Good and Evil: Universals?
 

Are there universal principles that can be called Good and Evil?

Are there some acts that may be properly understood as having intrinsic moral value, either positive or negative, apart from all social context and cultural value systems, or is the moral weight of each action contingent solely on the relativistic value assigned to it by its cultural context?

There are several corrollaries to this primary question, which will be raised as the thread progresses.

I'll go ahead and stake my ground in the affirmative camp. There are actions that are properly understood as evil. Torturing babies for pleasure would be one example. Even if the entire world decided that this was acceptable behavior, in fact rewarded those who did it, it would still be morally wrong. The moral value of this action is not contingent on the cultural response to it.

-sm

Since you were kind enough to provide check boxes instead of radio buttons, I was a smartass and checked all 3. It's impossible to discuss even the concept of "absolutes" in the absence of cultural constructs. Having said that, yes, there are some things that are just Wrong. I don't need any kind of validation to tell me that they're wrong, and I really don't give a damn if somebody else says they're not. And contrariwise with good. Perhaps this is a kind of Locke-ian "self evident natural law" kind of thing.

The problem is, in the middle there are a whooooollleeeee bunch of other things that are not completely good, and not completely evil. Let's look at the recent military action in Iraq. (I may regret bringing this up as an example, but it springs to mind.) I think everybody can agree that the atrocities permitted by Saddam's regime are bad. (Or maybe not--Saddam obviously thought it was OK.) We can also agree that killing people is bad, and perhaps we can agree that killing civilians in a military conflict is worse than killing soldiers. Well, if we take those as axioms, we can then argue that the killing of people undertaken by the US was unfortunate, but that it was justified by the need to rid Iraq of a government not merely corrupt but, well, evil. Or we could argue that killing all those people was uncalled for and that a single man could have been removed from power without all that bloodshed, that the cost of human life can't simply be written off in a political calculation.

So from where I sit, the problem isn't whether Good and Evil are universals. The problem is that they are very, very gray, instead of the black and white demagogues on both sides of any issue like to pretend.

MORAL = Subjective point of view formed by your past.

Morals work best when everyone agrees on them. But that doesn't change the fact that they're completely made-up. Can you scientifically prove that morals exist?

I agree that it's just a subjective ratings system.

Atlanta, May 2006: CDC researchers have determined that when babies are subjected to immense, body-wide pain for a period of 5 straight minutes, they develop a basic immunity to pain through their lives, a sort of "toughness innoculation" that reduces lifetime pain by 80% for most. Initial research shows they have no memory of the event if it is not accompanied by other trauma.

Wash. DC, June 2006: The AMA is instructing doctors on how best induce torturous pain in infants whilst putting them in an otherwise neutral setting. Directly contacting the nerves in each of the four limbs with electricity would produce enough pain to gain the desired result. "At first, I hated the idea that I had to be the one to push the button to place this baby in terrible pain -- even if we've perfected how to do that without risking her life," said head physician Dr. Toad. "But now, I get tremendous pleasure in pressing that button, knowing I'm guaranteeing her a better life."

Just a little thought experiment

Holy shit UT, you had me going for a minute.:thumb:

UT: thus the qualifier, for pleasure (where pleasure is the sole and efficienct cause for the person inflicting the pain).

Innoculting an infant agaist disease, even where it causes discomfort, is a very different thing from giving a baby the disease for the sole purpose of watching it suffer. One would be a justifiable act, the other is clearly not.

An interesting thought experiment, but it doesn't fit the initial conditions.

-sm

Juju, that's a categorical fallacy. Scientific proofs are proper to the realm of physical things, and their interactions (mass, energy, chemical properties).

Universals are not the proper subjects of the scientific method. To assume that something is only true if it is scientifically provable is to exclude vast portions of the edifice of human knowledge.

A correllary example is the idea of Redness. It is a universal, existing without being defined in its extant participants. A red apple is not Redness, it merely adheres to, and exhibits the property of the universal. There is no way to scientifically prove the existence of the universal; the most you can say is that when certain factors combine (pigments, light frequencies, etc.), the property of redness obtains in that object. You've said nothing about the universal itself. Yet the universal exists, apart from any object that exhibits its properties.

As a further extension, if a certain person does not see the color red, does not understand it, and does not believe it exists, we do not assume that the unversal is therefore not valid. Instead, we assume that the person is color blind. The individual experience of the universal does not condition the existance of the universal.

to sum up,
1) Universals are not the proper subject of the scientific method, only the objects that obtain to the properties of the universal.
2) Universals are not conditioned by the objects that exhibit their properties.
3) A universal is not conditioned by the perception (or lack therof) of it.
4) Norah Jones, still not the next Ella.

-sm

Then by extension If NO ONE experiences something does that mean it doesn't exist?

