BGE

Refute these claims, if you can, and if you dare:

[i]Only those who are very powerful can choose to do Good or Evil.

Those who are weak, have no power to do Good or Evil.

Those who are weak, are below Good and Evil, neither Good nor Evil.

Those who are weak, cannot choose, have neither choice nor freedom.[/i]

This one dude was in a hospital, really fucked up, could only blink. Someone showed him two albums, told him to blink left for the first album and blink right for the second. He did, and thus a very weak person was able to make a choice.

Strength is not just physical.

Can you tell an infant to blink its eyes?

Infants are the weakest point in human existence. They have no choices. It is only through rearing, edumacation, and indoctrination that we can make “choices”, and often these “choices” are socially regimented by parents, school teachers, and greater society. And if you make the “wrong choices”, then you are punished, sometimes severely. Sometimes a child will even suffer emotional and mental abuse, leading to mental illnesses as an adult, which they will suffer for the rest of their lives.

So, keep this in mind when mentioning the bed-riddled disabled man who blinks his eye and makes a “choice”.

If you measure strength by choice, then your precursory glance is insufficient at least, lazy at best.

Ah, so anybody who can blink is not weak, I see.
So, by ‘powerful’ and ‘weak’ you really mean basically ‘Everyone who can at least blink’ and ‘people who can’t even blink’.
That makes the OP pretty vacuous. You’re only saying that people too weak to even blink can’t make a choice. So what?

Not so fast.

You are assuming that the healthy test-maker, and the meek bed-ridden man, both have the power (choice) to interpret the test truthfully.

How do you know the man was blinking to indicate a “choice”, and not just spontaneously doing so? You could be making an error of self-confirmation bias.

There is not enough context to your scenario to prove a “choice” has been made.

Sure, I know: when he got healed and could speak again, he said, “Thanks for playing those albums I chose, I’m so glad I could blink.”

Whose choice was it to play the albums, the bed-riddled man or the test-maker?

Who is responsible for presenting the choice? Does not the presenter of the choice take responsibility for it?

Oh give up already you silly goose. What you said was meaningless and you know it. Of course the weak make choices. Not unless you actually are defining weak as ‘incapable of making choices’, which would be a bizarre definition and would just make your OP tautologically true (which is another way of saying meaningless).

However, there are two sides of choice, given your example.

There is the choice as issued by the presenter of the choice.
There is the choice as received by the chooser of the choice.

So you have effectively cut the OP into two, into a dualism. Because there are two people, each with the power of choice, supposedly.

Ok :animals-chickencatch:

Only those who believe in “good” and “evil” can do either, regardless of their “power.”

What constitutes weakness?

If they are neither “good” nor “evil,” could they not also be ‘above’ or ‘adjacent’ to rather than invariably ‘below’ these concepts?

I’m not getting into “free will,” but I should say it is universal; either everyone has it or no one does.

I will eventually argue that people only acquire power, to do what they believe is “Good” or “Evil”.

Good and Evil are the justifications for power, which make the WTP possible, and eventually, absolutely necessary and inevitable.

Human infancy and innocence, humans are at their weakest while gestating in the mother’s womb, or newly born. People are also at their weakest during times of ill health and near to death. Frailty and death constitute weakness.

Below Good and Evil, implies that you are too weak, or ignorant, to make a choice regarding good and evil.

Beyond Good and Evil, implies that you are very power, have made choices regarding good and evil, and recognize both sides of morality as necessary.

Above Good and Evil, means that you choose Good and you choose Evil, when best fitting your end and Justification in life, your Purpose in life.

All living organisms have free will, by degrees.

Rocks, inanimate objects, elements, chemical compounds, unliving things, have no free will, as they have no biology, neurology, or consciousness.

That’s wonderful, and I’m sure you’ll do a super job of it, but before that, you might want to address my having told you that your premise is off. You said that “only the very powerful can choose to do good or evil.” I’m saying 1) the distinction between “good” and “evil” is one made on a personal or social level (i.e. the values are discursive), 2) one must first have a conception of “good” and “evil” before for one can choose to “do” either, and 3) that power and free will are not synonymous.

So weakness then is only physical and limited to the individual–likewise with strength?

Why have both ‘beyond’ and ‘above’ if you grant them the same qualities? The reason I said what I did is that you’ve given me no reason to believe that power is prerequisite to making a choice about “good” or “evil.”

There are no degrees; you can either choose or you can’t.

You’re missing the point. Power is the first concept of good and evil. What people call or dream of good and evil, is nothing without the power to realize these conceptions. A weak person cannot choose Good. A weak person cannot choose Evil.

Weakness is both physical and mental, represented in infancy.

That is because you are rejecting the premise, based on your lacking definitions of power, strength, and choice.

If you are unaware that infants are meek and weaklings then you are out of touch with reality.

If you believe infants are ‘strong’ and ‘powerful’ then you are deluding yourself.

Choice is based on power.

Power is based on degree, one man’s power compared to another man.

One man is smarter than another man, therefore has more intellectual power.

One man is stronger than another man, therefore has more physical power.

The smartest and strongest men, of all, have the greatest ability to make choice, regardless of the nature of choice itself.

 Can't choosing is also a choice, until the won't is differentiated from the incapable.

So what’s the difference?

Glad to see you around.

Good and evil are merely the tags slave morality invents out of ressentiment, in reaction to master morality. Good and bad (not evil), on the other hand, is the dichotomy of master morality, where good is what the strong see as honorable and noble (what is like themselves) and bad as what is weak or unlike themselves. It’s will to power that makes the concepts good and evil possible, and will to power perhaps thrives the most when it does not invoke the dichotomy of good and evil.

The won’t choose is the person who is hesitant for some reason or another, who has problems making choices, so sometimes procrastinates until the last moment, and sometimes, by then, it’s too late, a choice may have been made for him already, or simply, there are no more choices to be made.

On the other hand, there are those, who simply are incapable even to realize the distinctions between choices, or can’t understand that they ha e to be made, or they just won’t make a choice and let nature take it’s course. One has capacity but no motivation, and the other is incapable of understanding choices.

That’s what i do. Not all the time, but with some frequency. Then again, i’m a determinist - so the notion that i am somehow responsible for my fate, or that i could ever choose differently than i do is all so much blathering and preaching. Strength and weakness are qualities we project onto others, they don’t actually have moral implications. Power is all contextual - Infants have power, particularly over their parents - this is how they outlive infancy. Dogs have power over their owners, this is how they get fed and taken care of. Slaves have certain powers over their masters, and masters have certain powers over their slaves. It really doesn’t work when you try to classify people as EITHER weak or strong. It works even less to say that weak is morally bad and strong is morally good. Morality should be about what you actually DO, not what you’re capable or incapable of doing.