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  1. - Top - End - #31
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    Default Re: [Thought experiment] If alignments are objective how do we know what they represe

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    So for me, it definitely seems like a huge logical leap from "Good" = morally correct and "Evil" = morally incorrect, and in fact the terms morally correct or morally incorrect should really just be left out of the equation.
    I mean, it's a question of your goals. There are things that being good promotes. If those things are part of your goals, then you should seek to be good. In an objective morality system, you would be morally correct by trying to adhere to the alignment that aids your goals.

    It gets tricky to discuss this within the forum's rules when we get into what, precisely, works in the real world and why "real world moral good" of any stripe is or is not aligning with an individual's or society's goals. In the fictional setting of D&D, where fantastic things happen and make up the stories it's designed to play, it is perfectly plausible to set up the laws of reality such that one's objectively evil behaviors are precisely in line with getting you to your goals, provided your goals are of a particular sort.

    In an objective alignment system, you are "morally correct" if you are adhering to the alignment you wish to be. This is loosely defined to cover both aspirations towards specific alignments, and correctly identifying the alignment that will be most conducive towards your goals.

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    Default Re: [Thought experiment] If alignments are objective how do we know what they represe

    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    I think the trouble here is that you're assuming "morally correct" means "adhering to being good."
    I am assuming "morally correct" means "what one ought to do". I thought you had been assuming good was moral (so I had been adopting that premise).

    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    "Objective morality" doesn't mean you agree on what's desirable. It just means you agree that something is good or evil. There is no disagreement between people who live in an objective morality setting and who are factually correct in their assessments over whether wearing white after labor day is evil or not. There is an objective truth over the evilness of that fashion choice. That doesn't stop Shiro Edgelord from wearing white all the time specifically because he thinks being evil is cool. He agrees it's evil. That's why he likes it.
    Sorry that I am being a bit stubborn, but Objective Morality is a Term of Art in the branch of Ethics and it is one of the few terms I will insist on using correctly. Objective Morality states that moral statements are either true or false. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_universalism It has nothing to do with people agreeing/disagreeing. It is only about moral statements having exactly 1 truth value.

    Does it say everyone agrees whether a particular moral statement is true or false? No.
    Does it say everyone agrees that the statement "All theft is immoral." is True? No.
    Does it say everyone agrees that the statement "All theft is immoral." is False? No.
    What does it say? It says the statement "All theft is immoral." has exactly 1 truth value.
    It says if John claims "The statement 'All theft is immoral.' is true." and Jane claims "The statement 'All theft is immoral.' is false." then exactly 1 of them is correct. They can disagree, and did disagree, but only 1 of those meta-statements will be true. The other will be false.

    So technically yes. Of all the people that make claims about whether the statement "It is immoral to wear white after labor day" is true or false. Everyone that is correct chose the same answer. Either all true or all false depending on whether the statement actual is true or false. However people can be incorrect too. Objective Morality is not claiming there is a consensus, it is claiming there is a correct answer to statements about morality.

    Now, statements about morality also tend to dwell on correctness because moral / immoral are labels for correct / incorrect.

    So Shiro Edgelord might agree that wearing white is [Strange]*, the might also believe it is moral or amoral because they think [Strange] is cool. But they would not think it is both moral/right/correct and immoral/wrong/incorrect.
    *Using the [Strange] alignment to avoid conflating [Good] with moral.

    Now in D&D for the exact same reason for why we don't have a consensus about morality IRL, characters in the game could consider [Strange] to be moral. They could even believe that if they called [Strange] "Evil". They could even do it if the GM called [Strange] evil. They could even do it if the GM said [Strange] was immoral.

    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    The drow matron mother in D&D agrees that her behavior is chaotic and evil. For argument's sake, we'll assert that she is objectively correct, and so when the LG dwarven paladin condemns her for her wickedness and duplicity, she proudly agrees, and then condemns him for his weak-minded clinging to rules that only serve to enslave him to pathetic losers who are better off sacrificed for power.

    She doesn't see a need to justify that what she does is "good." She believes evil is the morally correct alignment to pursue.
    Agreed.

    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    And, given her preferences and goals, she is objectively correct that it is the best one for her.
    For this to be true, the alignments would be orthogonal to rather than coincide with moral/immoral. That is a bit unusual but a possible cosmology. Normally alignments like Good and Evil would coincide with moral/immoral.

    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    "Objective morality" doesn't mean you agree on what's desirable. It just means you agree that something is good or evil.
    So we are back up here again. I already touched on why objective morality does not imply consensus. However if you are divorcing good/evil from morality, then why would Objective morality have anything to do with them?

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    Ah. That explains it then. I ascribe no particular value or meaning to related to the IRL word moral. Nor am I interested or see any value in IRL moral theory.
    Ah. When I talk about a topic I use the words from that topic. If I were talking about math I would use the IRL terms for it. I would talk about Binomial Coefficients rather than Grabok's Numerals (fictional example). I would make it clear by Binomial Coefficients I meant the term as defined IRL rather than the Chultian Lizard (fictional example) with the same name. However when I did need to switch between game terms and IRL terms, I would try to make some clear like to avoid overloading a word.

    That said if you are not interested in the topic of Objective Morality due to having no interest at this time to delve into that branch of philosophy, then that is good too.

    There is plenty of amoral alignment discussion for this thought experiment.



    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    So for me, it definitely seems like a huge logical leap from "Good" = morally correct and "Evil" = morally incorrect, and in fact the terms morally correct or morally incorrect should really just be left out of the equation.

    That is basically the core conflicting belief at the heart of Planescape, except it's not just good vs evil.
    I think Planescape works best if the players/GM don't know what is moral/immoral for that universe. It can work either way but it seems better if the audience is not biased.
    Last edited by OldTrees1; 2021-03-03 at 05:27 PM.

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    Default Re: [Thought experiment] If alignments are objective how do we know what they represe

    All "moral" means, by your own statement, OldTrees, is "what one ought to do." I assume - and correct me if I am wrong - that there is a hidden component that prevents conflating "you ought to maintain your car so that it doesn't break down" with more traditional conceptions of morality.

    Now, most people will assume that you ought to do things to align yourself with "good." Perhaps particularly when alignments are subjective, and you can decide that your ideals are "good" because you say so for yourself.

    But for objective morality, this would be a mistake. If your ideals align with a non-good alignment, then you ought to live by that alignment.

    Or, put another way, moral behavior brings you in alignment with the moral state you seek to achieve, and immoral behavior drives you away. An evil peraon sees evil as moral. Not because he sees some subjective definition of morality or evil, but because morality is goal-state defined.

    In analogy, if you and I sit across the table from each other, and I say that the door is to my left and. Indeed, gesture that direction, you still would see the door as being to your right.

    If I am evil and you are good, I will see moral behavior as that which you find immoral. And if we are both honest and correct, we would even agree that both of us are right.

    This stems from using "moral" to mean "what you ought to do." The only reason there seems to be contradiction is because of attempts to have it oth mean "what you ought to do" and "good."

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    Default Re: [Thought experiment] If alignments are objective how do we know what they represe

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    So technically yes. Of all the people that make claims about whether the statement "It is immoral to wear white after labor day" is true or false. Everyone that is correct chose the same answer. Either all true or all false depending on whether the statement actual is true or false. However people can be incorrect too. Objective Morality is not claiming there is a consensus, it is claiming there is a correct answer to statements about morality.
    Right, and this implies that if a fictional setting postulates an objective moral reality internally that means that while there may be multiple moral theories held in-universe, one of them is correct and all the others are wrong.

    Generally I would say that fantasy comes at this from a religious, rather than philosophical question. Specifically most fantasy settings aren't 'all myths are true' they're 'this specific myth is true' and that specific myth usually includes a deity/deities who determine the moral system that governs the setting.

    As a result, the question of what alignments represent, in a particular universe, is what the gods say they represent, and questioning the gods is pointless because the gods make the decisions and there's nothing a mortal living in such a setting can do about it.

    I think a lot of players find this weird, in part because the kind of deity-derived moral certainty implied works better for a monotheistic system with a distant and presumably all-powerful creator entity rather than a polytheistic system where a bunch of gods squabble amongst themselves. This is why various writers working in FR felt obligated to create a level above the gods in the form of Lord Ao because the idea of FR deities, as presented, mediating an moral system at all was laughable. This is also probably why a huge amount of modern fantasy has retreated from polytheistic systems and back toward distant monotheistic non-interventionist creator deities. One god = one truth is simply a much simpler equation for addressing ethical questions when worldbuilding.
    Now publishing a webnovel travelogue.

