Seasons

Irina, if you didn't think torturing babies was wrong, it means it wouldn't be evil to you. It would still be evil to me and I would act accordingly. If you lived in a society where most thought it was evil and would punish you, you would either (a) learn to think of it as evil (b) learn to hide it or (c) get caught and suffer the consequences.

I define evil subjectively, thought my own standards, values and experiences. It's evil to me if it uses others a objects, or a means to your own ends, and especially if it hurts them for your own gain. It's good to me if it cultivates compassion and awareness of our connection to each other and the greater whole. That's just a quick and dirty summary of my own values and worldview. YMMV. Societies tend to have a collective version of that, though if my standards are different from that of another culture, I keep mine and don't care what people say about my ignorance for judging what I could not possibly understand from the outside. I will try to understand the other culture and all that, but that doesn't mean I will give up my subjective view that beating up people who are weaker than you (like women or monks) is wrong. It's my perspective and I am keeping it (and acting on it when I can).

The Clerk:

IMHO, a person is not morally responsible for any matter in which he has no choice. Suppose you are tied to a chair with a button near your right foot; someone taps you under your right knee with a little hammer and by reflex, your foot kicks out and depresses the button, which (as you knew all along) sets off a bomb killing 100 children. You are not morally responsible for their deaths, since a reflex action is not voluntary.

If a pedophile truly cannot help himself, then he is not evil, only unfortunate.

Clerk, though I tend to in general think of the behavior as "evil" and not the people (I was raised Lutheran and all that) and I also think biochemical factors play a huge role along with social factors in shaping our behaviors, I don't think I will completely give up on the concept of internal choice also being a factor. Arguably, one of the reasons creatures with some level of self-awareness and ability to make choices based on all the information they receive evolved and flourished is that the ability to make choices that made it more likely they would survive, attract mates, and pass on the choice-making ability in their genes. While I grant you our choices are limited by our ability to fully use our brain, our internal chemistry and filters, our education and our environment, humans are still, by and large, able to make many choices about their own behaviors, including, for the most part, which impulses are safe to act on and which are not.

Though in some cases people people may be truly unable to control behavior, in many more I believe they may uses the impulses as an excuse to act in what they see as their interest or desire when they think they can get away with it. Therefore, if a pedophile randomly jumps on children in public with parents and police present regardless of the consequences, I believe he or she has no ability to control it. If the pedophile plans and waits, manipulates and minimizes his or her chances of being caught, then he or she had control. Even if they cry and say they knew what they did was wrong and they felt guilty, I think they are really just feeling sorry for themselves. It's sort of like men who "snap" and beat up their wives and the cry about how awful it was for them and they just couldn't help it. Funny, they never seem to snap in a biker bar and randomly hit Mountain Mike or "The Brute" Johnson. If the break was totally out of control, they would hit their boss, random strangers and the local cop. All the crocodile tears in the world only mean they pity themselves, not much different than a cheater who cries because he got caught. Biology may give them the impulse, and society may give them mixed messages but they still made a choice.

Bev writes:

Irina, if you didn't think torturing babies was wrong, it means it wouldn't be evil to you.

I'm sure that's right, taking "evil... for you" to mean, "evil ... in your opinion". But I claim that it would be evil (just plain evil, not just 'evil for me'), whether or not I believed it to be. Indeed, if I died tomorrow, it would still be true that torturing babies just for fun would be morally wrong.

If someone were unfortunate enough to believe that 2+2=5, we could say that "2+2=5" was true 'for him'. Arithmetic truth would then also be subjective. I guess this would make everything 'subjective', since there is nothing that people couldn't disagree on or change their minds about. But then 'subjective' wouldn't be a very interesting concept, since it would apply to everything.

But if someone who believes that 2+2=5, and various consequences of that (such as 20+20=50 and 4+4=10) were to design a sophisticated airplane from scratch, and built one from that design, I don't think it would fly, even 'for him'!

No doubt it is true 'for you' that ethics is subjective, but it is true 'for me' that it is objective. If that is all there is to it, we don't even disagree: we both agree that ethics is subjective 'for you' and objective 'for me'. Why even discuss it? We are both trapped in our own subjectivity. You discuss it because, I venture to suppose, deep in your heart you believe that ethics really is subjective, not just subjective 'for you', and that I am wrong when I say otherwise.

Bev: I define evil subjectively, thought my own standards, values and experiences.

Yes! I'm reading C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, and he argues that we all somehow know right from wrong. His example involves an orange, and goes something like this:

Say Bev says to Irina, "Give me a bit of your orange; I gave you a bit of my orange the other day." (Virtual oranges, yet.)

If Irina refuses to share her orange with Bev, she'll explain it away. She won't just say, "I don't want to," or "I don't have to" (unless she's selfish). She'll say something along the lines of that being an entirely different situation. She knows that she should share her orange with Bev. (Well, you should, Irina. So there.) Now sharing oranges doesn't compare to the Holocaust. But on a sliding scale between pure goodness and pure evil, Irina has just nudged over to the evil side and she knows it. Nobody's completely evil. But the point is that people generally know right from wrong.

I think what's pure good is selflessness. Pure evil would be never considering how your actions affect other people.

We all know smacking babies against the wall is evil. And, Irina, we all know you owe Bev a bit of your orange.

Am I out of the sandbox now for revealing myself as a crazy genius? Really, I'm just weird. Why else would I have stuck around this place so long? I fit in!

Irina, Clearly you believe there is an objective "evil" independent of individual perspective (what I called evil per se). What is it's source? Who defines it?
how would we study it as a natural phenomenon (like electricity or magnetic fields)?