"Redness" is the way the human brain perceives certain frequencies of light. It directly refers to something in the physical world. Morality is a judgement on actions. It's not the same thing at all.

Also, your language is really hurting my head. I haven't read that many philosophy books, so you've really got to dumb it down for me and put it in layman's terms.

That's a red herring; no one makes that assumption. All things can be analyzed scientifically, once all the terms are defined. Philosophy is about finding those definitions.

So what is the nature of a universal moral? Can an act be considered moral if it helps one person at the expense of another? I suppose our war in Iraq can be considered non-moral in that it wasn't specifically immoral, but killing some random people to help some others isn't terribly moral, regardless of the reason.

I think a universal moral would be something that helps some living things, but with no downside at all. Holding the door is moral; gassing Mosquito Lake Park is not.

This is hardly unprecedented. Inducing torturous pain in babies is actually still a common practice today.

Circumcision.

     I would say that morals are not universal due to a simple review of history. For example, Alexander the Great was considered kind because he razed Thebes killed a chunk of the population and sold many into slavery, but didn't do the same to Athens. Or the US nuked Japan, and most people agree that was the best course of action because it cost fewer lives in the long run.
     Does anyone think either course of action would be considered acceptable by today's standards? Yet both were considered the right thing to do at the time.
     Oh and Juju, let the language slide, anyone who has gotten into existentialism, even a little, believes in using too many big words. Just get the jist and move on.

     Okay, I got to thinking about it later and this is a little unfair. If you go back to Plato or Aristotle or the like you'll find a tendency for this kind of thing. I just tend to connect the verbosity of the philosophical vernacular to the Existentialist due to the extremities to which they aspire in the field. That and they annoy the shit out of me...
     How 'bout this then?      Can you scientifically prove redness exists? Red is what we all agree to call the color of the smilie on the top right of the smilie box when we relply. Moral is what we all agree to call actions that we consider just and good. Asking for scientific proof is like questioning if morals exist at all. I think we're past that.

OK, in alphabetical order:

Bitman: I wasn't trying to throw out a red herring, just wanted to make sure that juju wasn't looking for an inapporpriate aparatus to test the existence of Universals. On looking for the nature of a universal moral principle, they exist as seperate from the individual acts. An example would be, "Human life has inherent value". From that universal principle, moral laws can be construed, such as laws against murder and torture. From these moral laws, ethical guidelines are constructed for individual activities, such as "In this situation, I should not kill this person".

Juju: Sorry for the over-weighted language. A lot of the terms used are used because they are precise ways of saying what would otherwise take a paragraph or two to say. The connection between Redness and Morals is this - if they are both universals, then they exist apart from individual objects that have them as properties. You can then say that a particular thing, like an apple or a person's action, either adheres to the universal, or does not adhere to the universal.

Whit: You can have universals and still say that cultural standards change. If the universal is that "human life has value", then societies understanding of how to best act out that principle may change, but the principle they are attempting to adhere to does not change. One society enforces this principle by enacting the death penalty for those who violate the principle. Another society refuses to use the death penalty, so as to not violate the principle. Both are attempting to adhere to the same universal. RE the language, it's hard to discuss computers without using some of the technical terms. Same with philosophy. It's really not an attempt to huff and puff and blow the house down, it's my attempt to be as precise with language as we are all trying to be with our thinking.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoG'dayBruce: By definition, no one needs to experience a universal for it to exist. "Gravity" would still exist even if there were no objects for it to act upon. The principle stands.

... whew. finals, papers, MATRIX2 and a studio session before Saturday. I may not be too speedy on this thread till after that.

-sm

     Hmm, okay maybe we're approaching this the wrong way...      Why exactly would torturing babies be immorral then? If nobody has a problem with it why is it wrong?

Well, let's back up. I'm saying that humans come up with morals themselves, and you're saying that they just "exist" outside of humans' influence, immutable. Is that right?
What is a "categorical fallacy"? Is that a fancy way of saying I'm wrong? Whoops, I don't want to dilute the definition too much. We've got to be precise.

Nothing exists outside of reality except maybe ideas. Are you trying to say that your ideas are so correct that they've trancended the concept of "idea" and become physical law? Or are you just trying to say that you're right no matter what?

The burden of proof is on you to prove that morals exist. What you're saying here is that you want to be relieved of this burden. You want me to just take your word for it. I'm sorry, but I can't do that. So far, the only proof you've offered of morals' existence is by labeling it a "Universal". I have no idea what this means, but the closest I can figure is that it means, "This concept is unquestionable. Please do not question it." Perhaps you could offer a more direct definition?

As to the Redness example, I do not agree that Redness exists. Light exists, and color is just the way we perceive it's various frequencies. In the same manner, morals are the way we perceive actions. Actions exist, morals do not.