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    Default Re: [Thought experiment] If alignments are objective how do we know what they represe

    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    All "moral" means, by your own statement, OldTrees, is "what one ought to do." I assume - and correct me if I am wrong - that there is a hidden component that prevents conflating "you ought to maintain your car so that it doesn't break down" with more traditional conceptions of morality.

    Now, most people will assume that you ought to do things to align yourself with "good." Perhaps particularly when alignments are subjective, and you can decide that your ideals are "good" because you say so for yourself.

    But for objective morality, this would be a mistake. If your ideals align with a non-good alignment, then you ought to live by that alignment.

    Or, put another way, moral behavior brings you in alignment with the moral state you seek to achieve, and immoral behavior drives you away. An evil peraon sees evil as moral. Not because he sees some subjective definition of morality or evil, but because morality is goal-state defined.

    In analogy, if you and I sit across the table from each other, and I say that the door is to my left and. Indeed, gesture that direction, you still would see the door as being to your right.

    If I am evil and you are good, I will see moral behavior as that which you find immoral. And if we are both honest and correct, we would even agree that both of us are right.

    This stems from using "moral" to mean "what you ought to do." The only reason there seems to be contradiction is because of attempts to have it oth mean "what you ought to do" and "good."
    I think the issue here is that the ultimate question ("What ought one do?") in the moral theory proposed by OldTrees (and which seems to be a real philosophy, based on his descriptions) is asked in a vacuum, not from the perspective of any person.

    You said that the drow priestess's ideals align with the in-universe alignment "Evil". This can be true. You then said she "ought to live by that alignment." And from her perspective, this is true and she will do so.

    The issue is that the question "what ought one do?" in OldTrees's moral theory is not asked from her perspective. It is asked in a vacuum, in a white room. In an RPG, it is defined by the GM. So if the GM decides that it is "moral" to follow the in-universe alignment "Good", then the drow priestess is objectively wrong to follow the in-universe alignment "Evil", even though doing so is what she believes she ought to do based on her ideals. Her ideals themselves are objectively wrong under this moral theory. She is mistaken that one ought to be Evil.

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    Default Re: [Thought experiment] If alignments are objective how do we know what they represe

    Quote Originally Posted by gloryblaze View Post
    I think the issue here is that the ultimate question ("What ought one do?") in the moral theory proposed by OldTrees (and which seems to be a real philosophy, based on his descriptions) is asked in a vacuum, not from the perspective of any person.

    You said that the drow priestess's ideals align with the in-universe alignment "Evil". This can be true. You then said she "ought to live by that alignment." And from her perspective, this is true and she will do so.

    The issue is that the question "what ought one do?" in OldTrees's moral theory is not asked from her perspective. It is asked in a vacuum, in a white room. In an RPG, it is defined by the GM. So if the GM decides that it is "moral" to follow the in-universe alignment "Good", then the drow priestess is objectively wrong to follow the in-universe alignment "Evil", even though doing so is what she believes she ought to do based on her ideals. Her ideals themselves are objectively wrong under this moral theory. She is mistaken that one ought to be Evil.
    Asked in a vacuum, with no goal stated, there is no answer to "what ought one to do?"

    This is true regardless of moral systems, subjective or objective. "What ought I to do?" cannot be answered if you do not already know the answer to the follow up question, "In order to...?"

    That is, "What ought I to do?" depends entirely on what it is you're trying to achieve. If you have no answer to that, then there is nothing you ought to do. Alternatively, the answer may be "nothing. You ought to do nothing." Because if there is no goal, no purpose to your question, then anything you do will be in service to something other than your goal, because you have no goal to serve. And thus there is nothing you ought to do.

    This is why most people have an underlying "...to be a good person" or "...to be happy" or "...to assuage my conscience" or "...to go to the best afterlife" or any number of other things they don't say when they ask, "What ought I to do?"

    In a system with objective morality, if the underlying "to...?" is answered by "to be a good person," everyone will agree - because there is an objective definition of "good" - that he ought to behave in a good-aligned manner. Why he chose "a good person" over "an evil person" is an open question, but likely has to do with his society and seeking to fit in (which sounds Lawful, but really is rather ethically neutral; even Chaotic social creatures can prefer to be comfortable in their society).

    The answer to the thread's topic question is that we know what they represent because we know what they are. And what is moral for one alignment is potentially (even probably) immoral for another. Or, put another way, any act with moral weight is moral, and the question is just which alignment it is moral for.

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    Default Re: [Thought experiment] If alignments are objective how do we know what they represe

    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    All "moral" means, by your own statement, OldTrees, is "what one ought to do." I assume - and correct me if I am wrong - that there is a hidden component that prevents conflating "you ought to maintain your car so that it doesn't break down" with more traditional conceptions of morality.
    The lack of a qualifier is the "hidden component". Morality is the end onto itself in contrast to instrumental ends (maintain your car so that it doesn't break down). It is not "What ought one do in order to X?", rather it is just "What ought one do?".

    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    But for objective morality, this would be a mistake. If your ideals align with a non-good alignment, then you ought to live by that alignment.
    You keep using the phrase "objective morality" to mean something other than its definition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_universalism I give up. I have provided links. I have explained it a few times in a few ways. IRL this week is going to be too stressful for me to continue this exercise. So I am bowing out. Thank you for humoring me for this long. While there was a failed communication, it was very respectful discussion.

    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    Right, and this implies that if a fictional setting postulates an objective moral reality internally that means that while there may be multiple moral theories held in-universe, one of them is correct and all the others are wrong.

    Generally I would say that fantasy comes at this from a religious, rather than philosophical question. Specifically most fantasy settings aren't 'all myths are true' they're 'this specific myth is true' and that specific myth usually includes a deity/deities who determine the moral system that governs the setting.

    As a result, the question of what alignments represent, in a particular universe, is what the gods say they represent, and questioning the gods is pointless because the gods make the decisions and there's nothing a mortal living in such a setting can do about it.

    I think a lot of players find this weird, in part because the kind of deity-derived moral certainty implied works better for a monotheistic system with a distant and presumably all-powerful creator entity rather than a polytheistic system where a bunch of gods squabble amongst themselves. This is why various writers working in FR felt obligated to create a level above the gods in the form of Lord Ao because the idea of FR deities, as presented, mediating an moral system at all was laughable. This is also probably why a huge amount of modern fantasy has retreated from polytheistic systems and back toward distant monotheistic non-interventionist creator deities. One god = one truth is simply a much simpler equation for addressing ethical questions when worldbuilding.
    Sorry but my gut reaction to Divine Command theory is Socrates' dialogue Euthyphro. If the gods (or powers) dictate the definition of the alignments, then there is a very good argument for the alignments not being morally relevant. I won't go further than reference it here due to forum limitations.

    My second reaction is you mentioning the laughable squabbling. I have a headcanon that the shape the cosmology depends on which alignment created the universe (since Aboleths once predated this universe). Obviously the Great Wheel was created under Lawful dominance.

    Personally when I do use an objective morality I do it independent of the gods. It is just a fact of that reality.
    Last edited by OldTrees1; 2021-03-03 at 06:28 PM.

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    Default Re: [Thought experiment] If alignments are objective how do we know what they represe

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    Ah. When I talk about a topic I use the words from that topic. If I were talking about math I would use the IRL terms for it. I would talk about Binomial Coefficients rather than Grabok's Numerals (fictional example). I would make it clear by Binomial Coefficients I meant the term as defined IRL rather than the Chultian Lizard (fictional example) with the same name. However when I did need to switch between game terms and IRL terms, I would try to make some clear like to avoid overloading a word.
    Understood. I avoid certain kinds of IRL unprovable philosophical hypothesis like the plague, due to having negative opinions about them that will only start fights.

    I'm sure there's a term for me in moral theory, if it's mostly complete.

    That said if you are not interested in the topic of Objective Morality due to having no interest at this time to delve into that branch of philosophy, then that is good too.
    I don't mind talking about it in D&D terms, I just don't think IRL hypothesis and related languages have much bearing or relevance to something that is (to me) something defined within the game itself. Unfortunately they're brought in immediately, because objective morality is a Term (capital T).

