Philosophy of Evil

I think that from a philosophical point of view you need to start with the relationship between the "good-evil" dimension and "consensus". I say this because what might be "good" for the individual may be "evil" for a group or vice versa.
Once you presume that "good/evil" are absolute terms then you are into the realms of religion, which you say you wish to avoid.

Obviously, everything is relative. But I am speaking here of what would be rational or right in a given situation. That is, the terms "good" and "evil" are contained within the situation and within the perspective, such that they are universal within that situation and perspective. In other words, it's completely hypothetical. There's no such thing as a complete vacuum, or a perfect circle, but we can talk about both for the purposes of math and science. So we can talk about the hypothetical right and wrong for the purposes of philosophy.

Sorry to be pedantic but surely "right" and "wrong" are retrospective. I argue that "the situation" does not define what is "right" or "wrong"...only a later (wider)report of the situation. For example, suppose someone jumps into a river to save a another (a) if they survive was it right (he risked the well being of his family) ? (b) if they both drown was it "wrong" ? etc.

The journalist/writer can artificially delimit "the situation" according to his needs. He sets the boundaries of "the event" ...but reality is not like that.

I am not talking about things that happen by chance or about general goals. I am talking about momentary decisions, such as the decision to leap into the river, the decision of how to rescue the drowning person when in the river, the decision of how to get the drowning person back to land. The objective is not right or wrong - the objective merely determines whether the actions were right or not. The important thing is to name the objective before you begin. Perhaps it was morally right that the person should drown, perhaps he was an evil bastard. But if the objective is to rescue him, than it is right that he be saved, because that is what was stated as the goal.

For instance, in a geometric proof, it wouldn't be considered "right" prove something other than what you were trying to show, or disprove what you were trying show, even if you do the proof correctly. You have to set some parameters, and make some assumptions before you can come up with hypothetical philosophies.

Okay, I'd like to pursue this further but I'm off to work in the UK. See you later.

You personify "evil" as a conscious force with a goal? Then it must be a god-like entity (Satan et al) and you are indeed talking about religion.

Evil is nothing more than the natural consequence of evolution. The urges for sex, hoarding food, and acquiring goods and power are survival traits, but in a diverse population there will be people whose drives are stronger than average and who will gratify their own desires at the expense of others.

Insecurity may be a primary source of the temptation to hurt others in the need to obtain wealth. Some cause harm for revenge or momentary pleasure. Others act out of patriotism or religious fervor.

Some evil people lack the ability for empathy due to defective brain structure or trauma. Others may perform evil acts because their mental illness distorts their view of reality. Cultural conditioning may prevent men from seeing woman, children, animals, or people of other races/castes as beings with rights and feelings.

"Good" men, on the other hand, may have lower levels of testosterone, etc, and are not overwhelmed by their biological urges or are able to control them through social conditioning and/or self-discipline.



The notion that some force exists that that would sacrifice the lives of millions of Jews in order to give Hitler a choice makes no sense. It is unethical to sacrifice altar boys to priestly choice, natives to conquistadors, women to rapists, blacks to whites. Victims have no right to choice, but their tormentors do? That is absurd. Why should innocents suffer and die needlessly so that this mysterious force has an excuse to reward or punish people who were destined by nature and nurture to be "good" or "evil"?

Evil is NOT a requirement for free will to exist. Even if there was no biological urge to harm others, there will always be trade-offs between self-interest and the common good, and choices where the consequences are neutral, slightly advantageous to one party or the other, or optimal for all.

What is seen as "evil/bad" is usually good for the individual (if only temporarily) but not for society.
What is seen as "good" is usually what is good for society, but may or may not be for the individual.

This is why, as you were trying to claim "evil" may not be necessary if someone is given all temptations (and needs). Society works on a premise like that - we work together, follow certain societal codes (like marriage, traffic laws), in exchange for mutual benefits.

The individual desires of humans (on their most basic level) tend to be for survival - food, water, shelter, and sex (propogate the species). Societal status can also be a motivation.

I don't believe in "good" and "evil" as concepts that exist (like, gravity, for example). Notions of what is good and what is bad also change from society to society. It is beneficial to a human in society to behave well to others in within society in order to function in that society.
Note - as war and gang members show, people usually only hold this "good/bad" moral code responsible to actions in their own society.

