food that could to people who won't help themselves seems like a time sink in your worldview. I'm happy to say that it isn't in mine.

It's interesting, learning the people on the forum whose views you will no longer put any stock in. I don't mean to be rude, but this thread made me realize how just different we can be, especially regarding things which I thought were universal. Raping a child not Evil? Disgusting indeed.

Yeah, I'm not out raping kids. Because I think it's wrong and I'll fight against anyone who thinks otherwise. Violently if I absolutely have to. Just because I won't use a word that makes you feel comfortable it's somehow disgusting however. I think that says more about you than you think it does about me. That's the "extra baggage" I mentioned above with the big E Evil. Wounds me not one bit however.

Dienekes

2017-04-29, 03:35 PM

Slavery was not and is not necessary to human development. Slavery held back Rome, Greece, the Islamic world and the American South, it didn't benefit them, at least in the sense of having a government for the people and not vice versa. It's looting and decimating human potential. Less people thinking means more progress? If slavery could have been eradicated earlier our trajectory towards modernity and its epitomising symbol of success, the Apollo project, would have been that much steeper and earlier. What marvels the world would have if not for slavery and the mentality that produces it!

That said, it may not have been possible to eradicate slavery so quickly, but this is not because slavery was “the backbone” of advancement, but because the Fallen condition of the world presents us with what amounts to a salvage operation on a reef-wrecked sailing ship. It takes time, effort, and Providence to develop a culture of freedom. Picking the tick out of your skin might destroy skin cells but there is no other way. This does not mean you need the tick to have healthy skin.

Do you have a society that dramatically advanced technology that did not use: slavery, massive serf populations, or rigid social structures between the development of agriculture and the industrial period?

I can't think of one. Do you want to know why? Because everything takes time. It's weird that you can argue that slavery held back cultures, when those same cultures were the ones regarded as the highest pinnacle of advancement for their time periods.

Look, here is what everyone has to do to survive: gather food, create homes, patch home said home, create clothes, wash clothes, clean food, prepare food, wash self, which means you have to learn how to make your own soap, drag water back to your shelter every day, reproduce, care for the product of your reproduction. That's your day. That's basically your entire day, every day of your life.

If you're always doing that science will not advance. So humanity figured out that gathering a group of people and forcing them to do this work frees up other people to do other things; some become professional soldiers, some professional politicians, and some professional scientists. But all of that comes form having a foundation of people who are relegated to doing that busy work that will take up everyone's life.

Now, in a post-industrial world we don't have that problem to nearly the same extent. We have reached a tipping point where technology allows more time opened up so many people with the inclination to enter science can do so. Not all of them, admittedly, but a lot more than ever before. Without that technological base, then that would be impossible. Ergo, slaves.

If, slavery was really holding cultures back. If it was a tangible force that prevented them from moving forward, then those societies that used it would have been held back. But they weren't. They were usually the most powerful advanced societies of their time period. Some of these societies eventually failed, others just adapted to new economic and social realities. But that they were only supported because of exploitation is inarguable.

Now, I am not saying that is in any way good. It isn't. But to simply ignore that the very technology that we are using the create this amazing world we're in today where ideas are spreading further and faster than ever before was only possible because of generations of exploitation is just wrong.

Donnadogsoth

2017-04-29, 03:42 PM

Drugs have given us the greatest art, music and forms of expression mankind has ever seen. That's not a place we can quibble over. There's no debate. It's a fact.

What drugs were Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, and Rembrandt on for the purposes of their creative work?

Does it? Giving food that could to people who won't help themselves seems like a time sink in your worldview. I'm happy to say that it isn't in mine.

You're changing "starving children" to "people who won't help themselves." Which is it?

Dienekes

2017-04-29, 03:59 PM

What drugs were Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, and Rembrandt on for the purposes of their creative work?

Can't speak for all of them, but Mozart was a notorious drunk. His wife's records even indicate he wrote music drunk. Other interesting things were that some of his most famous compositions were only made to pay off his insurmountable debts only caused because of his alcoholism, gambling, and partying.

Also, random note, the dude was obsessed with poop and farting. Like, we all enjoy a good fart joke from time to time, but Mozart was obsessed.

Donnadogsoth

2017-04-29, 04:04 PM

Do you have a society that dramatically advanced technology that did not use: slavery, massive serf populations, or rigid social structures between the development of agriculture and the industrial period?

I can't think of one. Do you want to know why? Because everything takes time. It's weird that you can argue that slavery held back cultures, when those same cultures were the ones regarded as the highest pinnacle of advancement for their time periods.

Look, here is what everyone has to do to survive: gather food, create homes, patch home said home, create clothes, wash clothes, clean food, prepare food, wash self, which means you have to learn how to make your own soap, drag water back to your shelter every day, reproduce, care for the product of your reproduction. That's your day. That's basically your entire day, every day of your life.

If you're always doing that science will not advance. So humanity figured out that gathering a group of people and forcing them to do this work frees up other people to do other things; some become professional soldiers, some professional politicians, and some professional scientists. But all of that comes form having a foundation of people who are relegated to doing that busy work that will take up everyone's life.

Now, in a post-industrial world we don't have that problem to nearly the same extent. We have reached a tipping point where technology allows more time opened up so many people with the inclination to enter science can do so. Not all of them, admittedly, but a lot more than ever before. Without that technological base, then that would be impossible. Ergo, slaves.

If, slavery was really holding cultures back. If it was a tangible force that prevented them from moving forward, then those societies that used it would have been held back. But they weren't. They were usually the most powerful advanced societies of their time period. Some of these societies eventually failed, others just adapted to new economic and social realities. But that they were only supported because of exploitation is inarguable.

Now, I am not saying that is in any way good. It isn't. But to simply ignore that the very technology that we are using the create this amazing world we're in today where ideas are spreading further and faster than ever before was only possible because of generations of exploitation is just wrong.

Your glowing review of the benefits of slavery are impressive and all but beg consideration of continuing the practice. But allow me to riposte.

The slaving societies you gesture towards who made such great strides in technology were imperial societies. Ottoman empire, Roman empire, etc. And empires are morally unfit to survive on the basis of their nature as looters, existing to plunder other societies for the benefit of their imperial masters. Empire and war go together for this reason. Eventually, the internal contradiction of treating the population as livestock triggers an empire's collapse.

The break with this came under the banner of Joan of Arc in the 15th Century, allowing Louis XI to develop the first true nation-state under the effective principle of the general welfare, that the government exists for the benefit of the people and not vice versa. Thus, we have the replacement of the principle of oligarchy or rule by few for the benefit of the few, with the principle of the republic where all are considered.

All modern success in statecraft owes itself in large measure to Joan of Arc's sublime victory. And, from this basis, the development of the nation-state has continued, culminating in the American experiment and its eventual extinguishment of slavery on its own soil on the bases that slavery is both unjust and inefficient.

You will say that industrial development rendered slavery obsolete and you will be right. But, that industry flourished not under slavery, but outside of it in the free North.

In a Fallen world, we face the inevitability of certain forms of injustice. The people immersed in them at the time probably almost unanimously thought of such injustice as just, inevitable, and would be continued in perpetuity. But the visionary few knew that such things are an impediment to man's progress, not a platform of it. The deciding factor is the ability to install a republican culture into a given society—something much contested by imperialists and slavery apologists alike.

Donnadogsoth

2017-04-29, 04:11 PM

Can't speak for all of them, but Mozart was a notorious drunk. His wife's records even indicate he wrote music drunk. Other interesting things were that some of his most famous compositions were only made to pay off his insurmountable debts only caused because of his alcoholism, gambling, and partying.

Also, random note, the dude was obsessed with poop and farting. Like, we all enjoy a good fart joke from time to time, but Mozart was obsessed.

I wonder how much wine had to do with the intellectual success of the Greeks. They even had a god of wine as I recall.

If what you say is true, then wine may have a role to play in the new creative order. But, I'm not convinced that "drugs" in general or even wine in particular have been the midwives for the lion's share of art and general genius.

Razade

2017-04-29, 04:11 PM

What drugs were Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, and Rembrandt on for the purposes of their creative work?

Why are you selecting only those people? If I have to answer though?

da Vinci: None that we know of.

Michelangelo: None that we know of.

Beethoven: Died of complications due to cirrhosis. So...lots and lots and lots of booze.

Bach: Booze. He was also very fond of coffee and caffeine is a drug. Legal. But a drug.

Mozart: Just...all the alchohol you can imagine. Mozart had a major drinking problem later in life.

Rembrandt: None that we know of.

But that list is...really rather limited don't you think?

I wonder how much wine had to do with the intellectual success of the Greeks. They even had a god of wine as I recall.

Modern anthropologists, at least a section, believe that one of the major reasons we moved from a hunter gatherer society to an agrarian society as a species was to grow and make beer. If it wasn't the major reason, it was a very large reason. The Egyptians had a very deep and religious aspect of beer brewing. Many of the Levantine societies did too. There's just no escaping the fact that alcohol was a major motivator for our species as a whole.

If what you say is true, then wine may have a role to play in the new creative order. But, I'm not convinced that "drugs" in general or even wine in particular have been the midwives for the lion's share of art and general genius.

Allow me to help you then.

Jimi Hendrix is considered one of the greatest guitarists of all time, major drug user. Died choking on his own vomit. John Belushi, one of our great comic minds...cocaine. Just all the cocaine. How about the Beatles? They did tons of drugs and are considered one of the greatest bands of all time. Robin Willians, George Carlin, Bill Hicks, . I mean...the list of musicians and comedians who did drugs would go beyond the limit I could write. Why go with just "modern" ones though? Stravinsky abused prescription drugs. Berlioz was an opium addict. Oscar Wilde was an opium addict. Aldous Huxley...all sorts of drugs but mostly mescalin. Phillip K. **** used Speed. Steven King was a major cocaine addict and booze. The Shining was written in a drug fueled bender. Hunter S. Thompson...mostly LSD...Jean Paul Sartre used mescalin. Keats was an opium addict. Picasso used opium and morphine.

And how about those scientists that you're so very fond of and think are doing the sole good that mankind can do? Sagan? Major proponent of weed and hallucinogens. Francis Crick, one of the people who discovered DNA did it while on LSD. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates both, big LSD users and proponents. Kary Mullis (a name you may not know but he did a lot of work on DNA) also LSD. ARE YOU NOTING A TRED? Richard Feynman, my favorite scientist, used weed and LSD. Stephen Jay Gould, one of the greatest evolutionary biologists of our day and the coiner of non-overlapping magestira...uses weed. While Freud is a bit of pseudoscience today there's no mistake he paved the way for modern Psychology as we understand it. Freud was a massive cocaine addict.

I could go on. I don't think I need to. Of the six names you were willing to give, half were drunken sots and the others we just don't know. Not that they didn't. That we're not sure if they did.

You're changing "starving children" to "people who won't help themselves." Which is it?

Both. Under your world view. Children actually have a harder time helping themselves when they get into poverty. If we didn't waste money on feeding them we could spend it on curing diseases and space exploration.

*Bluetext because not only do I find the colored words wrong but I don't think anyone where disagrees with that assessment.

Frozen_Feet

2017-04-29, 04:44 PM

It's mostly the baggage associated with [the word "Evil"].

And what baggage would that be?

Dienekes

2017-04-29, 04:49 PM

Your glowing review of the benefits of slavery are impressive and all but beg consideration of continuing the practice. But allow me to riposte.

It shouldn't, even if it wasn't strictly obsolete.

The slaving societies you gesture towards who made such great strides in technology were imperial societies. Ottoman empire, Roman empire, etc. And empires are morally unfit to survive on the basis of their nature as looters, existing to plunder other societies for the benefit of their imperial masters. Empire and war go together for this reason. Eventually, the internal contradiction of treating the population as livestock triggers an empire's collapse.

That's... usually not what triggers an empire's collapse. Now there's probably some example you can pick up. But the most common ones I know of are: the empire is split because it becomes too unwieldy for a consistent law system, or because the leader wanted to split it for some other reason (the Roman, Mongolian, and Macedonian Empire). The empire is conquered by an outside force (Roman, Byzantine, Chinese, Egyptian, Carthaginian, Zulu, Peruvian, etc.). Changing economic realities (Persian). Or, not technically the end of an empire but court intrigue causes one dominant power within the empire to overthrow a weakened dominant power (Roman again, Japanese, Holy Roman Empire, etc.).

This changes post-Industrial Revolution. That's where we begin to see organized revolts from the lower classes actually standing up and having a chance against the dominant powers, in a way that can actually destroy an empire rather than causing minor policy alterations. Now there is something vastly important that changed social hierarchies and put more of an importance on the lower class that was a bit earlier. But, I'm going to get to that in a little bit. Because I have to comment on this:

The break with this came under the banner of Joan of Arc in the 15th Century, allowing Louis XI to develop the first true nation-state under the effective principle of the general welfare, that the government exists for the benefit of the people and not vice versa. Thus, we have the replacement of the principle of oligarchy or rule by few for the benefit of the few, with the principle of the republic where all are considered.

What the hell are you talking about? What does Joan d'Arc have to do with General Welfare? What she did was realign a war away from an inheritance squabble to a religious pseudo-nationalism. The common people did not get more rights under her, because she had no power to actually do that. Moreover, Louis XI didn't reign until another 30 years after she died. Yes, he did utilize the growing bourgeoisie instead of the noble elite to reorganize government, but that was never linked Joan.

That stems from one of the great crisis's of history; The Black Death. After the 1350s when the Black Death killed off a huge portion of European population, we see a steady increase in a growing middle class that rises in power and prominence. Because the vast slave/serf labor that powered the various kingdoms were no longer fully functional. This increased the ability to ask for higher wages among the common people, effectively reshuffling society and creating a space for a rising middle class to step in and become more influential than the nobility. This process was slow, and took several centuries to reach fruition, and we start seeing various kings and emperors start utilizing the growing middle class more. Louis XI was just another extension of that.

And while, this nice new growing middle class was great, and was effective at creating more room for those professional scientists. Go look at actual population distribution. The poor forced to work in agricultural and (later) industry jobs will still be vastly higher. Sure, the peasantry were not called slaves anymore, and the plague had ended up giving them a few more rights, but they were still a much lower class forced to work, through economic and social conditions, in these drudge fields. Only now the "middle class" starts to have actual power because economics start being the main focus on national might as opposed to warlike elite.

All modern success in statecraft owes itself in large measure to Joan of Arc's sublime victory. And, from this basis, the development of the nation-state has continued, culminating in the American experiment and its eventual extinguishment of slavery on its own soil on the bases that slavery is both unjust and inefficient.

You will say that industrial development rendered slavery obsolete and you will be right. But, that industry flourished not under slavery, but outside of it in the free North.

In a Fallen world, we face the inevitability of certain forms of injustice. The people immersed in them at the time probably almost unanimously thought of such injustice as just, inevitable, and would be continued in perpetuity. But the visionary few knew that such things are an impediment to man's progress, not a platform of it. The deciding factor is the ability to install a republican culture into a given society—something much contested by imperialists and slavery apologists alike.

I am not saying that slavery or caste systems are just. I am saying they were the building blocks for our current society to have happened. Without them we would not be where we are today. I am thankful we have developed past that point. It is amazing, and it is horrifying to me that the past is what it is. But that doesn't change that they were what our current society developed out of.

Razade

2017-04-29, 04:50 PM

And what baggage would that be?

Stuff that would inherently violate the forum rules.

Dienekes

2017-04-29, 04:54 PM

I wonder how much wine had to do with the intellectual success of the Greeks. They even had a god of wine as I recall.

If what you say is true, then wine may have a role to play in the new creative order. But, I'm not convinced that "drugs" in general or even wine in particular have been the midwives for the lion's share of art and general genius.

Oh man, this is just fun. So basically the Ancient Athenian philosophers got at least part of their start because of wine tasting parties. That was really it, they would pour wine in a huge bowl then the starting philosopher and students would discuss things while drinking. The object was to create a permanent buzz, but not to go too far into excess that you vomit. That was considered mildly distasteful.

The other big thing that helped along the modern understanding of Athenian philosophy was losing that war with Sparta. So many great philosophers seemed to have popped up just after that period, in large part trying to answer the question "Why the hell did we lose the war with Sparta?"

Donnadogsoth

2017-04-29, 08:12 PM

Oh man, this is just fun. So basically the Ancient Athenian philosophers got at least part of their start because of wine tasting parties. That was really it, they would pour wine in a huge bowl then the starting philosopher and students would discuss things while drinking. The object was to create a permanent buzz, but not to go too far into excess that you vomit. That was considered mildly distasteful.

The other big thing that helped along the modern understanding of Athenian philosophy was losing that war with Sparta. So many great philosophers seemed to have popped up just after that period, in large part trying to answer the question "Why the hell did we lose the war with Sparta?"

Besides the convivial effects, I conjecture the relation of wine to philosophy is that talking for extended periods makes one thirsty and wine is more enjoyable than relying on water.

Donnadogsoth

2017-04-29, 08:24 PM

But that list is...really rather limited don't you think?

I'm going with the cream of the classical artistic, musical, and scientific crop. I could have added Gauss, Riemann, and Kepler on the science side. Most of the people you counter-cite are not classical artists and so somewhat beneath the relevant radar.

That said, I'm not sure that the drugs classical geniuses used had anything to do with their output. It's a matter for further study.

I've heard the beer/civilisation theory before. Man's quest for mind-altering substances seems likely to be a consequence of living in bestial conditions cut off from a healthy humanistic culture of science and art, but I'm not sure. Again, further study.

You're changing "starving children" to "people who won't help themselves." Which is it?

Both. Under your world view. Children actually have a harder time helping themselves when they get into poverty.*If we didn't waste money on feeding them we could spend it on curing diseases and space exploration.
*Bluetext because not only do I find the colored words wrong but I don't think anyone where disagrees with that assessment.

Why is curing diseases and space exploration more important than feeding starving children who “have a harder time” feeding themselves?

Donnadogsoth

2017-04-29, 08:44 PM

That's... usually not what triggers an empire's collapse. Now there's probably some example you can pick up. But the most common ones I know of are: the empire is split because it becomes too unwieldy for a consistent law system, or because the leader wanted to split it for some other reason (the Roman, Mongolian, and Macedonian Empire). The empire is conquered by an outside force (Roman, Byzantine, Chinese, Egyptian, Carthaginian, Zulu, Peruvian, etc.). Changing economic realities (Persian). Or, not technically the end of an empire but court intrigue causes one dominant power within the empire to overthrow a weakened dominant power (Roman again, Japanese, Holy Roman Empire, etc.).

This changes post-Industrial Revolution. That's where we begin to see organized revolts from the lower classes actually standing up and having a chance against the dominant powers, in a way that can actually destroy an empire rather than causing minor policy alterations. Now there is something vastly important that changed social hierarchies and put more of an importance on the lower class that was a bit earlier. But, I'm going to get to that in a little bit. Because I have to comment on this:

Every mode of production is based on a resource pool generated by the given set of physical principles. Any society that is not continually discovering new principles, marginally depletes its resource base instead of increasing it. Therefore, inevitably, any empire, no manner how well-governed or militarily mighty, will collapse, as modern society is collapsing. Naive historians may blame it on internal bickering or whatever, but in the end all empires are doomed because they are morally unfit to survive.

What the hell are you talking about? What does Joan d'Arc have to do with General Welfare? What she did was realign a war away from an inheritance squabble to a religious pseudo-nationalism. The common people did not get more rights under her, because she had no power to actually do that. Moreover, Louis XI didn't reign until another 30 years after she died. Yes, he did utilize the growing bourgeoisie instead of the noble elite to reorganize government, but that was never linked Joan.*

That stems from one of the great crisis's of history; The Black Death. After the 1350s when the Black Death killed off a huge portion of European population, we see a steady increase in a growing middle class that rises in power and prominence. Because the vast slave/serf labor that powered the various kingdoms were no longer fully functional. This increased the ability to ask for higher wages among the common people, effectively reshuffling society and creating a space for a rising middle class to step in and become more influential than the nobility. This process was slow, and took several centuries to reach fruition, and we start seeing various kings and emperors start utilizing the growing middle class more. Louis XI was just another extension of that.

And while, this nice new growing middle class was great, and was effective at creating more room for those professional scientists. Go look at actual population distribution. The poor forced to work in agricultural and (later) industry jobs will still be vastly higher. Sure, the peasantry were not called slaves anymore, and the plague had ended up giving them a few more rights, but they were still a much lower class forced to work, through economic and social conditions, in these drudge fields. Only now the "middle class" starts to have actual power because economics start being the main focus on national might as opposed to warlike elite.

Joan saved France qua France, allowing it to develop into the first nation-state under Louis XI. Outside of that there were fiefdoms and kingdoms and empires, but not nation-states as we moderns would understand them, in principle, governed in principle for the general welfare. And that was not an inevitable process of history but something that was won.

I am not saying that slavery or caste systems are just. I am saying they were the building blocks for our current society to have happened. Without them we would not be where we are today. I am thankful we have developed past that point. It is amazing, and it is horrifying to me that the past is what it is. But that doesn't change that they were what our current society developed out of.

Fair enough. The “building blocks” are what I would call Providence, as, for example, how the Roman empire helped spread Christianity largely through the existence of slave-built roads. All I am saying is that the progression out of slavery was something that was won, that it was the introduction of new principles, paid for in blood, that wrenched us away from such evils and exploited new possibilities for human development. Without those victories said evils could have continued indefinitely.

Razade

2017-04-29, 08:59 PM

I'm going with the cream of the classical artistic, musical, and scientific crop. I could have added Gauss, Riemann, and Kepler on the science side. Most of the people you counter-cite are not classical artists and so somewhat beneath the relevant radar.

Are you serious? Carl Sagan is "beneath the relevant radar"? The person who discovered DNA is "beneath the relevant radar". The Beatles? One of the top selling and most famous bands is below the relevant radar. Look dude. I know you just got pinned to a wall but have the decency to admit it.

That said, I'm not sure that the drugs classical geniuses used had anything to do with their output. It's a matter for further study.

Your measuring stick is small. Your biases quite clear.

I've heard the beer/civilisation theory before. Man's quest for mind-altering substances seems likely to be a consequence of living in bestial conditions cut off from a healthy humanistic culture of science and art, but I'm not sure. Again, further study.

Man is an animal yes but "bestial conditions"? What? Once again, you can't quack out anything even close to coherent. I'll tackle it though.

This begs the question of the so called human beast. Has man's strife for culture not demonized it's former roots, sprouting from the sense inherent to all primal? If so, how does an agent enabling to unshackle oneself of these roots contradict this effort?

Why is curing diseases and space exploration more important than feeding starving children who “have a harder time” feeding themselves?

I don't think it is. According to you though only one of those things gets us closer to "altering and mastering the Universe". So you tell me.

I just want you to answer my very first question. Can you actually answer a question without a fallacy? I'm honestly curious.

Trekkin

2017-04-29, 09:38 PM

Razade

2017-04-29, 09:40 PM

Trekkin

2017-04-29, 09:44 PM

Not sure why their skin color matters at all. You should be asking why he's discounting so many people in general.

The "cream-colored" remark was a poorly thought out double entendre. My point was that he's trying to draw conclusions about "all the smartest people" with a very restricted reference pool, yes.

Razade

2017-04-29, 09:46 PM

The "cream-colored" remark was a poorly thought out double entendre. My point was that he's trying to draw conclusions about "all the smartest people" with a very restricted reference pool, yes.

It's almost like there might be a bias involved. :smalltongue:

Donnadogsoth

2017-04-29, 09:48 PM

Are you serious? Carl Sagan is "beneath the relevant radar"? The person who discovered DNA is "beneath the relevant radar". The Beatles? One of the top selling and most famous bands is below the relevant radar. Look dude. I know you just got pinned to a wall but have the decency to admit it.
What universal physical principles did Carl Sagan discover? DNA was an important discovery, sure. What does “top selling and most famous” have to do with quality? Wife beating is popular in some countries, does that make it good?

Man is an animal yes but "bestial conditions"? What? Once again, you can't quack out anything even close to coherent. I'll tackle it though.

This begs the question of the so called human beast. Has man's strife for culture not demonized it's former roots, sprouting from the sense inherent to all primal? If so, how does an agent enabling to unshackle oneself of these roots contradict this effort?
I don't understand what you're saying.

Why is curing diseases and space exploration more important than feeding starving children who “have a harder time” feeding themselves?

I don't think it is. According to you though only one of those things gets us closer to "altering and mastering the Universe". So you tell me.

If you were paying attention you would have caught the dichotomy I described, between survival and happiness. Survival demands we master the Universe. But, happiness is also important, for without it survival is in vain. Yet, too much happiness can lead to an early death. Some people, venerated heroes, sacrificed all their future happiness for the sake of the survival of their societies. So there is a paradox there. My earlier statement, “evil is that which reduces man” is therefore applicable here: letting people starve reduces man, both in happiness and in survival power, as does failing to alter and master the Universe.

I just want you to answer my very first question. Can you actually answer a question without a fallacy? I'm honestly curious.

“By Don's definition every single person who has lived is big E evil because no single person alive to the present day has "transformed the Universe".”

Understanding why what you said in the above quote is completely asinine at best, and in bad faith at worst, will contribute to you understanding what I have said in this thread.

Trekkin

2017-04-29, 09:56 PM

What universal physical principles did Carl Sagan discover?

He wasn't a theoretician. He was an astronomer. Look at his publications sometime; most of the ones in academic journals deal with specific astrophysical phenomena. That does not make his contributions any less valuable than the theoretical physicists whose efforts were informed by his.

Donnadogsoth

2017-04-29, 10:02 PM

Could you maybe add someone who isn't a European white guy? I mean, I know you listed the names most embedded in popular culture as "smart people unlike the idiots that everyone but me are", but maybe, just for scientists, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi or Ada Lovelace or Zhang Heng or Sinah Estelle Kelley or Srinivasa Ramanujan? Maybe? Just to make the crop a little less problematically cream-colored?

If you're going to implicitly claim that only people of a certain demographic are smart enough or matter enough to suit your purposes, I'm not sure how you expect anyone to take you seriously.

It depends on whether or not they have contributed to what might be termed classical humanist culture, most specifically the discovery of universal principles of art and science or generally the intellectual platforms for such discoveries. I am not familiar with Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, but, if he fits into this category I would like to know more about him. What do you think of Ibn Sina?