    I think Planescape works best if the players/GM don't know what is moral/immoral for that universe. It can work either way but it seems better if the audience is not biased.
    The way you're using the terms moral/immoral, I can see why. :)

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    Default Re: [Thought experiment] If alignments are objective how do we know what they represe

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    The lack of a qualifier is the "hidden component". Morality is the end onto itself in contrast to instrumental ends (maintain your car so that it doesn't break down). It is not "What ought one do in order to X?", rather it is just "What ought one do?".
    You're conflating two things, then, which are incompatible, and that is perforce leading to the paradox. Let me address this part to explain:


    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    You keep using the phrase "objective morality" to mean something other than its definition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_universalism I give up. I have provided links. I have explained it a few times in a few ways. IRL this week is going to be too stressful for me to continue this exercise. So I am bowing out. Thank you for humoring me for this long. While there was a failed communication, it was very respectful discussion.
    By the link you provided...
    Moral universalism (also called moral objectivism) is the meta-ethical position that some system of ethics, or a universal ethic, applies universally, that is, for "all similarly situated individuals",[1] regardless of culture, race, sex, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, or any other distinguishing feature.
    I have been using this definition. If you believe me not to be, then I require that you demonstrate how what I'm saying doesn't comport with it.

    Objective morality tells you what is good, neutral, and evil, morally. You can be morally good, morally neutral, or morally evil. You can take actions that weigh in on that scale and which reflect your position on it, or reflect a change in that position.

    When you turn around and ask, "What ought you to do?" you're asking for a judgment of which of those alignments you ought to be pursuing. It is possible for an objective moral system to have a definitive answer to this...assuming you have something you can settle on as a goal.

    There is never an answer as to which alignment you ought to pursue. They are not their own end. Even if "I will be GOOD!" is your declared goal, you're pursuing it because you believe it will make you happy. It pleases you, and there's a reason why it pleases you. But if your goal is, "I WILL BE GOOD," then you ought to do what the Good alignment calls for.

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    Default Re: [Thought experiment] If alignments are objective how do we know what they represe

    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    You're conflating two things, then, which are incompatible, and that is perforce leading to the paradox. Let me address this part to explain:

    By the link you provided...
    I have been using this definition. If you believe me not to be, then I require that you demonstrate how what I'm saying doesn't comport with it.
    Objective morality tells you what is good, neutral, and evil, morally. You can be morally good, morally neutral, or morally evil. You can take actions that weigh in on that scale and which reflect your position on it, or reflect a change in that position.
    Tells me? No, Objective morality does not imply the moral agent is informed. It does claim there is an answer, and makes a claim about the answer.

    Objective Morality claims that moral statements have a single truth value.
    "some system of ethics, or a universal ethic, applies universally"
    "if we adopt the principle of universality: if an action is right (or wrong) for others, it is right (or wrong) for us."
    If I make a moral statement "X is immoral" then that is either true or false, and is true for everyone.

    When you turn around and ask, "What ought you to do?" you're asking for a judgment of which of those alignments you ought to be pursuing. It is possible for an objective moral system to have a definitive answer to this...assuming you have something you can settle on as a goal.
    ?? That is not what the question asks. Moral is the label given to the answer. The contents of the answer, well that is where moral statements and their truth values come in.

    Objective morality means moral statements have a single truth value "if we adopt the principle of universality: if an action is right (or wrong) for others, it is right (or wrong) for us."

    So Objective Morality claims there is some system of ethics, or a universal ethic, that applies universally. That ethic is the objective moral standard (there are no claims yet about it being known or knowable). That standard answers the question of ethics (what ought one do?) by answering what is moral (because moral is the label given to the answer to the question "what ought one do?").

    So, what ought one do? Shrug, call it "moral" for now, we can use that word to reference the answer before we know it. Then discuss if the answer will be universal or subjective. If subjective discuss how that works. If objective then return to the question to guess what is that unknown universally applying system of ethics.

    But this does need to be my last post on this subthread. Despite being interesting and respectful discussion about one of the few things I am passionate about, it is also very stressful. And this week IRL is going to be a bit much. I apologize.
    Last edited by OldTrees1; 2021-03-03 at 08:27 PM.

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    Default Re: [Thought experiment] If alignments are objective how do we know what they represe

    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    Generally I would say that fantasy comes at this from a religious, rather than philosophical question. Specifically most fantasy settings aren't 'all myths are true' they're 'this specific myth is true' and that specific myth usually includes a deity/deities who determine the moral system that governs the setting.

    As a result, the question of what alignments represent, in a particular universe, is what the gods say they represent, and questioning the gods is pointless because the gods make the decisions and there's nothing a mortal living in such a setting can do about it.

    I think a lot of players find this weird, in part because the kind of deity-derived moral certainty implied works better for a monotheistic system with a distant and presumably all-powerful creator entity rather than a polytheistic system where a bunch of gods squabble amongst themselves. This is why various writers working in FR felt obligated to create a level above the gods in the form of Lord Ao because the idea of FR deities, as presented, mediating an moral system at all was laughable. This is also probably why a huge amount of modern fantasy has retreated from polytheistic systems and back toward distant monotheistic non-interventionist creator deities. One god = one truth is simply a much simpler equation for addressing ethical questions when worldbuilding.
    In most published D&D settings it is clearly not the case that the gods determine what is good and what is evil.

    In the Forgotten Realms it's implied that Ao is the "over god" who actually gets to determine morality, but it's also implied in some places that Ao himself is subject to some other higher power.

    In settings like Dragonlance good and evil are basically built into the universe and unchangeable by the gods, with no higher power visibly enforcing them. It's just the way the universe works. The BECMI immortals set worked like this too - the immortals there didn't create the basic laws of the universe, they are just very powerful beings who still have to work within them.

    Eberron has objective morality but the gods may or may not actually exist, so nobody really knows why good and evil work they way they do - people just know that it's a law of the universe that magic can detect and interact with alignment. Eberron also made a point of removing most of the "always evil" or "always good" alignment restrictions for creatures.

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    Default Re: [Thought experiment] If alignments are objective how do we know what they represe

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    Tells me? No, Objective morality does not imply the moral agent is informed. It does claim there is an answer, and makes a claim about the answer.
    Sorry, I was speaking colloquially. "Objective gravity tells you that gravity points the same direction for everyone, and is not like how it works in the Plane of Air in D&D where it depends on which way you decide is down."

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    Objective Morality claims that moral statements have a single truth value.
    "some system of ethics, or a universal ethic, applies universally"
    Eh... I was going to agree, then you said this:
    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    "if we adopt the principle of universality: if an action is right (or wrong) for others, it is right (or wrong) for us."
    If I make a moral statement "X is immoral" then that is either true or false, and is true for everyone.
    Can we agree that the law of gravity, and gravity itself, is objective in the real world? That there is an objective answer, that all who know the full set of facts about a given problem involving it can agree are true? (And if this still is problematic wording, I apologize. I am not saying "consensus determines reality." This is me trying to articulate that there is an objective truth without circularly using the word "objective" to define "objective." One more attempt at clarity: Can we agree that gravity has certain laws and that there is one correct answer for any given physics problem involving gravity?)

    Assuming we agree that gravity is objective IRL, I will point out that this does not mean that "if a direction is down for me, it is down for (all) others." The classic example of an American and an Australian, each in their native lands, would not find through empirical testing that both of their "down" vectors have the same direction. Maybe not even the same magnitude, depending on their distance from the center of the Earth.

    Yet, gravity is objective. "Down" is objectively determined for each of them. It is not subjective in the sense that they can change their perspective and decide it's another way. Their position on the gravity-generating sphere determines an objective "down" for them. That position is objective - they are definitely at specific positions. Moreover, we have the objective model to whatever precision we wish to define it that allows us to tell what "down" is at any given point on the sphere, and thus what "down" is for each of them.

    "Down" is objectively determined. Gravity is objective.

    But that doesn't mean that "down" has the same vector representation from all positions on the gravity-generating sphere.

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Segev
    When you turn around and ask, "What ought you to do?" you're asking for a judgment of which of those alignments you ought to be pursuing. It is possible for an objective moral system to have a definitive answer to this...assuming you have something you can settle on as a goal.
    ?? That is not what the question asks. Moral is the label given to the answer. The contents of the answer, well that is where moral statements and their truth values come in.
    So you're defining "moral" to be "one end of the alignment axis." Is that correct?