You're confusing this with religious morality. Good as I mentioned above, for my purposes only refers to an action that is not the correct one to take to acheive a certain goal. If your goal is to help other people rather than yourself, and to not have sex, than I guess you're right. But you're making assumptions here that are irrelevant. Doing each of these deeds requires conscious thought and a conscious decision. We are not wind-up toys that simply go and go things based on how much testosterone we are allotted.

You misunderstand what I'm saying in that second part. The force that caused Hitler to sacrifice thousands of Jews was Hitler. The force of evil was what gave him the option of doing so, and what plagued his conscience later on, and lost him the war and the respect of thinking people everywhere. Evil didn't help Hitler, since he was somewhat less than human at that point, but it did help us.

Who said that victims did not have a choice? Everyone who is human has a choice. Good people are people who make good choices, and bad people are those who make bad ones - and what choices we make are not predetermined.

In a trade-off between self-interest and the common good, there is a right and a wrong answer. There is always a right and a wrong answer, whenever you have an objective and more than one choice as to how to acheive it.

And this doesn't have anything to do with the discussion, but if you have a biological urge to harm others you should proabably see a shrink.

I'd have a biological urge to harm others if they were getting in the way of my food, water, sleep, or reproduction. Because of positive and negative reinforcements (society has the acknowledged right to provide these too) I may not act upon these desires. However, as an individual and not a member of society, what would be the motivation not to hurt someone who was, for example, stealing your food?


Society had rejected Hitler. He couldn't make it as an art student, was rejected and mocked by the school. He had weird sex practices and possibly a missing testicle, and was insecure. He had mental problems. I'm sure being so terrible made him feel powerful. People with mental illness are an exception to studies of normal human functioning. People have a tendency to follow leaders, and pick up their characteristics when asked to in a society (psycology experiments have been done to confirm this). The German people picked up Hitlers.

And don't forget what motivated so many German people into WWII - they were paying massive war reparations and were experiencing debt and lack of food. They were a population ready and willing to find a scapegoat and take their money.

In a trade-off between self-interest and the common good, there is a right and a wrong answer. There is always a right and a wrong answer, whenever you have an objective and more than one choice as to how to acheive it.


There is always a right and a wrong answer? What backing do you have for this claim?

Re: Philosophy of Evil

You're already injecting a teleological element into you notion of "evil" before you've even defined it. In other words, you hold that evil has a "purpose" when you don't even know what it is. A philosopher would call this "question begging." You first need to step back and consider the possibility that "evil" has no purpose at all.


You may have a definitional problem here. Is a good person "good" because he always chooses good actions, or are the good consequences of his actions evidence of his "goodness?" Or, to put it another way, does the person make the actions good or do the actions make the person good?


I believe this is correct only if you adhere to a belief in free will. If, on the other hand, actions are determined, then the absence of choice does not necessarily negate morality.


I'm not sure this follows; refer to my comments above.


Not sure I follow you here. What sort of "entity" are you talking about?


I'm not sure if this is more Manichean or Leibnizian. If you're talking about an actual evil entity, then it's closer to Manichaeism. If you're simply saying that the purpose of evil is to generate goodness, then you're closer to Leibniz.

How about good/moral being what insures, or is intended to insure, survival of some group greater than the immediate family, with evil/immoral being the opposite.

It's not an original thought, but it works for me.

rufio

Much has been said above about the problems of your assumptions including that of "free will". Also it may not be possible to separate"a person" from "his actions" (see an earlier thread of mine on the Social Construction of Reality).

However if you insist on pursuing a "Euclidean Mode" of ethical argument I think you must start with the maestro Spinoza who is easily researched (but not so easily understood !) via google, with the proviso that for Spinoza the existence of "God" seems to be axiomatic.

"I'd have a biological urge to harm others if they were getting in the way of my food, water, sleep, or reproduction."

So when your mother told you you couldn't eat cake for breakfast, or that you couldn't date until you were 15, you tried to kill her?

" what would be the motivation not to hurt someone who was, for example, stealing your food?"

Common sense, that is my point. It all depends on the situation. If it was you last food, it might be a right thing to do, but if you had other food, it might be a wrong thing based on the fact that friendship with that person could be beneficial to you, maybe even a part of your objective.