Again, I think that morals are just rules we came up with to further our self-interest.

OK, I got it.
Good is a universal because even though everyone cannot agree on what goes on the list of good things, everyone can make a list of things they believe to be good.
Bad, second verse, same as the first.

     Um, Juju, if you accept that light exists and at different frequencies how can you not accept that there's one particular frequency we call "red"?

     Damn Bruce, that's quite possibly the most intelligent thing anyone has said on this thread. Of course the problem comes when things on peoples good list is on someone else's bad list. The Nazi attempt at the genocide of the Jews for example. We generally call that bad, they said it was good.
     So, how do we reconcile the contradiction? I suppose we could get all C. S. Lewis about it, but I'm not a big fan.

I'll throw out the old standby: "An it harm none, do as you will," which always struck me as a pretty good rule of thumb to live by. (Disclaimer: I am not a pagan/Wiccan, nor am I a participant in any other religion. However, I can acknowledge parts of religions and their beliefs that make sense without embracing the religions themselves.)

In that context, morality centers around the question of "what constitutes harm?" If something causes harm, particularly when it's intentional, most would chalk it up on the "Evil" side of the ledger. If it causes no harm and is instead beneficial, it goes under "Good." But what exactly _is_ "harm," and who gets to decide that?

From there, there's a huge argument waiting to happen between absolutists and relativists. Religion throws a huge monkey wrench into that argument; if an absolutist bases his/her moral beliefs around the concept of a Divine Being (i.e. God knows what is right and wrong, good and evil, and little to no gray area exists), and a relativist rejects that concept, there can be no agreement between them because they're arguing on different terms.

If you define 'red' as a certain frequency of light, then it exists and is a real, scientifically provable phenomenon. If you define it as just the perception of that frequency, though, then it's not a 'real', physical thing.

Not to mention that in practical terms, there isn't "one" red.

"Red" covers a variety of shades -- some lighter, some darker, some mixed with other colors, but with red remaining the dominating color. I could hold up five cards, each one with a varying shade of red, and say "What color is this?" and you'd probably say "Red" to any of them, yet also distinguish that they're different if I held them up together.

And so it also goes with "good" and "evil."

Can't. You will never get everyone to agree on what is good or Evil. Even if you did, there would be so many stipulations and qualifiers it would look like the US penal code.
That said, you might get everyone to agree that they have an opinion on what's good and evil. Therefore good and evil exist but can't be defined.

Because everyone agrees on something, that means it's true?

There's something very Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance about this line of reasoning -- the whole "You can't define 'quality', but you know what it is and when you see it" paradigm.

The CONCEPTS of good and evil exist, certainly. We're discussing them now. But if there is no general agreement on the _definition_ of those concepts, on what the concepts mean, then are the concepts useful in and of themselves? If the definitions are inherently unquantifiable, then what does the concept really stand for?

Whatever the person (or persons, or community, or authority) using the concept wants it to stand for, that's what.

good and evil are useful as shorthand to let people know how you feel.
Beer good.
Brussel sprouts bad.;)

     I think that's a misuse of the terms. Perhaps improving relations with beer, good. Shoving brussel sprouts down someones throat till they asphyxiate, evil.

I'll buy that !:beer:

Good= you may do that to, on, near, with, for, in, over me.
Evil = I would prefer it if you would do that to, etc,... someone else

Just to try to stir a little more religious debate in...

A common argument used by atheists to "prove" that there is no God is that evil and suffering exist in the universe. If God is all-powerful and all-caring, he wouldn't allow these to exist.

My argument to that has always been that evil is indeed relative. Yes, the Christian God has defined what good and evil are (as vsp pointed out), but he could have made the spectrum itself to be different.

Reminds me of Mel Brook's (alleged) quote, "Tragedy is when I stub my toe. Comedy is when you fall into a manhole and die".

(Disclaimer: I did the obligatory snopes.com search for this quote and turned up nothing. Please don't bash me if it turns out that Mr. Brooks did not make this comment.)

I don't think one can prove that there is no God, just as I don't think you can prove that there is one. I personally think the evidence points overwhelmingly in a single direction, but to offer it as "proof" is a bit extreme.

i think gary larson used that one at the beginning of one of his far side collections. he also attributed it to mel brooks. for what its worth.

~james

I took Psych 101 in college, where we had to study numerous logical "proofs" on both sides. They were all rather absurd, lemme tell ya.

[psych talk]If someone can figure out a way to support or deny the existance of a god to a statistical significance through an ANOVA, you know where to find me.[/psych talk]

I was just thinking about how we've taken a negative word and created a positive connotation for it in the past 40 years, the word being "bad."

It's amazing what a difference time makes. Sometimes it's hard to tell what people mean. You have to consider the source.
That was a bad post.
vs.
That was a bad post, dude.:confused: