Philosophy of Evil

It will, as long my definitions of them suffice.

I don't know where you are getting these alrenate definitions of good and evil from except from outside this thread.

fulio

You are trying to claim that good and evil can be and are universally applied and others here on this thread, cicerone, fresco etc., are saying, "Tell us how they are universal. Define your words, "good" and "evil", etc."

You wrote: That's why I'm using the terms generally and abstractly.

But what does that mean? That you are using them in a naïve way?

I'm sorry rufio but I think we must conclude you are out of your depth.

I and others have offered possible definitions or connotations of "good" and "evil" but on the one hand you say you are not interested in these, yet on the other you accuse us of concepts devoid of meaning whilst you yourself refuse to define these terms, unilaterally claiming that they are "universal".( LOL). Finally when it is is pointed out that this nebulous "universality" leads to a truism about ANY pair of opposite qualities used to describe human activities, you misunderstand this and accuse us of offering "alternative definitions" of "Good" and "Evil" from "outside the thread" !

Thank you Fresco.
You have saved me a pointless time in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent. Well said.

Rufio, if your definitions are the only valid ones and that outside information is not relevant then what is the point of your "discussion" ?

rufio, Whatever man is capable of doing is "natural." In trying to tag it as good or evil is based on the individual's environment which includes culture, education, religion, climate, socio-economic status, and a whole slew of other things too numerous to list. "Good" is a fleeting concept that changes with personal perception and time. It's one of those concepts of life that's difficult to "put your finger on it," because many people have different interpretations of the same incident, art, music, action, and/or experience. That's one of the reasons why there is never a 100 percent concensus on who our president should be. Many think GWBush is good, and some of us think he is evil.

rufio, nobody is confusing good with religious morality, but you are making some unwarranted assumptions here, first that good and evil are entities with goals (which makes them deities in my book), and second that there are always right/wrong answers. Your religion may teach this, but logic denies it.

You seem to have completely missed the point of my first post, which is that "evil" is nothing more than a natural consequence of the evolution of traits that have enabled us to survive. It is often the result of biological drives taken to an extreme: uncontrolled lust, greed, domination, self-satisfaction at the expense of others, pleasure taken in causing someone else pain.

We cannot reasonably debate a generic "evil" but must define what we mean by it. I consider deliberately causing unnecessary pain or suffering to be the foundation of evil.

Not true. There can be multiple courses of action that would benefit each party to a greater or lesser degree without actually harming any of them. The trick is to get them to reach a consensus since no solution will be optimal for everyone.

How do you determine the "right" course of action when the long-term consequences can rarely be foreseen? Those who designed welfare system had good intentions and failed to anticipate the social cost. Was the atomic bomb good or evil? It killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians, but saved the lives of countless soldiers who would have died in the invasion of Japan. Was Prohibition good or evil? What about the war on Iraq?

Sometimes there are no good choices, and you must pick the lesser of evils.



Hitler was fully human, as we all are. You cannot disinherit him just because you don't approve of his actions. As Portal Star implied, he thought that what he was doing was good for the German people. Since he chose a course of action to achieve this "good" objective, by your own definition he was "good."

How did the force of evil help us?

I say that victims are deprived of choice, particularly murder victims but also children, slaves/peasants, women denied the right to vote and control their own destinies, and anyone else who suffers at the hands of someone who has power over them.

People who are mentally ill have their ability to choose impaired. People whose culturally-instilled beliefs compel them to act in certain ways have their ability to choose impaired. People under the influence of drugs, alcohol, hormones, or other mind-altering substances have their ability to choose impaired, although the initial decision to use drugs or alcohol was a choice.

In any case, good people make bad choices for a lot of reasons. Your black-or-white philosophy excludes not only myriad shades of gray, but the whole spectrum of human emotion that includes seeing red, feeling blue, and being green with envy.

"Good or moral in this case would be closer to rational, or logical, or correct."

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

What do you not understand about these definitions, fresco? They are universal because they are not subjective.

"you misunderstand this and accuse us of offering "alternative definitions" of "Good" and "Evil" from "outside the thread" !"

You certainlty haven't been doing anythign else on this thread.

" Rufio, if your definitions are the only valid ones and that outside information is not relevant then what is the point of your "discussion" ?"

