The other day I was kicking around the notion of the root of all evil. Evil must begin somewhere, but where? Is money the root, as the saying goes? Is it satan, as many would argue?
I won’t bore with why i don’t think these to be the root, instead I’ll bore you with what i think is.
I came to the (perhaps not fully thought out) conclusion that the root of all evil is an illogical thought process. Let’s start with my premises. First, evil only applies to a being capable of volition,i.e.mankind. For example, we wouldn’t call a hampster evil for eating its children, but we would a human. Thus an evil act begins with the ability to choose a course of action as opposed to relying on an instinctive course.
Second, mans life is the standard of value ,i.e standard of good/evil . Reason is mankinds means of survival. Reason is an attribute of the mind. The mind is an attribute of the individual,i.e I cannot think for you, nor you me. Therefore, logically, we all must accept others individual freedom (by freedom I mean free from forced actions) to decide its own means of survival.
Here’s where illogic comes in. If I believe that you, and I, have the right to survive then I cannot (logically) steal your food for then I would be admitting that others have the right to steal mine. I cannot logically decide that my means of survival requires your non-survival.
Another obvious example of evil would be murder. A person who chooses to murder another is denying that persons right to survive and at the same time implicitly admitting that he himself does not have that right. That illogical thought was the root of the evil act.
I know this post is inarticulate at best, after all it is a very raw thesis , but perhaps with some input from fellow thinkers at ILP I can refine and validate my theory.
First Premise–“Evil only applies to a being capable of volition,i.e.mankind. For example, we wouldn’t call a hampster evil for eating its children, but we would a human. Thus an evil act begins with the ability to choose a course of action as opposed to relying on an instinctive course.”
I agree.
Second Premise–"Mans life is the standard of value ,i.e standard of good/evil . Reason is mankinds means of survival. Reason is an attribute of the mind. The mind is an attribute of the individual,i.e I cannot think for you, nor you me. Therefore, logically, we all must accept others individual freedom (by freedom I mean free from forced actions) to decide its own means of survival. "
Reason is not the means of our survival alone. Quite a bit of unreason goes along in keeping us alive. We guess and imagine in our fearful moments, more than think and reason.
More than an attribute of the mind, what ever that may be, reason is an attribute of our brains. I do not deny the existence of the mind, as generally understood, but some physical chain must be kept rather than generate an abstraction (reason) out of another abstraction (mind).
Here’s where illogic comes in. If I believe that you, and I, have the right to survive then I cannot (logically) steal your food for then I would be admitting that others have the right to steal mine.
O- Sounds like “Real Politiks” to me.
I cannot logically decide that my means of survival requires your non-survival.
O- I disagree. Logic can and has been used to justify war.
Another obvious example of evil would be murder.
O- Notice here that it is murder and not killing. Where is the difference between them? See the First Premise.
A person who chooses to murder another is denying that persons right to survive and at the same time implicitly admitting that he himself does not have that right.
O- No. The person might simply be killing. It would be strange that a person would call his act of killing another by necessity a murder. When a person kills another, at least two views develop. One is the first person view. To the person pulling the trigger a million reasons might exists that demand that action–reasons that could not be resisted, or denied. It is not that he has admitted to lack a right to life, or that the person he kills lacks that right, but that a system dictates liofe and death between men. Be it race, nationality, beliefs etc, something differentiates between them and that is what grants the trigger man his right over the life of an other. By killing, what trigger man is in fact doing is enforcing his right to exist within that system-- a system that owes it success to it’s clear divisions, it’s almost mathematical premises, it’s unity in purpose.
Murder is an unnecessary killing–a death that was not sanctioned by the system. Evil is contingency. Evil is chaos and randomness. It is choice. Uncertainty. See First Premise.
Illogic is the root of all evil? cough cough categorical imperative cough cough You basically said “Kant” in that post. If you haven’t read him, I suggest getting a book about him and his philosophy.
I disagree, on the grounds that there’s no such thing as evil. Word-games aside though, logic can easily be used to justify malicious or destructive acts. The problem with humans and logic is that we’re really not very logical. We all have unique experiences and unique perspectives, which usually results in unique sets of axioms by which we do what little reasoning we actually do. Something logical to you may appear illogical to someone else, simply because they can’t see your evidence and your premises from your perspective.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from years of internet forums, logic is pretty useless in human relations. All the logic in the world cannot open a closed mind.
OMAR- I think you have misunderstood what I was saying and unknowingly reaffirmed what I was saying. I think we actually agree. But first ,thank you for one good point ,i.e. reason not being the sole means of survival. Maybe I should state that reason is the basic means of survival.
I do not know what you are implying when you say sounds like “real politiks”, so I can’t respond to it.