"People with mental illness are an exception to studies of normal human functioning."

Mine too. I wasn't talking about Hitler. I was speaking completely hypothetically, and completely non-politically.

"There is always a right and a wrong answer? What backing do you have for this claim?"

That if you have an objective, there is always a better way to accomplish it, and a worse way. That's my definition of good and evil here - how effective an action is at reaching a predetermined goal.

"You're already injecting a teleological element into you notion of "evil" before you've even defined it. In other words, you hold that evil has a "purpose" when you don't even know what it is. A philosopher would call this "question begging." You first need to step back and consider the possibility that "evil" has no purpose at all."

I'm defining my terms here. I am not making assumptions about a known entity, I am defining something for the purposes of further development.

" You may have a definitional problem here. Is a good person "good" because he always chooses good actions, or are the good consequences of his actions evidence of his "goodness?" Or, to put it another way, does the person make the actions good or do the actions make the person good?"

The actions were defined first, the people are defined by what actions they choose. Where would goodness come from if not from choosing good actions?

" If, on the other hand, actions are determined, then the absence of choice does not necessarily negate morality."

Only if you believe that something other than actions creates morality. I really don't see how that's possible.

Good actions exist independantly of evil ones - that much should be obvious. But, as I said, a good person is defined as a person who chooses good actions, not one who merely does them. If there were no evil actions to choose from, people could not chose, because there would be no choice. Without choice, a person cannot choose a good action, hence, there can be no good people.

"Not sure I follow you here. What sort of "entity" are you talking about?"

An anthropomorphic one. People need to choose, to be human. So if they were not presented with choices, they would create their own. The evil entity is the part of human beings that thinks up alternatives to dead-end or one-track situations. Like, if one day, on your way to work, you think about what might happen if you just sail through a red light at a busy intersection, and this thought causes you to drive a little more carefully that day.

Manichaeism sounds more like the first idea of evil that I referenced as being different from this one.

" How about good/moral being what insures, or is intended to insure, survival of some group greater than the immediate family, with evil/immoral being the opposite."

If that's the objective, sure. It could just as easily be the opposite way around.

For the last time, I am not assuming anything about anything that is real. This is all hypothetical. I am saying, that given the things which I have defined here and nowhere else, this other thing is true. Not that any of this is necessarily true, just that it necessarily follows.

Rufio

You are trying to apply a quasi mathematical model
to an area which resists such modelling. This resistance is due to lack of consensus as to terms.
Similar problems arise in litigation involving the categorization of "crimes". (Take for example the McNaughton Rules on "Insanity" etc), the point being that "categorization" is the lowest level of mathematical description (nominal level).
Your results will therefore be tautological or semantically vacuous. The difference between ethical arguments and litigation is that litigation is a process involving subsequent action. So the "functional meaning" of "not guilty" is the process of freeing the accused etc. But "hypothetical ethics" have no such "functional meaning" and we end up with word salad.

I've very carefully defined every term with a meaning so that I could discuss it later. Which part of this are you having trouble with?

Problems of definition ?

How about "choice", "correct", "action", "situation", "merit", "entity" and "exist" for a start !!!

Ok, maybe I wasn't so clear, if it didn't get across:

A choice is a decision made between two possible actions.

Correct = good = best able to fulfil the objective (which I explained above).

An action is anything that is done by a human being.

A situation is the result of a series of past actions that determines which actions are available to choose.

I'm not sure where you're getting merit from.

An entity is a thing or force that exists separately from other things or forces.

Existance is a fundamental concept of philosophy. I'm not sure you can do much to elaborate on it.

Okay - I admit to some extent throwing rhetorical spanners in your works but I really have trouble knowing what you are talking about because you still seem to be using circular or minimalistic definitions . So for example when you use the word "action" as anything "done by a human being" I find myself saying "who decides what has been done"..."is doing nothing an action"...."is mental activity an action"...and so on...and the reason for this is that you are taking the concepts of "Good" and "Evil" out of their normal context of spiritual/moral/ethical/religious usage and thereby rendering them skeletons of their former selves.

As Wittgenstein said.."meaning is use"...and your usage is idiosyncratic.