    If you are doing this, then "what is moral?" is no longer the same question as "what ought you to do?" No more than you can answer the question, "Which way is down?" if I do not specify to you the coordinates that you're at and the coordinates of the center of the gravity sphere that generates the gravitic pull you're experiencing. If I show you a globe and ask you to draw an arrow in an entirely separate box that indicates which way is "down" on that globe, you have to start making assumptions about what references you have. Maybe you assume the box's relative position to the globe is what to use, and you point towards the globe. Maybe you assume the box is oriented relative to the page, and you point towards the bottom of the page. Maybe you use some other set of assumptions. But without me telling you where on the globe to draw the vector, you're operating on incomplete information. You have to know the frame of

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    Objective morality means moral statements have a single truth value "if we adopt the principle of universality: if an action is right (or wrong) for others, it is right (or wrong) for us."
    This only works if you have an axiomatic assertion that "good is moral." This is not actually required for objective morality, any more than an axiomatic assertion that "down is always the direction I indicate with this vector at the moment I say 'mark' and will never change" is required for there to be an objective gravity nor an objective meaning of "down."

    I think a more correct way of phrasing what you wrote is this: "Objective morality means moral statements have a single truth value 'if we adopt the principle of universality: if an action is good (or evil) for others, it is good (or evil) for us.'"

    "Right" or "wrong" make presumptions about what your desired end state is.

    As a thought experiment to illustrate my point, let me ask you this: Why should I be moral?

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    So Objective Morality claims there is some system of ethics, or a universal ethic, that applies universally. That ethic is the objective moral standard (there are no claims yet about it being known or knowable).
    Agreed.

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    That standard answers the question of ethics (what ought one do?) by answering what is moral (because moral is the label given to the answer to the question "what ought one do?").
    Why ought one to do it? I would have agreed with these statements prior to this discussion with you over them, but I believe you are making untrue assertions (not accusing you of lying, but I do think you're factually and logically wrong) when you state these, because you have underlying assumptions that are impossible.

    The objective moral and ethical standard means that there is an objective standard by which you can determine (using D&D's general grid as an example) whether something is lawful or chaotic, and whether it is good or evil. It can answer what is moral by telling you what to do to align yourself with a desired alignment. This is an objective answer; it doesn't matter what alignment to which you belong, you can tell somebody what they ought to do to align themselves with any particular alignment (provided you are perfectly knowledgeable about the objective truth of morality and ethics). But it DOES mean you have to know what alignment they want to be, or what they want that will let you determine which alignment will get them what they want. Because just as an astronomer in America who tells an Australian rocket physicist to "go straight up for 10 light years and you can't miss it" would be extremely wrong in his directions if both of them use "up" from their position, so too is somebody who says "you ought to kill that witness before he can snitch, it's the right thing to do," is wrong (or lying) if he's telling this to somebody who wants to be good. But the drow matron mother telling that to her son that she's raising to be a CE assassin? She's absolutely right about that being the right thing to do.

    And any objective observer who knows the facts of the situation, even if he finds evil to be reprehensible, would acknowledge that for an evil person, it's the right thing to do. He just hates evil and thinks people shouldn't be evil.

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    So, what ought one do? Shrug, call it "moral" for now, we can use that word to reference the answer before we know it. Then discuss if the answer will be universal or subjective. If subjective discuss how that works. If objective then return to the question to guess what is that unknown universally applying system of ethics.

    But this does need to be my last post on this subthread. Despite being interesting and respectful discussion about one of the few things I am passionate about, it is also very stressful. And this week IRL is going to be a bit much. I apologize.
    The problem here is that, once again, you say, "What you ought to do is be moral."

    Well, why?

    Why ought I to be moral?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    This only works if you have an axiomatic assertion that "good is moral."
    If I had to guess, that is probably an assertion, or definition, in IRL moral theory. Good = Moral, and possibly also = the correct/right "way to behave"/"thing to do".

    Good = Moral is not how D&D or Palladium define any of the good Alignments. And the most recent version describes Alignment as moral & social attitudes that results in typical behavior.

    If so, that means we know that some portion of the Alignment name labels, e.g. Good and Evil, isn't lining up with IRL Moral Theory.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    If I had to guess, that is probably an assertion, or definition, in IRL moral theory. Good = Moral, and possibly also = the correct/right "way to behave"/"thing to do".

    Good = Moral is not how D&D or Palladium define any of the good Alignments. And the most recent version describes Alignment as moral & social attitudes that results in typical behavior.

    If so, that means we know that some portion of the Alignment name labels, e.g. Good and Evil, isn't lining up with IRL Moral Theory.
    I mean, there's a foundational problem, though: for any moral theory you care to outline, I can ask, "Why should I be moral?" There are ways to answer that, but all of them require things that have been rejected when I have proposed them. The trouble is that "should" and "ought" and the like require a purpose. They have a hidden assumption that there is a purpose for which you "should" do things. Without purpose, "should" is meaningless. When you say, "You should be moral," but define "moral" as "what you should do," you have a circular definition with no foundation.

    So I ask this of anybody who cares to answer (though OldTrees1 is in particular invited to respond): "Why should I be moral?"

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    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    I mean, there's a foundational problem, though: for any moral theory you care to outline, I can ask, "Why should I be moral?" There are ways to answer that, but all of them require things that have been rejected when I have proposed them. The trouble is that "should" and "ought" and the like require a purpose. They have a hidden assumption that there is a purpose for which you "should" do things. Without purpose, "should" is meaningless. When you say, "You should be moral," but define "moral" as "what you should do," you have a circular definition with no foundation.

    So I ask this of anybody who cares to answer (though OldTrees1 is in particular invited to respond): "Why should I be moral?"
    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    When you say, "You should be moral," but define "moral" as "what you should do," you have a circular definition with no foundation.
    Correct. You could word the definition that way as a circular tautology. I frame it in a non circular, but no more helpful way.

    What if the word "ought" did not require a purpose? What if instead of asking about instrumental ends, it was asking about intrinsic ends? What if it was asking which intrinsic end one ought to adopt/follow? What if that question is hard / impossible to answer so the asker labeled the answer "Moral" to save mental space while they kept working on the problem.

    So while it is not framed as a circular definition, it is still not one that helps answer it.

    Why should you be moral? Because the right answer is labeled moral. What is moral? That is the label for the right answer. What is the right answer? I can't know, but at least I have a name for it.

    That does not stop people from developing theories based on moral intuitions, moral disgust, or their own values. It just means all those theories are rooted in a fallacious jump from the unhelpful tautological / empty start to a helpful but fallacious theory.
    Last edited by OldTrees1; 2021-03-04 at 04:07 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    So I ask this of anybody who cares to answer (though OldTrees1 is in particular invited to respond): "Why should I be moral?"
    In most fantasy settings, including D&D, one answer to this question is 'so that when I die I don't spend an extremely lengthy period of time suffering horribly.'

    If there is an explicit afterlife in a fantasy setting, and if that afterlife lasts longer than the mortal life (which is almost always does, whether it's 'eternal' or not), then mortal existence is basically a test that determines outcomes for the actual majority of a being's existence which will in fact occur after death - even with an afterlife that ends after 10,000 years, the average human still spends 99% of their existence in it. Consequently, the reason to be moral is to secure the best possible consequence for this majority period.

    Now, D&D is tricky in that some small portion of evil people, like 0.01% or something, actually manage to beat the system. While 99.99% of those who perish with the evil tag applied to their alignment are doomed to an extremely long period of abject misery and suffering as a Larva, Lemure, Manes, or other low-level denizen of the Lower Planes until they are ultimately destroyed in the Blood War, a lucky few manage to escape this fate and ascend the fiendish hierarchy. 'It is better to rule in hell than serve in heaven' is arguably true in D&D, but only for those souls that manage to win the evil lottery. Most people who end up in Hell are getting the full course torture package. However, almost everyone who self-acknowledges as 'evil' in D&D parlance thinks they'll be one of the lucky ones, which means that willful embrace of evil, in D&D, involves an immense level of delusional thinking. Which is just very strange.
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    Default Re: [Thought experiment] If alignments are objective how do we know what they represe

    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    Now, D&D is tricky in that some small portion of evil people, like 0.01% or something, actually manage to beat the system. While 99.99% of those who perish with the evil tag applied to their alignment are doomed to an extremely long period of abject misery and suffering as a Larva, Lemure, Manes, or other low-level denizen of the Lower Planes until they are ultimately destroyed in the Blood War, a lucky few manage to escape this fate and ascend the fiendish hierarchy.
    Well, it's not like the Good afterlife is all that much better. Most Good people will spend their eternity as a celestial blade of grass or a heavenly doorknob or something. But more than that, even the low end of the fiendish hierarchy isn't necessarily a punishment. If you are a masochistic worshiper of the God of Pain, you presumably consider the eternity you spend in a pit full of flaming spikes to be the Good Ending.