That said, it won't do to complain about the standout European contribution to classical culture. Most of the classical art and science are the products of Europeans or European Americans. This is, to use a phrase I have used before in this thread, how she's cut. As, if, and when classical humanist culture spreads and saturates the world, we have good reason to believe that the non-European peoples will join the ranks of said classical culture's earlier heroes, whether European or not.

Donnadogsoth

2017-04-29, 10:05 PM

He wasn't a theoretician. He was an astronomer. Look at his publications sometime; most of the ones in academic journals deal with specific astrophysical phenomena. That does not make his contributions any less valuable than the theoretical physicists whose efforts were informed by his.

Johannes Kepler was an astronomer and he discovered the universal physical principle of gravitation. So it's patently not impossible for an astronomer to discover universal physical principles. I would like to know if Sagan discovered any. You seem to suggest he did not. Very well, he discovered stars and other bodies and made other calculations. Such work is useful and good, but it would not do to put in on the level of Kepler's contribution.

Razade

2017-04-29, 10:15 PM

What universal physical principles did Carl Sagan discover?

Carl Sagan was instrumental in assisting NASA in space exploration. A metric that you only three pages ago said was the very opposite of Evil. Big E Evil. Carl Sagan work allowed us to send probes and machines outside of our own planet. Specifically Venus but other stuff too. To research other planets within our solar systems and maybe even one day beyond it. Carl Sagan didn't just help with that. He inspired and taught others to value scientific discovery. He inspired one of the greatest Astrophysicists of our day (Neil DeGrass Tyson) to get into the sciences.

Johannes Kepler was an astronomer and he discovered the universal physical principle of gravitation. So it's patently not impossible for an astronomer to discover universal physical principles. I would like to know if Sagan discovered any. You seem to suggest he did not. Very well, he discovered stars and other bodies and made other calculations. Such work is useful and good, but it would not do to put in on the level of Kepler's contribution.

Carl Sagan helped land robots onto other planets to learn about them. If anything, he contributed more to humanity than Kepler did because Kepler's principles of Gravitation were further refined and made better. Because that's how science works.

DNA was an important discovery, sure.

Not just an important discovery. One of the most important discoveries. Without knowledge of DNA entire fields of study wouldn't exist. It is as big as discovering a Universal Principle if there ever was one. No DNA? No modern medicine. No DNA? No enhanced foods. No DNA? There goes all of modern forensics. The understanding of and use of DNA is vital for our modern society to function. And here you are trying to simply write it off because it doesn't meet your very particular, narrow requirements. Bravo.

What does “top selling and most famous” have to do with quality? Wife beating is popular in some countries, does that make it good?

I never said anything about quality. I actually don't care for the Beatles. The reason I pointed out they're one of the greatest selling bands of all time is because that IS a metric for how much people enjoyed them as an artist and that entertainment is good for quality of life.

I don't understand what you're saying.

When the question I'm replying to is as malformed as it was, that's going to happen. You're claiming a bestial nature....which isn't a thing. You're saying there's a division between a human civilization and a non-human civilization....which isn't a thing. Human civilizations are those with humans. Every civilization is a human civilization.

If you were paying attention you would have caught the dichotomy I described, between survival and happiness. Survival demands we master the Universe. But, happiness is also important, for without it survival is in vain. Yet, too much happiness can lead to an early death. Some people, venerated heroes, sacrificed all their future happiness for the sake of the survival of their societies. So there is a paradox there.

My earlier statement, “evil is that which reduces man” is therefore applicable here: letting people starve reduces man, both in happiness and in survival power, as does failing to alter and master the Universe.

You know. Too many words to say something really simple.

"Mastering the Universe" and "That which reduces man" are meaningless. I don't mean the concepts. I mean the configuration of the words you're using with the meaning you're ascribing them. They lack any descriptive power what so ever. You can't define them or refuse to. They can be applied to anything at any time. As evidenced when, back against the wall, you switch definitions around. You change contexts to mean what you need at the time. When you do offer an example they conflict and contridict other examples. The entire argument is like a baby foal. Tripping over its own legs as it desperately tries to figure out the world it was birthed into.

The entire argument isn't just meaningless. It's banal. They're Deepities of a sort.

A deepity is a proposition that seems to be profound because it is actually logically ill-formed. It has (at least) two readings and balances precariously between them. On one reading it is true but trivial. And on another reading it is false, but would be earth-shattering if true

Except instead of "true but trival" replace with "too vague to ever be capable of being true".

Aliquid

2017-04-29, 10:35 PM

It depends on whether or not they have contributed to what might be termed classical humanist culture, most specifically the discovery of universal principles of art and science or generally the intellectual platforms for such discoveries. I am not familiar with Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, but, if he fits into this category I would like to know more about him. What do you think of Ibn Sina?

That said, it won't do to complain about the standout European contribution to classical culture. Most of the classical art and science are the products of Europeans or European Americans. This is, to use a phrase I have used before in this thread, how she's cut. As, if, and when classical humanist culture spreads and saturates the world, we have good reason to believe that the non-European peoples will join the ranks of said classical culture's earlier heroes, whether European or not.The only reason you know about all the people you speak of... is because you have been told about them. In text books, popular media, etc etc. The problem is, that when people of European heritage make a point of writing textbooks and creating pop-culture references, they tent to focus on their people... and ignore others. In the end you get a very biased impression of history.

Ibn al-Haytham - Over 1,000 years ago he created the foundation of the "scientific method" that we all use today. He wrote more than 100 books on physics, mathematics and astronomy & other fields

But he isn't spoken of much in western cultures

T-Mick

2017-04-29, 11:20 PM

Too many words to say something really simple.

Razade,

You have a knack for punchy talking. I like that. It's a breath of fresh air on this board. Everyone wants to sound smart.

What the hell do you mean when you say "Capital E Evil?"

You have a problem with the word?

Is the baggage political or religious?

Child rape is "profoundly ****ed up," I think you said, not evil? That's a lot of words to describe something really simple.

Dienekes

2017-04-29, 11:20 PM

Every mode of production is based on a resource pool generated by the given set of physical principles. Any society that is not continually discovering new principles, marginally depletes its resource base instead of increasing it. Therefore, inevitably, any empire, no manner how well-governed or militarily mighty, will collapse, as modern society is collapsing. Naive historians may blame it on internal bickering or whatever, but in the end all empires are doomed because they are morally unfit to survive.

You got any actual facts to back this up, or is this just a sermon? Because, you do know there were empires that changed from expansive economies to trade economies? It's not even all that uncommon. Just look at China, which was undoubtedly an early empire, with the Qin conquering all the various kingdoms, and then it just stabilized. Sure, occasionally losing land, or regaining it, a border push here or there. But it did not expand to nearly the size and speed of something like the Mongol, English, or Roman empires. It just stayed there, admittedly pretty huge, but at roughly that same size dynasty to dynasty. Up until the Mongols eventually conquered them of course.

But, of course, every nation, republic, empire, and kingdom will collapse. I don't think anyone argued they wouldn't. But you have to actually provide examples of an empire actually running out of resources, or because they were somehow morally unfit. And just pointing at people that lost and saying "oh they were unfit and they lost." You have to actually show how that degradation resulted in the loss.

Joan saved France qua France, allowing it to develop into the first nation-state under Louis XI. Outside of that there were fiefdoms and kingdoms and empires, but not nation-states as we moderns would understand them, in principle, governed in principle for the general welfare. And that was not an inevitable process of history but something that was won.

What kind of half-assed pop history class did you come out of? The 100 Years War was never going to destroy France. Britain was never in a position to destroy France. The most they could have done was taken over Normandy, Brittany, and Champagne. They never even got close to conquering Aquitaine, Toulouse, Gascony and the rest.

If it was "won" which I am not all that certain of, then it certainly wasn't Joan of Arc who brought it about.

You're also conflating subjects here. Nation-state does not imply that they were governed by general welfare. All a nation-state is, is a political entity (the state) which is tied to a specific nationality (the nation). France became regarded as a nation-state because, after an exhaustive propaganda campaign, the different sections of France began to view themselves as "French" instead of "Gasconian." This did not imply they were particularly better treated. Remember, the government that Louis XI left behind would eventually turn into the very state that housed the first actually successful overthrow of a major monarchy by a commoner based force. England had some similar troubles a few times with some Peasant Revolt, I believe The Wat Tyler Revolt came the closest to succeeding. Which should tell you a lot about how close the rest were.

Fair enough. The “building blocks” are what I would call Providence, as, for example, how the Roman empire helped spread Christianity largely through the existence of slave-built roads. All I am saying is that the progression out of slavery was something that was won, that it was the introduction of new principles, paid for in blood, that wrenched us away from such evils and exploited new possibilities for human development. Without those victories said evils could have continued indefinitely.

And I'm saying, yes, the steps out of slavery where hard fought. People died, and their sacrifices should never be forgotten.

But that doesn't change the reasons why they won. If all it took was the will of the people and the nerve to revolt, slavery would have died in the West in 71 BC. It didn't, not by a long shot. Morals are good, that's they're nature. But the goal of morals is to keep them despite the hardships of the world, not because they make the world easier. Using slaves was easier. Using a stronger military force to suppress people to do unwanted labor was easier, more efficient, and resulted in economies that could sustain a scientific base before anyone else could. That doesn't change the morals, that just shows what morality was up against. And so we can look at why morality ended up partially victorious on this issue. And it's not because "good always triumphs" or something of that regard. It was the social, economic, and militaristic changes that resulted in a population that could enforce their ideology.

Could this have happened if the common revolutionists were up against 14th century knights in plate and expensive weaponry that takes years to master? Probably not. It happened when guns were mass-produced, and strong enough to punch through the defenses of the military bodies. Because anyone can use a gun.

This changes the entire nature of warfare, the balance of power in social and political exchanges. And why did guns come about? Because of economic and social factors that allowed to Industrial Revolution to occur. And why did the Industrial Revolution occur? Because of other factors caused by the reshuffling of population numbers and centers after the Black Death. Which happened because of disease spreading that happened due to the Mongol Invasion and opening up of trade through the middle of Asia. And we can go on, and on.

Now, I'm not trying to make this sound like 1 inevitably results in the next thing down the line. I don't think it does. But, certain events in our history are only even possible because of situations caused by the past, some not as well understood as others.

Razade

2017-04-30, 12:06 AM

Razade,

T-Mick.

You have a knack for punchy talking. I like that. It's a breath of fresh air on this board. Everyone wants to sound smart.

I don't want to sound smart. Can't sound like something you aren't. :smalltongue:

What the hell do you mean when you say "Capital E Evil?"

I think I addressed that a little bit but maybe not in full when I said "little e evil" as used colloquially to mean wrong/immoral/f'd up. Little e evil is just a label, it's not some objective value to be weighed against good as an objective limit. An "evil" act is simply one that given the context and situation (yes I know those evil evil nuances you hate so very much T-Mick) is one we find goes against the morals of the time. Big E Evil (and Big G Good) are unchanging and without context. They are what they are regardless of intent or anything else. Little e murder (we'll use the unjust killing of an innocent here) isn't little e murder when killing in self defense say. Big E murder, both contexts are Evil. Killing to save yourself from being killed is just as Evil as killing to...take a guy's pants.

Does that clear it up?

You have a problem with the word?

No. Big E or little e. I don't have problems with any word, even the ones our forum filters.

Is the baggage political or religious?

Absolutely the latter. Sometimes the former depending on how much the latter's injected into it.

Child rape is "profoundly ****ed up," I think you said, not evil? That's a lot of words to describe something really simple.

It's not simple though, mostly because of the baggage. But also because different people have different definitions of evil. Which is why I asked the person to define what they meant by Evil. Because I don't know what they mean by that, because if I assume they mean one thing and they mean another we're not really not having a conversation. It's not simple because while we agree it's wrong, you find it "disgusting" (using your word there) that I won't use a word you would. Wrong and evil are each one word. Wrong's the easier of the two, even if it doesn't always adequately provide the weight and inflection one might want and even if it can mean different things to different people just as well as evil, people (I find) have an easier time coming to consensus over wrong as opposed to Evil. Because ya know. The baggage.

veti

2017-04-30, 06:10 AM

Me, though, I'm one of those apparently broken madmen whose compassion extends even to people who have done things I'd rather they didn't. I don't see Justice and Honor and Duty and Right and Wrong; I see seven billion people and counting doing what they do out of incomplete information run through error-prone processors, and I wonder how to adjust the underlying equilibria to durably predispose them to act in ways I'd approve of more, despite all the random noise complicating the systems. Yes, perhaps at its basest level Evil is tangible and real and so forth, but if you follow the threads back you quickly get tangled in things you can't stop by getting tough and going with your gut and trusting your own moral fortitude. It's easy to sieze the moral high ground, but it's down in the trenches where decisions actually need to be made.

Thank you for this reflective note.

To the know-it-when-I-see-it school, I ask: what is the purpose of calling something "evil"? If you see any of these acts in progress, I think we'll all agree that, if there is any way to do so, you should attempt to prevent it. But what, specifically, does attaching the label "evil" gain us?

All I can think of is that it's a way of distancing yourself from the perpetrator. Calling them "evil" is like saying "The child rapist is Not Like Us; therefore, we don't have to consider the usual obligation to treat him fairly or try to understand his motivations". I find that problematic on a number of levels, but most fundamentally because it directly handicaps us in any serious attempt to reduce the total amount of evil in the world.

From where I sit, most evil is done by people very like me. Because if slavery is definitely-for-sure-no-messing-capital-E-Evil, then so is buying fruit picked by involuntary labour. And nearly everyone does that. But I'm pretty sure that merely by tagging all those people "evil", shunning and condemning them, I'm not going to change anything. I'm certainly not going to free any slaves that way. A more, if you'll please refrain from tracking me down and pouring cold porridge down my shirt for saying, fruitful approach is to try to understand why these things happen and how the world can be ordered differently, and what it would cost to do so. And that has to be a real, detailed, nitty-gritty understanding, not just vague principles.

And the same goes for the more visceral, violent evils too. Child abuse and terrorism and indiscriminate bombing didn't "just happen" because someone woke up that morning and thought "hey, this'll be a laugh". In each case there are reasons, a traceable process that leads to a human being doing these things. And if you don't acknowledge that that human being is, essentially, the same as you, you can't hope to understand that process, and you'll never be able to prevent it.

"Evil" is a cop-out. It's a way of avoiding facing uncomfortable truths. "Fighting" it is like fighting a fire - it's necessary, it's immediate, everyone feels good about it - but if you think that's all that's necessary, then there are going to be a lot more fires.

Brother Oni

2017-04-30, 06:35 AM

Akin to cutting off your ear so it won't be itchy.

More akin to removing your tonsils so they won't become infected in the future.

T-Mick

2017-04-30, 07:11 AM

Does that clear it up?

No. It looks like BS. Maybe that's why it's so long.

Frozen_Feet

2017-04-30, 11:09 AM

@Veti: it's pretty funny you pretty much answer your own question from the get-go but fail to see its utility.

Let's bend this from steel wire:

Morals exist to create rules of conduct for human society. They are precursor to laws.

Categorizing something as immoral, AKA evil, then serves to tell people what to not do. It tells which things ought to be prevented.

A problem then appears that several evil acts may benefit an individual in the short term, despite harming everyone in the long term.

So how do you keep individuals from engaging in evil acts? On a basic level, you have two options: carrot and the stick. People who live morally are rewarded (by co-operation, gratitude, resources, social acceptance etc.) while people who act immorally are punished (by withdrawing co-operation, resources, social acceptance etc.) The exact same question and exact same answers are faced on the level of law-making higher up.

Of these, which one is more important? The stick is. Look up "altruistic punishment" on Google and Google Scholar. Group cohesion is created by the willingness of moral people to punish immoral people even when this causes the moral people harm. Why is that last part important? Because it stops human parasites from appealing to consequences.

When you talk about how buying a fruit picked up by forced labour is tantamount to supporting slavery, you are describing what happens when altruistic punishment is NOT utilized. Slave labour persists because to consumer, slave-picked fruits are convenient and profitable. If they were to brand slavery as evil and systematically punish the slavers, they would lose the convenience and profit of those fruits. Because they are averse to this loss, they fail to brand the slavers as evil, and consequently fail to take necessary action to eradicate the slavers, the human parasites.

So when you claim branding something as evil, and ostracizing evil, can't reduce the amount of evil in the world, you are dead wrong. We can talk to the end of days about which actions and which people are evil and what would be proportionate responses to them, but as long as you're unwilling to call anything out as evil, as wrong, as immoral, you have not even joined the real discussion. That's the real cop-out.

Also, understanding how and why evil exists and acts is not mutually exclusive with recognizing something as evil. Understanding is not the same as acceptance. It's arguments like yours which reinforce the misconception that they are.

OldTrees1

2017-04-30, 11:27 AM

The big problem with Morality/Ethics is that we are seeking for a "correct" meaningful answer to a concept we only know in a circular manner.

Jane Doe woke up one morning and asked an unqualified for of "What should I do?". Previous times she asked that question she provided the question with a goal (Ex: "What should I do to get some food?"). This time rather than provide a goal, she asked in regards to an unspecified "correct" goal. The question "What ought I do?" with its circular answer of "Do what you ought to do." is the foundation of morality/ethics.

I cannot answer the question without relying on an extra and unjustified premise. However is morality is doing what one ought to do, then evil is never necessary for something is only evil if one ought not do it and one cannot both ought and ought not do the same something.

Summary: Evil, by the definition of being what one ought not do, cannot be necessary.

Donnadogsoth

2017-04-30, 12:39 PM

Carl Sagan was instrumental in assisting NASA in space exploration. A metric that you only three pages ago said was the very opposite of Evil. Big E Evil. Carl Sagan work allowed us to send probes and machines outside of our own planet. Specifically Venus but other stuff too. To research other planets within our solar systems and maybe even one day beyond it. Carl Sagan didn't just help with that. He inspired and taught others to value scientific discovery. He inspired one of the greatest Astrophysicists of our day (Neil DeGrass Tyson) to get into the sciences.

Carl Sagan helped land robots onto other planets to learn about them. If anything, he contributed more to humanity than Kepler did because Kepler's principles of Gravitation were further refined and made better. Because that's how science works.

As I said, such work is useful and good. Mister Spock inspired people go to into Science, too, that doesn't mean Mister Spock discovered any universal physical principles.

Not just an important discovery. One of the most important discoveries. Without knowledge of DNA entire fields of study wouldn't exist. It is as big as discovering a Universal Principle if there ever was one. No DNA? No modern medicine. No DNA? No enhanced foods. No DNA? There goes all of modern forensics. The understanding of and use of DNA is vital for our modern society to function. And here you are trying to simply write it off because it doesn't meet your very particular, narrow requirements. Bravo.

Is DNA a biological principle? Perhaps it is.

I never said anything about quality. I actually don't care for the Beatles. The reason I pointed out they're one of the greatest selling bands of all time is because that IS a metric for how much people enjoyed them as an artist and that entertainment is good for quality of life.

They're not Classical musicians. Their music, however much people enjoy it, remains inferior.

When the question I'm replying to is as malformed as it was, that's going to happen. You're claiming a bestial nature....which isn't a thing. You're saying there's a division between a human civilization and a non-human civilization....which isn't a thing. Human civilizations are those with humans. Every civilization is a human civilization.

That's similar to saying that everything humans do is natural because humans are part of Nature. Very well as far as it goes. But, humans are different from other creatures in Nature in that we can wilfully increase our carrying capacity on Terra. And, civilisations can be constructed which further or retard that power. A civilisation that keeps its populace ignorant and backward, that attempts to halt scientific progress and substitutes inferior art forms for superior, Classical forms, is a civilisation that embodies the “bestiality of the peasants” and will eventually collapse. That is what I mean by a civilisation that is bestial in nature, one that fails (often due to the deleterious effects of sophists) to cultivate the characteristic higher nature of Man.

"Mastering the Universe" and "That which reduces man" are meaningless. I don't mean the concepts. I mean the configuration of the words you're using with the meaning you're ascribing them. They lack any descriptive power what so ever. You can't define them or refuse to. They can be applied to anything at any time. As evidenced when, back against the wall, you switch definitions around. You change contexts to mean what you need at the time. When you do offer an example they conflict and contridict other examples. The entire argument is like a baby foal. Tripping over its own legs as it desperately tries to figure out the world it was birthed into.

The entire argument isn't just meaningless. It's banal. They're Deepities of a sort.

The specific relevant metric is increase of potential population density, associated with increased capital intensity and increased energy flux density. There might be another metric I have forgotten, but those will do to make the point. Power over Nature is essential to human survival and this power can be measured. That is the shadow of the essence of the nature of Man. That is “mastering the Universe” and evil is necessarily that which detracts from this process, with the understanding already given that there is a dichotomy, aforementioned, that happiness is a necessary component of survival. Without all this man is a mere inhuman animal trapped in relativist sludge.

Razade

2017-04-30, 12:42 PM

No. It looks like BS. Maybe that's why it's so long.

If everything could be summed up in a sentence or two the world would be a better place. I think you need to brace yourself to the reality that concepts like Evil aren't going to fit on a post-it note. Mankind's only been arguing the point since we could write.

As I said, such work is useful and good. Mister Spock inspired people go to into Science, too, that doesn't mean Mister Spock discovered any universal physical principles.

Your standard is absurd and I think everyone but you knows it.

Is DNA a biological principle? Perhaps it is.

It is actually. It's part of Gene Theory. I am eager to see how you try and wriggle out of this one.

They're not Classical musicians. Their music, however much people enjoy it, remains inferior.

In your opinion. But the opinion of Donnadogsoth doesn't really count for much. It and a penny and all I'm left with of any worth is a penny.

That's similar to saying that everything humans do is natural because humans are part of Nature.

Yeah and that's...true? It's a tautology. Mankind can't do unnatural things because we exist within the confines of nature. That's...just how it is!

But, humans are different from other creatures in Nature in that we can wilfully increase our carrying capacity on Terra.

Hitchen's Razor. That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. If by "willfully increase our carrying capacity"...which...once again you devolve into pseudo-intellectual rambling in lieu of actually making a point...you mean...farming and supporting our weight on the biosphere...I honestly have no idea what you mean otherwise...then other species farm. Other species shape their environment to support themselves. Because humans do it better doesn't make it

1. Not natural.
2. different from other animals.

And, civilisations can be constructed which further or retard that power.

What power?

A civilisation that keeps its populace ignorant and backward, that attempts to halt scientific progress and substitutes inferior art forms for superior, Classical forms, is a civilisation that embodies the “bestiality of the peasants” and will eventually collapse. That is what I mean by a civilisation that is bestial in nature, one that fails (often due to the deleterious effects of sophists) to cultivate the characteristic higher nature of Man.

I for one am glad that you aren't in a seat of power. It sounds more like you're trying to keep the populace ignorant and backward than anything else. We live in the most enlightened time on the planet. We live in a time with the best medicine and the greatest ability to communicate with our fellow man. We live in a world where we've been to other planets. In a world where we continue to visit other planets and explore our Universe. You however sneer at this progress because it displaces what you see as "Classical" forms. Lady Gaga?! OH NO!!! Decline of civilization right there! Things were SO much better when we all had TB but we could listen to Bach!

The specific relevant metric is increase of potential population density, associated with increased capital intensity and increased energy flux density.

I don't think even you know what you mean by this. You're just throwing words out at this point. Energy Flux Density is a meaningless phrase. Energy Flux is just the rate at which energy travels through a surface. How is that a relevant metric for anything and how does it even come close to applying here?

There might be another metric I have forgotten, but those will do to make the point.

Not even close.

Power over Nature is essential to human survival and this power can be measured.

Oh it can? What's your formula?

That is the shadow of the essence of the nature of Man.

Another pseudo-Deepity. This sounds like something Chopra would say.

That is “mastering the Universe” and evil is necessarily that which detracts from this process, with the understanding already given that there is a dichotomy, aforementioned, that happiness is a necessary component of survival. Without all this man is a mere inhuman animal trapped in relativist sludge.

And yet we're no closer to being able to verify anything you said because it's all buzzwords and misapplied science with no real relevancy to anything else within anything you've said. All on top of a massive pile of Begging the Question.

Donnadogsoth? You're a Sophist of the highest order.

Donnadogsoth

2017-04-30, 12:46 PM

The only reason you know about all the people you speak of... is because you have been told about them. In text books, popular media, etc etc. The problem is, that when people of European heritage make a point of writing textbooks and creating pop-culture references, they tent to focus on their people... and ignore others. In the end you get a very biased impression of history.

Ibn al-Haytham - Over 1,000 years ago he created the foundation of the "scientific method" that we all use today. He wrote more than 100 books on physics, mathematics and astronomy & other fields

But he isn't spoken of much in western cultures

If so, hence the importance of a Platonic dialogue of cultures to bring into awareness all the geniuses of history, including sifting the wheat from the chaff when it comes to the European ones.

Donnadogsoth

2017-04-30, 01:05 PM

You got any actual facts to back this up, or is this just a sermon?

It's a principle of political economy, based on the nature of man. We see its effects in the ongoing economic decay of Western civilisation, which is ever more degraded morally in terms of fostering a populace capable of discovering, transmitting, and assimilating into practice universal principle. Without those principles, we get rust belts, we get the decline of the machine tool sector, we switch to “service economy” and “information economy," our productivity goes down, our infrastructure maintenance lapses, and we by hook and crook become a Third World nation.

Because, you do know there were empires that changed from expansive economies to trade economies? It's not even all that uncommon. Just look at China, which was undoubtedly an early empire, with the Qin conquering all the various kingdoms, and then it just stabilized. Sure, occasionally losing land, or regaining it, a border push here or there. But it did not expand to nearly the size and speed of something like the Mongol, English, or Roman empires. It just stayed there, admittedly pretty huge, but at roughly that same size dynasty to dynasty. Up until the Mongols eventually conquered them of course.

Which is a kind of collapse. Why weren't the Chinese able to fight off the Mongols?

But, of course, every nation, republic, empire, and kingdom will collapse.
Why?

What kind of half-assed pop history class did you come out of? The 100 Years War was never going to destroy France. Britain was never in a position to destroy France. The most they could have done was taken over Normandy, Brittany, and Champagne. They never even got close to conquering Aquitaine, Toulouse, Gascony and the rest.

Tell that to the French.

You're also conflating subjects here. Nation-state does not imply that they were governed by general welfare. All a nation-state is, is a political entity (the state) which is tied to a specific nationality (the nation). France became regarded as a nation-state because, after an exhaustive propaganda campaign, the different sections of France began to view themselves as "French" instead of "Gasconian." This did not imply they were particularly better treated. Remember, the government that Louis XI left behind would eventually turn into the very state that housed the first actually successful overthrow of a major monarchy by a commoner based force. England had some similar troubles a few times with some Peasant Revolt, I believe The Wat Tyler Revolt came the closest to succeeding. Which should tell you a lot about how close the rest were.*

The principle of the general welfare was implicit in Louis XI's reign. See the Rosebush of War.

And I'm saying, yes, the steps out of slavery where hard fought. People died, and their sacrifices should never be forgotten.*

But that doesn't change the reasons why they won. If all it took was the will of the people and the nerve to revolt, slavery would have died in the West in 71 BC. It didn't, not by a long shot. Morals are good, that's they're nature. But the goal of morals is to keep them despite the hardships of the world, not because they make the world easier. Using slaves was easier. Using a stronger military force to suppress people to do unwanted labor was easier, more efficient, and resulted in economies that could sustain a scientific base before anyone else could. That doesn't change the morals, that just shows what morality was up against. And so we can look at why morality ended up partially victorious on this issue. And it's not because "good always triumphs" or something of that regard. It was the social, economic, and militaristic changes that resulted in a population that could enforce their ideology.

Could this have happened if the common revolutionists were up against 14th century knights in plate and expensive weaponry that takes years to master? Probably not. It happened when guns were mass-produced, and strong enough to punch through the defenses of the military bodies. Because anyone can use a gun.

This changes the entire nature of warfare, the balance of power in social and political exchanges. And why did guns come about? Because of economic and social factors that allowed to Industrial Revolution to occur. And why did the Industrial Revolution occur? Because of other factors caused by the reshuffling of population numbers and centers after the Black Death. Which happened because of disease spreading that happened due to the Mongol Invasion and opening up of trade through the middle of Asia. And we can go on, and on.

Now, I'm not trying to make this sound like 1 inevitably results in the next thing down the line. I don't think it does. But, certain events in our history are only even possible because of situations caused by the past, some not as well understood as others.

The ideas had to be there too, such as the principle of the general welfare. Nerve and will and guns are not enough. And, to establish a moral order those ideas need to be present, need to be discovered and developed, which includes a nascent understanding of the nature of man as discussed above. So, we need popular will, we need ideas, and we need leadership, and we need the opportunities Providentially supplied by history.

Frozen_Feet

2017-04-30, 01:43 PM

The big problem with Morality/Ethics is that we are seeking for a "correct" meaningful answer to a concept we only know in a circular manner.

This isn't a special feature of ethics. It's a feature of all systems when trying to reduce them to logic.

Fortunately, both logicians and ethicists already figured out how to get past these tautologies. They are what you called "extra and unjustified premise".

AKA Axioms. AKA "A seemingly self-evident or necessary truth which is based on assumption; a principle or proposition which cannot actually be proved or disproved. (mathematics, logic, proof theory) A fundamental assumption that serves as a basis for deduction of theorems."

Jane Doe woke up one morning and asked an unqualified for of "What should I do?". Previous times she asked that question she provided the question with a goal (Ex: "What should I do to get some food?"). This time rather than provide a goal, she asked in regards to an unspecified "correct" goal. The question "What ought I do?" with its circular answer of "Do what you ought to do." is the foundation of morality/ethics.

Not exactly. In any worthwhile system of ethics, that "Do what you ought to do" is replaced by specific course of action, based on axioms of that system.

I cannot answer the question without relying on an extra and unjustified premise. However is morality is doing what one ought to do, then evil is never necessary for something is only evil if one ought not do it and one cannot both ought and ought not do the same something.

Summary: Evil, by the definition of being what one ought not do, cannot be necessary.

You might want to go back a few posts to where me and Devil's Advocate discussed this concept of necessary evil.

Because, in a given system of ethics, you might actually find situations where all answers appear wrong, or where an answer appears to violate principles of the system from which it is derived, yet you cannot prove this in context of the system. These are proper ethical dilemmas. Again, this is not specific to ethics. See Gödel's incompleteness theorem and Russel's Paradox for similar phenomena in logic.

Also, again, due to physical limitations of what humans can do, you may end up in a situation where ethics gives a clear solution, but this solution is not physically achievable. Hence, you have to pick a choice which, under normal circumstances, you would recognize as evil. See also: Catch-22, Morton's Fork and Lose-Lose.

OldTrees1

2017-04-30, 02:52 PM

This isn't a special feature of ethics. It's a feature of all systems when trying to reduce them to logic.

Fortunately, both logicians and ethicists already figured out how to get past these tautologies. They are what you called "extra and unjustified premise".

AKA Axioms. AKA "A seemingly self-evident or necessary truth which is based on assumption; a principle or proposition which cannot actually be proved or disproved. (mathematics, logic, proof theory) A fundamental assumption that serves as a basis for deduction of theorems."

While this is true, which axioms ought one pick? With math there is usually some external reality I am modeling so I can use that purpose to determine which axioms to pick. With Ethics I tend to see ethicists relying on their moral intuitions. I think doing so, while the only step available, results in an arbitrary choice rather than a choice that would correlate with reality. I am not convinced I should count that as a step forward rather than backwards.

Not exactly. In any worthwhile system of ethics, that "Do what you ought to do" is replaced by specific course of action, based on axioms of that system.
When a conclusion is formed from 2 axioms that does not negate the foundational nature of either of those axioms. So I think you consider this incomplete rather than incorrect. It was left as such because I was talking about ethics rather than about a specific system of ethics.

You might want to go back a few posts to where me and Devil's Advocate discussed this concept of necessary evil.

Because, in a given system of ethics, you might actually find situations where all answers appear wrong, or where an answer appears to violate principles of the system from which it is derived, yet you cannot prove this in context of the system. These are proper ethical dilemmas. Again, this is not specific to ethics. See Gödel's incompleteness theorem and Russel's Paradox for similar phenomena in logic.

Also, again, due to physical limitations of what humans can do, you may end up in a situation where ethics gives a clear solution, but this solution is not physically achievable. Hence, you have to pick a choice which, under normal circumstances, you would recognize as evil. See also: Catch-22, Morton's Fork and Lose-Lose.

I am still building up my mathematical foundation in the pursuit of thoroughly understanding Gödel, however I don't think it applies to whether evil can be necessary or not. Anything less than Gödel I think I can disprove merely by defining my terms:

A situation may leave a moral agent with one or more options to choose from including inaction when that exists. By including inaction moral agents are forced to choose one of the options of a choice.

I define moral choice as the option or options that the moral agent ought to take. Since they must take one, there must be at least one option that they ought to take.

I define immoral choice as any option that is not a moral choice and is also a choice the moral agent ought not take.

If these definitions are sufficiently rigorous, I believe that any situation you can design will have at least 1 moral choice and none of the moral choices will be immoral choices. Thus any situation has at least 1 non evil option.

My only concerns are about whether it is the kind of language that Gödel could use to form one of those really tricky sentences out of.

For a trivial example take the Deterministic world: Every moral agent receives situations that only comprise of 1 moral choice as the sole option.

Frozen_Feet

2017-04-30, 03:13 PM

I see no flaw in your definitions, and just don't see how they can stop an ethical dilemma from forming in the shape of Catch-22, Morton's Fork, Lose-Lose etc.

Donnadogsoth

2017-04-30, 03:34 PM

Sophist..deepity...etc.

You sir (I'm presuming you're a sir), are snide, sneering, sophistical, and wilfully ignorant. Your chief defect is your inability to grasp the existence of principles, particularly and specifically those of art and science, leading to your false equivalency of the Classical with the Dionysian, the discoverer of principle with the mere observer. This poisons the well against anything I could say in defense of good, man's higher nature, and the definition of evil. And, I was even happy to consider DNA a principle, but instead of courtesy you merely press the attack. In the end, if you project that I'm a Sophist, then, by your own definition, there is no point in us communicating further.

OldTrees1

2017-04-30, 03:40 PM

I see no flaw in your definitions, and just don't see how they can stop an ethical dilemma from forming in the shape of Catch-22, Morton's Fork, Lose-Lose etc.

The following is why I think all such ethical dilemma will have at least 1 non immoral choice (although it can be quite tragic/unfortunate)
P1) All situation have at least 1 moral choice
P2) A choice cannot be both moral and immoral
C) All situations have at least 1 non immoral choice

However I do wonder if Gödel's incompleteness will be introduced along with the arbitrary definition axiom used to escape the tautology. That is an area where I would have to defer to your firmer grasp of Gödel.

Razade

2017-04-30, 04:06 PM

You sir (I'm presuming you're a sir), are snide, sneering, sophistical, and wilfully ignorant. Your chief defect is your inability to grasp the existence of principles, particularly and specifically those of art and science, leading to your false equivalency of the Classical with the Dionysian, the discoverer of principle with the mere observer. This poisons the well against anything I could say in defense of good, man's higher nature, and the definition of evil. And, I was even happy to consider DNA a principle, but instead of courtesy you merely press the attack. In the end, if you project that I'm a Sophist, then, by your own definition, there is no point in us communicating further.

So instead of actually answering a question you go to a tu quoque. Bravo. A+ Donnadogsoth.

Frozen_Feet

2017-04-30, 04:43 PM

The following is why I think all such ethical dilemma will have at least 1 non immoral choice (although it can be quite tragic/unfortunate)
P1) All situation have at least 1 moral choice
P2) A choice cannot be both moral and immoral
C) All situations have at least 1 non immoral choice

However I do wonder if Gödel's incompleteness will be introduced along with the arbitrary definition axiom used to escape the tautology. That is an area where I would have to defer to your firmer grasp of Gödel.

I suppose you could reconcile that with my argument by concluding that if we observe a situation where all choices are apparently immoral, but we cannot leave this situation without choosing one of the options, then the option we choose can't be immoral.

AKA Necessity can't be evil.

Which would absolve the concept of "necessary evil"

veti

2017-04-30, 05:37 PM

Categorizing something as immoral, AKA evil, then serves to tell people what to not do. It tells which things ought to be prevented.

Now we're eliding "immoral" into "evil" (and later you wrap "wrong" into the same package). Are these all synonyms?

Because if they are, then the claim that "people know evil when they see it" seems, as I suggested, insupportable. Yes, you can cite the most extreme examples, but the interesting cases are the less extreme ones. And on those, people can and do disagree. Vehemently and continually.

When you talk about how buying a fruit picked up by forced labour is tantamount to supporting slavery, you are describing what happens when altruistic punishment is NOT utilized. Slave labour persists because to consumer, slave-picked fruits are convenient and profitable. If they were to brand slavery as evil and systematically punish the slavers, they would lose the convenience and profit of those fruits. Because they are averse to this loss, they fail to brand the slavers as evil, and consequently fail to take necessary action to eradicate the slavers, the human parasites.

I can refuse to buy that fruit. But my grocery dollars, in themselves, aren't going to sway the supply chain. If I want to do that, I need to argue and engage with people who are, currently, supporting evil, i.e. who - if we eliminate the shades of distinction between "evil", "immoral" and "wrong" - are themselves doing something I believe is "evil". And I am not going to do that by "ostracising" them (how does one person "ostracise" the rest of their community anyway?)

To reduce evil, you need to understand it. Otherwise you're just going to be playing the same game of whack-a-mole forever.

Sure, punishing criminals reduces crime a bit, and it's a necessary element in the whole system. But understanding and educating would-be criminals reduces crime a lot more.

Frozen_Feet

2017-04-30, 06:15 PM

Now we're eliding "immoral" into "evil" (and later you wrap "wrong" into the same package). Are these all synonyms?

I already answered this earlier in this thread. Evil = morally wrong = immoral.

If you want to propose a definition of evil action that is not tied to moral wrongness. I know of one, that of natural evil, but it doesn't support your argument, as it is synonymous with suffering and harm. I doubt you have interest in arguing we shouldn't distinquish between harmfull and non-harmfull things.

Because if they are, then the claim that "people know evil when they see it" seems, as I suggested, insupportable. Yes, you can cite the most extreme examples, but the interesting cases are the less extreme ones. And on those, people can and do disagree. Vehemently and continually.

Separate individuals disagreeing is not proof of anything, because one of them can simply be wrong. A color-blind person literally can't see several different hues and can't agree with a non-color-blind person of what color things are. This doesn't mean the non-color-blind is wrong.

Not everyone's moral intuitions are equal, but neither are they of equal worth.

I can refuse to buy that fruit. But my grocery dollars, in themselves, aren't going to sway the supply chain. If I want to do that, I need to argue and engage with people who are, currently, supporting evil, i.e. who - if we eliminate the shades of distinction between "evil", "immoral" and "wrong" - are themselves doing something I believe is "evil". And I am not going to do that by "ostracising" them (how does one person "ostracise" the rest of their community anyway?)

By cutting ties with to socially punish them, by shaming them, by working to reveal their immoral ways, by refusing them gratitude, co-operation, acceptance and resources. By organizing boycots, by ceasing their assets, by destroying means of production.

You say you can't do that? Provide proof of your powerlessness, and I'll lest you off the hook. But don't pretend that invalidates the principle.

You say your life would be greatly inconvenienced by acting like that? Well of course it would. Evil persists by making itself convenient. That is why altruistic punishment, that of making sacrifices to punish evil, is necessary.

To reduce evil, you need to understand it. Otherwise you're just going to be playing the same game of whack-a-mole forever.

You speak as if realizing that evil needs to be punished is not part of understanding evil. You speak as if you have not realized the threat of punishment is one thing which prevents evil.

Sure, punishing criminals reduces crime a bit, and it's a necessary element in the whole system. But understanding and educating would-be criminals reduces crime a lot more.

These are again, not mutually exclusive. And again, you need to recognize evil to make the decision of which people to educate, and how.

You cannot teach ethics without concepts of moral and immoral.

Donnadogsoth

2017-04-30, 06:27 PM

I fear I lack the education to understand most of what is posted in this thread.

Any reading suggestions?

Here's a video series you might find informative:

Discovering LaRouche's Method:
A New York Class Series on Economics (https://larouchepac.com/new-york-class-series)

Razade

2017-04-30, 06:32 PM

I fear I lack the education to understand most of what is posted in this thread.

Any reading suggestions?

From Bacteria to Bach and Back, Neuroscience and Philosophy: Brain, Mind, and Language, and The Intentional Stance by Daniel Dennett. The Moral Landscape and The end of Faith by Sam Harris. Also the Humanist Manifesto III. You'll also find it under Humanism and Its Aspirations if you can't just find it as the former.

Here's a video series you might find informative:

Discovering LaRouche's Method:
A New York Class Series on Economics (https://larouchepac.com/new-york-class-series)

And do what you can by avoiding this. Not to censor and not to mystify the guy but so you don't waste your time. LaRouche is a well known supporter of Fascistic models of government not to mention holds truck with a lot of conspiracy theories that come very close to Holocaust Denial. Also just...a lot of his work isn't just disregarded by actual scientists (of which he isn't one) but outright disproved a lot of his hypothesis. He also believes in government mind control and believes in "ego-stripping". Which is basically psychological torture to "rebuild their personalities around a new socialist identity".

LaRouche is a Grade A quack that made a few right calls.

Dienekes

2017-04-30, 06:47 PM

From Bacteria to Bach and Back, Neuroscience and Philosophy: Brain, Mind, and Language, and The Intentional Stance by Daniel Dennett. The Moral Landscape and The end of Faith by Sam Harris. The Humanist Manifesto III. You'll also find it under Humanism and Its Aspirations.

And do what you can by avoiding this. LaRouche is a well known supporter of Fascistic models of government not to mention holds truck with a lot of conspiracy theories that come very close to Holocaust Denial.

Hey now, you should never avoid a work. No matter how outdated, xenophobic, or even nonsensical. You should, however thoroughly read dissenting opinions on them all and work out for yourself which you find holds the strongest argument.

I would throw in various Marxist historical understandings of medieval culture. Take your pick there are hundreds of them. And they give a good general idea about how changing economic and social realities influence policy

Imagined Communities.

And any good book on the 100 Years War.
Inscribing the 100 Years War in French and English Cultures, gives a good overview of what was going on in both sides.

Razade

2017-04-30, 06:49 PM

Hey now, you should never avoid a work. No matter how outdated, xenophobic, or even nonsensical. You should, however thoroughly read dissenting opinions on them all and work out for yourself which you find holds the strongest argument.

Avoid is maybe the wrong word. I gave my reasons why one probably shouldn't waste their free time on LaRouche. I'm not for censorship after all.

Donnadogsoth

2017-04-30, 07:19 PM

Thanks, but I seldom watch videos.

Reading suggestions are appreciated.

Books!

That's my style! Thanks!

As you wish:

Gottfried Leibniz
Monadology (http://hume.ucdavis.edu/mattey/phi175/monadology.html)

Nicolaus of Cusa
On Learned Ignorance (http://jasper-hopkins.info/DI-I-12-2000.pdf)

Lyndon LaRouche
On the Subject of Metaphor (https://www.schillerinstitute.org/fid_91-96/fid_923_lhl_metaphor2.html)

Razade

2017-04-30, 08:08 PM

L L?

Yes I've heard that name.

Decades ago (I'm 48).

I think my writing anything about him may break Forum rules.

Just how old are you?

He ran for the President of the United States in the late 70's for the Labor Party. He's run eight times, the latest in 2004.

Trekkin

2017-04-30, 08:51 PM

Nicolaus of Cusa was the guy who tried to prove that an infinitely long line is also a triangle, circle, and sphere, right?

Donnadogsoth

2017-04-30, 09:09 PM

Nicolaus of Cusa was the guy who tried to prove that an infinitely long line is also a triangle, circle, and sphere, right?

He used those cases as examples for the reconciliation of opposites conjectured to exist in the Deity.

Devils_Advocate

2017-05-01, 05:11 PM

I've spent rather a bit of thought on the closely-related subjects of vague, ambiguous words and vague, ambiguous concepts. And I think that some of my musings might be rather relevant to much of the above discussion. Let me start with a bit of a digression, if you can forgive that; I'll go on to explain how it illustrates the idea I'm talking about.

Consider the famous question "If a tree falls in the forest, and no one's around, does it make a sound?" Lot of people seem to think that this question is about whether unobserved events happen. But how could that be? For a tree to be able to fall when no one's there to observe it, obviously unobserved events must be able to happen; so the answer to that one is assumed by the nature of the hypothetical under consideration!

No, what the question boils down to is "What does the word 'sound' mean?" Does "sound" refer to a type of perception, a type of external phenomenon that produces that sort of perception, or what? Unfortunately, even people who understand that that's what's at issue can still wind up spending a lot of time debating what the one right answer to that question is. Which strikes me as... misguided.

First of all, we tend to learn the meanings of basic words like "sound" by example. We form generalizations around the use of the word "sound" by others, rather than being taught a formal definition. And this sort of learning is a necessary precursor to learning by formal definition, because you can't understand what a word means based on its definition in terms of other words unless you understand what those other words mean, now can you? But almost all uses of "sound" happen when a type of perception occurs in response to a type of external phenomenon, because the perception generally doesn't happen without the stimulus, and we're generally not aware of the phenomenon without the perception. So different people can easily build up concepts of sound as external phenomenon, sound as perception, and sound as perception in response to external phenomenon, because all of those are accurate generalizations of what someone talking about "sound" indicates. And that is why we don't speak the same language (http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=640).

Secondly... I think it's actually more complicated than that. I think that while we know that there's a distinction between what we perceive and the external cause of that perception... that's not actually a distinction that we're consciously aware of most of the time. Our naive understanding of the world is that our perceptions are reality, not merely of reality, and as we go about and discuss our daily lives, that's the implicit assumption that we operate under, until a case arises where the difference is important. In which case the word "sound" isn't just a social conflation of different meanings held by different people; rather, the typical personal concept of sound is a conflation of actually distinct things that works just fine most of the time because for most uses of the concept, those things go together.

And for both of the above reasons, I don't think that treating a word as having exactly one specific, unambiguous meaning accurately reflects how humans use language most of the time. Rather, to the extent that a word has specific, unambiguous meanings, it usually has multiple, but there's a lot of overlap, so the difference often doesn't matter. The vague, ambiguous word "sound" and the correspondingly vague, ambiguous concept of sound aren't so vague and so ambiguous that we can't agree that the color red isn't a sound.

So...

Q: If a tree falls in a forest an someone does hear it, is that a sound?
A: Yes, of course it is.

Q: Is the color red a sound?
A: No, of course it isn't.

Q: If a tree falls in the forest, and no one's around, does it make a sound?
A: Standard conflation no longer applies.

1. Is killing people morally wrong? Does saying that killing people is morally wrong mean that killing a person is always morally wrong? If so, does that preclude killing someone being morally right in some circumstances? Can something be morally right and morally wrong at the same time?

Answer: Standard conflation no longer applies. There are valid, different, overlapping senses of the word "evil" and of the very concept of evil. That said, asking what "evil" should mean is different from asking what it does mean. It's a question of which of the competing meanings to favor in order to serve some (presumably moral, given the context) purpose.

2. Sure, you can get almost everyone to agree that if something is unjust, unkind, oppressive, etc., etc., then it's evil. But what happens when different moral standards are at odds with each other? In that case, how do you decide which standard has primacy? If only one of the standards under consideration can serve as an axiom without contradiction, how then are we to determine which to use as the axiom, and which is merely a situational consequence of the other, such that its opposite might instead be the case in certain specific circumstances? In such a case -- a case where two different persons each consider the other to be advocating for evil -- what is evil?

Answer: Standard conflation no longer applies.

If there's a real question here, I think that it's this: What's most important to you? Which of your values are your highest values, to which your other values are subservient? Which of your values do you want to be highest?

I would caution against assuming that, finally, at this point, any answer you give is the correct answer. To the extent that you're trying to formalize your own moral intuitions, I wouldn't entirely discount the possibility that you somehow misunderstand your own moral intuitions. Even if you understand each intuition individually, maybe you're not yet aware of some ways in which they conflict. Maybe your intuitions would change with further information or simply further reflection; perhaps they already have, and you regard this as an improvement. Best not to guard against future improvements in that case, eh? And, finally, in verbally formalizing an ideology, it is possible to choose wording that does not give an accurate impression of your beliefs to your audience. We do not speak the same language.

All things to bear in mind. In closing, I will hazard a guess that some moral conflicts come down to conflicts between core moral values, but that this is the case less often than one might think, and that more often two parties are operating on different incomplete information. Also, a lot of the time the problem is that someone wants to do evil, ethics be damned. In many cases where two parties do have conflicting core values, the obvious approach is to compromise, to bring each more into accordance with the other's moral standards, rather than each violating the other's moral standards. That should be preferable to both sides, where it is possible; besides, it's the ethical solution. ;)

Donnadogsoth

2017-05-01, 05:56 PM

I've spent rather a bit of thought on the closely-related subjects of vague, ambiguous words and vague, ambiguous concepts. And I think that some of my musings might be rather relevant to much of the above discussion...

Interesting stuff. “The beginning of wisdom is calling things by their proper names.”

On the subject of evil, we face a conflation of half-formed popular meanings of the word "human". For, since we are human ourselves, unless we define what a human being is, we cannot understand what evil might mean.

A human being is a creature made in the image of the creative potency of the Universe, what Plato called the Good. As such, we have the unique capacity, so far as we have been able to determine, of increasing our potential population density on Terra and by extension the Universe at large, through succeeding successful discoveries of universal physical principle and related principles, such that we move from one state of knowledge to the next successively, thereby increasing our power to exist in the hostile Universe.

No mere animal can do this. Some animals have been known to use tools (apes, horses), even build infrastructure (termites), but none can willfully increase their carrying capacity with no principled limit. As such, humans, while taxonomically (physically) are animals, metaphysically they are not. Anyone who tells you they are, is degraded, wittingly or not.

Being in the Good's image, humans are thus charged with the ongoing creative economic development of the Universe, towards a elusive end point of perfection. This is the point of being human, and happiness, as a universal desire, accompanies and nourishes this ongoing creative work.

Therefore, as man is the highest creature, anything which reduces him in terms of his ability to master the Universe, whether mankind as a whole or man as an individual, including degrading both his ability to experience happiness and his dignity as a man, including such dignity as man's appreciative existence extends to the natural world, is evil, if anything is evil, in its only proper use of the term.

Devils_Advocate

2017-05-01, 06:59 PM

Donnadogsoth

2017-05-01, 07:10 PM

Razade

2017-05-01, 07:13 PM

I would like to pose the very same question to Razade as well.

I don't think I've actually made any claims. Just saying that

1. I don't believe the claims that Evil is a thing. Not that Evil doesn't exist. That I don't believe it does and any evidence given hasn't convinced me. That's not a claim, that's...the default...

2. I don't believe Donna's claims because they're self contradictory, vague and riddled with so many logical fallacies that even if the other two issues didn't exist I still wouldn't believe. Once again, I'm not claiming the opposite of what Donna's proposing. I'm simply pointing out the issues with Donna's arguments and why they fail to be convincing.

If you think I've made a claim though let me know and I'll try to give as much supporting evidence than I can.

The greatest scientific experiment experiment ever conducted, called "the economy," is my proof of the definition of the nature of man. That we, and we alone, have accumulated and wield such mighty power as to increase our carrying capacity on Terra 1000-fold from the carrying capacity of the great apes with no principled limit is the requested verification.

Donnadogsoth forgets that there are other animals that have a rudimentary barter system. Not just mammals either. So your proof that we're alone in making "The Economy" is...suspect. Capuchin Monkeys and Chimpanzees are two prime examples. Chimps are a food for sex sort of thing but Capuchin seem to have a rudimentary currency. Mostly shiny things. Which makes sense, as a Primate we certainly developed something similar. We even use both species to investigate the most likely conclusion of how WE did it.

Yet another shovelfull of dirt on the grave of Donnadogsoth's basket of bad ideas.

Trekkin

2017-05-01, 07:27 PM

Donnadogsoth, do your theories make any verifiable and/or falsifiable predictions not made by competing theories? I get the impression that you think you're making factual claims about the observable universe, so I'm curious as to whether, well, that's actually meaningfully the case.

The nature of Donnadogsoth's claims would suggest that it is not.

Setting aside the claim that humans are "made in the image of the creative potency of the Universe" as unfalsifiable and frankly irrelevant, we simply cannot increase our population density without bound. Like any other chemical process -- and we are exactly that -- there are thermodynamic limits to how closely we can be packed before we overheat or can no longer exchange reactants for products. In short, pack us too tight and we drown in our own effluvia. The same is true of termites, apes, and everything down to bacteria -- who, as it happens, actually chemically poll themselves and limit their own growth accordingly to minimize this.

Furthermore, literally every self-replicating process in the Universe, given a source of random changes to their structure, will exist in an equilibrium of variants proportional to the efficacy with which those variants produce additional replicators. We've actually seen this happen in a laboratory setting; look at "the Lenski paper", as it is popularly known, for a reasonably accessible case. Humans can adapt more quickly than most organisms, yes, but is there really any qualitative difference between building codes written on paper and tunnel-digging strategies encoded in termite DNA? Both are knowledge, and both are ultimately "learned" through trial and error (albeit at vastly different time scales). Heck, they understand airflow better than most people building computer cases.

Ad hominem attacks aside, it is possible to develop an ethical system that exists independent of the unprovable assertion that humans are somehow special and unquantifiably different and anything other than one random product of a lot of time and death operating on replicating units -- one that does not break down in the face of the limits, obtained from "universal physical principles", on how densely we can be packed and how much matter and energy we can appropriate for this purpose.

Here's how I'd do it:

Model humanity as a Markov chain to whatever scale is practical, determine a scoring system to quantify the morality of any given state (ideally as a single rational number), and run a Monte Carlo graph walk to stochastically determine the requisite series of state changes to reach the global morality maximum within the state space. If these changes do not result in a monotonic morality score increase, Evil is necessary to break us out of local maxima -- and the chief determinant of that is the choice of score function.

Sure, the first step is unfeasibly computation-intensive and the second step is arbitrary and the third step will take longer than real time, but it can be simplified -- and, critically, it is testable, given a consistent score function.

EDIT: By any statistical standard, "the economy" is not a particularly convincing scientific experiment. N of one, after all.

Devils_Advocate

2017-05-01, 07:57 PM

Razade

2017-05-01, 08:04 PM

Trekkin

2017-05-01, 08:09 PM

Well, specieism is hardly illogical. It's simply an evolutionary byproudct. Humans are (at least for the moment) the only species we know that sacrifices its own well being for others outside of very specific cases.

What about rat altruism? Admittedly the study was limited to showing that rats like not having other rats drown more than they like chocolate, but it's not like we can ask them how altruistic they are directly.

Razade

2017-05-01, 08:22 PM

What about rat altruism? Admittedly the study was limited to showing that rats like not having other rats drown more than they like chocolate, but it's not like we can ask them how altruistic they are directly.

I'm not arguing against altruism in animals (it's...well documented even beyond your one example). Devil's Advocate is making a case against speciesism and I'm saying biologically speaking even if speciesism is wrong (I tend to think it is) it's not an unreasonable argument to be made in an ethical model. Your example is still a rat helping another rat. That's...exactly in line with what you'd expect to see.

And that goes for anyone who advocates putting humans first on the basis of our capabilities, whether cognitive, economic, spiritual, or whatever. Anyone equivalently superior to us is just as justified in crapping all over us as we are in crapping all over inferior species, right?

This right here. Speciesism 101 basically. The reason is because it's biological? That doesn't make it valid or rational but it's the explaination on why human models of ethics presume humans as the highest tier. Well that and because we don't have any other examples that we view as equal to ourselves to adapt a new ethical situatuion but...the biology one is the bigger of the reasons. Humans make distinction between human life and non-human life because it's biologically advantageous to us. A species that puts greater emphasis on the survival of other species ahead of its own well being isn't going to be a species long.

tl;dr (in case T-Mick is still reading along and all the words scared them): Humans make moral frame works with humans in mind because evolution favors species that put their own well being (not the individuals of the species. The species as a whole) over ones that don't.

Trekkin

2017-05-01, 08:30 PM

I'm not arguing against altruism in animals (it's...well documented even beyond your one example). Devil's Advocate is making a case against speciesism and I'm saying biologically speaking even if speciesism is wrong (I tend to think it is) it's not an unreasonable argument to be made in an ethical model. Your example is still a rat helping another rat. That's...exactly in line with what you'd expect to see.

Indeed it is. I had misread "others" as "other individuals" rather than "other species" in the post I quoted above; my apologies.

I certainly can't think of any species other than humanity that does so outside of symbiosis and other cases where it's in their long-term best interest to do so. The closest thing I could think of would be cats bringing their owners dead small animals and things, but they kill so many for fun it's really not that much trouble for them to do so.

Razade

2017-05-01, 08:35 PM

Indeed it is. I had misread "others" as "other individuals" rather than "other species" in the post I quoted; my apologies.

I certainly can't think of any species other than humanity that does so outside of symbiosis and other cases where it's in their long-term best interest to do so. The closest thing I could think of would be cats bringing their owners dead small animals and things, but they kill so many for fun it's really not that much trouble for them to do so.

I'd offer dolphins up as a species level entity that...exhibits something close? There's too many documented examples of dolphins warding off sharks from shipwreck victims for me to simply throw away the possibility that they may have some endospecies altruism. Of course, there's no study I can cite to lead further credence to that. So my offer is at best circumstantial and anecdotal.

Trekkin

2017-05-01, 08:46 PM

I'd offer dolphins up as a species level entity that...exhibits something close? There's too many documented examples of dolphins warding off sharks from shipwreck victims for me to simply throw away the possibility that they may have some endospecies altruism. Of course, there's no study I can cite to lead further credence to that. So my offer is at best circumstantial and anecdotal.

There is a study I can cite in support of interspecies and indeed intergeneric altruism in cetaceans(assuming you have JSTOR access (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2460934?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents))...but it is also largely a collection of anecdotal evidence.

warty goblin

2017-05-01, 08:58 PM

Interesting stuff. “The beginning of wisdom is calling things by their proper names.”

On the subject of evil, we face a conflation of half-formed popular meanings of the word "human". For, since we are human ourselves, unless we define what a human being is, we cannot understand what evil might mean.

A human being is a creature made in the image of the creative potency of the Universe, what Plato called the Good. As such, we have the unique capacity, so far as we have been able to determine, of increasing our potential population density on Terra and by extension the Universe at large, through succeeding successful discoveries of universal physical principle and related principles, such that we move from one state of knowledge to the next successively, thereby increasing our power to exist in the hostile Universe.

No mere animal can do this. Some animals have been known to use tools (apes, horses), even build infrastructure (termites), but none can willfully increase their carrying capacity with no principled limit. As such, humans, while taxonomically (physically) are animals, metaphysically they are not. Anyone who tells you they are, is degraded, wittingly or not.

Being in the Good's image, humans are thus charged with the ongoing creative economic development of the Universe, towards a elusive end point of perfection. This is the point of being human, and happiness, as a universal desire, accompanies and nourishes this ongoing creative work.

Therefore, as man is the highest creature, anything which reduces him in terms of his ability to master the Universe, whether mankind as a whole or man as an individual, including degrading both his ability to experience happiness and his dignity as a man, including such dignity as man's appreciative existence extends to the natural world, is evil, if anything is evil, in its only proper use of the term.

Count me as degraded then (and happily so!), because we're most definitely animals. Animals who are, comparative to other known exemplars, very good at some short term very greedy optimization, but definitely animals. We act to maximize our resource security, physical comfort, and secure competitive advantage for our offspring. Your vaunted 'creative economic development of the Universe' is really just a fancy way of saying exactly that, but this is in no way distinct in type from the behavior of most to all animals. We're just better at imagining the outcomes of different actions before we take them, and so take more effective actions than your average bear.

If we are meaningfully distinct from other animals, I'd argue it's because we at least have the theoretical capacity to limit our population growth and energy consumption so as not to exceed our carrying capacity and so avoid suffering the generally unpleasant consequences thereof. Therefore a person who chooses to not have children, or eat meat, or consume this that or the other completely unnecessary thing is much farther from being a 'mere' animal than those running around trying to maximize human population and resource consumption. Mind, as a species we seem to be genuinely terrible at actually doing this, so the distinction may very well be academic.

Devils_Advocate

2017-05-01, 09:08 PM

What does it even mean do say that something is "merely" or "just" or "only" something, anyway? Does it mean that X is Y and there's nothing more to be said? If that's the case, I'm hard-pressed to imagine anything that's just anything. In that sense, humans aren't mere animals, but neither is anything else, because "mereness" isn't a thing!

The thing about speciesism is that people attempt to defend it by appealing to values that (1) are horrific and (2) they don't actually hold.

To say that humans deserve better treatment based on some sort of mental ability we posses -- self-awareness, language, moral agency, whatever -- is to say that there is some level of some type of cognitive disability beyond which it's okay to use humans in medical experiments with just as little regard for their welfare as is given to other animals. I can't think of a Distinguishing Human Ability I've ever heard of that manifests in infancy either, mind you. Of course not; what can a baby do that other species can't?

But the people who say such stuff generally don't mean to dehumanized other humans, I think. I suspect that they're just trying to reconcile the idea that it's better to abuse non-humans with the idea that it's wrong to discriminate against others on a superficial basis. So they try to come up with a non-superficial basis for discriminating against non-humans, and manage not to notice that the non-species boundary they're drawing doesn't actually match the species boundary that it was contrived to match, because we're not talking about rational thought processes here, so people can fail to think through even the obvious implications of what they're suggesting. That's my theory, anyway.

Mind you, that they don't actually think that means that they do actually think that it's okay to oppress others on a superficial basis, which is also horrific, which was why they were trying to convince themselves that they don't think that. Honestly, you can't base that sort of evil on non-evil values. If you actually want to divest yourself of evil values, you have to be willing to -- *gasp* -- not do evil things.

Razade

2017-05-01, 09:13 PM

The thing about speciesism is that people attempt to defend it by appealing to values that (1) are horrific and (2) they don't actually hold.

Are you a vegetarian or vegan?

Trekkin

2017-05-01, 09:25 PM

Are you a vegetarian or vegan?

Et tu (quoque), Razade?

Razade

2017-05-01, 09:27 PM

Et tu (quoque), Razade?

I'm not but I'm also not arguing against specieism. Soft...speciesism. I'm against the torture and undue suffering of an animal for strictly pleasure's sake. I'm not against it for sustenance. That's just nature being nature. If I felt that cows had the same inherent worth and rights as a person I would be however. I don't feel that though, so eating meat doesn't bother me. Other people eating meat doesn't bother me either.

And there are some animals I won't eat because I think they're too close to sapience to be eaten ethically. Dolphins being one of them. Octopus is another. As the number of those animals rises the lower the number of animals I'll eat.

Devil's Advocate seems to be arguing against the motion that humans and cows aren't inherently the same however so I fail to see how it's a tu quoque.

Trekkin

2017-05-01, 09:42 PM

Devil's Advocate seems to be arguing against the motion that humans and cows aren't inherently the same however so I fail to see how it's a tu quoque.

Because a tu quoque fallacy is definitionally an attempt to discredit an opponent's argument by asserting that they fail to act in accordance with its conclusions. I fail to see how Devil's Advocate's diet is otherwise relevant enough to their point for it not to be.

Devils_Advocate

2017-05-01, 09:49 PM

My understanding is that food animals are raised in a really inhumane, wasteful, environmentally destructive manner in most cases. I'm not saying that eating meat is inherently unethical. But I don't see how eating humans is inherently unethical, either. There are special health risks, I understand.

I look at it like this: If doing something to a human isn't worse for the human than doing the same thing to a non-human is for the non-human, then how is it worse?

Are you a vegetarian or vegan?
Oh, sure. Doesn't mean that my impact on the planet isn't still probably a net negative due to my actions as a consumer, though. I've barely even started to try to be ethical, there. I have lots of free time to research stuff, too. Even better, I could try to more than make up for whatever damage I'm doing, which would really be the more efficient approach.

I linked to Wikipedia's article on effective altruism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism) earlier. An intro to the subject (https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/introduction-to-effective-altruism/) has been sitting in one of my browser tabs as I piss away my time on other things.

I am evil by my own standards. I'm not saying that I'm especially so (https://xkcd.com/1386/), just that I'm more evil than not evil all. I may be less evil than average, but I halfheartedly aspire to a bit more than that.

I invite others to acknowledge that they, too, are evil, even if only a little. The first step is acknowledging that you have a problem, as they say. But, at the same time, that first step is useless on its own.

Razade

2017-05-01, 09:53 PM

Because a tu quoque fallacy is definitionally an attempt to discredit an opponent's argument by asserting that they fail to act in accordance with its conclusions. I fail to see how Devil's Advocate's diet is otherwise relevant enough to their point for it not to be.

I'm not attempting to discredit his argument. I'm pointing out (as I very narrowly quoted him) that if he's

a. Against speciesism

b. perfectly fine eating meat

than he is doing the same thing that he's criticizing others of doing in arguing a position with values he doesn't hold. His argument may be valid, but he's using the same tactics they're using and of which he seems to have a problem with.

My understanding is that food animals are raised in a really inhumane, wasteful, environmentally destructive manner in most cases. I'm not saying that eating meat is inherently unethical. But I don't see how eating humans is inherently unethical, either. There are special health risks, I understand.

I too am against factory farming.

I look at it like this: If doing something to a human isn't worse for the human than doing the same thing to a non-human is for the non-human, then how is it worse?

Well...I don't really disagree? I don't think a tiger is wrong for killing a human to eat it as opposed to us eating a cow. The tiger is doing what a tiger does. That doesn't mean I'm going to feed humans to a tiger though because I value human life as higher than I do tiger life because...evolution programs us for that.

The big difference here is, let's take it into a hypothetical, if an alien as smart as us comes down and eats a human. We can explain to that alien that we as people don't like being eaten. We can rationalize against being eaten. A cow can't. We can't rationalize with a tiger either. But between two sapient agents we can, hopefully, express some form of ethical rationale between the two of us and get them to stop eating humans and enjoying a nice hamburger.

Oh, sure. Doesn't mean that my impact on the planet isn't still probably a net negative due to my actions as a consumer, though. I've barely even started to try to be ethical, there. I have lots of free time to research stuff, too. Even better, I could try to more than make up for whatever damage I'm doing, which would really be the more efficient approach.

Oh sure...you ARE Vegan/Vegetarian? I don't...this doesn't answer the question.

I invite others to acknowledge that they, too, are evil, even if only a little. The first step is acknowledging that you have a problem, as they say. But, at the same time, that first step is useless on its own.

This gets me back to "I don't know what you mean by evil". I'll be happy to acknowledge I'm evil (even if only a little) if you can give me a definition and examples that meet some form of burden of proof.

Devils_Advocate

2017-05-01, 10:12 PM

As I mentioned before, it's about respecting others' preferences. In other words, caring about what others want.

That's what not being evil is about, I mean. Just so we're clear. I guess you could define evil, in the relevant sense, then, as disrespecting others' preferences; specifically, doing things to them that they would prefer to avoid, and not because it prevents something even worse.

I could add "and not just what you want", but wanting others to get what they want is still something you want, isn't it? Doing something that you don't want to do seems like the definition of an involuntary action, to me.

Mind you, "evil" can mean a bunch of subtly different things. This is the case for words in general, really. Have I mentioned that? Ooh, I have?! Excellent.

Oh sure...you ARE Vegan/Vegetarian?
Yes, I am. Was that somehow unclear? I thought that "sure" as a synonym for "yes" was common usage.

I too am against factory farming.
Do you know where all of the meat you eat comes from?

The big difference here is, let's take it into a hypothetical, if an alien as smart as us comes down and eats a human. We can explain to that alien that we as people don't like being eaten. We can rationalize against being eaten. A cow can't.
Well, what if the alien says "Dude, so what? Cows dislike lots of stuff that's done to them, too. How is their inability to talk about that or to form abstract thoughts about that remotely relevant here? Why should I care about any of these distinctions you're making, bro?"

The alien has obvious motive to negotiate with humans if the alien and humans both hold power over each other. But what, hypothetically, if the alien has ALL of the power? What reason, then, does the alien have to care more about humans than about cows? Humans' arguments against eating them? Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that the alien finds all of those arguments to be spectacularly unimpressive, and maybe even resolves to eat more humans based on the arguments that humans come up with against doing so.

... Honestly, if the alien decided to eat all of the people who made certain really bad arguments against eating them, I'm not sure I wouldn't be on the alien's side. This alien is starting to sound pretty cool!

Razade

2017-05-01, 10:48 PM

As I mentioned before, it's about respecting others' preferences. In other words, caring about what others want.

I could add "and not just what you want", but wanting others to get what they want is still something you want, isn't it? Doing something that you don't want to do seems like the definition of an involuntary action, to me.

Not only would I not call this evil but I would actually counter that it's a rather poor standard. Someone could have a preference to cause harm to the people around them and a preference to not care about what other people want. We call those people sociopaths. They exist. Violating their preferences is not evil. It may actually be the preferences of people to be hurt. Violating those preferences is also not evil if the harm done to them is significant.

Another example would be an adult who won't give medical care to their sick children and who has convinced their children they don't need medical care. It may be both their preferences to not get medical care but it's not evil to violate those preferences because the child's well being is at risk.

Preferences are simply opinions and they can be flawed. Respecting them is all well and good until it starts to do harm to others. Simply going off preferences is a poor measuring stick for ethics.

Even if none of that was the case, the argument still fails on merit that it's self contradictory. Two people go to a restaurant. One of them wants to order a burger. That's their preference. The other person's preference is that they don't. Both actions can't be evil. Even if they care what the other one wants, both sides can't mutually respect and allow the other's preference without violating their own. You need something else to plug in to resolve the conflict. It can't simply fall down to letting others do what they want because that has no explanatory powers. It is flawed on its outset.

Mind you, "evil" can mean a bunch of subtly different things. This is the case for words in general, really. Have I mentioned that? Ooh, I have?! Excellent.

Sure, I'm a descriptivist too. Party for all the people who are correct! If you're just using evil to mean something negative...I still wouldn't say I'm evil. Because, for starters, doing things that are wrong doesn't make me wrong over all. Or to use the word you want to use. Doing something "evil" doesn't make me "evil". I do plenty of good things too. How many "evil" acts do I have to do before I'm "evil". Or vice versa how many "good" things do I have to do to be "good". Not only that but what you define as evil is at best your opinion. Mind you, what I describe as wrong is too. But I'm not the one saying people are "evil" as if that means anything. You are however.

Yes, I am. Was that somehow unclear? I thought that "sure" as a synonym for "yes" was common usage.

Just a wee bit. Thank you for clarifying. I don't care if you're not. As above, it doesn't do anything to detract from the truth of your argument (your argument does that all on its own! :P). It would however make it so that you're doing the same thing you're criticizing others in doing and...you might have wanted to look into that or at least stop criticizing other people for it. That's not the case though so it's a moot point.

Do you know where all of the meat you eat comes from?

I do my best to know but sadly it's not that easy to find out every single time.

Well, what if the alien says "Dude, so what? Cows dislike lots of stuff that's done to them, too. How is their inability to talk about that or to form abstract thoughts about that remotely relevant here? Why should I care about any of these distinctions you're making, bro?"

To start...because cows lack the cognizance to have dislikes outside of survival instincts as opposed to having some desire to live on. A cow, as far as we know, doesn't have hopes or dreams or aspirations. It doesn't cling to life because it understands life and death. It clings to life because it's waiting for a bull to come and knock it up and so it can plop out some calves. That's the difference (AS FAR AS WE KNOW) between humans and cows. Or anything else that we eat. Is it an arbitrary distinction? Absolutely. But the line is drawn somewhere. That's where I choose to draw the line. If cows (or anything else we eat) cross that line from non-sapient to sapient you better believe they'll be off my menu. Because that's the ethical thing to do.

Back to the alien though. If, after the alien is shown that humans are sapient, it still decides "Don't care" and goes off and eats more humans....the alien's a jerk. Just like a human who eats another human is a jerk. Just like a human would be a jerk if they (after finding out that a cow has sapience) continued to eat cow. Until that point however...they're just doing what they do. Just the same as a tiger eating a gazelle isn't inherently wrong. A tiger is just doing what it does. Humans are omnivores. We eat meat. The meat doesn't seem to either care that they're being eaten in the same way a sapient being does or if it does they're not exactly lobbying against it in a way you'd expect a sapient being to do so.

The alien has obvious motive to negotiate with humans if the alien and humans both hold power over each other. But what, hypothetically, if the alien has ALL of the power? What reason, then, does the alien have to care more about humans than about cows? Humans' arguments against eating them? Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that the alien finds all of those arguments to be spectacularly unimpressive, and maybe even resolves to eat more humans based on the arguments that humans come up with against doing so.

Well obviously it doesn't really matter what we have to say if we have no power to back it up now does it? The man trapped in a cage with a hungry tiger has no power to argue or stop the tiger from eating him. It doesn't matter how much he doesn't want to be eaten, he's lost the ability to make that happen and can only hope that the tiger doesn't eat him until he can be freed...or that someone with power is coming to free him.

You can be the most correct person in a room and that still doesn't give you any guarantee that you're going to be the one getting his way. Welcome to life!! Raw deals happen all the time. All we can do is attempt to make them happen less often. Which is why talking things out is one of the most vital tools we as a species has. Something other species don't and until such time as they do well..we're the ones with the power. Welcome to nature baby.

... Honestly, if the alien decided to eat all of the people who made certain really bad arguments against eating them, I'm not sure I wouldn't be on the alien's side. This alien is starting to sound pretty cool!

So would you prefer to be braised in a lemon citrus glaze or do you want to just stew in the post with the rest of us? :smalltongue:

Frozen_Feet

2017-05-02, 05:07 AM

But what, hypothetically, if the alien has ALL of the power? What reason, then, does the alien have to care more about humans than about cows?

1) Charity, or if you want to sound even more cheesy, Love.

2) Social prestige among other aliens.

3) Arguments by other aliens.

4 ... N) Other social structures among aliens.

Fun fact, the same applies between the rich and the poor. Which is generally a good reason to not be poor if you can help it. :smalltongue:

2D8HP

2017-05-02, 06:45 AM

...So would you prefer to be braised in a lemon citrus glaze or do you want to just stew in the post with the rest of us? :smalltongue:

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT2ov8_zUSG7sNu5xg405ALxWONdRlJ8 7b1pcmpbXQfa5kqMW8n

Donnadogsoth

2017-05-02, 11:03 AM

Donnadogsoth, it is conceivable that in the future we will encounter beings much better qualified to increase their population and their happiness than we are to increase ours. They might be advanced artificial intelligence or genetically engineered organisms that we invent, or they could be extraterrestrials or visitors from an alternate universe, or other, stranger, possibilities, some of which way may never have even considered. Maybe everything I've mentioned seems very implausible to you, but there doesn't seem to be any compelling reason to think it impossible that we will eventually face some other species or form of intelligence far better suited to mastering the universe than ourselves.

In such a case, would it be right and appropriate for such beings to enslave or exterminate humanity, if it served their ends? Would we be obligated to serve them as they see fit? And do we have a duty to create such entities to serve as our cosmic successors, if in the future we have the means to do so?

My understanding of your values, from what you've said, is that the answer to all three questions is "yes", but I wonder if you'd be quite so supportive of such a system if you weren't one of the ones "on top".

And that goes for anyone who advocates putting humans first on the basis of our capabilities, whether cognitive, economic, spiritual, or whatever. Anyone equivalently superior to us is just as justified in crapping all over us as we are in crapping all over inferior species, right?

I don't personally think that there is a value of X such that being more X than other sentient beings inherently justifies mistreating them.

Let's jump to the end: At the highest possible, conceivable level of development, a cognitive individual would merge with the Good. That means that that individual would be omniscient and omnipotent, possessing knowledge of all principle.

Yet, such an individual would remain in the same essential typical relationship to the Good as would any other cognitive individual, in terms of having a faculty capable in principle of discovering universal principle, and which faculty is “right next to” the Good. There can be no higher association of cognition; any individual, no matter how advanced, will, at their highest level of thought, think as we respectively think as individuals. They may be thinking in very different terms at lower levels of consciousness, but, at the highest level of actually discovering principle, they would be the same.

We, to such a “merged” individual, would therefore be as children, not as animals. We, and said individual, would all be made in the image of the Good, by virtue, again, of our cognitive powers and the love of cognition and, by extension, of cognitive beings, that associates with those powers. The “merged” individual would not have less regard for us than we do for ourselves, but more, because such an individual would embody perfected humanity.

All hypothetical “alien species” would fit into the spectrum of cognitive ability implied by my opposition of humanity to the “merged” individual. If they did not, they would not belong to the cognitive “type,” would not be “right next to” the Good, would not be made in the Good's image, and, therefore, would be, at best, some kind of animal, subject to the same general considerations of usefulness and dignity that define (or should define) our relationship with the animal world. If such alien beings were the same type as us, but more advanced, we would properly be “little brothers and sisters” to them. We would be wise to heed them, but not at the expense of our own interests or our dignity. If that meant war then war it would be. Even more advanced beings can make moral mistakes.

To answer your third question, (“do we have a*duty*to*create*such entities to serve as our cosmic successors, if in the future we have the means to do so?”) the answer is an unqualified “yes”, because we already do do this. The best educated mind of today is better educated to an infinite degree than the best educated mind of the Paleolithic. The ideal Classical humanist education compresses thousands of years of cognitive development, in terms of discoveries of principle, into a fraction of a single human lifetime, thus making us, today, our own “cosmic successors,” and we hope that our descendants will surpass us, for the sake of our love of them and of humanity in general.

Red Fel

2017-05-02, 11:13 AM

And now that I've added something to the 'technicalities to discuss prior to the actual discussion', I'll try to invoke someone who generally discusses evil in fun and educational ways: Red Fel, Red Fel, Red Fel...

Oh, wow, I have been busy for awhile. Somehow this thread completely slipped under my radar.

I'm devoting this to an honest argument for the cause of evil. Obviously, the world would be awful if everyone was evil, and I don't want that to happen. However, I would say that evil is a necessary part of human society. Much of our modern technology is based on military technology. No evil, no war, no radios or advanced aircraft. Also, evil provides jobs for police, security officers, or guards. No evil, no police necessary, more unemployed. Evil pushes us to move forward as a civilization, whether in the form of a certain person or a force that can't be blamed as easily, like war. Depending on how evil is defined, the line between evil, good, and motivation becomes very thin. Is killing evil? Is killing an evil person evil? Is it better to stand aside? If they go out and kill a thousand others, was standing aside evil? Was it better to let them live?

Well, there's a lot to unpack in your question. First and most importantly:

Can you define Evil first? Because I don't even know if Evil is actually a thing.

This. While I won't dispute the existence of evil - I'm right here, you guys - it's important to look at what it actually means in any given context. Let's look back at the initial question.

Obviously, the world would be awful if everyone was evil, and I don't want that to happen.

Objection. You've already decided that "evil" is bad without defining it, and then you go on to posit ways that it's good. That's some problematic logic, that is.

However, I would say that evil is a necessary part of human society. Much of our modern technology is based on military technology. No evil, no war, no radios or advanced aircraft.

Again objection: Alleges that military is inherently evil. Sure, there's a general sense that death is bad, death on a massive scale is badder, and that war is therefore very much bad. By extension, anything implemented in war would be similarly bad.

Except that the argument can be made that, no, not all war is bad. War engaged in to prevent mass death could be argued to be quite good. But that is, admittedly, a more philosophical debate than we need at this point. To continue.

Also, evil provides jobs for police, security officers, or guards. No evil, no police necessary, more unemployed.

Conjecture.

Bad people do bad things, which leads to the employment of good people to stop them. Okay, that's fair. But do you honestly think that, if crime simply stopped one day, every police officer would simply starve? They wouldn't look for other work?

Also, are we really going to go with the "I create job opportunities" angle on villainy? Because while I love that particular rant - and the various permutations thereof - it is admittedly somewhat perverse logic.

Evil pushes us to move forward as a civilization, whether in the form of a certain person or a force that can't be blamed as easily, like war. Depending on how evil is defined, the line between evil, good, and motivation becomes very thin. Is killing evil? Is killing an evil person evil? Is it better to stand aside? If they go out and kill a thousand others, was standing aside evil? Was it better to let them live?

We could just as easily argue that it's not "evil" that pushes us forward. One anthropological theory humorously posits, for example, that it is the invention and consumption of alcohols that has pushed us forward. Another posits that it's "thirst" - that is, the desire for the attention of those one finds sexually attractive - that drives people to wage wars, climb mountains, break records and unlock the secrets of science. I'm reluctant to put all this on evil, just because.

So let's get to it. What actual argument could we make in favor of evil? I mean, if we really tried? It's a surprisingly simple one: Choice.

Let us try to envision a world where each person can perfectly predict the outcomes of their actions, and each person is perfectly altruistic. Each person would, necessarily, choose the actions which would lead to the best result for the most people. It wouldn't even be a question. It would be practically instinct - knowing what would produce the most good, you take that course of action, full stop.

Those aren't people. Those are robots. The ability to do good becomes meaningless when there is no choice to do so. It is the fact that we must choose to do good - sometimes over options that are easier, or more fun, or otherwise more satisfying - that makes the act of doing good significant.

Yeah, it's the usual "without evil, good loses all meaning" schtick, but it's true. Without the option to do what is selfish, what is cruel, what is excessive, the choice to be selfless or compassionate loses significance.

This is the ultimate value evil brings. It brings freedom. It gives you a choice. "You can do the right thing. You probably know what it is. But, on the other hand, you could do this. It's your call."

It's really that simple.

Donnadogsoth

2017-05-02, 11:26 AM

Count me as degraded then (and happily so!), because we're most definitely animals. Animals who are, comparative to other known exemplars, very good at some short term very greedy optimization, but definitely animals. We act to maximize our resource security, physical comfort, and secure competitive advantage for our offspring. Your vaunted 'creative economic development of the Universe' is really just a fancy way of saying exactly that, but this is in no way distinct in type from the behavior of most to all animals. We're just better at imagining the outcomes of different actions before we take them, and so take more effective actions than your average bear.

If we are meaningfully distinct from other animals, I'd argue it's because we at least have the theoretical capacity to limit our population growth and energy consumption so as not to exceed our carrying capacity and so avoid suffering the generally unpleasant consequences thereof. Therefore a person who chooses to not have children, or eat meat, or consume this that or the other completely unnecessary thing is much farther from being a 'mere' animal than those running around trying to maximize human population and resource consumption. Mind, as a species we seem to be genuinely terrible at actually doing this, so the distinction may very well be academic.

As I said, taxonomically you're correct, metaphysically you're not. We represent a new development in the negentropic increase of power usage in the biosphere, one premised on the willful increase of carrying capacity, to no known principled limit, through successive discoveries of principle. Thereby, a “spiritual” or mental/cognitive cause, leads to profound physical changes in the world. In V.I. Vernadsky's terminology, we, and we alone, generate a “noösphere” or cyberneticisation of the biosphere, through our willful mental action. Nothing else does this, not even close. If they did, they would be one of us. To equate this to what animals do is like saying that both you and your favourite TRPG manual are the same because “we both exist”.

Note that you mischaracterised my argument as “trying to maximize human population and resource consumption.” We are not trying to maximise human population in absolute numbers, but potential population density as an example of a measure of power to survive. The resource consumption associated with survival naturally changes during this process, and the use of certain commodities may decrease as their use is obsoleted, such as a fusion economy no longer needing to burn coal to generate electricity.

2D8HP

2017-05-02, 11:46 AM

Oh, wow, I have been busy for awhile. Somehow this thread completely slipped under my radar....

Thank you Red Fel, for your masterful command of the English language.

It is a privilege to read your posts.

Unlike many other posts on this thread, I didn't have to "Google" multiple words and phrases to try and follow along, only to give up in frustration.

It's almost as if you wanted to communicate with actual other people!

Careful it may spread.

Razade

2017-05-02, 03:01 PM

Thank you Red Fel, for your masterful command of the English language.

It is a privilege to read your posts.

Unlike many other posts on this thread, I didn't have to "Google" multiple words and phrases to try and follow along, only to give up in frustration.

It's almost as if you wanted to communicate with actual other people!

Careful it may spread.

Not to be rude here 2D but...you've admitted these aren't subjects you're familiar with. If the idea of reading up on subjects you're not familiar with when you come to a word or concept you don't understand is upsetting or frustrating for you then maybe you shouldn't invest the time? That's not a "get good" or "keep out of the clubhouse" comment. You're complaining that people are using words you don't understand and bemoaning the fact you have to actually...investigate them.

2D8HP

2017-05-02, 04:18 PM

...You're complaining that people are using words you don't understand and bemoaning the fact you have to actually...investigate them.

Yes.

The thread topic isn't about a movie I've never seen, or a game I've never played, it's one of general interest, and if in a single post (not one of yours) I count over five items (before I stop counting) that uses unfamiliar terms than I think that my breadth of knowledge is too limited, but when they're multiple such posts, one after another, it seems more and more that the writers need to please keep readers in mind, and not talk past us (or is it just me?).

Red Fel

2017-05-02, 04:24 PM

Razade

2017-05-02, 04:25 PM

Yes.

The thread topic isn't about a movie I've never seen, or a game I've never played, it's one of general interest, and if in a single post (not one of yours) I count over five items (before I stop counting) that uses unfamiliar terms than I think that my breadth of knowledge is too limited, but when they're multiple such posts, one after another, it seems more and more that the writers need to please keep readers in mind, and not talk past us (or is it just me?).

I'm not going to deny that there have been some posts that can't string a coherent sentence together. Bemoaning learning however seems to me a rather poor complaint. That baggage I talked about that makes this really difficult to talk about on this forum? Some of that baggage is just philosophical. Humans have been debating the topic for as long as there have been humans. There are entire Doctorate level courses on the concepts of evil. Sometimes you just have to pull your boots up and Google. Be glad you have it and (we're both of an age) that you'd have to go and look all this up at a library.

Can't you just let the teeming masses worship me in (momentary) peace? You know, as it should be?

Can't stop them. I will say though they're worshiping you for the same reason they'd worship anything else. :smalltongue: Not that that would bother you I suspect, being the object of worship.

pendell

2017-05-02, 04:31 PM

Oh, wow, I have been busy for awhile. Somehow this thread completely slipped under my radar.

Bravo, Red Fel. A well-written and well-reasoned post.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Knaight

2017-05-02, 07:21 PM

Not to be rude here 2D but...you've admitted these aren't subjects you're familiar with. If the idea of reading up on subjects you're not familiar with when you come to a word or concept you don't understand is upsetting or frustrating for you then maybe you shouldn't invest the time? That's not a "get good" or "keep out of the clubhouse" comment. You're complaining that people are using words you don't understand and bemoaning the fact you have to actually...investigate them.

While I'm generally sympathetic to the value of jargon, this thread in particular has more than a little meaningless drivel hidden behind poorly used technical terms. Jargon is being used to obscure and not communicate in said posts, and given that the arguments being made in said posts tend towards being ludicrous I suspect that the jargon is being used to import an unearned sense of authority. Criticizing that is valid.

Razade

2017-05-02, 07:23 PM

Red Fel

2017-05-02, 07:56 PM

While I'm generally sympathetic to the value of jargon, this thread in particular has more than a little meaningless drivel hidden behind poorly used technical terms. Jargon is being used to obscure and not communicate in said posts, and given that the arguments being made in said posts tend towards being ludicrous I suspect that the jargon is being used to import an unearned sense of authority. Criticizing that is valid.

This.

Fact is, I've been a teacher. That should leave you both unsurprised and horrified. And when it comes to teaching, simplicity helps.

Now, that's not to say terms of art are bad. Used properly, they elevate the dialogue and enable a more precise communication of thoughts. But used exclusively, they wall off the conversation, excluding the layman from getting involved. It's why, when I feel that I have to use terms of art, I always make sure to express the concept in plain terms as well, so that anybody can - and should - be able to follow along.

Again, I won't criticize the people using the jargon. If it helps you communicate clearly, use it. But remember that not everyone speaks that language, and if you want to open up the conversation, use Common too. Everyone has ranks in it by default.

Misereor

2017-05-03, 04:22 AM

I'm devoting this to an honest argument for the cause of evil. Obviously, the world would be awful if everyone was evil, and I don't want that to happen. However, I would say that evil is a necessary part of human society. Much of our modern technology is based on military technology. No evil, no war, no radios or advanced aircraft. Also, evil provides jobs for police, security officers, or guards. No evil, no police necessary, more unemployed. Evil pushes us to move forward as a civilization, whether in the form of a certain person or a force that can't be blamed as easily, like war. Depending on how evil is defined, the line between evil, good, and motivation becomes very thin. Is killing evil? Is killing an evil person evil? Is it better to stand aside? If they go out and kill a thousand others, was standing aside evil? Was it better to let them live?

A rule of halves applies.
Evil is a subjective term and therefore dynamic. If evil as we know it is exterminated, a new definition of evil will arise, derived from the new rules we live by.
In the end society will always have an average level of good. Everyone and everything you measure against this average will either be above or below average. The categorization may not be neat, but it is so implicit that we rarely notice it.

Frozen_Feet

2017-05-03, 05:19 AM

RE: "Jargon": it would help if you pointed out which words, specifically, are obscure, so that maybe the writers can attempt to explain or direct you to an explanation.

pendell

2017-05-03, 09:03 AM

FWIW, I don't mind the use of technical language or jargon in these posts; It's not like I don't have a dictionary available me at my desktop. When people use these words, I hit the books to find out what they mean, and thus I learn something new.

Be that as it may, I think that a debater such as Red Fel, who can put his meaning across in the plainest way possible, is more skilled and more persuasive than a person who cannot reduce his argument to plain language.

So while I learn more from the technical jargon, it's the plain language that is ultimately persuasive. At least, for me.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Razade

2017-05-03, 10:16 PM

Be that as it may, I think that a debater such as Red Fel, who can put his meaning across in the plainest way possible, is more skilled and more persuasive than a person who cannot reduce his argument to plain language.

You should probably work on fixing that. The way a person conveys their argument in no way tells you the validity of it.

veti

2017-05-03, 11:21 PM

You should probably work on fixing that. The way a person conveys their argument in no way tells you the validity of it.

Actually, I think it does.

Obviously not in the simplistic sense that "he's using shorter words, he must be right". But more broadly: if a speaker can't make their case in words that I can understand, then how can I accept it? I don't even know what it is.

Sure, I can go away and look up their fancy terms. But then how do I know that the definitions I look up are the same as those they're using? It's common for the same jargon words to have different meanings in related fields; this can catch out even experts sometimes, who think they know what a word means, but don't realise that in this specific context it's something else.

If your opponent presents arguments clearly and coherently, you need to be just as clear and coherent in your rebuttal. That's why "rhetoric" used to be part of the basic university syllabus.

Aliquid

2017-05-03, 11:44 PM

You should probably work on fixing that. The way a person conveys their argument in no way tells you the validity of it.Being persuasive is a completely different thing than being valid. You can be 100% right, but if you can't convey your message effectively... you are just talking to yourself.

Razade

2017-05-03, 11:45 PM

Actually, I think it does.

Obviously not in the simplistic sense that "he's using shorter words, he must be right". But more broadly: if a speaker can't make their case in words that I can understand, then how can I accept it? I don't even know what it is.

You go and find a way for you to understand it? Do you understand quantum gravity? No? Does that make quantum gravity wrong? No. It doesn't. Your inability to understand a concept doesn't make the concept wrong and if you accept that it's not true because you don't understand it...that says more about you and your values than it does about anything else. Ego is the word I believe.

Sure, I can go away and look up their fancy terms. But then how do I know that the definitions I look up are the same as those they're using?

Verification? Checking sources? Listening to the person again and finding words that sync up.

It's common for the same jargon words to have different meanings in related fields; this can catch out even experts sometimes, who think they know what a word means, but don't realize that in this specific context it's something else.

Again. The inability for the speaker to convey the information doesn't make the information wrong.

If your opponent presents arguments clearly and coherently, you need to be just as clear and coherent in your rebuttal. That's why "rhetoric" used to be part of the basic university syllabus.

Except that tells you nothing about the validity of their argument. All it tells is their capabilities as a debater. If someone gets up is nervous and can't explain the Theory of Evolution correctly that doesn't make the Theory of Evolution wrong. If someone stands up and is just amazing at elocution and oration but is arguing say...the Flat Earth Model that doesn't make him correct. I'm sure there's a name for this (because very fallacy has a name...I'll just say Argument from Charisma or Argument from Efficacy for now) I just don't know what it is.

Either way, it's fallacious.

Being persuasive is a completely different thing than being valid. You can be 100% right, but if you can't convey your message effectively... you are just talking to yourself.

It's not a crime to be bad at conveying your ideas. Not everyone can have a silver tongue.

Frozen_Feet

2017-05-04, 03:49 AM

2D8HP

2017-05-04, 06:56 AM

@Razade,

While you have used some jargon, your posts are mostly coherent, and you are not who I had in mind when I stated that "post after post" were incomprehensible in this thread.

For whatever it's worth, all of the last few posts have seemed clear to me.

Since I fear that if I single out examples of the posts I meant, I may be breaking Forum rules, I'll just repeat my plea to please keep readers in mind.

Red Fel

2017-05-04, 08:39 AM

It sounds like there's a bit of a talking-past-one-another going one.

I hear one side saying, "If your medium of communication is bad (i.e. unclear), it doesn't matter how good your message is." I hear the other side saying, "If your message is bad (i.e. false), it doesn't matter how good your medium of communication is." And I think you're both right, and I'm guessing you'd probably agree on both of those points.

Fact is, in an ideal world, both the medium and the message would be good. The words would be clear and comprehensible, the meaning logical and true.

But here's the thing. If you care enough about sharing your message, you make an effort to make it comprehensible. Obviously, this depends on your target audience; in a scientific journal, there is no real incentive to make your thesis easily understood by a lay reader. But we aren't in a scientific forum; we're in a forum where people are engaging from various backgrounds and knowledge bases.

Can the reader research the jargon, in order to elevate himself to the level of discourse? Possibly. Should the burden be on the reader to do so, or on the speaker to communicate more clearly? That's a debate.

But there's another point to be made. True, the way in which a person makes an argument has no impact on its validity. But it does have an impact on the reader's ability to challenge it. If I made an argument in such a way that you didn't understand, I could be right, I could be wrong, but you could never prove anything - because you didn't understand it. By contrast, if I made that same argument in the common tongue, you could challenge any part of it with which you disagreed.

Therein lies the value of a simply-phrased argument. Not in some sort of magical guarantee of veracity. But in the fact that, if you can understand it, you can determine its veracity for yourself.

Aliquid

2017-05-04, 09:17 AM

It's not a crime to be bad at conveying your ideas. Not everyone can have a silver tongue.No, but communicating with others is a waste of your time if you don't at least put some effort into conveying your ideas effectively.

pendell

2017-05-04, 11:00 AM

No, but communicating with others is a waste of your time if you don't at least put some effort into conveying your ideas effectively.

Precisely my point. Being correct and being able to communicate are too different things.

Also, my experience with mathematical proofs and so forth is that, the more convoluted and complex the proof, the more likely someone's dropped a decimal point or otherwise made a serious error which they are having to make ever larger and more complex logic to compensate for. When you find yourself having to write ever expanding logic to fit a proof, I've learned to intuitively look back and start looking for the fundamental flaw that's causing the break.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Razade

2017-05-04, 04:59 PM

Neither is it a crime to not go through lot of effort to understand half-assed communications. I'm too busy to go fetch self-quotes from tjhe Charging Bull / Fearless Girl thread, but there's a number of facets pertaining to communication when determining who, if anyone, is at fault for miscommunicating.

Nonetheless, it is true that sufficiently badly conveyed message makes it impossible to determine what the message even is.

No, but communicating with others is a waste of your time if you don't at least put some effort into conveying your ideas effectively.

Nothing I've said comes close to saying that these points aren't true. I was refuting someone saying that yes indeed it did matter how well the argument was presented to establish the veracity of a claim. Which is nonsense. I don't care about if it's a waste of time or not, I care if something's true.

@Razade,

While you have used some jargon, your posts are mostly coherent, and you are not who I had in mind when I stated that "post after post" were incomprehensible in this thread.

For whatever it's worth, all of the last few posts have seemed clear to me.

Since I fear that if I single out examples of the posts I meant, I may be breaking Forum rules, I'll just repeat my plea to please keep readers in mind.

I didn't think you were referring to me. I know who you were referring to. I think everyone but they know who you're referring to.

Trekkin

2017-05-04, 05:34 PM

I didn't think you were referring to me. I know who you were referring to. I think everyone but they know who you're referring to.

If you mean me (and you'd certainly have good reason to), I'm actually well aware I overuse jargon to an almost incomprehensible degree.

Razade

2017-05-04, 05:36 PM

If you mean me (and you'd certainly have good reason to), I'm actually well aware I overuse jargon to an almost incomprehensible degree.

Nope, not you. :smalltongue:

veti

2017-05-04, 06:08 PM

Nothing I've said comes close to saying that these points aren't true. I was refuting someone saying that yes indeed it did matter how well the argument was presented to establish the veracity of a claim. Which is nonsense. I don't care about if it's a waste of time or not, I care if something's true.

OK, I'll try just one more time.

If I can't understand your claim, then it may or may not be "true" (see below). I can't speak to that. But one thing it definitely isn't is, "established". Established implies an agreement, a meeting of minds, that hasn't happened because (at least) one party doesn't understand the claim.

As to the truth of the claim: even if it is "true" to you, it is not true (or false, for that matter) to me. Because truth or falsity requires meaning, and that meaning is absent to me.

Of course you can claim "that's absurd, truth isn't dependent on someone else's understanding". But I'm not talking about the absolute truth of your proposition, I'm talking about the truth of my understanding of it. Which is the only thing that is knowable to me, and indeed the only thing that matters to me.

Razade

2017-05-04, 07:16 PM

As to the truth of the claim: even if it is "true" to you, it is not true (or false, for that matter) to me. Because truth or falsity requires meaning, and that meaning is absent to me.

No. Just...just no. There is no "true for you". Truth isn't used as a synonym for opinion at this level of veracity. Truth (at this level of veracity) is that which comports with reality. Gravity isn't not true just because you don't understand gravitational physics. It's true because it is. A rock is a rock even if there's no one around to look at it. The speed of light is what it is, there's no interpretation on that. The speed of light isn't one thing for me and one thing for you. It's the same for both of us.

Of course you can claim "that's absurd, truth isn't dependent on someone else's understanding".

Truth is true regardless off who says it or if there's no one there to interpret it. Truth is simply what is. It's not conjecture.

But I'm not talking about the absolute truth of your proposition

Me neither.

I'm talking about the truth of my understanding of it. Which is the only thing that is knowable to me, and indeed the only thing that matters to me.

Yeah, there's no "Truth of your understanding". That's called opinion. And your opinions can be wrong. If you don't care what you believe comports with reality than...I don't even know why we're having this discussion. You're fine with the things you believe being untrue because all you care about is if it's understandable to you. That's how we get people like Flat Earthers. That's how we get Moon Landing conspiracies and conspiracies in general. Saying "well, I don't understand it so it can't be right but this thing I do understand makes sense so I'll just go with that". It's not an accurate way to learn about the world around you.

veti

2017-05-04, 07:46 PM

We're not talking about "Truth (at this level of veracity)", whatever that means. We're talking about words written on an Internet message board.

If you think that those words are absolutely and indisputably synonymous with "that which comports with reality", then - yep, I have nothing further to add.

Bohandas

2017-05-04, 08:05 PM

Strigon

2017-05-04, 09:57 PM

Regarding merits of evil, or at least non-good, it is often the case that one person's loss is another's gain,

It's also the case that often one industry must be allowed to fail in order for its superior replacement to flourish; can you imagine if they had tried to protect the livelihood of manual weavers in the wake of automated textile equipment, or lamplighters in the wake of the electric lightbulb?

Though admittedly this is, again, closer to simply "non-good"

Yeah, that's not even remotely Evil.
It's a completely Neutral action, at worst; inventing a superior good isn't Evil. The act of invention is entirely non-aligned.

However, in the case of Evil, one person's loss is rarely equal to another person's gain. Imagine a murder, if you will; you have the loss of a life, and everything that life would have produced. Theoretically, you even have the loss of future children, who would also have contributed to the world at large. That's a very serious loss, and what does the murderer gain? One less person he dislikes is in the world. That's a significant net loss.

Or imagine a burglary; anything the burglar has to dismantle is a net loss for society. He breaks down a door, we're out the value of one door. If he kills a guard dog, we're out the value of one guard dog. Even if he steals something without doing any damages, and sells it to a fence who then moves the item on the books for its full value, and taxes are paid on the item, society is still out. The time and energy it took to procure, transport and sell the item could have been better spent elsewhere. The effect is small, but it's there.

I can't think of any general case where Evil helps society. Specific examples, sure. But only specific actions, under specific circumstances. I certainly wouldn't call any of them necessary for society as a whole.

Bohandas

2017-05-05, 01:42 AM

A place where evil really has the potential to shine is war. Think of how much easier it would be to wage war if we didn't have to be concerned about civilian casualties

However, in the case of Evil, one person's loss is rarely equal to another person's gain. Imagine a murder, if you will; you have the loss of a life, and everything that life would have produced. Theoretically, you even have the loss of future children, who would also have contributed to the world at large. That's a very serious loss, and what does the murderer gain? One less person he dislikes is in the world. That's a significant net loss.

It's also the gain of everyone else who disliked them as well. And their rivals in business and those who hold opposing political opinions. You also have the loss of all the waste and folly the person may have produced, and the gain of any resources they may have consumed.

pendell

2017-05-05, 07:35 AM

OK, I'll try just one more time.

If I can't understand your claim, then it may or may not be "true" (see below). I can't speak to that. But one thing it definitely isn't is, "established". Established implies an agreement, a meeting of minds, that hasn't happened because (at least) one party doesn't understand the claim.

As to the truth of the claim: even if it is "true" to you, it is not true (or false, for that matter) to me. Because truth or falsity requires meaning, and that meaning is absent to me.

Of course you can claim "that's absurd, truth isn't dependent on someone else's understanding". But I'm not talking about the absolute truth of your proposition, I'm talking about the truth of my understanding of it. Which is the only thing that is knowable to me, and indeed the only thing that matters to me.

It appears to me we're talking about two different things: One is whether something is true or not, the second is the ability to persuade other humans to believe it.

As far as the first goes, very few truths are true all the time independent of the observer's frame of reference; I believe current science only recognizes the speed of light (10x8m/sec/sec) as the one constant that is the same in all frames of reference.

So far as ethical or moral problems go, in law this class of evil is called Malum In Se (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malum_in_se) -- that is, something that is evil and recognized as such by all humans. Murder, for example, is a Malum In Se evil. It's evil regardless of what humans think, and if there were no law it would still be evil.

But that's only a subset of what is considered "evil" or "crime" in society.

The other class of evils is called Malum Prohibitum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malum_prohibitum), "Wrong only because there's a law in our society against it; it wouldn't be wrong in some other culture".

Of this classes of wrongs, the most obvious examples are the speed limit, modesty laws requiring, say, women to wear all-encompassing garments, or a law requiring you to buy health insurance. There's no particular reason these things should be evil in another society -- and indeed, Germany's autobahn is legendary for its speed, far greater than any American highway.

So there are at least two classes of wrong: Those things which are evil in themselves, that are universally true in all human frames of reference, and those 'truths' which are merely culturally determined. It's a bit more than mere opinion because it's the common consensus of an entire culture, which may have persisted for thousands of years. But it's not a scientific fact, and what culture makes it can also unmake.

As toward the second -- Strange thing about humans; many of the same skills required to con or lie to them are also the skills required to convince them of something that is really true. Once upon a time, this was the skill of rhetoric (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric).

Knowing a truth is a good thing and benefits you, but to my mind truth that is not applied isn't terribly useful or beneficial. And if you want people to apply a truth you've got to convince them of it. So if you want to persuade a society (say), or even Uncle Ned, that something previously thought Malum in Se (such as women teaching men) is actually malum prohibitum, you're going to need to enlist rhetoric in this service. Rhetoric without truth is a lie, unworthy of our time. Truth without rhetoric is Cassandra weeping in Troy because no one listens to her.

I know for my part I don't especially appreciate it when commenters in an internet argument wax sarcastic, rude, patronizing, or just plain nasty. Even if the proposal they are holding out is true, they are making it difficult for me to consider their truth simply because they've metaphorically dipped the pill in horse droppings.

There's no reason to get nasty in one of these discussions anyway. It's not like the stakes are especially high in them, so why kick over the table just to score a cheap point?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Strigon

2017-05-05, 08:16 AM

A place where evil really has the potential to shine is war. Think of how much easier it would be to wage war if we didn't have to be concerned about civilian casualties

Yes, wars would be easier. But, considering civilians are the ones who usually make scientific advancements, do all the farming, and generally do everything that doesn't involve killing someone else. So any advancements in that area would be unlikely to balance out in the end.

It's also the gain of everyone else who disliked them as well. And their rivals in business and those who hold opposing political opinions. You also have the loss of all the waste and folly the person may have produced, and the gain of any resources they may have consumed.

That's all true. I would, however, say that the physical gain from an extra person is pretty much always superior to the peace of mind of whoever didn't like them. Besides, while their business rivals may be glad to have the competition gone, I would like to remind you that competition tends to breed higher standards of business. Without the extra competition, the deceased's rivals have less reason to provide higher quality goods and more reason to cut corners and jack up prices.

Also, in general, people give out more to the community in general than they take. That's the only reason society can progress; people produce more than they consume. If the person had a job, then economically speaking they were probably a net positive.

T-Mick

2017-05-05, 08:33 AM

If everything could be summed up in a sentence or two the world would be a better place. I think you need to brace yourself to the reality that concepts like Evil aren't going to fit on a post-it note. Mankind's only been arguing the point since we could write.

Let's do that.

"Little e evil" is wrong in context, but "Big E Evil" is just wrong.

Damn. I guess I'm going to need a bigger post-it note. Maybe if I just said "Evil is wrong," that'd fit better. Except that "wrong" has other meanings unrelated to evil, and "evil" is a word that we understand, and a concept we intuitively recognize. Even if Razade would prefer we use a softer word.

A Sophist.

Trekkin

2017-05-05, 10:55 AM

A Sophist.

Here is a thought, T-Mick. I hope I have used small enough words for it to count as "punchy."

Your intuition cannot guide you through things you do not intuitively understand.

I mean this in two senses. First, you and I and everyone live different lives. I cannot say how to ethically kill chickens. Most people cannot say how to ethically publish patient DNA sequences. No one has the wisdom to judge everyone. This is not sophistry. This has real implications. For example, when is it ethical to give a hard-of-hearing child a cochlear implant? I am sure you think you know. I wonder how you would know if what you think is wrong.

Second, there are people who do not have moral intuition. This includes people who cannot have it, like some sociopaths. These people are neither evil nor Evil nor wrong for existing, and cannot be simply ignored. They simply are. They can learn to act morally -- but not if morality starts and ends in your gut and all else is sophistry.

The world is more complex than you or anyone knows. Morality is likewise more complex than just not raping babies, and justice is harder than lynching what you dislike. Calling everything complicated "sophistry" is very easy and feels good. Developing a sense of Evil that can weather our uncertainty and extend to what we cannot imagine is hard. It is also needed.

If our morality can tell us nothing we do not already know, what good is it?

Razade

2017-05-05, 03:07 PM

Let's do that.

"Little e evil" is wrong in context, but "Big E Evil" is just wrong.

Damn. I guess I'm going to need a bigger post-it note. Maybe if I just said "Evil is wrong," that'd fit better. Except that "wrong" has other meanings unrelated to evil, and "evil" is a word that we understand, and a concept we intuitively recognize. Even if Razade would prefer we use a softer word.

A Sophist.

Wow T-Mick, you done did good there buddy.

Except "Evil is wrong" still doesn't tell anyone what it is. I'm sure you know you can't define a thing by its explanation. Evil is a word people understand differently across cultures and in different contexts. No one on this planet has a shared definition of evil. I wouldn't prefer anyone to use any word. I'd prefer if you define the nonsense you're sprewing so we can come to some kind of understanding.

You of course just want to explain it away with "well, we all know evil is a thing" except we obviously don't. Or we wouldn't be having this conversation.

The only one engaged in sophistry is you T-Mick. Well and Donnadogsoth. The both of you. You in short, non-descriptive terms and Donna is a spew of meaningless alphabet soup.

2D8HP

2017-05-05, 03:31 PM

"Evil is for thee, but not for me."

I wish I could remember where I read this (fever dream?), but something that sticks in my mind, is a study of how "leaders" are selected.

IIRC, the researchers had invited many participants for a "project" and had asked each table to select "project leaders". Groups were set at tables with a pot of coffee.

At the tables the researchers had "salted" the groups with people who would act in certain ways.

1) Drink as much coffee for themselves, and leave little for the others ar the table.

2) Give their share of coffee to the others at the table.

3) Go to other tables, take the coffee there and bring it back to their table.

Those who stole coffee from other tables were overwhelmingly those the tables would choose as "leaders".

When I read that, I thought of Viking "ring-givers", warlords, and kings in history.

Evil committed to the "in-group" has long been considered evil, but evil done to those in the "out-group" have often been considered "good".

Perhaps someone with better "Google-fun", can shed more light on this.

Razade

2017-05-05, 03:33 PM

Yeah, no one thinks they're actually doing "evil". Or they wouldn't do it. From the worst despots to the simple mugger. They do the things because they want to and rationalize how it isn't wrong.

Frozen_Feet

2017-05-05, 04:27 PM

@2D8HP: you already know the most relevant search word: ingroups and outgroups. Tracking down the specific study will be a pain in the ass, most likely, but you can put the basic words in Wikipedia and spend rest of the evening reading articles as you hunt for references and more search keywords.

T-Mick

2017-05-05, 06:56 PM

Wow T-Mick, you done did good there buddy.

Except "Evil is wrong" still doesn't tell anyone what it is. I'm sure you know you can't define a thing by its explanation. Evil is a word people understand differently across cultures and in different contexts. No one on this planet has a shared definition of evil. I wouldn't prefer anyone to use any word. I'd prefer if you define the nonsense you're sprewing so we can come to some kind of understanding.

You of course just want to explain it away with "well, we all know evil is a thing" except we obviously don't. Or we wouldn't be having this conversation.

The only one engaged in sophistry is you T-Mick. Well and Donnadogsoth. The both of you. You in short, non-descriptive terms and Donna is a spew of meaningless alphabet soup.

That's a paraphrase of your wordy version.:smalltongue:

Razade

2017-05-05, 07:05 PM

That's a paraphrase of your wordy version.:smalltongue:

Yeah, this is. I get ya.

"Little e evil" is wrong in context, but "Big E Evil" is just wrong.

I still don't think either of those things are a thing. Big E or little e. No one's given me a convincing definition of evil. Even as simple as those are.

I don't know how this is hard for you. That's what other people mean by evil. I don't have a definition of evil because I don't think it exists. You do though and you've failed to define it. Which is why I said if it's just a stand in for wrong...I fail to see why we need to use the word evil. You're free to, I don't care what words you use. I don't care if you use any at all :smalltongue:

Bohandas

2017-05-05, 07:56 PM

T-Mick

2017-05-05, 07:58 PM

I still don't think either of those things are a thing. Big E or little e. No one's given me a convincing definition of evil. Even as simple as those are.

I don't know how this is hard for you. That's what other people mean by evil. I don't have a definition of evil because I don't think it exists. You do though and you've failed to define it. Which is why I said if it's just a stand in for wrong...I fail to see why we need to use the word evil. You're free to, I don't care what words you use. I don't care if you use any at all :smalltongue:

I have zero interest in defining evil. I want it acknowledged. If you can't see it, you're either twisted or playing word games. I'm hedging on the second for you, but hey, I don't know you. Either way, the kind of willful ignorance you try to pass off as the enlightened view is disgusting. Go preach it to the innocents in Mosul.

Trekkin

2017-05-05, 08:07 PM

Evil is good for countering other evil. Initiating evil os bad, but it's good to be able to answer spite with spite and violence with violence. You're not going to defend yourself and defend the innocent and win wars and destroy evil by being nice, you defeat evil by burning down Atlanta and dropping the Bomb on Nagasaki

Setting aside the conflation of war with evil (not that I like war, you understand), I'd contend that "being nice" can and has been far more effective at ending the underlying causes of war than military force alone. Killing people just makes everybody you don't kill want to avenge the new heroes you've given them until everybody's either dead or irrevocably committed to your destruction; it's much harder to rally people to oppose the folks repairing your infrastructure and treating your friends & family and so forth.

Then again, I'd contend that "winning" a war in any material sense, outside of petty stupid tribalism, entails as little fighting as possible anyway.

Razade

2017-05-05, 08:11 PM

I have zero interest in defining evil. I want it acknowledged. If you can't see it, you're either twisted or playing word games. I'm hedging on the second for you, but hey, I don't know you. Either way, the kind of willful ignorance you try to pass off as the enlightened view is disgusting. Go preach it to the innocents in Mosul.

You can't acknowledge something you don't have a definition for. That's nonsense. You're asking for people to just agree with you without presenting your argument. You're making a value claim, you're passing judgement based off something you believe. You believe evil exists. You have a definition for it (you do, or you couldn't be arguing for it) and for some reason seem unwilling to share it. This "ho hum let others define it. I know it when I see it" argument is vacuous. As for the rest...I never claimed enlightenment. That's...no where once have I claimed the superior position. I've asked for a definition.

And boy has that got you all out of sorts. Asking you to define this word you want to wank over got you all hot and bothered such that you're trying to tell me I'm "disgusting" even though we agree that murdering innocents is wrong. We both agree rape is wrong. But because I ask you "What do you mean it's evil", well that sure did interrupt your epistemological masturbation. If that makes me disgusting to you well...means about as much to me as your definition of evil.

T-Mick

2017-05-05, 08:31 PM

You can't acknowledge something you don't have a definition for. That's nonsense. You're asking for people to just agree with you without presenting your argument. You're making a value claim, you're passing judgement based off something you believe. You believe evil exists. You have a definition for it (you do, or you couldn't be arguing for it) and for some reason seem unwilling to share it. This "ho hum let others define it. I know it when I see it" argument is vacuous. As for the rest...I never claimed enlightenment. That's...no where once have I claimed the superior position. I've asked for a definition.

And boy has that got you all out of sorts. Asking you to define this word you want to wank over got you all hot and bothered such that you're trying to tell me I'm "disgusting" even though we agree that murdering innocents is wrong. We both agree rape is wrong. But because I ask you "What do you mean it's evil", well that sure did interrupt your epistemological masturbation. If that makes me disgusting to you well...means about as much to me as your definition of evil.

Are you getting frustrated?

I don't need to define evil, you and I both recognize it. I just use the right word.

Razade

2017-05-05, 08:38 PM

Are you getting frustrated?

Not at all! You're the only reason I've put the chair and noose away today.

I don't need to define evil, you and I both recognize it. I just use the right word.

No I don't. How do you know I do? Can you read my mind? If I recognized evil we wouldn't be having this conversation.

3rdSpawn

2017-05-05, 08:55 PM

Razade

2017-05-05, 08:59 PM

No, people cannot "see it", which is the very core of the problem, with evil being a difficult to define term. As a matter of fact what exactly is evil and what is not is a large topic for intercultural interaction and problems resulting from it.

T-Mick doesn't want to define evil though and that's all they'll say on the matter. Listen and believe, T-Mick shouts from the rooftops. But don't you dare ask for clarification. The Church of T-Mick doesn't allow for any of those "nuances" or "gray areas". That's sophistry. As opposed to what T-Mick is doing refusing to define terms. Asserting that people know what he's talking about without evidence and then calling out anyone who doesn't agree with him.

To simply call someone not blindly wanting to acknowledge your idea of evil disgusting is nothing short of trying to force them adhere to the same morale compass than you. You're painting in black and white.

It's actually an ad hom. But if I wanted to sit down and point out all of T-Micks fallacies we'd be here for a while. It's also sorta that "jargon" people are whining about.

Randomly mentioning some atrocity doesn't further you argument, on the contrary is comes off as a way to use an emotional appeal as opposed to logic.

Think of the children! Oh god will someone think of the children! T-Mick has been using appeals to emotion from the onset. It's ok though, emotions are good.

Aliquid

2017-05-05, 09:12 PM

Are you getting frustrated?

I don't need to define evil, you and I both recognize it. I just use the right word.SO, in your world moral dilemmas don't exist? Not only that but everyone in the world knows what the "right answer" is?

Razade

2017-05-05, 09:16 PM

SO, in your world moral dilemmas don't exist? Not only that but everyone in the world knows what the "right answer" is?

I imagine the reason T-Mick is saying this is something we can't discuss on the board. Religious reasons, if I had to guess.

T-Mick

2017-05-05, 10:16 PM

Again, I am not interesting in defining evil. I'll add that I'm not interested in anyone buying my idea of it. I want you to acknowledge the reality of evil. As a tangible thing that happens every day.

The existence of grey areas do not stop evil.

The existence of moral dilemmas does not stop evil.

Morality is complicated and cultural. Doesn't stop evil. Sometimes makes it worse.

Philosophical discussion of evil is useful. When philosophy hides evil, out the door it goes. Philosophy that denies evil has no basis in reality.

Razade

2017-05-05, 10:25 PM

T-Mick. I want you to acknowledge the existence of the pixies in my dresser. I'm not going to define them, I have 0 interest in defining them. I want you to acknowledge their reality. That they're tangible and interact with the world every day.

The rest is just circular reasoning and special pleading. Presuming the existence of something and then arguing for it is not a logical argument. All you're looking for is for people to agree with you without providing evidence or explanation. Every point you can raise can have "evil" swapped with anything else and be just as valid.

T-Mick

2017-05-05, 10:53 PM

And if you want to know the reasons I'm saying this, it's very simple.

The most extraordinary evil is committed by ordinary people. The people responsible for the mass killings in the twentieth century were drawn from the ranks of the everyday citizens.

They did not recognize evil when it was right in their face. The people operating the Nazi crematoria believed they were purifying Germany to make room for a greater and better Germany. 10 million dead in the Russian Revolution? 20 million dead in the Chinese Revolution? They did it out of loyalty, they thought they were doing the right thing. Ordinary people.

Guess what? They were better at it than the psychopaths.

Some of those ordinary people recognized evil, and did not take part in it. One soldier in My Lai shot off his toe to get out of participating in the massacre. In Auschwitz, one newly arrived SS officer was horrified to see what was going on. He requested to be transferred immediately. I want more people like that.

People didn't recognize the big evils, and the result was that they kept on happening. What about the small evils? Here's a working definition of evil: Evil is breaking into a man's house. Evil is murdering him and his wife. Evil is kidnapping and torturing his daughter. Oh dear, too much? Evil is taking a young child between two soldiers. One hits him with the butt of his rifle, and he staggers towards the other. The second one hits him with the butt of his rifle, he staggers the other way. Meanwhile, a team of scientists take notes on the effects of trauma to the head.

We recognize these intuitively as evil. Yeah, yeah, some of us are queasy about that word. F***ed up is better. We say all sorts of things are f***ed up. I'd venture most of them aren't evil. I've heard f***ed up jokes. "Evil" is specific. Got some baggage? Sure. Conceptually vague? No more than any other abstraction, and considerably less vague than "f***ed up." The baggage is useful some days. If it isn't, leave it behind. And for the purpose of clear communication, "evil" is the best word.

Some people think evil violates a higher philosophical commandment. Maybe it puts us out of the good graces of whatever benign god in favor of a malignant deity. Maybe it deprives people of their humanity. Whatever, I'm sure those are useful. I'm only interesting in people recognizing the real and tangible existence of evil. Recognizing evil is part of stopping evil.

Bohandas

2017-05-05, 11:26 PM

Evil and good are socio-intellectual constructs, like love, justice, sovereignty, the value of money, the value of gold, gender (but not sex), etiquette, dignity, and just about any other abstract concept. They can't exist independently of a thinking intellect any more than a virus can live independently of a host cell

When the Way is lost there was ‘virtue’; When 'virtue' is lost there is benevolence; When benevolence is lost there is rectitude; When rectitude is lost there are rites, and these are merely apparitions. All things are empty of intrinsic existence and nature. Vanitas vanitatum. Omnia vanitas.

Razade

2017-05-05, 11:49 PM

*Snip*

The reality T-Mick (outside of your yet again fallacy riddled diatribe) is that you're not interested in a discussion. You're interested in giving a sermon. Listen. Believe. You're not interested in a logical discussion, you're interested in emotionally charge rhetoric. You yourself have said you're not interested in defining things. You're just interested in people agreeing with you. When they don't, you're interested in asserting, without evidence, that they're just lying. That they would agree with you if they weren't trying to be deceptive. It's unleaded horse crap. Your working definition of evil, where breaking into someone's home and the murder of millions are equal, is almost as bad as Donna's. It's a trivial explanation that doesn't actually give you any sort of information what so ever. There ARE hard questions out there. There are difficult realities we have to accept and even more difficult questions to be asked because of them. Sitting around saying "let someone else do those things, let's pass judgement on those who question" seems to me a rather poor way of discovering anything or finding conclusions to anything.

Bohandas

2017-05-06, 12:01 AM

Some of those ordinary people recognized evil, and did not take part in it. One soldier in My Lai shot off his toe to get out of participating in the massacre. In Auschwitz, one newly arrived SS officer was horrified to see what was going on. He requested to be transferred immediately. I want more people like that.

People didn't recognize the big evils, and the result was that they kept on happening. What about the small evils? Here's a working definition of evil: Evil is breaking into a man's house. Evil is murdering him and his wife.

What if...you went back in time and stabbed the [expletive deleted] out of Hitler and Eva Braun?

EDIT:

On reflection, I suppose this would fall into the category of lesser evil/necessary evil/good-evil that I was talking about earlier.

Razade

2017-05-06, 12:05 AM

Trekkin

2017-05-06, 12:20 AM

Well, why stab Braun. All she's guilty of is having crappy standards for the men she dated. Killing Hitler though, hard to argue against killing one person in the light of six million. Even if it wasn't Hitler, I'd personally make that call and sleep well at night. One life to save six million? It's a non-question.

That depends, of course, on the necessity of killing the one to save the sixeleven million, which itself highlights the artificiality of the moral dilemmas people love to pose. I accept that, for certain definitions of evil, it's a necessary possible outcome of free choice, but not when railroaded into making the paladin fall, so to speak.

veti

2017-05-06, 01:38 AM

That depends, of course, on the necessity of killing the one to save the sixeleven million, which itself highlights the artificiality of the moral dilemmas people love to pose. I accept that, for certain definitions of evil, it's a necessary possible outcome of free choice, but not when railroaded into making the paladin fall, so to speak.

What if killing Hitler wouldn't save those millions? What if, in the alternate history you beget, Stalin invades Europe and purges it instead? The categories of people to be killed would be different, but the overall number of deaths probably wouldn't be that much lower. Maybe more, by the time you factor in the revised version of WW2.

Kill Stalin as well? Now you're looking at power vacuums in two major, unstable countries. Not a happy picture. Why not just kill everyone and invade Poland yourself?

Razade

2017-05-06, 02:02 AM

What if killing Hitler wouldn't save those millions? What if, in the alternate history you beget, Stalin invades Europe and purges it instead? The categories of people to be killed would be different, but the overall number of deaths probably wouldn't be that much lower. Maybe more, by the time you factor in the revised version of WW2.

Kill Stalin as well? Now you're looking at power vacuums in two major, unstable countries. Not a happy picture. Why not just kill everyone and invade Poland yourself?

That is the problem with hypothetical questions. You can always propose another.

Frozen_Feet

2017-05-06, 04:46 AM

Since T-Mick is doing such a poor job standing for intuitionist view of evil, let me give a helping hand:

"Evil is that which you strongly feel ought not to be done or ought to not have been done before you have had a chance to reason why it ought to not be done or ought to not have been done."

For example, Razade's comment about killing Hitler in favor of allowing the Holocaust proves Razade has a sense of right and wrong, of good and evil. I'd now expect him to engage in a long-winded argument, very reasoned of course, how he does not use or would not to use words "good" or "evil". But it would be completely besides the point, as intuition and emotion precede analytical thinking. I have every reason to believe that if I started performing random (to me) evil acts before Razade, we would rather quickly find things he intuitively balks at. At that point, all of Razade's attempts to analyze or rationalize those feelings away would not describe the actual process of his intuitions; he would be wrong about himself.

Now, some philosophic poster might ask: "but how do we know that what people intuitively feel is evil matches with the real evil?" This presupposes 1) an existence of "real evil" which precedes intuition and 2) that it matters.

There might not be a "real evil" before intuition, but this demonstrably does not stop people from having moral intuitions, nor does it stop them from forming consensuses nor living their lives. Neither existence nor non-existence of "real evil" can hence be argued to be all that significant to human life.

Now, I already see this getting back on the stupid track of "but what if my intuition differs from your intuition?" Realize that the exact same question, as well as everything said above about moral intuitions, applies to sight and color intuitions. Most people have no ability to analytically and correctly describe how and why they see. Their body and brains knows how to collect and interprete visual signals into comprehensible patterns without their conscious minds having a say in it. In fact, if you cut across history of ocular science and contrast old theories of sight with modern ones, you will rapidly find that the best, most rational minds of their time were absolutely incorrect about how and why human beings could see. Yet this didn't prevent them, nor anyone else, from seeing or agreeing upon colors.

The best most people can do to define colors, such as, say, red, is through reference and association. "Red is color of strawberries." "Red is color of blood." If you know enough of the science of strawberries or blood, you can nitpick such examples to the end of your days. You can even argue colors are subjective, non-inherent things and no-one sees red in the same way. Yet, people still, demonstrably, observably can and do agree on which things are red. You haven't proven non-existence or non-functionality of color intuitions, you've just proven that human intuition can in real time achieve consensus faster than your tortured logic could.

Now, if you still want to press it, you might latch onto a blind or color blind person. But hands up: is anyone here willing to use such people as proof that colors don't exist? Why, then, would you use people with dysfunctional moral intuitions to prove evil doesn't exist?

3rdSpawn

2017-05-06, 05:20 AM

Now, if you still want to press it, you might latch onto a blind or color blind person. But hands up: is anyone here willing to use such people as proof that colors don't exist? Why, then, would you use people with dysfunctional moral intuitions to prove evil doesn't exist?

Not only do you try to compare a definable attribute (reflecting a certain spectrum of right) to a social construct, you also come dangerously close to calling some people born evil.
People don't see color differently because it vividly changes, but because that's due to a difference in perception. Red always stays the same physical attribute, no matter how it's percieved. Different people can do the science and come to the exactly same conclusion, despite their receptory organs having differences.

To call people whose actions don't align with your moral compass evil would assume that your either know what's right yourself, or already have found a way to absolutely define evil via something else, so you could reference it. That certain would make yourself or whatever nebulous source you'd want to cite the arbiter of morality. When was the last time anybody with such ideas didn't end up in a horrible mess?

Razade

2017-05-06, 05:20 AM

Since T-Mick is doing such a poor job standing for intuitionist view of evil, let me give a helping hand:

T-Mick refuses to define his position, so he's not so much doing a poor job as not doing the job at all. :smalltongue:

Before we start though can I just point out that Intuition isn't the basis for logic because your intuition is fallible and thus cannot provide you with enough information in which to form a cohesive system of...anything? Cause I'd like to.

For example, Razade's comment about killing Hitler in favor of allowing the Holocaust proves Razade has a sense of right and wrong,

I'd hope that that's evident by me agreeing rape and the unjust killing of innocents are both wrong. :smalltongue:

of good and evil.

Not so fast!

I'd now expect him to engage in a long-winded argument, very reasoned of course, how he does not use or would not to use words "good" or "evil".

I freely admit I can bloviate with the best of them. However as pointed out it's not that I reject the words. It's that I fail to see the words being justified in light of

1. No one being able to agree on a definition.

2. The baggage, religious or otherwise.

Good and evil are fine words to use colloquially. It's when, inevitebly, people want to start saying what they are that I have a problem. Hence the dilineation between Big E/G and little e/g. I'll try to keep things very short and to the point for you though. :smallsmile:

We can say Immoral and Moral though. Totally on board with those. Will that make you happy? Because I'd like you to be happy. You being happy and healthy is moral, in my eyes.

But it would be completely besides the point, as intuition and emotion precede analytical thinking.

Yeah. That's why arguments from emotion and appeal to intuition or "feel it in your gut" are both logical fallacies. Neither of them are fully capable of giving you any assured pathway to truth. You need to plug them into logic.

I have every reason to believe that if I started performing random (to me) evil acts before Razade, we would rather quickly find things he intuitively balks at.

Try me. Bet you fail by number three. :smalltongue:

At that point, all of Razade's attempts to analyze or rationalize those feelings away would not describe the actual process of his intuitions; he would be wrong about himself.

Well no. You stabbing me doesn't negate there being a rational argument. It just means I can't lodge one at the moment. Which makes sense for a biological being like me. Stab me, fight or flight takes over. The rational mind stops as its flooded with chemicals. A brain is distress isn't capable of logic. Or reason. A brain in distress is not a useful brain when arguing the merits of "please don't stab me in the face Frozen Feet".

The rest...the rest really is just mitigated by the fact that intuition and perception do not a logical system make. If a sense of good and evil were real as you assert we'd be able to build a machine to sense them. Just like we can build a machine to sense light. Or heat. Or wind. Or electrons or any other particle. No one's built an Evil Detector. Except you think we're all biological evil detectors. But that's probably the most amusing thing you've said in...well I won't accuse you of being long winded.

People don't have an innate sense of right and wrong and the evidence is literally the last ten thousand years of human experience. Or at least, it's evidence that if we do it's a really shoddy sense and like all our other methods of perception should be shucked aside because our senses CAN LIE. Morals change. Morals evolve. Morals differ from culture to culture and age to age. If we had an innate sense we wouldn't see that. We just wouldn't. You can say "well every culture thinks theft is wrong" but...they don't and they haven't. Thousands of cultures have benefited bigly from theft. Theft of land. Theft of resources. Theft of people. You can say that every culture thinks rape is wrong. They don't. There are cultures today that don't think rape is wrong. In the year 2017 there are cultures that are fine with rape. There were a lot more back in ye olde times. You can say that every culture thinks slavery is wrong. I'm afraid I'll just have to laugh at you if you do. You can say that every culture things killing is wrong. I think we both know that's not true. Human history is filled with bloody conflicts and the cultures at large didn't think they were wrong.

Every example of a moral a person can have, there has been a person or society that has disagreed. That and that alone is enough to refute...anything you have to say on the matter in regards to how one can innately intuit good and evil. The preponderance of evidence is against you.

But hey. We're both moral people regardless of why we believe we have them. I think that's good enough. Unlike T-Mick I don't think you're disgusting for disagreeing with me.

T-Mick

2017-05-06, 07:09 AM

The reality T-Mick (outside of your yet again fallacy riddled diatribe) is that you're not interested in a discussion. You're interested in giving a sermon. Listen. Believe. You're not interested in a logical discussion, you're interested in emotionally charge rhetoric. You yourself have said you're not interested in defining things. You're just interested in people agreeing with you. When they don't, you're interested in asserting, without evidence, that they're just lying. That they would agree with you if they weren't trying to be deceptive. It's unleaded horse crap. Your working definition of evil, where breaking into someone's home and the murder of millions are equal, is almost as bad as Donna's. It's a trivial explanation that doesn't actually give you any sort of information what so ever. There ARE hard questions out there. There are difficult realities we have to accept and even more difficult questions to be asked because of them. Sitting around saying "let someone else do those things, let's pass judgement on those who question" seems to me a rather poor way of discovering anything or finding conclusions to anything.

Murder, rape, and torture are the small evils. Mass killings are the big ones. Refusal to recognize either as evil lets them happen.

Let me recap your position. You recognize the existence of right and wrong. You distinguish between moral and immoral. But you do not recognize evil, because you "fail to see the word being justified in light of: 1. no one being able to agree on a definition, and 2. the baggage, religious or otherwise."

I'm sorry. Barring the Latinate words all muddled up in English, could we find the word that everyone can agree on the definition of? I know a young student who uses "article" to refer to short stories. In his mind, that word encompasses that meaning. Language works that way.

Believe me, I know words have baggage. Every day I struggle with how to deal with one language's baggage compared to another's. When baggage is a problem, you sometimes have to put a footnote. " 'evil' here is meant in the purely behavioral sense, bereft of its theological connotations." Is that hard to do?

You see, my issue with you, Razade, is not that I think you're a disgusting amoralist plotting some latest scheme of depravity, which could be stopped if only I made an emotionally persuasive enough appeal. My issue is the word, and the recognition the word gives to reality. You do recognize evil. When we give examples of evil, you recoil from being misunderstood as their defender. You see that they are wrong. It upsets you when lesser evils are made equivalent with greater evils. You define yourself as a moral person. It's just that word. Not using the word hides evil. The last thing we need is evil to have a place to hide. Not using the word where it applies is disgusting.

You can't accuse me of not defining my position, only of not defining my word. I define words with examples. There is no other way of defining things that is not inherently flawed. Language without reference to reality is useless.

Short version: You don't like the word evil. You need to get over yourself.

pendell

2017-05-06, 07:58 AM

Setting aside the conflation of war with evil (not that I like war, you understand), I'd contend that "being nice" can and has been far more effective at ending the underlying causes of war than military force alone. Killing people just makes everybody you don't kill want to avenge the new heroes you've given them until everybody's either dead or irrevocably committed to your destruction; it's much harder to rally people to oppose the folks repairing your infrastructure and treating your friends & family and so forth.

Then again, I'd contend that "winning" a war in any material sense, outside of petty stupid tribalism, entails as little fighting as possible anyway.

I like this quote I saw on the Erfworld forums: Between war and hell, war is worse. Hell doesn't have innocent bystanders.

It's not just enemy soldiers who die in war. It's also people at the wrong wedding party, children picking up unexploded ordinance, people in the building above a command bunker, children starving to death in a blockade or embargo (see Grave of the Fireflies) , or just chimney sweeps working in Rotterdam, or Coventry, or Dresden, or Hiroshima on the day some government decides to punish another with saturation bombing.

No, there's not much good about war. There are times it may be necessary, but it is never something to call "good".

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Frozen_Feet

2017-05-06, 08:50 AM

Not only do you try to compare a definable attribute (reflecting a certain spectrum of right) to a social construct...

Non-sequitur. "Defineable attribute" is not antonym to "social construct". English is a social construct; it is also defineable and even posters who cannot formulate a solid definition of English in the abstract can correctly identify that we're writing in English based on prior experience.

In addition, I gave you a definition of evil. If you want to maintain that evil is undefineable, you must prove that either what I gave you is not a definition, or that the definition is wrong. You have done neither.

... You also come dangerously close to calling some people born evil.

This is absolutely irrelevant to my argument and I wonder why you think it even matters.

People don't see color differently because it vividly changes, but because that's due to a difference in perception. Red always stays the same physical attribute, no matter how it's percieved. Different people can do the science and come to the exactly same conclusion, despite their receptory organs having differences.

1) the concept of red predates any ability of humans to scientifically define it. The definition of red as a specific wavelength of light is post-hoc rationalization for an intuitive, linguistic and ultimately arbitrary concept.

2) "Red always stays the same physical attribute, no matter how it is perceived" only applies to red light, without taking into consideration how red light interacts with objects and human perception. See, for example, how humans are capable of identifying a tomato as red, even when due to absence of light the tomato is actually visually blue, or black.

3) This whole science of colors is only possible because humans shared color intuitions before they had ability to do science. If humanity lacked sight or if the prevailing conditions had not supported construction of color terms, we would never have bothered with the concept of red and would never have affixed any meaning to a certain wavelength of light. As a matter of fact, to this day there exists tribes of humans who have no words nor concepts of "red", and they do not specially distinquish between red objects. The same is true, to lesser or greater extent, of all colors. See "Color terms" in Wikipedia or similar to fish for articles.

5) In short, when you say "red is this wavelength of light" or "we can scientifically prove this wavelength of light exists", you aren't even talking about the same things as I am. I am talking about how humans can intuitively identify things as red before their conscious mind has even been introduced to concepts such as "wavelength of light" or "science". The same goes for evil. I already noted that the existence of "real red" and "real evil" as something existing before intuition are not specially relevant.

Do you have an argument for why it is specially relevant, or are you happy to just keep talking past me?

To call people whose actions don't align with your moral compass evil would assume that your either know what's right yourself...

It takes a specially demoralized person to never decide they know when something is right, and a specially spineless person to never decide someone who offends them is wrong.

or already have found a way to absolutely define evil via something else, so you could reference it.

Non-sequitur. Long before I had any ability to absolutely define colors, I was able to experientially define them and observe when someone had poorer perception of colors than me. The same applies to morals. No-one needs to be a perfect moral operator nor do they need to have solved ethics to be able to judge people.

This is detached from the above discussion on moral intuitions. I'm merely taking a break from it to point out you are implicitly advocating a standard of behaviour that no functional human or group of humans ever applied to themselves. Even scientists are happy to use theories they know to be obsolete, incomplete or incorrect when they produce experiantially useful results, and are happy to call people wrong when they disagree with those obsolete, incomplete or incorrect laws. The exact same standard applies to ethics and law.

That certain would make yourself or whatever nebulous source you'd want to cite the arbiter of morality. When was the last time anybody with such ideas didn't end up in a horrible mess?

By the definition I just gave, all people with moral intuitions are arbiters of morality. Your vague category of "anybody with such ideas", when formulated in response to me, is hence broad enough to cover all people who ever made a moral judgement of anyone, ever.

In which case the answer to your question "when was the last time...?" is "today", and by all probability people have been doing it daily and continuously from the dawn of time. Unless your conception of "a horrible mess" is likewise broad enough to cover all human endeavors.

Even more hilariously, your wording suggests you yourself are making a moral judgement of people who make judgements of other people. Or do you want to present me some standard where "horrific mess" is not a moral statement?

---

Razade's reply is long enough that I'll need to tackle it separately.

Trekkin

2017-05-06, 09:26 AM

Frozen_Feet

2017-05-06, 10:43 AM

T-Mick refuses to define his position, so he's not so much doing a poor job as not doing the job at all. :smalltongue:

He is very clearly advocating social intuitionist view of morals where you learn what is evil experientially based on your intuitions. ("I know it when I see it.") He's clearly been doing the moral equivalent of saying "red is the color of strawberries" throughout.

His position is clear, his ability to argue for it isn't.

Before we start though can I just point out that Intuition isn't the basis for logic because your intuition is fallible and thus cannot provide you with enough information in which to form a cohesive system of...anything? Cause I'd like to.

You can. It's not particularly relevant and to a degree it is empirically wrong. Humans rely on their intuitions constantly to live their lives. So do animals. Clearly, intuition is then sufficient enough to create a system of "do not do something which would kill me today" and "breed to create a new generation of critters", on a species level even if not always on the individual level.

If intuition was incapable of this, we'd be seeing a lot less life on this planet.

I'd hope that that's evident by me agreeing rape and the unjust killing of innocents are both wrong. :smalltongue:

Yes, it is reaffirming to know you can distinquish between good and evil despite going to lenghts to weasel out from using those words. :smalltongue:

Not so fast!

Which you are now about to demonstrate while making my prophecy self-fullfilling. Oh joy.

I freely admit I can bloviate with the best of them. However as pointed out it's not that I reject the words. It's that I fail to see the words being justified in light of

1. No one being able to agree on a definition.

2. The baggage, religious or otherwise.

1. People (who are these people anyway?) disagreeing is no reason on its own to cease to do anything, because people can be wrong. I bet you wouldn't use such feeble standard for anything else, so why do you advocate it for ethics.

2. I gave you a definition of evil which only has baggage of human moral intuitions, and already noted that morally wrong is synonymous with evil. Since you agree there is such thing as morally wrong, you are in implicit agreement with me, and are just wasting your time restating your dislike of specific words for it. Which, like said, is besides the point.

Which is why I can nix a couple of paragraphs from here without responding to them with good conscience.

Yeah. That's why arguments from emotion and appeal to intuition or "feel it in your gut" are both logical fallacies. Neither of them are fully capable of giving you any assured pathway to truth. You need to plug them into logic.

1) You seem to say I ought to use logic. But you can't use logic to make that statement, smarter men than either of us have tried and failed. You need something external to logic to make it. It would appear you are using your moral intuition to make this decision. Or do you have a third standard according to which to make this decision, external to logic and independent of your human intuition? I'm all ears.

2) In absence of such third standard, I have no reason to pay any attention to intuitive thinking being a logical fallacy.

Try me. Bet you fail by number three. :smalltongue:

I won't, because it's too much effort for an internet argument to seek you out physically to commit depraved acts under your nose. Also, you know, evil.

Well no. You stabbing me doesn't negate there being a rational argument. It just means I can't lodge one at the moment. Which makes sense for a biological being like me. Stab me, fight or flight takes over. The rational mind stops as its flooded with chemicals. A brain is distress isn't capable of logic. Or reason. A brain in distress is not a useful brain when arguing the merits of "please don't stab me in the face Frozen Feet".

If you think post-hoc rationalizations for why me stabbing you in the face is not evil are worth a damn, you deserve a Darwin Award. It's actually lucky for you your intuition would likely act faster than your conscious mind and act to stop me from stabbing you in the face.

The rest...the rest really is just mitigated by the fact that intuition and perception do not a logical system make.

It's not mitigated at all, because you have not offered any principle under which logic would be superior. You sure seem to like throwing around "reason" and "logic" in a way that implies you think they ought to be arbiters of morality, though.

Again: do you have some third standard under which to prove that logic and reason ought to be used? Or is it your axiom?

If a sense of good and evil were real as you assert we'd be able to build a machine to sense them. Just like we can build a machine to sense light. Or heat. Or wind. Or electrons or any other particle. No one's built an Evil Detector.

This is a nonsense argument based on a nonsense standard. For majority of human existence, we didn't have ability to make machines to sense most of those other things, we weren't even aware some of those things existed. Would you have argued, back then, that those things didn't exist?

The existence of machines to duplicate human behaviour, and our ability to build them, are both irrelevant.

But just to humour you: computer science has already reached the point where we have briefly simulated operations of a human nervous system on a supercomputer. This proves that in theory, even if not in practice, it is possible to electronically simulate the human brain. Such electronic brain would be able to develop moral intuitions just like a human, and consequently intuit moral verdicts just like a human.

So not only is your argument irrelevant, it is founded on a false assumption about our ability to build such a machine.

Except you think we're all biological evil detectors. But that's probably the most amusing thing you've said in...well I won't accuse you of being long winded.

Calling humans "biological evil detectors" is just a tongue-in-cheek way of saying "humans are living moral operators". Since you admit to having a sense of right and wrong, and you most likely are alive, you are have implicitly admitted to being "a living evil detector" yourself.

Unless you want to claim you are not alive, I suppose.

People don't have an innate sense of right and wrong and the evidence is literally the last ten thousand years of human experience.

Actually, social intuitionism rose to prominence because we did find empirical evidence of humans making moral judgements intuitively instead of rationally. But if you feel you can disprove findings of, say, Jonathan Haidt or modern neuropsychology, go ahead.

You invoking human experience as a backing for your argument is hilarious when big part of your rebuttal to mine was that human experience can be flawed. (Not that it was much of a rebuttal since I never claimed they were flawless, but eh.)

Or at least, it's evidence that if we do it's a really shoddy sense and like all our other methods of perception should be shucked aside because our senses CAN LIE.

"Shucking aside our methods of perception" is a nonsense standard because it is not actually feasible; without them, you have no knowledge or even potential for knowledge. Yes, they can be wrong...but unless you too want to argue for the nonsense standard that we can't do anything before being perfect, it's not actually good enough reason to abandon them.

Morals change. Morals evolve. Morals differ from culture to culture and age to age. If we had an innate sense we wouldn't see that. We just wouldn't.

So do color terms. So do perception of colours, both on individual and societal level. Yet human sight and ability to see colors is also encoded to us at a genetic level. Have you considered your counter-argument is founded on a poor and unsophisticated understanding of what innate qualities are and how they manifest in humans?

You can say "well every culture thinks theft is wrong" but...they don't and they haven't.

I didn't say that, I have no need to say that & my definition of evil doesn't require that, so why are you bothering with this line of argumentation?

In the year 2017 there are cultures that are fine with rape.

In the year 2017, there are also cultures which don't have colour terms beyond black and white. There are also blind and colour-blind people. I don't pay them much attention when debating colour theory. Why I should pay much attention to the people you mention when discussing ethics?

Every example of a moral a person can have, there has been a person or society that has disagreed. That and that alone is enough to refute...anything you have to say on the matter in regards to how one can innately intuit good and evil. The preponderance of evidence is against you.

As I already noted, "people disagree" is a nonsense refutation and nonsense standard of evidence, because people can be wrong, of both the world and themselves. If you want to argue against humans having moral intuitions, you have open to you the methods of science and criticism of modern psychology, neurology, sociology etc.. But do not waste your time coming to me with this "people disagree" nonsense.

Frozen_Feet

2017-05-06, 11:35 AM

This is not only a bad definition of evil, it's a dangerous one -- and I think it explains a lot.

Well if actually explains something, it means I'm closer to truth than most. :smalltongue:

Saying you feel evil ought not to be done is one thing. Saying that everything you don't want to happen is evil is unjustifiably giving your preferences the weight of a moral imperative.

Remember the distinction between intuitive and analytical thinking. My definition didn't merely say "evil is what you think ought not be done", it said "evil is what you strongly feel ought not be done before you've had a chance to reason why".

People are perfectly capable of claiming something ought to not be done based on reasoning, despite not actually feeling strongly about it. The visible symptom of this is hypocrisy; that is, people acting against their stated moral beliefs when it is convenient for them. People are likewise perfectly capable of reasoning away their feelings to do something they dislike. The visible symptoms of this are guilt, shame, regret and the elevated levels of stress and anxiety to go with them.

I'd also question this word, "unjustified". Mostly because you've yet to explain to me why a person would be more justified in giving weight to anyone else's intuitions.

Consider, for a moment, all the people with very strong views about who we should allow to marry who. Your definition gives every bigot, zealot, and lunatic out there carte blanche to demand an end to everything they find distasteful because it's morally imperative.

It also gives me (and people like me) a carte blanche to demand end to all those other bigots, zealots and lunatics, so I don't see any problem here. :smalltongue:

But then, I think that's what they want; there's a definite correlation between the people who assert that evil can be intuited and frequent ad hominem assertions that everyone who does not agree with their views is insane, evil, or spineless. When their whole argument is "disagreement with me is evil", one wonders why they bother to argue at all.

Simple, we... errr, I mean, they argue to find likeminded individuals so they can group up and smite evil-doers together. Because despite constant claims to the contrary, people can intuit alike; that is more or less how you can have any co-operating units larger than one.

I'm glad you have been, though; I'd never thought of evil as a qualia before, but it makes sense.

I'm amazed by this. Consequentialist ethics are founded on ponderings of pleasure and pain, both of which are qualia; I would've thought that given ubiquitous "evil is subjective", arguments, everyone even mildly interested in ethics would've made the connection. It can be demonstrated that regardless of which theory of ethics you subscribe to, most things labeled "evil" are qualia people wish to avoid.

Bohandas

2017-05-06, 12:59 PM

What if killing Hitler wouldn't save those millions?

That's a good point. On reflection that kind of thinking (that I had presented) is arguably the result of Hitler's own propaganda presenting himself as a great and extraordinary man. In reality he was only one of many many interchangable protofascist pinheads that could have ended up on top when the movement solidified.

Still, even eliminating all of them would probably result in a large net reduction in body count.

S@tanicoaldo

2017-05-06, 01:03 PM

For me, if you see someone asking for help. They have been robbed and stabbed.

The good, will help.
The neutral will ignore. Also called non-good.
The evil will kick them again and take their shoes.
And the ugly… Oops wrong Thread.

But yeah, I can’t see how being evil can help humanity in the long run.

Aliquid

2017-05-06, 03:19 PM

Razade

2017-05-06, 03:49 PM

Short version: You don't like the word evil. You need to get over yourself.

You need to stop strawmanning people for one. For two, you need to stop demanding people agree with you without you proving anything. I'm fine with the word evil. I said as much in my last post. The rest of what you said I've already refuted and you have nothing else to add.

I like this quote I saw on the Erfworld forums: Between war and hell, war is worse. Hell doesn't have innocent bystanders.

This is a quote from M.A.S.H by the way.

You can. It's not particularly relevant and to a degree it is empirically wrong. Humans rely on their intuitions constantly to live their lives. So do animals. Clearly, intuition is then sufficient enough to create a system of "do not do something which would kill me today" and "breed to create a new generation of critters", on a species level even if not always on the individual level.

If intuition was incapable of this, we'd be seeing a lot less life on this planet.

I didn't say Intuition is useless. I said it doesn't get us to empirical data and that's what I'm asking for. Your "feelings" of evil don't mean jack ****ing **** to me.

Yes, it is reaffirming to know you can distinquish between good and evil despite going to lenghts to weasel out from using those words. :smalltongue:

As much as you'd like to portray me as being dishonest (ad hom) I'm not weasling out of anything. I'm asking for you to prove your damn argument.

Which you are now about to demonstrate while making my prophecy self-fullfilling. Oh joy.

I'm very clearly playing along. Have some fun, you long winded stick in the mud. :smalltongue:

1. People (who are these people anyway?) disagreeing is no reason on its own to cease to do anything, because people can be wrong. I bet you wouldn't use such feeble standard for anything else, so why do you advocate it for ethics.

I don't use it for ethics either. I'm using it to display that your thesis, that we have an innate sense, is wrong. This isn't hard to follow.

I was going to continue and respond to everything but I got to this....and....the rest doesn't really matter. A few other points along the way but over all if you're arguing what I think you're arguing here.

Again: do you have some third standard under which to prove that logic and reason ought to be used? Or is it your axiom?

Yeah, their continued demonstrable reliability. Are you arguing that we don't use logic and reason in our arguments which morality is one of? Are you saying we shuck it out? Because if so I'm done with this particular discussion with you. If you're arguing we don't apply logic to the world around us then there's no point in continuing with you.

Then I saw this

In the year 2017, there are also cultures which don't have colour terms beyond black and white.

No they don't. They literally do not. There is no culture that believes this. You're making **** up Frozen. Come on.

And then finally this.

There are also blind and colour-blind people. I don't pay them much attention when debating colour theory. Why I should pay much attention to the people you mention when discussing ethics?

Why should you pay mind to people who disagree with you? I don't know Frozen. To me, I like it when people disagree. I REALLY LIKE IT WHEN PEOPLE DISAGREE WITH ME.

It's great! Because than we can have a discussion and if I'm proven wrong? Well hot holy damn! I get to alter my world view and add another thing I believe which is true which I didn't believe before!! My perceptions. My intuition. They've changed! I see the world a little more correctly than I did before and that is a reason to celebrate and to be proud of. I seek it out. I spend most of my day listening to youtube videos and audiobooks and podcasts where not a single person believes the way I do. You may think that's a waste of time but not to me. Not to me.

Because even if they don't sway me? I've heard their arguments and I'm better suited to refuting them. I'm better able to say "no this is wrong because you've made this wrong assumption here and here" and hopefully. Hopefully. If they're just as intereted in the truth as I am they'll go "You're right Kyle. Thank you" and we'll both have come out of the conversation better. That's the WORST CASE SCENARIO. That I changed someone else's mind.

It's not that people have refutations of your arguments. It's that they simply disagree with you. And why would you need to listen to them. You're right Frozen. And people who are right don't have to trouble themselves with those pesky nay sayers.

Bohandas

2017-05-06, 03:54 PM

yes we have a gut reaction to something and know it is evil. The problem is that many people have a gut reaction to things that they see as really gross, or just "improper". And they lump that gut reaction in the same category as evil.
That is dangerous.

"Dangerous" isn't the word I'd use; I'd go with "evil".

EDIT:

Found a more apropos term in Fiendish Codex 1, "Confused and malevolent ignorance"

Razade

2017-05-06, 03:55 PM

"Dangerous" isn't the word I'd use; I'd go with "evil".

So you're...evil for not being able to detect evil from not-evil?

You people need some kind of pick me up. I didn't think I'd meet so many misanthropes on a social forum.

Devils_Advocate

2017-05-06, 03:57 PM

There is no "true for you". Truth isn't used as a synonym for opinion at this level of veracity. Truth (at this level of veracity) is that which comports with reality. Gravity isn't not true just because you don't understand gravitational physics. It's true because it is. A rock is a rock even if there's no one around to look at it. The speed of light is what it is, there's no interpretation on that. The speed of light isn't one thing for me and one thing for you. It's the same for both of us.

Truth is true regardless off who says it or if there's no one there to interpret it. Truth is simply what is. It's not conjecture.

Yeah, there's no "Truth of your understanding". That's called opinion. And your opinions can be wrong. If you don't care what you believe comports with reality than...I don't even know why we're having this discussion. You're fine with the things you believe being untrue because all you care about is if it's understandable to you. That's how we get people like Flat Earthers. That's how we get Moon Landing conspiracies and conspiracies in general. Saying "well, I don't understand it so it can't be right but this thing I do understand makes sense so I'll just go with that". It's not an accurate way to learn about the world around you.
Razade, you seem to have, however inadvertently, ignored veti's point. Your post only seems to make sense under the assumption that words have inherent meanings. If one instead proceeds from the assumption that there is no "what something really means" independent of what something is understood to mean, then it's possible for a single statement to have different meanings under different interpretations, or even no meaning at all. (Is "Jjijioyiaje jkfdklaj dklfh kiuhyopaf" true or false?) In such a case, where a single sentence means different things to different people, it may be that one meaning is true and another is false.

veti was talking about subjective correspondence between statements and reality, not due to subjective correspondence between beliefs and reality, but due to subjective correspondence between statements and beliefs. Your response seems to instead be about the correspondence between beliefs and reality. In which case you either missed or deliberately evaded the point.

If you do think that sentences have objective meanings, then what it the nature of objective meaning? How does it, like, work? That seems like a highly prescriptivist stance, to me; but you earlier self-described as a descriptivist. That leads me to believe that you somehow misunderstood veti's post.

Bohandas

2017-05-06, 04:05 PM

So you're...evil for not being able to detect evil from not-evil?

Evil for detecting evil where none exists. Therein lies the genesis of all the greatest recent historical evils: ISIS, Al-qaeda, the Klan, the Nazis, Stalinism, Islamophobia, and others

Razade

2017-05-06, 04:13 PM

Razade, you seem to have, however inadvertently, ignored veti's point. Your post only seems to make sense under the assumption that words have inherent meanings.

No. I'm pointing out that we use our words to explain things that exist in reality and that's why no matter the understanding of the words, they're explaining tangible things that are either true or not true. Something can't be both true and untrue. A rock can't not be a rock. A rock can't be both big and small. And I don't mean the words. I'm saying the things our words describe. Switch out all the words and you're still describing a phenomenon in the physical reality we both inhabit and we can investigate that. My failure to understand what your saying doesn't alter reality.

If one instead proceeds from the assumption that there is no "what something really means" independent of what something is understood to mean, then it's possible for a single statement to have different meanings under different interpretations, or even no meaning at all. (Is "Jjijioyiaje jkfdklaj dklfh kiuhyopaf" true or false?) In such a case, where a single sentence means different things to different people, it may be that one meaning is true and another is false.

Except that there's a true meaning the speaker is describing and that's what matters. If someone is on fire and they shout "hey! I'm on fire!" but you don't speak their language that doesn't make them not on fire. If someone is drowning but you're not drowning and they beg for you to save them and you go "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh....I'm not drowning so...you can't be drowning". You see the problem of course.

Also your example is either true or false. There is no inbetween. I just don't grok what you're trying to explain.

veti was talking about subjective correspondence between statements and reality, not due to subjective correspondence between beliefs and reality, but due to subjective correspondence between statements and beliefs. Your response seems to instead be about the correspondence between beliefs and reality. In which case you either missed or deliberately evaded the point.

Right, except when someone is saying something and making a truth claim it needs to comport with the reality they both share. A room is a certain temperature even if one person thinks its too hot and the other is too cold. This is why Frozen Feet's "intuition" argument fails. Because we all process reality in subtlety different ways. But reality isn't actually CHANGING. It's merely the perception.

If you do think that sentences have objective meanings, then what it the nature of objective meaning? How does it, like, work? That seems like a highly prescriptivist stance, to me; but you earlier self-described as a descriptivist. That leads me to believe that you somehow misunderstood veti's post.

I hope I clarified for you. Words are labels. They describe things in reality. The thing in reality doesn't change even if the label changes. When we use words, we try to accuretly describe the world around us. But it's not perfect because words aren't objective. They're descriptive. And descriptions are sadly based on faulty perception.

Evil for detecting evil where none exists. Therein lies the genesis of all the greatest recent historical evils: ISIS, Al-qaeda, the Klan, the Nazis, Stalinism, Islamophobia, and others

So it's evil to....detect something that isn't there. So it's evil to have a faulty sense? Colorblind people are evil because they can't see color? People with nerve damage are evil for not being able to feel sensations? People who can't taste are evil because they can't...taste things?

A broken sensor makes you evil. A broken evil sensor makes you evil. Gotcha. Yet another knockout, dragdown example of why evil doesn't seem to be a thing.

Bohandas

2017-05-06, 04:22 PM

Bohandas

2017-05-06, 04:23 PM

So it's evil to....detect something that isn't there. So it's evil to have a faulty sense? Colorblind people are evil because they can't see color? People with nerve damage are evil for not being able to feel sensations? People who can't taste are evil because they can't...taste things?

A broken sensor makes you evil. A broken evil sensor makes you evil. Gotcha. Yet another knockout, dragdown example of why evil doesn't seem to be a thing.

I already corrected myself in the initial post that a better description would be "confused and malevolent ignorance"

Razade

2017-05-06, 04:28 PM

Fire and water are tangible well defined things, good and evil are not. They are abstract and nebulous. You cannot touch them or hold them nor empirically measure them with any equipment you may have. Abstracts have no tangible form; Plato was a bit of a crackpot.

Math is abstract. It can be measured by physical things. Logic is abstract, it can be measured. Feelings are abstract, we can measure them.

If evil was as abstract as math we wouldn't be having this discussion.

This is just apologetics at this point.

By the way. When you say "it's abstract and nebulous" what you really mean is "subjective". I see you.

I already corrected myself in the initial post that a better description would be "confused and malevolent ignorance"

Oh that's...worse actually! People born with a disability are "confused and ignorant". How very progressive minded of you.

T-Mick

2017-05-06, 04:47 PM

You need to stop strawmanning people for one. For two, you need to stop demanding people agree with you without you proving anything. I'm fine with the word evil. I said as much in my last post. The rest of what you said I've already refuted and you have nothing else to add.

You forgot "For three, 'the reasons why my objections to 'evil' hold water under even the barest linguistic scrutiny.' "

Razade

2017-05-06, 04:50 PM

You forgot "For three, 'the reasons why my objections to 'evil' hold water under even the barest linguistic scrutiny.' "

If your argument was the last bucket on a sinking life raft I'd use it to beat my brains in as opposed to bailing water out. That's how little water it holds.

Devils_Advocate

2017-05-06, 05:16 PM

No. I'm pointing out that we use our words to explain things that exist in reality and that's why no matter the understanding of the words, they're explaining tangible things that are either true or not true. Something can't be both true and untrue. A rock can't not be a rock. A rock can't be both big and small. And I don't mean the words. I'm saying the things our words describe. Switch out all the words and you're still describing a phenomenon in the physical reality we both inhabit and we can investigate that. My failure to understand what your saying doesn't alter reality.
But veti -- to my understanding -- was talking about collections of words, rather than the states of affairs that those collections of words describe. The whole point is that "what a sentence describes" is ambiguous. (Right, veti? Or did I misunderstand you?)

Also... "You meant whatever you think you meant, but you said what your audience thinks you meant."

Except that there's a true meaning the speaker is describing and that's what matters.
You seem to be taking the position that meaning is entirely a matter of speaker intent. Well, I intend for the word "meaning" not to refer exclusively to speaker intent! And by your own standards, I don't see how you can fault me for that. How 'bout them apples? If that's the case, you can say "Words only mean what they're intended to mean" and I can say "Words can have meanings that weren't intended", and we're both right, even though we're apparently contradicting each other. Is that what you're advocating here?

Regardless, intended meaning is hardly all that matters; see below.

If someone is on fire and they shout "hey! I'm on fire!" but you don't speak their language that doesn't make them not on fire. If someone is drowning but you're not drowning and they beg for you to save them and you go "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh....I'm not drowning so...you can't be drowning". You see the problem of course.
Suppose that I see someone from Bizarro World flailing around in the water and that person shouts "I'm not drowning!", and as a result I don't do anything because I think everything is fine, and the person drowns. Or suppose that I'm flailing around in the water and I say "I'm drowning!", which the Bizarro World person takes to mean the opposite of what I intended. You see the problem, I hope.

Also your example is either true or false.
Are you seriously saying that "Jjijioyiaje jkfdklaj dklfh kiuhyopaf" is either true or false, rather than simply meaningless? Given that I didn't intend for it to mean anything, I would think it would be meaningless even by your standards.

There is no inbetween.
The assigning of truth values to gibberish aside, haven't you heard of fuzzy logic? How do you decide on the boundary between heap and non-heap (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox) using only binary logic, in a case where the speaker intended no specific boundary?

I just don't grok what you're trying to explain.
Ditto.

Right, except when someone is saying something and making a truth claim it needs to comport with the reality they both share. A room is a certain temperature even if one person thinks its too hot and the other is too cold. This is why Frozen Feet's "intuition" argument fails. Because we all process reality in subtlety different ways. But reality isn't actually CHANGING. It's merely the perception.
The problem is that "The temperature in this room is thirty degrees" could be interpreted to mean degrees Fahrenheit or degrees Celsius, and while the temperature could be neither, it definitely isn't both.

Razade

2017-05-06, 05:32 PM

You seem to be taking the position that meaning is entirely a matter of speaker intent.

No, I'm taking the position that there is a physical world we live in and the speaker is correct or incorrect on their ability to describe that world accurately. Regardless of the words they use. Independent of their intent or word usage.

Well, I intend for the word "meaning" not to refer exclusively to speaker intent!

Cool beans! What do you intend it to mean? Is it what I said I intend it to mean? Then we've got a conversation buddy! If not, we gotta keep working at this.

And by your own standards, I don't see how you can fault me for that.

I don't. We're both slapping meat together to make sounds. Well, punching keys to write words that correspond to those sounds. Whatever, you get me.

How 'bout them apples?

What do you mean by apple? :smalltongue:

If that's the case, you can say "Words only mean what they're intended to mean" and I can say "Words can have meanings that weren't intended", and we're both right, even though we're apparently contradicting each other. Is that what you're advocating here?

I wouldn't say that though. I'd say words describe the world. If they're accurate then that's great. If not, let's shore that up and if we find a meaning that's not intended lets investigate it.

Suppose that I see someone from Bizarro World flailing around in the water and that person shouts "I'm not drowning!", and as a result I don't do anything because I think everything is fine, and the person drowns. Or suppose that I'm flailing around in the water and I say "I'm drowning!", which the Bizarro World person takes to mean the opposite of what I intended. You see the problem, I hope.

The problem is you missed the point. Unless in Bizarro World water (what we call water here) doesn't actually drown you then they'd be able to recognize independent of the words you're using that you're in trouble. Unless in Bizarro World fire doesn't cause harm, they'd be able to see you on fire and want to put you out. It doesn't matter if Fire in our world is Mlglglg in theirs. They can assess the reality we live in and act in corrospodance. It's not perfect mind you but nothing is.

So yeah. Your point only works if Bizarro World doesn't operate on the same principles of reality as ours. And then it's a different conversation.

Are you seriously saying that "Jjijioyiaje jkfdklaj dklfh kiuhyopaf" is either true or false, rather than simply meaningless? Given that I didn't intend for it to mean anything, I would think it would be meaningless even by your standards.

Sorry, I was operating under the idea that you did intend it to mean something. If not...then it doesn't matter if it's meaningless or not. People don't speak gibberish at each other and they don't say things that aren't intended to mean something. Even if it's banal and basal. If you just spewed gibberish for the sake of it it's neither true or false because it's nul. But statements can't be nul.

The assigning of truth values to gibberish aside, haven't you heard of fuzzy logic? How do you decide on the boundary between heap and non-heap (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox) using only binary logic, in a case where the speaker intended no specific boundary?

Sure and I love emergent properties too. When are there enough water molecules to make a droplet of water. The thing is...there's an answer to that. Us not knowing it doesn't mean it isn't there. It's only fuzzy because we don't have the tools to investigate it. However, you're not justified in asserting an answer. And I wouldn't assert an answer to the Sorites Paradox either. Either way though, me not having the answer doesn't mean there isn't one.

The problem is that "The temperature in this room is thirty degrees" could be interpreted to mean degrees Fahrenheit or degrees Celsius, and while the temperature could be neither, it definitely isn't both.

Hey! If you're advocating for a universal gauge of temperature I'm all for it! But your example is actually perfect in describing what I'm saying because it's two sets (three if you count Kelvin but that's based on Celsius so what ever) that describe the same thing differently and we've found a way to make them translate to one another. So when I say 30 degrees F you can then go "oh.you mean -1C". And thus, you can go "yes that is cold" and I can go "yes that is cold" and we both know that it's cold via two different operating principles. Or you could go "that's not cold to me" and that just means your tolerance is higher but you'd admit that it's cold to others. You admit its cold either way.

Same with "that rock is a rock" and "that puppy is a puppy". You're both describing the same thing with two seperate models and the moment you can share and translate those models is the moment you can have a conversation.

Devils_Advocate

2017-05-06, 06:13 PM

Razade

2017-05-06, 06:54 PM

Hmm. Well, let me try to illustrate my own understanding:

(1) Person P1 makes statement S.
(2) Person P1 takes statement S to describe hypothetical scenario HS1.
(3) Person P2 takes statement S to describe hypothetical scenario HS2.
(4) HS1 is the case in the real world.
(5) HS2 is not the case in the real world.

I would say that under those circumstances, S is true for P1 and false for P2, regardless of their beliefs, because of the different meanings that S has for P1 and P2. I think a statement means whatever someone thinks it means, i.e. that there's no one "real meaning" independent of how something is interpreted for interpretations to be right or wrong in relation to.

Right. That's demonstrably wrong though. HS1 is how the real world functions. It's right independent of P1 or P2. It's right. P2 saying it's not true is...my point. They're wrong.

There is a real meaning independent of words.

(1) Person P1 makes the statement there is a speed of light.
(2) Person P1 takes the statement speed of light to mean the speed light travels which is 299,792,458 m/s.
(3) Person P2 takes the statement of speed of light to mean the speed of light is actually 9 m/s.
(4) The speed of light IS 299,792,458 m/s.
(5) The speed of light IS NOT 9 m/s.

One of them is right. One of them is wrong. Independent of the words they're using. One is accuretly describing the world. The other is not.

What's your understanding? What does it mean for words to describe the world, or fail to do so?

That which comports with reality. Not using gibberish to describe a physical property would be a good start.

I also think that relative terms, like "big", "small", "heap", etc... are best treated as, well, relative, instead of pretending that they're absolute. Like, that sure seems like the way to go if you want to accurately describe how language is actually used. Those words apply to various things to various degrees, something that we already acknowledge when we use words like "bigger". Note that here I mean relative in the sense of being a matter of degree, as opposed to various other senses of the word relevant to the overall discussion.

Sure and the more descriptors you add the further and further you're going to have to go to parse out the language. That's because language in imprecise. I fully cop to that. That's why we're not using descriptors. We're keeping things as central and as singular as possible. We're not talking about a giant rock. We're just talking about a rock. How big it is doesn't matter.

Except that I totally just did that, in order to make a philosophical point. You were there! It's what we're talking about!

Yeah! And that point is either right or wrong!! That's what I'm talking about! Your point that gibberish is nul by using gibberish is true or not. It's true. Good for you! Gold Star! A+, you argued for something we both agree with and I never argued against!!

Assuming that you define statements to be meaningful, then yes. And I can agree to that definition.

Yeppers! Good to be on the same page.

... Interesting. Do you correspondingly believe that there is such a thing as evil, but our understanding is so incomplete that we shouldn't pretend that we know exactly what it is? Is that the issue that you take with the use of the term?

I've very clearly stated for the record that I don't believe there's any such thing as evil. However I am both...for lack of a better word agnostic and atheistic to its existance. I don't know if it exists. I don't believe it exists.

As I've laid out before. When people use evil to mean "wrong" or "immoral" I'm fine with that. I get that words can be used to mean things that other words describe.

The problem is that people don't just use the word evil to mean that. There's baggage inherent in the language. You can look at Frozen Feet who wants to ascribe evil to be some extant thing that preceeds the mind. You look at T-Mick who says evil is TANGIBLE. That it's some physical thing. Those aren't descriptors of wrong. Those are further additions to the concept. It's a way for them to smuggle in a concept that they won't or can't define. And I won't stand for that. You wanna assert something's real? Then you gotta prove it. Evidence baby, the only way we can figure any damn thing out.

You don't got the evidence? Then I'm gonna keep on pointing out you're not justified in your belief of a thing.

Not that you're doing that Devil. Just ya know. Talking about the wider thread in general.

It's also possible for one individual to have no clue what the other intended to communicate.

But it doesn't tell you the validity of the claim! Which was my god damned arsing point! Being incapable of communicating your point doesn't make it wrong. It doesn't make the counterpoint right because the person COULD communicate their wrong point BETTER. All it tells you is that the person is crap at communicating and the other isn't! Nothing else. It tells you literally nothing else.

Person X explaining the speed of light with sex toys and lubricant doesn't make the fact that the speed of light is the number above. It doesn't make the speed of light, the number above, wrong.

Person Y explaining the speed of light being 9 with bad science but in an articulate and easy to understand manner doesn't mean Person Y is right.

Aliquid

2017-05-06, 07:20 PM

Evil for detecting evil where none exists. Therein lies the genesis of all the greatest recent historical evils: ISIS, Al-qaeda, the Klan, the Nazis, Stalinism, Islamophobia, and othersAnd therein lies the irony of this debate.

T-Mick argues that if we trust a logical argument on what is evil, it will lead to massive evils like the Nazis. Which is true, you can rationalize and justify the most horrid of things if you try hard enough.

But, to conclude that you must therefore trust your intuition and your gut for what is evil... is wrong

Because that too will lead to massive evils like the Nazis. The population can be convinced that the uncomfortable gut feeling associated with a group of people that is 'strange' and 'different', is the same gut feeling associated with something that is evil. And once they are convinced of that, they can further be convinced that this "evil" must be eradicated.

veti

2017-05-06, 07:21 PM

That's a good point. On reflection that kind of thinking (that I had presented) is arguably the result of Hitler's own propaganda presenting himself as a great and extraordinary man. In reality he was only one of many many interchangable protofascist pinheads that could have ended up on top when the movement solidified.

Still, even eliminating all of them would probably result in a large net reduction in body count.

I wouldn't be so sure. First, I think Hitler was extraordinary - certainly in his charisma and his manipulation of the media, he had no rival in Europe at the time. If he hadn't been there, then the history of the 20th century would likely have been quite different.

But... does that mean the history of the 20th century would have been better without him? That we can only conjecture. In the 1930s there were tremendous social and economic pressures and upheavals that were causing plenty of hardship before Hitler came to power (indeed, that's why he came to power). Those tensions would have had to be resolved somehow. If you try to imagine what other forms that resolution could have taken - it's certainly possible that some of them would have been even bloodier and more drawn out than the real history, and leave us in a nastier world today.

So Hitler was undoubtedly evil. But the consequences of letting him live are at least known; those of killing him are not. Is it still "good" to kill him?

But veti -- to my understanding -- was talking about collections of words, rather than the states of affairs that those collections of words describe. The whole point is that "what a sentence describes" is ambiguous. (Right, veti? Or did I misunderstand you?)

I think you understood me well enough, but Razade doesn't seem to. Which is why I've given up that sub-topic now. I don't think I can make it any clearer, and if Razade still doesn't accept it - there's nothing more to be said. I can't force him to accept the point, any more than he can force me.

ArlEammon

2017-05-06, 08:04 PM

If I may bring up the manifestation of all evil, The Devil-

::Shot dead::

R.I.P Grave Stone:
"That's all I have to say on the matter".

Devils_Advocate

2017-05-06, 08:05 PM

Right. That's demonstrably wrong though.
What is?

HS1 is how the real world functions. It's right independent of P1 or P2. It's right.
Yes, that is among the circumstances that I stipulated.

P2 saying it's not true is...my point. They're wrong.
And my point is that by saying that S isn't true, P2 isn't claiming that HS1 isn't true; rather, by saying that S isn't true, P2 is claiming that HS2 isn't true. If meaning is speaker intent, then S means what P2 thinks it means when P2 says it!

There is a real meaning independent of words.
A real meaning of what? Are you saying that beliefs are true or false independent of the language used to describe them?

(1) Person P1 makes the statement there is a speed of light.
(2) Person P1 takes the statement speed of light to mean the speed light travels which is 299,792,458 m/s.
(3) Person P2 takes the statement of speed of light to mean the speed of light is actually 9 m/s.
(4) The speed of light IS 299,792,458 m/s.
(5) The speed of light IS NOT 9 m/s.

One of them is right. One of them is wrong. Independent of the words they're using. One is accuretly describing the world. The other is not.
"Speed of light" is a phrase, not a statement. And taking "There is a speed of light" or "the speed of light" to mean "The speed of light is actually 9 m/s" is implausible on the level of not being able to tell whether someone is drowning. I'm going to ask you to give a plausible example if you want to show that you understand what I'm talking about, because quite frankly from what I can tell you still don't.

Here's my own considerably-more-plausible example:

(1) Patrick says "It's thirty degrees down in the storage room".
(2) Patrick thinks that "It's thirty degrees down in the storage room" is true iff the temperature in the storage room is 30° F.
(3) Pamela thinks that "It's thirty degrees down in the storage room" is true iff the temperature in the storage room is 30° C.
(4) The temperature in the storage room is 30° F.
(5) The temperature in the storage room is not 30° C.
(6) Patrick believes that the temperature in the storage room is 30° F.
(7) Pamela believes that the temperature in the storage room is 30° C.

Obviously, Pamela is wrong about the storage room temperature. No one is disputing that. The question is whether Pamela is also wrong about what Patrick's statement means. And there's a related question of whether Pamela being wrong about the temperature is Patrick's fault, or Pamela's fault, or both. I personally say that they're equally at fault, because they made equally unjustified assumptions about how the statement was intended or would be interpreted.

I've very clearly stated for the record that I don't believe there's any such thing as evil. However I am both...for lack of a better word agnostic and atheistic to its existance. I don't know if it exists. I don't believe it exists.
Well, do you have any more reason to believe that heapness is a real thing?

But it doesn't tell you the validity of the claim!
The validity of the claim depends on the meaning of the claim, which is FRICKING ambiguous!

Being incapable of communicating your point doesn't make it wrong.
It's only impossible for poor communication to make what you say wrong if meaning is entirely a matter of speaker intent!

Bohandas

2017-05-06, 08:35 PM

Math is abstract. It can be measured by physical things. Logic is abstract, it can be measured. Feelings are abstract, we can measure them.

Math measures physical things, it is not measured by them

Devils_Advocate

2017-05-06, 09:08 PM

Evil for detecting evil where none exists. Therein lies the genesis of all the greatest recent historical evils: ISIS, Al-qaeda, the Klan, the Nazis, Stalinism, Islamophobia, and others
Perhaps the bigger mistake is conflating evilness with evil people, and in particular conflating opposing evilness with opposing evil people.

People can and do purport to justify atrocities in terms of some sort of supposed absolute morality. But people also commit atrocities for other, non-moral reasons. And people also sometimes do really good things based on some sort of supposed absolute morality. And, for that matter, people sometimes do really good things without relying on any fancy pants abstract philosophical framework.

So... How about saying "If you're doing awful things based on your 'morality', that seems like an indication that your 'morality' is actually evil", rather than "There's no such thing as good or evil"? Isn't it easier to fight evil morality with good morality than with moral nihilism? The latter immediately evokes the response "Well, if nothing's evil, then what's the problem?", for starters.

Someone who believes that possessing absolute pebbles would license torture and murder, is making a mistake that has nothing to do with buckets. (http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth/)

Kalmageddon

2017-05-07, 12:48 AM

I'm devoting this to an honest argument for the cause of evil. Obviously, the world would be awful if everyone was evil, and I don't want that to happen. However, I would say that evil is a necessary part of human society. Much of our modern technology is based on military technology. No evil, no war, no radios or advanced aircraft. Also, evil provides jobs for police, security officers, or guards.
As a security officer myself, that is a gross oversimplification. Contrary to what Hollywood says, my day to day job is not fighting terrorists and madmen (or getting killed by ninjas, but that's beside the point). Security is a much broader profession and it incorporates safety as well, if someone has a cardiac arrest, we are the first to intervene, if something catches fire, we put it off. Accidents happen all the time.
Now I would be lying if I said that the current political climate isn't benefiting my career but that's because people are stupid, scared animals that overreact to everything. Day to day, prevention of accidents and other non malicious problems is a much bigger part of the job, it's just that people outside of it don't really see it.

Elderand

2017-05-07, 05:00 AM

There is no such thing as evil, or good for that matter.

There is only actions and consequences. Whether or not those are grouped under the label of evil depends on whether or not the thing affected by the consequences are seen as important, and whether or not the consequences are favorable or unfavorable.

It is both pointless and impossible to give an objective definition of evil because evil is purely subjective.

Frozen_Feet

2017-05-07, 05:21 AM

I didn't say Intuition is useless. I said it doesn't get us to empirical data and that's what I'm asking for. Your "feelings" of evil don't mean jack ****ing **** to me.

So? Go look at the definition of evil I gave you. It's not talking about my moral intuitions. It's talking about yours.

The only empirical data my argument hence needs to support itself is proof that you do have moral intuitions. Since intuitions are feelings and you've already acknowledged that feelings can be measured empirically, you in principle have already agreed that an experiment exists which could prove or disprove what I am saying.

I cannot carry out this specific measurement over the internet. But you also cannot use my inability to do that to decide whether I'm correct or not.

Now, I freely admit intuition doesn't get you raw, empirical data. What you failed to spot is that I specifically said it doesn't need to. For my definition of evil, intuition only needs to exist.

As much as you'd like to portray me as being dishonest (ad hom) I'm not weasling out of anything. I'm asking for you to prove your damn argument.

It's not dishonesty I'm accusing you of. I'm accusing you of talking past the point. Because none of your objections to using the word "evil" have a damn thing to do with my argument. Nothing you have said about baggage of the word "evil" or people disagreeing about it have proven that moral intuitions do not exist.

I don't use it for ethics either. I'm using it to display that your thesis, that we have an innate sense, is wrong. This isn't hard to follow.

It's a plain non-sequitur, a "does-not-follow" because your thesis is insufficient to disprove existence of moral intuitions.

Again: if you have scientific criticism of the findings of, for example, Jonathan Haidt, I'm all ears. If you do not, you can bring forward any number of people who disagree with me - if they do not have valid criticisms of modern social intuitionism, psychology, neuropsychology etc., I will continue to dismiss them as irrelevant.

Yeah, continued demonstrable reliability [of reason and logic]. Are you arguing that we don't use logic and reason in our arguments which morality is one of?

Nope. I'm not arguing against what is. I can freely admit we use logic in our arguments, including arguments over ethics, as can be observed from this discussion.

I'm saying that you have not demonstrated why we ought to use logic. "Continued demonstrable reliability" is insufficient answer, because reason and logic can only be as good as the axioms you are using. You cannot demonstrate reliability of reason and logic via reason and logic. In fact, you have not demonstrated why reliability even matters.

Again: is it your axiom that we ought to use reason and logic? I'll let you off the hook if it is. Or do you have that a third standard, an axiom independent of intuition and logic, with which to prove logic is superior?

Are you saying we shuck it out?

No. I'm asking you, why we ought to use it to begin with? Surely you, as a fan of reason and logic, have an answer?

No [there are no human cultures which lack color terms beyond black and white]. They literally do not. There is no culture that believes this. You're making **** up Frozen. Come on.

This is where you go from merely having a poor argument to arguing against empirical anthropological, linguistic and psychological findings. I invite you, too, to open Wikipedia page on "color terms" and start going through the articles.

If you can disprove those specific empirical findings by, say, proving all the referenced articles are hoaxes, I may begin to take you seriously again on this specific matter. In practice, I do not expect you to do it, due to the herculean effort involved.

(In b4 "Wikipedia is unreliable RAWR!!!")

Why should you pay mind to people who disagree with you? I don't know Frozen. To me, I like it when people disagree. I REALLY LIKE IT WHEN PEOPLE DISAGREE WITH ME.

I can totally get it gives you a boner to stroke. I fail to see how that makes mere disagreement any better as evidence.

You may think that's a waste of time but not to me. Not to me.

I didn't say disagreement is a waste of time. I said that "people disagree" (again: who are these people?), on its own, is not sufficient to disprove anything I've said. Or anything else, for that matter. Stating that there is an opposite argument is not equivalent to presenting such argument. That's why saying "people disagree" is waste of my time. It's not equivalent to saying "disagreement is a waste of time".

That's the WORST CASE SCENARIO. That I changed someone else's mind.

Wrong. The worst case scenario is that N people wasted time arguing past each other and got hostile at each other for wasting each others' time. :smalltongue:

It's not that people have refutations of your arguments. It's that they simply disagree with you. And why would you need to listen to them. You're right Frozen. And people who are right don't have to trouble themselves with those pesky nay sayers.

This is a philosophical discussion. I presented an argument. The expectation is that people who disagree with me explain why. This usually involves refuting my arguments, instead of just talking past me.

Why would I listen to people talking past me, when in a very real sense they are not talking to me, or even about the argument I made?

----

Now to comment a thing you said in response to another poster, but about my argument:

A room is a certain temperature even if one person thinks its too hot and the other is too cold. This is why Frozen Feet's "intuition" argument fails. Because we all process reality in subtlety different ways. But reality isn't actually CHANGING. It's merely the perception.

My argument was about the existence of intuitions, not what they measure. I specifically said that the existence of "real evil" is not even required for moral intuitions to exist.

Since moral intuitions are feelings, and you already acknowledged that feelings are measurable, it follows we can measure the existence of intuitions. This is no more fantastic than claiming "we can tell if someone is in pain". The ability to feel pain varies by person and some people cannot feel it all, but I don't see you using that as proof that pain doesn't exist.

Or, to use your own example of two people arguing over whether a room is too hot or too cold. Neither of them is making a statement about absolute temperature of the room or some other fact external to them. They are making a statement about what is uncomfortable to them, and they can both be right. That is, person A can be correct the temperature is too high for person A, and person B can be right it is too low for person B. The exact absolute temperature of the room is irrelevant to gauging truth values of these statements.

Tl; dr: my argument isn't, and never was, about existence changing according to intuition. It was about existence of intuitions.