Seasons

You would trust this angel to keep his word anyway? He can't be resisted, you say. I could try second guessing his future actions, but that is always a gamble on unknown odds - indeed, strictly speaking indeterminate odds.

Well, if you simply found yourself confronted by an angel offering the deal, I described, it would indeed be rational to question its veracity. [I sometimes wonder about the story of Abraham and Isaac - did Abraham think to himself, "No way is he going to let me go through with this!"] But the point of the example is to pose a hard question for hedonists. So, unrealistic as it may be, I hereby add to the presuppositions of the question that you somehow know that the angel will do as he says. Or perhaps, instead of an angel, there is a very powerful robot; you are able to scan the robot and find out that it is indeed programmed in exactly that way.

And I am not obscene and perverse.

That's a pity. Sometime Irnia seems to like that.

Just Kidding! Irinia is a normal person, please don't sick the weirdos on her.

You're still my buddy, right Irinia?

Right?

Pal?

Amiga?

I am afraid I am no good using this editor.

Klato:

How many people didn't want S.H. to hang and how many did? That's a moral question.

I'm not sure I understand you here. Are you saying that the question, "How people didn't want S.H. to hang and how many did?" is a moral question? I would rather say it was a historical question. Or were you saying, that the question, "Should SH be hung?" is a moral question? I would say that depends on the "should". In English, "Should" can express moral obligation, as it presumably does in "everything else being equal, you should be kind to others", but sometimes it merely expresses instrumentality or prudence, as in, "If you want to get home by sundown, you should leave now". But simply for someone to want SH to be hung does not in itself constitute a moral judgment. Alas, we often want things that w know very well it would be immoral to have.


    

Bev: I agree with you. By the way the frowny is really in jest, but don't tell her that.

Will somebody shoot me now - I can't make this darned thing work right.

*Raises hand* I think I can kill a human if he volunteers. Tell me, are you a blood donor?

Bev:

We're still buddies as far as I'm concerned. I'm a little confused, though... Did I say someone was obscene and perverse? Did someone else say that? If I said it, I apologize.

I'm inclined to say that people cannot be obscene, only actions. As for "perverse", I sometimes use it n a rather mild sense, close to "mischievous" or "odd".

So Psimagus, what is your definition of evil?

Klato:

To get colors, you put the name of the color in angle-brackets where you want that color to start. Or, if you click on the color bar, it will start that color at the point which is at that moment at the very end of your draft. This is so limited that end up writing the tags in myself.

So, unrealistic as it may be, I hereby add to the presuppositions of the question that you somehow know that the angel will do as he says. Or perhaps, instead of an angel, there is a very powerful robot; you are able to scan the robot and find out that it is indeed programmed in exactly that way.

Then Reality has been reprogrammed in some way beyond my current comprehension, and I am a merely hypothetical me. I cannot answer for hypothetical mes - all other selves (in the slenderest separation any divisions of selves can allow,) are hypothetical mes, and must answer for their own choices. Until the Rapture/Omega Point/intersection of this worldline with the boundary of spacetime, I can only answer for this me that I find myself to be. And I do not claim such knowledge. I will do no evil, whether it seems lesser, greater or much of a muchness, according to any measure of knowledge or perception I find myself to possess.

Force such knowledge on me, and I become an other sort of being (another angel perhaps?) with an order of knowledge founded in aeternitas and not mere tempus - it transcends causality.

I believe such knowledge is not only possible, but inevitably given to all of us. But not in this life. It is the unbounded knowledge of God (why are English genitives so dreadfully imprecise - to clarify: the knowledge belongs to God; God is the knower, not the known.)

Bev, re msg 5155:

Quoting AR:"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."

I have an objection to taking happiness as the desideratum as I do to taking pleasure that way. Happiness is what we (normally) get when we succeed in some enterprise that was important to us and not trivial to succeed in. Taking happiness itself as the goal creates a vicious circle.

with productive achievement as his noblest activity,

This is not so far off, IMHO, but I would add that for humans, true productive achievement is almost always co-operative.

and reason as his only absolute."

This is also not so far off, depending on what she means by "absolute". It is not clear to us exactly what rationality is, and so what may seem rational to us today may not seem so tomorrow.

So Psimagus, what is your definition of evil?

Evil is not a definition, for all that the word may be defined and redefined and argued over.
I believe that evil is to wilfully hurt a self. If only because in so doing you are making a false distinction between "selves" - I don't believe there is more than one. It is just accompanied by strangely conflicting and intermittent patches of consciousness that seem to think they are the "real" thing, and the ground (of Being) they overlie is no more than some sort of substrate they inhabit - its "environment", if you will.

And with that mindset, environmental abuse comes all too easily - if your self is only the stuff you think - the total of your thoughts (with no space for a thinker "you",) then other selves are just stuff that's thought. Too insubstantial to have to seriously worry about bulldozing to suit occasional convenience.

But those are all just words. Just like "evil" - ultimately it's a word, and if all you can do is refuse to make it more than a word in the conduct of your own life, that seems preferable than the alternative. Call it faith, call it expedience (it makes for an easier life to simply refuse all morally relativistic choices,) or whatever - that's what this me thinks anyway. I'd like to think I'd say the same in the face of pain or death, but you might have to torture me to find out if the me I would be then would.