Good.. or Evil?

Evil is only possible if another path exists that would be less evil. Otherwise if it were the only path, then it could not possibly be evil, rather, it would be necessity.

Since "good" cannot exist without "evil" and vice versa, couldn't it be said that since they are such general labels, they can be easily switched? Since "evil" is that which causes harm to "good", couldn't it be stated that "good" has detrimental effects on "evil" as well? And since they are so reversible, it bring to mind the question of what exactly is differenciating these two opposites. I for one think that it all depends on the perspective. There is no "good" and "evil", only what will benefit one and what will benefit the other. Of course, there are times where one option will cause more damage than the other, but as long as there is a benefit, however small and insignificant, that option is there for a reason and causes a positive effect. (Within that certain perspective, of course.)

I wan't to be in that number who worries about detrimental effect of good on evil...

It may be that certain chemicals can account for our recoiling from a hot object, since all men by nature do so. But is morality exactly like that kind of chemical reaction? If so, then how can one account for the many differences in what is called "good" or "evil" in different societies or at different times?

I smell cookies coming out of the oven, and the odor is pleasurable to me (stimulus-response). But I know that they are for the children next door, and it would be "wrong" of me to eat them, so I refrain. Isn't this a case of my body suggesting one course of action, and I choose otherwise? Or I know they are for me, and I stop what I am doing and grab a couple? How would chemicals alone account for different reactions to the same external stimulus?

Say I am foolish enough to put a fork in an electric outlet. My body is shocked. But would we want to say the shock was "evil" or would we just say it hurt? We certainly would not blame our responding chemicals for the pain; we would not even think to do it.

I'd slow down and take a step back.

Before you delve into the neurochemistry of good and evil, have you truly considered how these words can mean vastly different things?

Take a look at a nice selection of evil from among Nazi war criminals, and you'll see that even among co-conspirators in a single crime, there were many different motives and psychologies:

Amon Goethe -- famous from Fiennes' portrayal of him in Schindler's List. He was the commandant of Plaszow. He was an outright sadist who took pleasure in beating, torturing, and randomly killing people. The same can be said for Josef Mengele, Klaus Barbie, and many others.

Adolf Eichmann -- he was a number cruncher who was the main practical overseer of all the death camps and all the transports of jews from ghettos to the extermination centers. But he was not much of an idealogue -- he was just an obsessive guy who was following orders and trying to do a good job so as to climb in the SS ranks. He'd have done anything they asked.

Rudolf Hoess -- Commandant of Auschwitz -- One of the few Nazis who confessed and apologized before his execution. He oversaw the gassing of between 1 and 2 million Jews in Birkenau. During his testimony at Nuremburg (as a witness against Ernst Kaltenbrunner), he said that he often felt bad for the families he was killing, since he had a family of his own, but he would not ever think of disobeying orders.

Joseph Goebbels, Julius Streicher, Heinrich Himmler -- very different people, but all fully indoctrinated in antisemitic ideology -- this is what motivated them. Goebbels and Streicher were both propagandists (in very different ways), Himmler was head of the SS and the architect of nearly all the Nazis' war crimes and crimes against civilian populations.

Finally, Hermann Goering -- he's the highest Nazi official to sign an order in writing ordering the commencement of the extermination of Jews (though it's known from plenty of testimony that Hitler himself had ordered it). But Goering didn't care much about it -- he was told to sign that order by Hitler, he passed it down, it happened, and he wasn't much involved with it.


What's my point here? It's all the same crime, but the inner motivations were very different. Goethe loved killing people with his own hands, but his ultimate supervisors (Eichmann and Himmler) both vomited when visiting death camps. Some wanted to inflict pain, some wanted to materialize an ideology, some wanted to advance their careers, and some would just do what they were told.

Are all these things the same, deep down, when one considers neurophysiology? I doubt it. Evil is the act, not the process.

Surely an act can only be morally judged on the basis of the motivation that lies behind it. If we say that a strictly physical neurophysiology accounts for human behaviour then there is no such thing as motivation. The good and evil question would not arise.

Forget motivation... Stupid comes out of stupid people, just as rotten comes out of rotten... If it ain't so bad because the bad are often incompetent, then shoot them with rubber bands instead of hanging them by their testycleeze...

Well, it's not just chemicals and cells-physical things as technical as you suggest, since you also include the conscious in your writing. My point is that there is more than what science can so clearly define (in the case of what we can see and touch) good and evil are two of those things...

The question is whether anyone can define them.

Love the greatest emotion is not just some chemical transfer, I don't like this concept at all

Consciousness goes beyond the physical brain and is not understood even by the best minds

To state my deep love for my children, wife and grandchildren it just some neurotransmitter peptide moving in my brain is an offence.