[snarls:] Oh, all right, then! TAKE it, if it means so very much to you! [Throws the rotten half of the orange at BEV] [stalks away, muttering:] Greedy, officious little...

Bev writes:'

Irina, Clearly you believe there is an objective "evil" independent of individual perspective (what I called evil per se).

Correct.

What is it's source?

I don't know that it has a source. It is part of the universe. Does the universe have a source? Does the number 5 have a source?


Who defines it?

Well, we all try to define it, with varying degrees of success. Alas, it exists whether we define it or not, just as the sun exists whether we define it or not.

how would we study it as a natural phenomenon (like electricity or magnetic fields)?

Well, I think we are doing that now, for example in the discussion of Hitler a few messages back.

Do you think that the truth about electricity and magnetic fields is merely subjective?

Clerk, weird really isn't a problem here. I will give a caveat to you observations from Mr. Lewis. I read all his "fictional" books as a young child (including his "sci fi" works and then I read his more serious work as a teen. I haven't read it recently but though I think he is brilliant, I also think he has some flawed assumptions. One is this idea of "right and wrong" in everyone. He goes too far in assume it is the same value system and world view in all people (sort of like Irina's objective evil).

I think we have the capacity to choose, and ability to understand and connect. Furthermore, I think we have empathy and some level of our awareness of our connections to each other from simply mechanisms such as bonding to the innate desire for some sort of social order. However, I think these capacities are triggered by our environment and largely learned from societies and families. The content and expression of such mechanisms develop in the healthy human over time (al la Piaget, and MAYBE a bit of Kohler, though I have issues with Kohler's work too). That would mean, to put is simply, most people have the structure in their brains for determining "right" from "wrong" just as we have a mechanism for language, music or math, but the actual values are learned and then chosen (or not). My environment is why I grew up speaking English, listening to pop music, and thinking algebra was something I need to know even though I have roughly the same capacities and biological factors as many babies who grew up speaking French, listening to classical music, and who may appreciate calculus. AS I made choices My taste in music became more eclectic, and my math skills sadly set aside. So it is a combination of biology (capacity and ability), environment and choice that effect human perception and behavior. Since I see right and wrong as part of human perception that effect choices and behaviors, I would argue these subjective value judgments are both learned and chosen, and exist within the individual's consciousness rather than outside it (though we can certainly share certain values and communicate them to each other--we even teach them, just as we teach languges or math).

the Clerk writes:

people generally know right from wrong.

Indeed. None of us has infallible, instant answers to moral questions. But we have some ability to discover moral truth.

It's like mathematics. None of us is born knowing much mathematics. But unlike rocks, we are born with the ability to learn mathematics. With the help of discussions by mathematicians of past centuries, we can learn a great deal about mathematics. None of us will ever be infallible in mathematics, but we can become reasonably competent in it.

In the same way, none of us is born knowing much about ethics. But unlike rocks, we are born with the ability to learn ethics. With the help of discussions by ethicists of past centuries, we can learn a great deal about ethics. None of us will ever be infallible in ethics, but we can become reasonably competent in it.

Bev writes [Message 5640]:

He goes too far in assume it is the same value system and world view in all people (sort of like Irina's objective evil).

What I am saying is somewhat different. I am not saying that we all agree about morals. I am saying that certain things would be true whether we agreed about them or not. Even if no one had even formulated the idea that torturing babies just for fun is morally wrong, it would be. With a tiny number of exceptions, truths are true regardless of who, if anyone, believes in them.

If this were not so, having opinions would be a lot easier. Whatever I believed would thereby be true 'for me', and if there's nothing more to be had than that, I might as well formulate my beliefs in the most labor-saving way possible.

Nor would there be any particular reason for seeking agreement. In fact, diversity is often considered to be a good thing; why should this not apply to diversity of belief? How much richer the world would be if everyone had a different opinion on every subject! One might believe that 2+2=pi, another that 2+2=0, and so on. In each case it would be true 'for him', and, if there's no more to be said, what would be the problem?

Irina, I think we had this discussion before. You know I think math is merely an abstract tool that helps us describe and work with the outside word, but that math has no physical existence outside of the way we define and use it. That is not to say math is "subjective" in the sense that if you accept certain premises and primitives, then you logically arrive at certain conclusions. However, change the rules and primitives, we get different results. Change the base of your number system from ten to 2 and there is no 5. Add a few dimensions or curves and Euclid may not be as useful. (Einstein had to use that crazy hyperbolic geometry, didn't he?) Math is a useful tool because of the way we can use it to make deductions about the data we collect, but it is a abstract concept that exists because we made it up. To clarify, we did not make up the physical relationships or the things like physical properties and phenomenon we observe, but we do create ways or organizing the information, setting up rules to help us think about it, and the logical mechanisms for making conclusions such as 2 + 2 = 4 (+ or - 1 if you are an engineer). Math is what I was calling a mental construct till Ulrike made fun of me for overusing the phrase. Still, it's an abstract concept we made up, teach and learn--a big old mind game with practical value when we apply it to data. Only the physical phenomenon studied and measured exists outside our heads.

Human values are abstract like math but the choice of values and definitions remain subjective because you will not get people to agree to use the same definitions and value system--even if you did it would be a convenience, like the definition and primitives in math, and ultimately a dead-end because you would achieve no more than simple logic, social conventions, and the legal system already have. There is no "evil" but what we define as evil--and you and I have different definitions, even if there are many things we end up agreeing on as a practical matter. What makes one definition more "right" or "objective" than another?