    What makes D&D really weird (to the point that even the authors sometimes lose the plot) is that it postulates that there are people who are in favor of things that are, in the real world, considered universally bad. In real life, no one is pro-terror. Even terrorists are doing what they do because they have some political or ideological goal they think it accomplishes. But in D&D, there is an actual God of Terror, whose goal (and that of his followers) is for there to be more terror in the world. Not because he thinks it's necessary to effect change, or even because it hurts some group he hates, but because he actually wants terror as a terminal value. The fact that his followers end up in an afterlife that is full of terror is no more a punishment than the fact that the followers of the God of Cooking end up in an afterlife that is full of food.

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    Quote Originally Posted by NigelWalmsley View Post
    Well, it's not like the Good afterlife is all that much better. Most Good people will spend their eternity as a celestial blade of grass or a heavenly doorknob or something.
    I don't get where this idea that people who go to the upper planes are transformed into objects comes from. What source actually says this? Good-aligned mortals die and become petitioners on good-aligned planes, the same thing that happens on the neutral and evil planes. Some of the good-aligned petitioners get converted into Celestial beings like Lantern archons, but mostly they just wander around as petitioners in environments that broadly match their understanding of what Heaven would be - like what happened to Roy when he died in OOTS. The big difference for the Lower Planes is that the fiendish powers-that-be convert essentially all arriving petitioners into-bottom rung fiends.

    But more than that, even the low end of the fiendish hierarchy isn't necessarily a punishment. If you are a masochistic worshiper of the God of Pain, you presumably consider the eternity you spend in a pit full of flaming spikes to be the Good Ending.
    No. If you're a masochistic worshipper of the god of pain in life you are probably sufficiently delusional as to rationalize to yourself spending eternity in a put full of flaming spikes would be awesome, but that isn't actually true, and the suffering is exactly as bad as a neutral observer thinks it would be. Someone who's brain chemistry is actually sufficiently messed up to enjoy spending time immolating while being impaled is sufficiently mentally disturbed as to preclude any alignment other than chaotic neutral.

    What makes D&D really weird (to the point that even the authors sometimes lose the plot) is that it postulates that there are people who are in favor of things that are, in the real world, considered universally bad. In real life, no one is pro-terror. Even terrorists are doing what they do because they have some political or ideological goal they think it accomplishes. But in D&D, there is an actual God of Terror, whose goal (and that of his followers) is for there to be more terror in the world. Not because he thinks it's necessary to effect change, or even because it hurts some group he hates, but because he actually wants terror as a terminal value. The fact that his followers end up in an afterlife that is full of terror is no more a punishment than the fact that the followers of the God of Cooking end up in an afterlife that is full of food.
    The real issue I find D&D has is that it presumes people like this are common. There are, among humans, a small number of 'people who just want to see the world burn' but they're extremely rare and tend to flame out spectacularly. Somewhere along the lines D&D committed to the idea that, if the Blood War came to an end the forces of evil would drastically outnumber the forces of good and overrun the multiverse and that just doesn't make any sense, mathematically.

    But yes, in the divine sphere the various designers of D&D failed to properly differentiate between gods who are evil - because they are unrelenting violent or can't control negative impulses or whatever - and gods of evil which are manifestations of negative impulse given form. Various mythologies include lots of gods who are evil, but very few gods of evil. The exception, of course, is monotheistic traditions which tend to include a single benevolent creator and a single perfectly malevolent oppositional figure. But the number of people who willfully chose to serve such adversaries - as opposed to being blackmailed, tricked, enslaved, or intimidated into such service - is quite small.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    In most fantasy settings, including D&D, one answer to this question is 'so that when I die I don't spend an extremely lengthy period of time suffering horribly.'
    I know it's a tangent, but I am having trouble remembering offhand one setting which has not started as an RPG where it is a known reality. I can remember maybe two which has dominant religions teaching that but no proof. In general fantasy as I know it tend to have unknown afterlives (unless they go for reincarnation) and even religions that teach either about unknowable afterlives or about something different from heaven-and-hell.
    Last edited by Saint-Just; 2021-03-05 at 12:49 AM.

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    Default Re: [Thought experiment] If alignments are objective how do we know what they represe

    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    No. If you're a masochistic worshipper of the god of pain in life you are probably sufficiently delusional as to rationalize to yourself spending eternity in a put full of flaming spikes would be awesome, but that isn't actually true, and the suffering is exactly as bad as a neutral observer thinks it would be. Someone who's brain chemistry is actually sufficiently messed up to enjoy spending time immolating while being impaled is sufficiently mentally disturbed as to preclude any alignment other than chaotic neutral.
    That seems like a cop-out to preserve a more traditional (and, to be fair, saner) view of morality in the face of the claims D&D makes. But the setup the game presents (or at least the Great Wheel cosmology that is most directly tied to alignment) is very much that all the afterlives are supposed to be rewards. Some of them are structured differently, but the Evil afterlives aren't punishments, they are rewards for being Evil that are desirable to Evil people.

    In particular, the notion that a sincere devote of the God of Pain isn't actually Evil seems to me to be basically a rejection of the validity of the alignment system (which is not necessarily a position I'm opposed to, but seems inconsistent with the thrust of your argument).

    The real issue I find D&D has is that it presumes people like this are common.
    Well that's basically the issue with alignment. Once you postulate that the Drow and Orcs are culturally Evil in some meaningful sense, you're left with a very difficult dilemma. Either "Evil" means something radically different from its real-world meaning (e.g. A Practical Guide to Evil, where "Evil" is basically just a team), or you start getting into the bizarre implications of D&D morality. If Drow culture is "Evil", then not only do the individual Drow have to be Evil, but the Drow afterlife has to be such that it makes sense for them to choose to be Evil. Or Lolth has to have such tight control over Drow society that she can force them to be Evil against both their wishes and their best interests.

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    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    Correct. You could word the definition that way as a circular tautology. I frame it in a non circular, but no more helpful way.

    What if the word "ought" did not require a purpose? What if instead of asking about instrumental ends, it was asking about intrinsic ends? What if it was asking which intrinsic end one ought to adopt/follow? What if that question is hard / impossible to answer so the asker labeled the answer "Moral" to save mental space while they kept working on the problem.
    You have yet to define these intrinsic ends. What are they? And why ought I adopt/follow them? I am happy to accept "intrinsic" ends, but you still need to answer why I ought to follow/pursue/adopt them.

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    So while it is not framed as a circular definition, it is still not one that helps answer it.
    I don't see yet how you've made it non-circular. What makes your "intrinsic ends" better than "instrumental ones" for this definition?

    I do not see how you can remove the goal orientation from "ought" and have it still mean anything. It's very definition requires that there be purpose.

    I am open to being proven wrong, here. If you can show me how you can use "ought" without it having an unspoken "...in order to [something]," I will be better able to discuss it as you seem to see it.

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    Why should you be moral? Because the right answer is labeled moral. What is moral? That is the label for the right answer. What is the right answer? I can't know, but at least I have a name for it.
    Is it always the right answer, under all circumstances, no matter what anybody wants, needs, or is? Because there are all sorts of objective systems - not even of morality or ethics - where the objectively right thing to do differs based on the situation. It is not always the right thing to put the same amount of gas into your gas tank, under all conditions and in all situations. It depends how full the tank is. And whether what you actually need to be doing is scraping ice off the windshield. Or turning the key in the ignition.

    What you are trying to do matters to "what you ought to do." And yet, there are objectively correct actions you can perform - right things to do - to achieve your ends with your car. If I ask you, "Why ought I see to regular filter and oil changes?" you can give me an answer, and I can tell you whether I actually care about what you're telling me the reason is. "Nah, I don't need to take care of it that way; I just plan to give it away and buy a new one in a year. I'm rich, you see."