I would die to save my beloved ones!! So is bravery also a chemical reactionin the brain, no we are much much more than that false idea.

Alan

Alan

You are nice fellow, Alan; but to believe the way we feel or act is not accompanied by chemical or electrical impulses denies a simple reality of our lives... We can over come our emotions with mind... We can learn to love, and learn to hate, which is to say intellect can self condition our emotions to an extent; but we should never deny our biology, because that is what we are about, as you have found out having children and grandchildren...Philosophy is not only about abstraction...It is about managing our natures so we can best fulfill our natures... Ants and fleas breed, so why can't we??? But looking at philosophers, it is easy to see that many of these large brained bi-peds were mere monkeys with reality, failures at the mating dance of life, able to think, unable to love...If you understand our biology in detail, in abstraction it is enlightening without being particularly meaning full... We live in gross, and not in miniture... Our lives are in vivo, and not in vitro... Do you get my drift???

I don't think Alan is suggesting that our feelings and acts are not accompanied by electro-chemical signals. He is suggesting that there is more to feelings and acts than this. To suggest otherwise, I would say, is to deny a simple reality of philosophy, which is that awareness cannot be explained by reference only to brain states.

well good people dont do evil to evil people god punishes them. evil people know the difference between good and evil and they choose to do evil that makes me sick and i cant wait til the show starts

Just in case the major players are late; why not start a little fire under the minor players... There is no reason those who reward themselves on the misery of others should not afford a little entertainment for their labors... It is a terrible thing, and a sad fact, but our system of laws which spread injustice far and wide also ruins a lot of people.. And another sad fact, is that some times people are born deformed mentally, and cannot comprehend the pain of others, and those people should be snuffed out as kindly as possible... You cannot give people a conscience...You cannot give them a sense of consequences...You cannot give them a love of others or the ability to sympathize.... I don't know how simple killers do it, kill, think of killing, justify killing; but as evil as when whole masses of people contibute but a step toward some mass killing, or war...Some of our president have been mass murderers... Many people enabled them and share their guilt, and it is useless to say they were only paper pushers... People should try to be responsible, and be aware of the results of what they do... Do you think that God, if there is a God will not be aware of what the saved were aware... People collect their checks, and go home to their children and wives, and they must know that their actions destroy whole families, of people who care as much for their families, who are cared for as much by their families...

I'm thinking of the Taliban and suicide bombers. Are they evil? The suicide bombers are so brainwashed by the promise of 72 virgins after death and the idea of martyrdom that they feel an obligation to fulfill their mission. To them it is not evil, but an obligation for the cause.
This quote from Gil Bailie, empathizes that idea. "The people who burned witches at the stake never for one moment thought of their act as violence; rather they thought of it as an act of divinely mandated righteousness. The same can be said of most of the violence we humans have ever committed."
--Gil Bailie, author and lecturer (b. 1944)
Majic

Good and evil are concepts. They are subjective distinctions or judgments that we make. It is usefull for us to make these determinations and so we navigate in the world applying them to all aspects of life from the trivial to the profound.


The value systems that emerge from our distinctions is a complex and essential part of being human. What are we without the knowledge of good and evil?

No... The taliban and the Muslim suicide bombers are not evil... I trust that they do not follow their own faith exactly... But, in a sense they do; so they are not evil... We would all be in trouble if we could be judged on the basis of an ethic not our own... We should not, and cannot do such a thing with justice...What those people are to us is a natural disaster.... We do not call rivers evil because they flood their banks...It is inevitable that where we negate people and abuse their religion and sense of virtue that they will come out swinging... We deny them, but when one of them takes a bunch of ours then we must count them....

Guys,

I think you might be mixing "absolute" evil with "subjective evil." Hitler might have thought his hideous acts for which he in accountable, where somehow good for the German people. But he could not care one heck!! for the millions of innocent souls he murdered in obtaining his insane good. Even that of his own people.

But real evil is when it is both, at the end of the day, both subjectively and objectively evil and hurts everyone it touches.

Scratching to find goodness in a person like Hitler, and even going as far as stating that he really in his own black heart thought he was doing good. The fact of the matter is his goodness was actually evil in the absolute sense. Or to use a quote the Devil in disguise



Hitlers subjective goodness, finally ended with him having to murder himself , bringing ruin to the German people and cost the lives of over 55 million people in the process

So there was no good in Hitler, his subjective "goodness", was objectively evil even unto himself

It could be that good/evil as a form of relationship between people was lost to him, simply beyond his comprehension... The form of power as survival as opposed to weakness equaling destruction was a more likely form of his understanding... He made one comment about his life seeming like a motion picture, which shows me a divide between his emotions and his being... In fact, he could think but not feel, and he could injure, but not sympathize... He was like any other mass murderer or serial killer.. The difference was of scale...