It is hypothetical. I have given exactly what I mean to give to it, and nothing more. If you want to discuss your ideas of good and evil, fine, but subjective ideas are not part of the hypothetical I set up.

"In trying to tag it as good or evil is based on the individual's environment which includes culture, education, religion, climate, socio-economic status, and a whole slew of other things too numerous to list."

No it's not. It's based on the definitions I gave. Your interpretation of what good and evil mean here is based on that.

"but you are making some unwarranted assumptions here, first that good and evil are entities with goals"

No, I wasn't. I was explaining why that would be the case. I simply put an idea out for others to comment on, and already people are accusing me of "assuming" and "preaching". What the hell is wrong with you people?

"(which makes them deities in my book)"

Well, your religion may teach that, but logic denies it.

" You seem to have completely missed the point of my first post,"

No, I got it. Your first post was you bitching about what you thought that evil, subjectively, was. I don't care. I really don't. If you would stop being so self-absorbed and actually read my post, you might actually be able to add somethign to the thread.

"We cannot reasonably debate a generic "evil" but must define what we mean by it."

I have defined what I meant by it in a way that everyone could associate with it, no matter what their personal little greivances and pet peeves.

" Not true. There can be multiple courses of action that would benefit each party to a greater or lesser degree without actually harming any of them."

Good is anything that acheives the desired goal, to whatever degree. Certainly there may be more than one good or evil choice.

"How do you determine the "right" course of action when the long-term consequences can rarely be foreseen?"

This is hypothetical. In a hypothetical world, you know how things will turn out because you set them up that way to acheive that effect, if you so choose. I am not debating good intentions. Either an action has the necessary effect, or it does not. Unlike you, I am not condemning evil people to hell.

"Sometimes there are no good choices, and you must pick the lesser of evils."

In that case, there was an evil choice made sometime earlier that affected the situation negatively.

"Hitler was fully human, as we all are."

Yes, but unable or unwilling to learn from his mistakes.

"he thought that what he was doing was good for the German people."

He was acting out of anger and bitterness. He was hunted down by his own troops. He chose this course of action as a result of his past failures, his past bad choices. He is an example of where evil failed. He made bad choices, but instead of realizing that they were wrong, for him and his life, he continued to do things out of hatred and his feelings of inadequacy. He was never trying to help the German people. He was trying to make up for his past. His actions accomplished neither.

"How did the force of evil help us?"

It gave us another lesson that we could learn through observation only.

" I say that victims are deprived of choice, particularly murder victims but also children, slaves/peasants, women denied the right to vote and control their own destinies, and anyone else who suffers at the hands of someone who has power over them."

How are they deprived of choice? Did your God make them that way? They are deprived of some choices, because of the evil choices of others. They have a few options open to them, still. Once we enter the real world, we are all limited in what we can choose to do, some more than others. That is why I am speaking hypothetically. Even if you are mentally ill, or cultutally bound, or on drugs, you still have the ability to choose. You only lose the ability to tell if you are choosing well. As I said, we are all limited in life. You can't choose to fly, even if you are completely mentally healthy. What I am discussing here is a theory associated with all choices that it is possible to make, not those that it is impossible to make.

"In any case, good people make bad choices for a lot of reasons."

Then by definition, they are not good people. By many standards of religious morality, most people are good people, because they have positive intentions. This does not make them good people in the end. Perhaps if you would stop comparing evil to Hitler and good to God, you could understand what I'm trying to say.

"Your black-or-white philosophy excludes not only myriad shades of gray, but the whole spectrum of human emotion that includes seeing red, feeling blue, and being green with envy."

How psuedointellectually profound. Have you got any other meaningless idioms you'd like to throw into the mix that have nothing to do with the point? Please, let's get them over with now so we can start talking about something real.

*yawn*

rufio, Taken from your first post, first paragraph, last sentence, "Good or moral in this case would be closer to rational, or logical, or correct." Rational for who? Logical for who? Correct for who? When you answer these three questions from your original statement, maybe we can proceed to the next step.

rufio wrote:




This statement is wrong applied to many different contexts.

Apart from being applied to any context it is meaningless.

A truism it is not.

Why you cannot see that I don't klnow.

Logical in that it accomplishes the objective.

Twyvel, care to write that in English for me? It's not a "truism". It's my definition of good for the purpose of this thing that I posted.

rufio

If you're just writing a fairy tale I guess you can define "good" and "evil" any way you want. Matter of fact maybe the "creative writing " forum would have been a better choice.

But in the philosophy section here, you will be challenged on your definitions and rightly so, wouldn't you agree? Especially when you present statements as if they were facts of knowledge.


You wrote:

Good is anything that achieves the desired goal, to whatever degree.

As many have said, cicerone imposter just above, apart from appling this statement to a context it is meaningless.

In other words, if this is not a truism or some absolute truth you are putting forward then what are you talking about? What is it?

You wrote:
It's my definition of good for the purpose of this thing that I posted.

Ah ha, so it's your subjective view which you have presented as objective. Well don't except others to agree, they have their own views, as you know.

I haven't started writing yet, twyvel, this is just a part of the premise. I was going to add more, but it seems like no one here is adult to talk about anything without bringing personal biases into it.

The definition of good and evil is a whole other kettle of fish, and I was trying to avoid that by adding a simpler definition. When Descartes says clear and distinct, he doesn't mean clear like just anything is clear - he means a specific thing that he defined it to mean in his philosophy. Similarly, when Hume uses the phrase "matter of fact" he isn't using it idiomatically and he doesn't mean to refer to true statements, and when Kant uses "aesthetic" he doesn't mean pretty. Get the gist? Imagine writing a paper on how one them was wrong in his philosophy simply because of his inability to use English (or French, or Midieval German, as the case may be).

I am speaking on the level of situation only, so of course the word here is applied to a single situation.

I'm setting up something that is true for every choice and every person who has to make choices.

My subjective veiw of what real-life things are good and which aren't has very little to do with this. This is a general definition based on the fact that whatever people consider to be good they are going to make their objective. If you think that helping people at the expense of yourself is a good, moral thing to do, than that will be your objective - if you thought that it was good and moral to do something else, than that would be your objective. Whatever action best accomplishes whatever objective you chose would be a good action, and whatever didn't would be an evil action. Universally.

You had to add "Universally" to negate your whole thesis. Remember Robin Hood?

You're missing it again. Let me show you.

Person A hates person B. Person A is convinced that person B is a morally bad person who should be killed. Person A's objective is to kill person B. Any choice he makes that fulfills that objective is a morally good choice for person A.

Person B is hungry. Person B thinks it is morally right that he should be able to eat. Eating is person B's objective. Any choice he makes that fulfills that objective is a morally good choice for person B, even if it is considered immoral to person A.

Person C is a judge. Person C wants to uphold certain laws which he believes are moral, such as people are not allowed to steal and not allowed to kill each other. His objective is to prevent person B from stealing anything and person A from killing person B. Any choice he makes that fulfills this objective is a morally good choice for person C.

There, we have three different people with three completely different moralities. But do you see anything that is consistantly, universally the same for all three?

What you have shown is that Person A could have beleived that Person B is a morally bad person, but that he wants to help him become a morally good person, and make it his life's ambition. Individual perception. Hungry Person B could also be morally right if he worked for his food. Individual perception. The Judge, Person C, could be a judge in Iraq under Saddam and execute both Person A and B for reasons that has nothing to do with morals. Individual judgement. All three have fulfilled their objective, and each truly feels they were morally right and justified.

Sure. It could be any way you want it to. It works out the same no matter how you do it.

a. a mother is a member of my immediate social group

b. If I was starving, and it was someone else's mother, maybe. Who says anything about cake? Cake has little nutritional value, and if I was starving, the sugar content might kill me. You've really got to think these things through.

c. 15 is no longer the standard reproductive age. And I'm a member of society and various social groups. Plenty of people have killed because someone took their lover away.

Humans are animals, and animals follow no morality. Survival is the intent of life, and morality is survival as part of a group - a necessary code for mutualism. This is why monkeys spend so much time grooming each other - it's their social time. As humans, we talk to maintain social relationships. Without social relationsips, what would I have holding me to a moral code? Survival would be my intent. As a community can help me to survive and be prosperous, it would be wise to follow societal rules (morals) as long as that society is beneficial to me. If a society was not beneficial to me, say, I was a slave in society, I may not be as invested in it.