I agree that war can be logical-when it is in self defense of those who initiate force and thus violate the logical conclusion of second premise.
I would differentiate between murder and killing with a murder being the (illogical) initiation of force in an attempt to deny anothers right to survival, and killing being the (logical) self-defense of ones right to survive.
Those who [/i]initiate the force are illogical and thus evil.
I agree with you that he who kills out of necessity ,i.e self defense, is not a murderer. Not only is he not a murderer he is a defender of the second premise.
Say you and I are cast adrift in the ocean by pirates. We’re only given enough water to keep one of us alive long enough to reach land.
Is it a good/right act if we share the water which will lead to neither of us surviving, and is it an evil/wrong act if one is allowed to die?
One choice results in 2 deaths and no survivors. The other choice results in 1 death and 1 survivor. Which seems to be the more rational decision under these circumstances?
It is the circumstances surrounding more than the act itself which determines it’s virtue. The virtuous lie,theft,murder,etc. exist under most philosophies of ethics that are based on reason/logic.
Ahhh… My never ending strugle against morality… You may rule the world now morality… but one of these days… I swear it… I will bring you down!
Anyways…
Mr. Knowitall:
“If I believe that you, and I, have the right to survive then I cannot (logically) steal your food for then I would be admitting that others have the right to steal mine.”
If you believe that you and I have some universal, natural right to live, than you are believing in something that has very little support if any. Something that can easily be called “Ilogical”… If by right to survive you mean a certain term in a social contract, than I am not sure what you mean when you say you believe in it. But if we are speaking of a term in a social contract, than all that would happen if you steal their food is you would be breaking the contract. Now is breaking a contract automaticly ilogical? I certainly see no reason why this is neccissarily the case. It may be the case… but it may not. I can certainly imagine situations where breaking a social contract is the most “logical” choice…
“A person who chooses to murder another is denying that persons right to survive and at the same time implicitly admitting that he himself does not have that right.”
Same thing… If were talking about something other than a term in a social contract, than I would gladly admit that I do not have the right to survive… I would admit that no one has any rights, rather that the idea of “rights” only has any relevance in terms of social contracts. If we are talking about human constructs here, than again you are just breaking the contract. And again, I can imagine plenty of situations where commiting murder, and consequently breaking a social contract, would be the most “logical” choice…
In your hypothetical situation it is the pirates who are evil/wrong. They violated my second premise by “casting us adrift” (forced action) in the ocean and thus denying our individual freedom to determine our own means of survival. Damn pirates.
Mr. Know-it-all:
Explain, please, what is fundamentally illogical about my saying that differences in perspective will lead to different lines of reasoning and different conclusions about the world.
One does not even need to go so far as to assume that “logic” works differently for everyone; it could work just the same for all of us, but that won’t mean a thing if our prejudices, predispositions, and subjective emotional reactions prevent us from seeing or accepting different truth-valuation mappings of our experiences in the world. Logic is supervenient on a base set of axioms that describe how truth-value is to be determined; change but one of those axioms and you get different conclusions from the same premises.
The categorical imperative fails when granted specific contexts. “Stealing is illogical because if I steal, then I prescribe that everyone else steal from me” is ridiculously broad and does not reflect real-world actions. More often than not, people do not steal “just” to steal; they steal because they are hungry, because they feel oppressed, or out of a pathological compulsion. In their cases, they could very will say “it is logical for me to steal due to my circumstances, so it is logical for anyone who shares my circumstances to steal.” Their circumstances provide them a reason, a justification or whathaveyou that someone else might not find acceptable. Another example would be the sadist, who reasons that even if his or her pain-inflicting actions were to be universalized (and thus directed upon him or her), he/she would rather take the risks of that world than live in a world where he/she cannot inflict pain at all.
“Logic is supervenient on a base set of axioms that describe how truth-value is to be determined; change but one of those axioms and you get different conclusions from the same premises.”
Can you give me an example of this? Can you give me on of those axioms and give me an example of how it could change or be diffirent?
“Stealing is illogical because if I steal, then I prescribe that everyone else steal from me. More often than not, people do not steal “just” to steal; they steal because they are hungry, because they feel oppressed, or out of a pathological compulsion.”
