FRIHOST • FORUMS • FAQ • TOS • BLOGS • DIRECTORY
You are invited to Log in or Register a Frihost Account!

Philsophical Question

   Frihost Forum Index -> Lifestyle and News -> Philosophy and Religion
 


rainmaker
Hi Everyone--

This was also posted under the general category. Sorry for the confusion.

I've had a burning question on my mind lately that bears discussing. The question is really two-fold in a sense.

Firstly, do good and evil truly exsit or is everything merely a product of circumstances?

For instance, a man kills another man out of rage. Can we really label him "evil" since his dislike for the other person was brought on by the given situation? Had his fate been different, the murder might not have taken place, after all.

Secondly, can we even define good and evil? In our modern context, do these concepts really exist as we believe? Or, like many other things, are they simply theoretical concepts set on a continuum?

Any of your thoughts on this matter are certainly welcomed.

--rainmaker
Indi
rainmaker wrote:
Firstly, do good and evil truly exsit or is everything merely a product of circumstances?

This question depends on the next question, and is closely tied to it, so i'll try that one first.

rainmaker wrote:
Secondly, can we even define good and evil? In our modern context, do these concepts really exist as we believe? Or, like many other things, are they simply theoretical concepts set on a continuum?

If you're looking for an absolute definition of good and evil, the only answer you'll find is in religion. There good and evil are black and white, and completely non-relative.

In the real world, good and evil are not binary concepts - there can be things that are really evil, sort of bad, neither good nor evil, nice and really good, and everything in between (although, as with most things, the farther the extreme in either direction, the more rare). Also in the real world, there is no absolute guidebook to say X is good and Y is evil - we're forced to have to analyze the motivations and implications of every decision individually. In other words, you can't just say "killing is evil", because there are cases when killing may be good. Even something that seems as purely evil as rape isn't necessarily absolutely evil; there may be cases when rape is good. Absolutes just don't work in reality.

That's not to say that it's impossible to have general definitions of what is good and evil - it's just that that definition will be just that: general. For a specific conclusion of whether a specific act is good or evil, you will have to make a specific judgment of the specifics of that act. (heh)

Generally, evil is defined as that which causes harm or removes happiness unnecessarily. Necessary harm, such as murder in self-defence or in the defence of another, is not generally considered evil. The same for accidental harm. Good is, therefore, that which causes happiness or removes harm unnecessarily. Happiness caused by necessity, or by accident, is not generally considered good.

Actions performed for reasons that are mostly evil are immoral actions. Actions performed for reasons that are mostly good are moral actions. Actions performed for reasons that are neither good nor evil (or for no reason at all) are amoral. Therefore, actions are defined as good or evil by virtue of the motivations for those actions, not the results (generally). Or, more precisely, actions you choose to make are defined as good or evil depending on how and why the choice was made.

You are responsible for knowing the reasonably predictable results of your actions - you should know that when you point a gun at someone and pull the trigger, the chances of them getting hurt are very high. Ignoring harmful results and performing an action despite them is evil. Again, the actual results don't matter - if you live after i shoot you, that doesn't mean that i'm absolved of the guilt of shooting you. If i feed you a meal with nuts in it and you die because you were allergic to nuts and i didn't know, i have not performed an evil act despite the bad results. You see? The actual results don't matter, but because you base your decisions on the expected results, and because good/evil is defined by how a choice is made, the expected results matter.

However! If i don't consider a reasonably predictable result - not ignoring a possibility, just failing to think of it - that doesn't make me evil, just incompetent. If i know that putting metal in the microwave could cause a fire, but i forget and put a fork in, and it starts a fire and kills someone, i have not performed an evil act, but i have been negligent. i may be held accountable if it can be shown that i was unreasonably negligent, but that still doesn't make the action evil.

So you see, whether an choice is good or evil depends only on how and why i made that choice - whether i made that choice with the intention of causing more harm or more happiness. The expected results of my action matter, but the actual results of my action do not matter.

So all that's left is to define harm and happiness. We can cut the work in half if we say that happiness is the opposite of suffering, and then we can say that harm is anything that causes more suffering. Whatever causes less suffering, then, is good.

That gives you an almost complete set of general guidelines to help you determine good from evil. Is it perfect? No, and it's certainly not absolute. And there are still plenty of questons that i can't give you a general answer for. For example: which is less suffering, one person living a lifetime of horribly tortured misery or thousands living in relative comfort but with a constant, overhanging fear (that is, which is less suffering: one person suffering a lot, or a lot of people suffering a little)? You do have to use your judgement when applying these rules, which means that it is possible for two people to decide the same act is good and evil. That doesn't mean that there is no general solution. It just means that we haven't figured it out yet. It's a work in progress.

So, using all that, i can try to give brief, specific answers to your questions:

Do good and evil truly exsit or is everything merely a product of circumstances?
Those are not mutually exclusive. Good and evil can exist while still being based on circumstances - they just won't be absolute concepts. Absolute good and evil don't exist (unless you turn to religion), but good and evil can exist as relative concepts. Just because a concept is relative doesn't mean it's meaningless. Speed is relative, but you can be damn sure the speed a car is going at when it hits you is meaningful.

For instance, a man kills another man out of rage. Can we really label him "evil" since his dislike for the other person was brought on by the given situation?
Yes and no. We cannot label the man evil. But we can label the action evil. The action he undertook was for the express purpose of causing harm. That means it was evil. It doesn't matter what the action was, what he was avenging or whether he succeeded. He wanted to hurt someone, so his action was evil.

Secondly, can we even define good and evil?
Yes, by saying that a choice is evil if the intention was to cause harm (or if the choice was made with wilful disregard of the potential harm), and a choice is good if the intention is to remove or minimize harm. Of course, that means that good and evil are situation dependent, not absolute.

In our modern context, do these concepts really exist as we believe?
That depends on how you believe they exist. You say "we" as if everyone or even most people have the same concept of good and evil. That's not true. For some people, the definition of good and evil is very simple - god likes it, it's good; god doesn't, it's not.

Or, like many other things, are they simply theoretical concepts set on a continuum?
At an intellectual enough level, everything is theoretical. "Do we even really exist?", for example. If you want to be abstract enough, yes, good and evil are theoretical. But if you want to consider reality at hand, good and evil are real and practical concepts that we can measure, predict and use as predictive tools with reasonable accuracy. That means that these aren't useless, abstract concepts that eggheads can debate over Zima. Society depends on a fairly accurate understanding of good and evil, designing laws to codify them and punish transgressions (evil), and then analyzing actions to determine whether they are acceptible under the society's code.
Wahwah Man
i was watching some show about "evil people" who had committed mass murders and such and they described a "formula" for making someone evil. i believe they were:

1) Mental Illness
2) Suffer Abuse as a Child
3) Brain Damage

it was quite interesting and fit together in retrospect with the killers background stories
Reply to topic    Frihost Forum Index -> Lifestyle and News -> Philosophy and Religion

FRIHOST HOME | FAQ | TOS | ABOUT US | CONTACT US | SITE MAP
© 2005-2007 Frihost, forums powered by phpBB.