    You are objectively correct that I ought to change the oil and filter every few thousand miles if I want to keep the car in good working order. I am not wrong for saying that I don't care about that, though.

    You say you posit "intrinsic" things I ought to do as "moral things." I don't know how far the "always the right thing to do" thing goes, though, even as you posit it. Is it absolute? Doing "what is moral" is right, all the time, for everybody, to the point that it is never the wrong answer, never an irrelevant act, independent of all circumstances? Or is it more nuanced than that even with what you're defining "objective morality" to be? (I genuinly am not sure, and want to nail down what you mean.)

    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    In most fantasy settings, including D&D, one answer to this question is 'so that when I die I don't spend an extremely lengthy period of time suffering horribly.'
    What if I don't care about that? Or I have a way to avoid it, perhaps through utter annihilation of my soul in a painless and fast fashion, and I prefer that to any afterlife?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    I do not see how you can remove the goal orientation from "ought" and have it still mean anything. It's very definition requires that there be purpose.

    I am open to being proven wrong, here. If you can show me how you can use "ought" without it having an unspoken "...in order to [something]," I will be better able to discuss it as you seem to see it.
    How would showing help? I have shown how it is used. "What Ought one do?" and "Ought one do X?" are examples. There is no hidden/unspoken "in order to [something]". If you change it to "Should one X in order to Y?" by presuming a purpose, I can change back to "Ought one Y?" by challenging the purpose.

    It is okay if that is a communication barrier. I cannot make it more clear without more shared premises (even then, this is one of the root concepts so I don't know which other shared premises could help).

    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    Is it always the right answer, under all circumstances, no matter what anybody wants, needs, or is?
    The right answer is always named/labeled "moral" as a way to make it talking about it more concise.

    You might notice I did not say "It is always the right answer". I said "the right answer" is given the nickname "moral" as a shorter name / label. It is always the case that the right answer is itself, and we will name it "moral" to make it easier to talk about it.

    The branch of Metaethics deals (among other things) with the rest of your questions about the nature of the answer to the question. I will not get into those topics at this time (including the subthread I left).
    Last edited by OldTrees1; 2021-03-05 at 02:16 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    Asked in a vacuum, with no goal stated, there is no answer to "what ought one to do?"

    This is true regardless of moral systems, subjective or objective. "What ought I to do?" cannot be answered if you do not already know the answer to the follow up question, "In order to...?"
    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    The lack of a qualifier is the "hidden component". Morality is the end onto itself in contrast to instrumental ends (maintain your car so that it doesn't break down). It is not "What ought one do in order to X?", rather it is just "What ought one do?".
    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    When you turn around and ask, "What ought you to do?" you're asking for a judgment of which of those alignments you ought to be pursuing. It is possible for an objective moral system to have a definitive answer to this...assuming you have something you can settle on as a goal.

    There is never an answer as to which alignment you ought to pursue. They are not their own end. Even if "I will be GOOD!" is your declared goal, you're pursuing it because you believe it will make you happy. It pleases you, and there's a reason why it pleases you. But if your goal is, "I WILL BE GOOD," then you ought to do what the Good alignment calls for.

    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    I think a more correct way of phrasing what you wrote is this: "Objective morality means moral statements have a single truth value 'if we adopt the principle of universality: if an action is good (or evil) for others, it is good (or evil) for us.'"

    "Right" or "wrong" make presumptions about what your desired end state is.

    As a thought experiment to illustrate my point, let me ask you this: Why should I be moral?
    The objective moral and ethical standard means that there is an objective standard by which you can determine (using D&D's general grid as an example) whether something is lawful or chaotic, and whether it is good or evil. It can answer what is moral by telling you what to do to align yourself with a desired alignment. This is an objective answer; it doesn't matter what alignment to which you belong, you can tell somebody what they ought to do to align themselves with any particular alignment (provided you are perfectly knowledgeable about the objective truth of morality and ethics). But it DOES mean you have to know what alignment they want to be, or what they want that will let you determine which alignment will get them what they want. Because just as an astronomer in America who tells an Australian rocket physicist to "go straight up for 10 light years and you can't miss it" would be extremely wrong in his directions if both of them use "up" from their position, so too is somebody who says "you ought to kill that witness before he can snitch, it's the right thing to do," is wrong (or lying) if he's telling this to somebody who wants to be good. But the drow matron mother telling that to her son that she's raising to be a CE assassin? She's absolutely right about that being the right thing to do.

    And any objective observer who knows the facts of the situation, even if he finds evil to be reprehensible, would acknowledge that for an evil person, it's the right thing to do. He just hates evil and thinks people shouldn't be evil.


    The problem here is that, once again, you say, "What you ought to do is be moral."

    Well, why?

    Why ought I to be moral?
    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    I mean, there's a foundational problem, though: for any moral theory you care to outline, I can ask, "Why should I be moral?" There are ways to answer that, but all of them require things that have been rejected when I have proposed them. The trouble is that "should" and "ought" and the like require a purpose. They have a hidden assumption that there is a purpose for which you "should" do things. Without purpose, "should" is meaningless. When you say, "You should be moral," but define "moral" as "what you should do," you have a circular definition with no foundation.

    So I ask this of anybody who cares to answer (though OldTrees1 is in particular invited to respond): "Why should I be moral?"
    Okay so here's the thing. You know how dragons, giants, and gelatinous cubes are not just things that happen to not exist, but things that cannot exist in Earths physical conditions, and if the laws of physics clearly affecting your characters were applied to them they would just instantly die? Alignment has a relationship to real life ethical reasoning that you are going to find very comparable to huge sized monsters' relationship to the square cube law.

    It is not a coincidence that four of the five authors who Gygax borrowed the concept of alignment from were Catholic, that Baator and Celestia are taken directly from the Divine Comedy, that the original writeup of holy symbols only gave the choices "wooden crucifix", and "silver crucifix", and that alignment makes perfect sense if you accept the moral theories of Aquinas and Augustine.

    See here's the thing: In the model of human minds used in the specific form of Objective Morality that I consider relevant to D&D, it is 100% of the time the case, for every living sapient being that has ever existed that having an alignment causes wanting things. If you could somehow cancel out someone's alignment, they would stand stock still and stop breathing until they suffocated to death. There is no such thing in this model as having a goal and then choosing a code of ethics, people only have goals because they have codes of ethics. (Saint Augustine specifically claims that people who hold any of the eight non LG alignments don't actually have Free Will.)

    So in this model, a Universal Ethical System (which is one of the components of the definition of Objectivity in this case) must answer the question "What should I do?" with the exact same answer, no matter what someone's actual goals are.. The reason this "makes sense" is because it's explicitly a religious argument with an assumed teleology for all sapient beings. Humans (and elves, dwarves, and orcs) are tools they exist to do a job and ethics is the field of figuring out how that job applies to seemingly irrelevant situations.

    And while nobody currently writing editions of D&D actually expects you to ride that train, the shape of alignment that was written into 1e, was written by people who basically thought that was how the real world worked. You can discard those assumptions, but you're going to have to do a ground up rewrite of how alignment works.

    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    Now, D&D is tricky in that some small portion of evil people, like 0.01% or something, actually manage to beat the system. While 99.99% of those who perish with the evil tag applied to their alignment are doomed to an extremely long period of abject misery and suffering as a Larva, Lemure, Manes, or other low-level denizen of the Lower Planes until they are ultimately destroyed in the Blood War, a lucky few manage to escape this fate and ascend the fiendish hierarchy. 'It is better to rule in hell than serve in heaven' is arguably true in D&D, but only for those souls that manage to win the evil lottery. Most people who end up in Hell are getting the full course torture package. However, almost everyone who self-acknowledges as 'evil' in D&D parlance thinks they'll be one of the lucky ones, which means that willful embrace of evil, in D&D, involves an immense level of delusional thinking. Which is just very strange.
    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    The real issue I find D&D has is that it presumes people like this are common. There are, among humans, a small number of 'people who just want to see the world burn' but they're extremely rare and tend to flame out spectacularly. Somewhere along the lines D&D committed to the idea that, if the Blood War came to an end the forces of evil would drastically outnumber the forces of good and overrun the multiverse and that just doesn't make any sense, mathematically.
    I do not think it is a coincidence that these statements are all perfectly compatible with the philosophical claims made by Gygax's specific religious denomination at the time he was writing D&D. They're also eminently gameable, which has allowed them to persist under writers of different creeds.