Forget those circumstances. Say I stole because I realy like the car you drove, and I realy wanted it… What im wondering is this: is it correct to say that by doing so I prescribe that everyone else steals from me on such a whim? I dont think so… I have decided it is logical for me to steal the car because I want the car… How does it follow from this that it becomes logical for someone else to steal my car? Im not saying its not, but it is not a necessary conclusion is it? This is my problem with the golden rule… Do unto others as you would have them do unto you… It would make sense if people actually did unto you what you did unto them… but alot of the time thats just not the case… If I steal your car, I do so in the hopes that you dont find out who did it. If you dont find out, than you cant do it back to me… Nor can you argue that not stealing necissarily makes people around me less likely to steal, and so its not the case that if I steal from some one, I am encouraging a negative environment for me. As if stealing will all of a sudden cause everyone to start stealing… Now I can see arguments for why it could. For example, if I stole a car, than some guy who wants to steal a car but is afraid his chance of getting cought is too high may be encouraged by the fact that I managed to pull it off and get away with it, and so he goes on to steal, maybe from me. Sure. I can see that happening but if I feel the risk of something like this happening is significant, or I have any reason to feel my actions might create significant risk for me, than I can do it in a manner where it wont create risk. I can try to figure out a way to steal your car where I will not be creating the risk. Such as stealing it and also framing some person but make it so that it seems like they sold it off to the black market or something. The car is mine and people think justice was served. All is well in the neighborhood.
Anyways, this is a bit of a tangent but I think the lesson here is this: Morality, ethics, religion, all these things are guidlines for how to act. Often times they are very strict guidelines, sometimes they can be more loose… They are general rules. My suggestion is that we never put too much stock in any general rules. Attempt as much as you can to evaluate every decision you make before you make it, do not blindly follow some set of rules on how to act. Simple example being “Do not lie!” Though it can probably be argued that most lies go bad, and statisticly those that do not lie are better off, that statistic is just one more consideration. Some people leave it at that and will never lie, even when they find themselves in a situation where it is CLEARLY in their best interest to lie. That is what I call dogma…
The categorical imperative (first espoused by Kant, here independently stated by the originator of the thread) is an ethical maxim that asserts an act or action is “good” if it does not bring about a logical contradiction. Basically, the argument goes that by performing an action, you endorse the action; ergo, if you steal, you endorse stealing as being “good.” Kant argues this by saying that humans are inherently reasonable, and they do not ever act without reason. Thus whatever reason you had for stealing my car, if it is a valid reason, would be valid for anyone else in your circumstances. Thus by endorsing an action as good, you are prescribing it as a rule to be followed by the rest of humanity (so the argument goes). Yet if you perform an action and also CONDEMN it categorically, you are contradicting yourself: your action affirms what you deny. If you steal, you are endorsing stealing; yet you may also not want to be stolen from, so you would condemn stealing. Thus you are contradicting yourself.
I am not endorsing the categorical imperative, and it appears that you got the impression that I am. Rather, I think that anyone can circumvent it by over-specifying their circumstances and reasons. Consider: “stealing is good” is different than “stealing is good if you are a starving father of six whom has been denied all access to employment, can only provide for your family through theft, and only steal from those of significantly greater wealth than yourself.” One can safely endorse the latter and be perfectly exempt from endorsing that people steal from one, without reaching a logical contradiction. However, one will likely enter disputes over several terms in those circumstances (“significantly greater wealth”, “denied employment”, “starving”, etc.), and this is because definitions of these terms depend largely on subjective experience.
As to your question about logic and axioms:
Consider the axiom known as “the law of the excluded middle”, central to Boolean logic: this axiom asserts that all propositions are either true or false, never both or neither. Rejecting this will result in a different way of reasoning and thus will enable different conclusions to be reached. Axioms, by definition, cannot be proved–they define the criteria for what is provable and how it may be proved. As a counter-example to Boolean logic, consider paraconsistent logic: in this form of logic, the law of the excluded middle is denied, resulting in FOUR potential truth-values for a proposition: true, false, neither true nor false, and both true AND false.
That’s a lame version lol. It looks cooler handwritten, or at least pretending to be.
Anyway, I agree with the OP… almost. What about misunderstanding? Misunderstanding could lead to undeserved hatred. And misunderstanding can come from misinformation or ignorance, not just bad logic.
If not spoken in depth, then this could apear wise.
“Money” symbolizes our desire to gain physical resources.
“Women” symbolizes our desire to procreate.
These are the two basic “meanings” of life,
and each can be also called the root of all “evil”
because a “problem” is “evil” and life is a “problem” because
“progress” requires solutions and work.
“Logic”, like so many other things, is not the root of all “evil”.
If we were so narrow minded as to want to ID the root of all problems in our lives, we would surely be analizing our own “sin” which is “error” due to weakness, imbalance and deficiencies. These all partain to our needs as an organism. Learning, experiance, failure, success, they are all part of life because as we raise our expectations we then feel difforent about our current status and then our eventual status if we do have possable goals.
Arrogant and overly-judgemental religious leaders each claim to have the solution to all of humanities “problems”. Science has done for more for humanity then they, which solidly shows that opinion or belief or ideals each are a cheap substitute for practical knowlage.
Learn, learn, learn! It is the way!