    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    I don't get where this idea that people who go to the upper planes are transformed into objects comes from. What source actually says this?
    Planescape I believe. Maybe Forgotten Realms wall of the faithless.

    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    No. If you're a masochistic worshipper of the god of pain in life you are probably sufficiently delusional as to rationalize to yourself spending eternity in a put full of flaming spikes would be awesome, but that isn't actually true, and the suffering is exactly as bad as a neutral observer thinks it would be. Someone who's brain chemistry is actually sufficiently messed up to enjoy spending time immolating while being impaled is sufficiently mentally disturbed as to preclude any alignment other than chaotic neutral.
    Neurotypicality and mental illness are orthogonal to what alignment you are. There are explicitly multiple creatures with alignments that don't even have minds. Nothing is stopping our inverted pain receptor person from being LE.

    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    But yes, in the divine sphere the various designers of D&D failed to properly differentiate between gods who are evil - because they are unrelenting violent or can't control negative impulses or whatever - and gods of evil which are manifestations of negative impulse given form. Various mythologies include lots of gods who are evil, but very few gods of evil. The exception, of course, is monotheistic traditions which tend to include a single benevolent creator and a single perfectly malevolent oppositional figure. But the number of people who willfully chose to serve such adversaries - as opposed to being blackmailed, tricked, enslaved, or intimidated into such service - is quite small.
    I kind of get the impression that the religious orthopraxies of Hellenic paganism that informed the myths that all D&D gods are based off of, do not actually take the position that the gods have free will at all. The god of plagues can't just stop giving out plagues, you can just make sure that he gives the plague with your name on it to someone else.
    Non est salvatori salvator,
    neque defensori dominus,
    nec pater nec mater,
    nihil supernum.

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    Default Re: [Thought experiment] If alignments are objective how do we know what they represe

    I think people are kinda missing the point of the question here. Saint-Just isn't asking "Does Detect Good really detect whether or not a character adheres to the IRL Objective Morality?". I mean, obviously they're not, that's an absurd thing to ask. They're asking how people would figure out the criteria by which the various Detect [Alignment] spells decide how strongly to light stuff up when cast. And for that, you'd use some behavioral studies:

    Study One: Are Behavior and Alignment Correlated?
    For this study, we want to know whether a specific behavior (or bundle of behaviors, if we already have a hunch about what Detect [Alignment] is checking for) will alter someone's alignment. We start out with an behavioral survey where we ask about all of the different behaviors we're curious about and we subject them to a battery of Detect [Alignment] spells. Then we send everyone on their way, with instructions to report back in next year for a repeat of the survey + alignment testing. We do statistics to see which behaviors tend to correlate to alignment changes. Maybe we find out that Detect [Alignment #3] correlates to eating brussel sprouts. Maybe we find out that Detect [Alignment #2] correlates to rescuing kittens from trees. Whatever we find, that informs the sorts of tests we do in Study Two through Four.

    Study Two: Do Behaviors Alter Alignment?
    For this study, we want to know whether a person can change their alignment by changing their behavior. We get ourselves a fresh group of volunteers, give them all the behavioral survey + Detect [Alignment] battery again, and then divide them up into control and experimental groups. The control group is instructed to perform some behavior that we're pretty sure isn't correlated with alignment change, while the experimental group is instructed to perform one of the behaviors we're curious about. After both groups are done with their activities, we check their alignments again. If it turns out that the experimental groups asked to eat brussel sprouts do indeed detect more strongly of [Alignment #3] than they did prior to their leafy meal, that's pretty good evidence that eating brussel sprouts will indeed cause someone to detect of [Alignment #3] out in the wild. But that's not quite enough for our purposes, because we also need to do Study Three.

    Study Three: Do Alignments Alter Behavior?
    This one's the opposite of the above study. We don't just want to know how to alter our alignment, we want to know what the effects of alignment actually are. Maybe there's a stereotype that people who detect strongly of [Alignment #4] enjoy violin music. Fair enough, we can test that with the Atone spell. We take our volunteers, have them subjectively rate their opinion of violin music and then split them into three groups. The control group has nothing done to them. Experimental Group A is Atoned to to [Alignment #2]. Experimental Group B is Atoned to [Alignment #4]. We play them some more violin music and have them rate that. If it turns out that Experimental Group B is the only one with a notable improvement in their opinion of violin music, that probably means that it's the alignment causing it. (If it turns out that both A and B start liking violin, that suggests that it's actually the Atone spell doing it, which would be... weird, but probably not the strangest experimental outcome in a universe where Detect Vegetable Eaters is a spell.

    Study Four: Is Alignment A Good Proxy For [Insert Ethics System Here]?
    This one is a bit cheeky. Nobody can agree on which ethics system is correct. But we can usually agree on which people are experts on which ethics systems. For this experiment, we check everyone's alignment, then have a panel of experts on [Insert Ethics System Here] interview our test subjects and then rate their level of adherence to [Insert Ethics System Here]. Then we check everyone's alignment again, just to be sure that being declared Highly Ethical by the Mer-Pope (or whoever else we're bringing in on our panel for [Insert Ethics System Here]) isn't one of the things that affects alignment. If it turns out that there's a strong correlation between [Alignment #3] and the having the approval of the Federated Council of Giant Spiders Who Eat Puppies, that tells us something about the relationship between [Alignment #3] and Being A Giant Spider and/or Eating Puppies.

    Now, none of this actually tells us whether or not we want to be [Good] or not. After all, in 3.5 the Puppy Eating Arson Spiders From Baator will detect faintly of [Good] if someone casts Protection From Evil on them, so Detect Good is clearly not a foolproof way of deciding if someone is a decent sort or not. But equally clearly, it can at least give us some information about the probable probity of people who detect as [Good] relative to those who detect as [Evil].
    Last edited by Grek; 2021-03-05 at 06:37 AM.

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    Default Re: [Thought experiment] If alignments are objective how do we know what they represe

    Quote Originally Posted by Grek View Post
    I think people are kinda missing the point of the question here. Saint-Just isn't asking "Does Detect Good really detect whether or not a character adheres to the IRL Objective Morality?". I mean, obviously they're not, that's an absurd thing to ask. They're asking how people would figure out the criteria by which the various Detect [Alignment] spells decide how strongly to light stuff up when cast. And for that, you'd use some behavioral studies:
    That is the nature of subthreads I suppose. People answer the main question to more or less detail, then a relevant tangent appears. In this case the subthread spun off of acknowledging that the philosophers of Sigil would still not agree on or know which Ethics System to use.

    You provided great detail. Quertus mentioned an interesting possbility and I wonder how it impacts these studies:
    What if the Detect spells are Detect Lawful Evil and Detect Chaotic Evil rather than Detect Good and Detect Evil? In this case they are not true opposites but still don't overlap.

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    Default Re: [Thought experiment] If alignments are objective how do we know what they represe

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    How would showing help? I have shown how it is used. "What Ought one do?" and "Ought one do X?" are examples. There is no hidden/unspoken "in order to [something]". If you change it to "Should one X in order to Y?" by presuming a purpose, I can change back to "Ought one Y?" by challenging the purpose.

    It is okay if that is a communication barrier. I cannot make it more clear without more shared premises (even then, this is one of the root concepts so I don't know which other shared premises could help).
    The part I bolded is, if I am parsing you correctly, the point I've been trying to get at. You seem to me to be trying to say that "the moral thing to do" is always the same thing, and I'm asking "why?" I'm challenging the hidden implied purpose of your statement, "You ought to do X." But I think this next bit is actually moving us closer, so I will address that and hope that this bit discussed here above is not necessary:

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    The right answer is always named/labeled "moral" as a way to make it talking about it more concise.

    You might notice I did not say "It is always the right answer". I said "the right answer" is given the nickname "moral" as a shorter name / label. It is always the case that the right answer is itself, and we will name it "moral" to make it easier to talk about it.

    The branch of Metaethics deals (among other things) with the rest of your questions about the nature of the answer to the question. I will not get into those topics at this time (including the subthread I left).
    Okay. So the objectively right answer to any (alignment-related) question about what you should do is always "the moral thing." This is tautological and circular, which makes it not a very useful ANSWER, but it still is a useful TERM in this case.

    The answer to the question of, "What is the moral thing for me to do?" when posed a situation will always, then, be, "whatever your (target) alignment dictates." If your alignment (or the alignment to which you aspire) dictates that you care nothing for the lives of others if they're not of use to you (evil alignments), then the answer to "What should I do with this child who caught me stealing and might tattle on me?" is probably "kill her, and hide the body/evidence." That would be the moral thing for an evil person to do in an objective morality system, under the definition of "moral" that says "the moral thing to do is defined as the right answer to the question, 'what ought I to do?'"

    It feels strange to us, who live in a world and society where everyone at least thinks of "good" as the alignment to which to aspire, to say "it is moral to do evil," but in an objective alignment setting where there are people who actively want to adhere to alignments other than Good, that is a perfectly sensible statement, given the definition of "moral" you, OldTrees1, have given me. (I am not saying it's "your" definition; I believe you are citing other philosophers and philosophies. But I am trying to be very precise that I am using it by that specific definition, and not a definition that, for example, says "moral == good.")
    Last edited by Segev; 2021-03-05 at 11:03 AM.

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    Default Re: [Thought experiment] If alignments are objective how do we know what they represe

    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    Okay. So the objectively right answer to any (alignment-related) question about what you should do is always "the moral thing." This is tautological and circular, which makes it not a very useful ANSWER, but it still is a useful TERM in this case.
    Yes, it is a term. A term used to reference the right answer to the overall question and to other questions of moral relevance.

    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    The answer to the question of, "What is the moral thing for me to do?" when posed a situation will always, then, be, "whatever your (target) alignment dictates."
    This is not a shared premise. Why would doing what your target alignment dictate be the right answer to "What ought one do?". That would be assuming the conclusion.

    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    The part I bolded is, if I am parsing you correctly, the point I've been trying to get at. You seem to me to be trying to say that "the moral thing to do" is always the same thing, and I'm asking "why?" I'm challenging the hidden implied purpose of your statement, "You ought to do X." But I think this next bit is actually moving us closer, so I will address that and hope that this bit discussed here above is not necessary:
    Well was established (imperfect word choice?) below (in your post), moral is a term for the right answer to the question.
    And the question does not presume a purpose. Assuming a purpose would be begging the question*. For any purpose you can imagine, I can question it by asking "But, ought one follow that purpose?". It may be hard to believe, but there is no hidden implied purpose to qualify the question.

    *Asking "What ought one do if we assume X is the answer to 'What ought one do?' ?" is circular logic or an unfounded premise.


    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    It feels strange to us, who live in a world and society where everyone at least thinks of "good" as the alignment to which to aspire, to say "it is moral to do evil, but in an objective alignment setting where there are people who actively want to adhere to alignments other than Good, that is a perfectly sensible statement, given the definition of "moral" you, OldTrees1, have given me. (I am not saying it's "your" definition; I believe you are citing other philosophers and philosophies. But I am trying to be very precise that I am using it by that specific definition, and not a definition that, for example, says "moral == good.")
    I struck out some unneeded qualifiers.

    In game, evil labels an alignment. It is not strange to discard unrelated moral statements about its namesake.* I can readily imagine a campaign where it is moral to do what is labeled evil. I can also readily imagine a campaign where alignments are amoral. I know some can readily imagine a campaign where the moral character of the alignments follows moral relativism, although I will admit I can't personally readily imagine moral relativism in any context.

    *Apologies but a more absurd example popped into my head:
    Assume that IRL choices between various icecream flavors was an amoral choice.
    Assume that a game was made with alignments named vanilla, rocky road, chocolate, and mint.
    There is no reason to assume, unless stated, that the moral statement about icecream flavors IRL is in any way related to statements about the alignments in that game. Two things sharing the same name does not make them necessarily the same.

    So statements like "It is moral to do evil" are not inherently self contradicting in the context where "evil" is not merely another word for "immoral". The statement might be false, or true, or mu, or depends. That depends on context not presumed at this time. For example Moral Universalism would declare the statement could only be false xor true. Moral Error Theory would say it was mu. Moral Relativism might say it depends.

    PS: I apologize for being the cause of the linguistic gymnastics you had to do in that qualifier around "the definition of 'moral' you, OldTrees1, have given me".
    Last edited by OldTrees1; 2021-03-05 at 01:22 PM.

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    Default Re: [Thought experiment] If alignments are objective how do we know what they represe

    I'm going to focus on this, because I think it's the core of where we're disagreeing or dancing around each other:
    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    This is not a shared premise. Why would doing what your target alignment dictate be the right answer to "What ought one do?". That would be assuming the conclusion.



    Well was established (imperfect word choice?) below (in your post), moral is a term for the right answer to the question.
    And the question does not presume a purpose. Assuming a purpose would be begging the question*. For any purpose you can imagine, I can question it by asking "But, ought one follow that purpose?". It may be hard to believe, but there is no hidden implied purpose to qualify the question.

    *Asking "What ought one do if we assume X is the answer to 'What ought one do?' ?" is circular logic or an unfounded premise.
    I think I have a better way to cut to the chase of this. If you ask me the question, "What ought I to do?" I am going to answer with some variation on, "It depends on what you want." This is all inclusive: It depends on what you want to happen; it depends on what you want to gain; it depends on what you want to achieve; it depends on what you want to experience; it depends on what you want to feel; it depends on what you want the outcomes of your actions to lead to.

    Do you want to be happy? Then list XYZ are the things the sufficiently-informed guru/spiritual advisor/life coach can objectively tell you to do to become happy. They are the answer to, "What ought I to do?" if you want to be happy.

    Do you want to be a good person? Then (in D&D or a system that uses a similar alignment grid) you ought to do those things which the good alignment says good people do.

    It is not presuming the conclusion to say, "You ought to do what the alignment you aspire to requires." If you asked "What is the moral thing to do?" of somebody who knows what alignment you aspire to, he will (assuming he is both correct and honest) tell you what the alignment to which you aspire says one should do in the situation you find yourself in. Because this hypothetical involves an objective alignment system, there is an objectively correct answer provided by each alignment. ("It doesn't matter; this is an amoral question" is also a valid answer, but I am neglecting it for now; we are assuming we have correctly identified our "what should I do?" questions as pertaining to the objective moral alignment system.)

    To reiterate: The answer, without making any assumptions about the asker at all, to the question, "What ought I to do?" - regardless of whether morality is objective or subjective - will always be, "It depends on what you want."

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    Default Re: [Thought experiment] If alignments are objective how do we know what they represe

    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    I'm going to focus on this, because I think it's the core of where we're disagreeing or dancing around each other:

    To reiterate: The answer, without making any assumptions about the asker at all, to the question, "What ought I to do?" - regardless of whether morality is objective or subjective - will always be, "It depends on what you want."
    What someone wants may, or may not be morally relevant, and if relevant may be moral or immoral. So while the overall question "What ought one do?" might have a large answer (John Stuart Mills thought the theory of Utilitarianism was the answer), I have no reason to presume the answer depends on what I want or to presume any other hidden purpose.

    This core of disagreement might not be resolvable. And that is okay.
    Last edited by OldTrees1; 2021-03-05 at 02:15 PM.

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    Default Re: [Thought experiment] If alignments are objective how do we know what they represe

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    What someone wants may, or may not be morally relevant, and if relevant may be moral or immoral. So while the overall question "What ought one do?" might have a large answer (John Stuart Mills thought the theory of Utilitarianism was the answer), I have no reason to presume the answer depends on what I want or to presume any other hidden purpose.

    This core of disagreement might not be resolvable. And that is okay.
    In objective morality, you either must define "moral/immoral" as the fixed axis, in which case you've essentially stated "moral = good" and thus it is no longer the #defined answer to the question "what ought I to do?" with no hidden assumptions about goals, or you must accept that the answer to the question "What ought I to do?" depends on what you want.

    The moment you insist that "moral == good," you can try to claim that you ought to do the moral thing, but you are now open to the question, "Why should I be moral?" And now we're right back to it depending on what I want.

    The only reason "moral" as defined previously - the answer to the question "What ought I to do?" - depends on what you want is because all "ought" questions require motivation. It is fundamentally impossible to have "ought" without a motivation.

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