Kantain moral agency, the variety that requires you be capable of both good and evil, specifically.
Yes, absolutely!
A man taking responsibility for himself, his own life, his own destiny, and his own freedom, will begin to become viewed as Evil by a majority of others, who themselves cannot take this burden of self-responsibility upon their own shoulders. He will both become esteemed by a community, and also hated by them.
Responsibility is True Power.
Responsibility is True Freedom.
You took that the opposite of how I intended.
Imagine that you are God. Is it immoral to give humans moral agency? To allow Moral Evil (which is distinguished from Natural Evil by having been intended by moral agents) into the world?
If you have children, do you wipe their poopy butts forever, or do you hope by raising them that they can take care of this responsibility on their own?
I don’t see anything ‘immoral’ about assigning responsibility to others. But by how most people conceive of morality, agency, cause, and existentialism, people inherently see responsibility as an evil, adultish concept. Children are irresponsible. Adults are responsible. And the transition of maturity from the former age to the latter implies that a man become responsible for himself, and thus a causal agent.
Yet that is what people view as Evil, and perhaps, Immoral.
I do what I will, as I see fit, under my own Free Will, and other people…have the audacity to Judge me, as if they were themselves moral or responsible agents. But actions speak louder than words. And most people rather readily and willingly sacrifice their own personal authority, to whatever “Mangods” they believe in, whether they are The Pope, Scientologists, George W. Bush, policemen, professors, teachers, parents, anyone.
I will argue that most people have their conceptions of morality confused, and what people actually value, and praise, is Irresponsibility rather than Responsibility.
Western culture has come to paint responsibility as something bad, negative, and evil, while classically, traditionally, culturally, religiously, for Christianity, responsibility has been a good thing, a Good virtue, epitomized by Christ our Lord, Thy God.
Again, to answer your question, I see nothing wrong with God giving mankind moral agency, and thus Free Will. He bestowed upon us, His powers to manipulate our world, environment, and the universe itself. By becoming responsible for oneself, Man literally becomes a Transcendental, Casual agent.
This was all off topic rambling. It might have sounded on topic, but you were really just stroking your misanthropic e-cock.
This however, is so nearly on topic that one might even call it useful. If we had no moral agency, that wouldn’t mean we had no causal role in our environment, just that we specifically couldn’t choose to do evil. Is our responsibility (which is taken away with our moral agency) necessary for us to be considered Causal agents?
Don’t really see how this kind of logic works.
Looking at how the worlds still survives itself after wars, finacial crisis, famine, plague and so on and so forth, what excatly do you want to improve?
Let me make it clear since you missed the entire point: Causal Agency is Evil!!!
That’s how most people view it anyway. So, yes, people do choose to become “Evil”, and all that means is self-responsibility.
If you are a self-responsible individual, then you are evil, because you can be blamed for things which you-yourself cause.
Likening this to God, who has, “Caused” the entire universe into existence. The reasoning is simple.
Is mere survivability all we can really strive for? If so, what a sad and pathetic existence.
The reasoning is, thus far, irrelevant. People are not “evil” simply by being responsible. That might be a necessary component but it is not sufficient.
And if your argument is simply to bemoan the state of human existence and society, then make your own thread doing so. If you’re only here to say we’ve become morally lazy and view individuality as evil, then that isn’t for this thread. Don’t take this personally. Your use of quotes over and over shows that you’re not interested in talking about what I am, you’re interested in changing the very language and meanings of what I said so that you can talk about whatever you feel like talking about.
Now for those who actually want to discuss the topic, there is perhaps another way to consider it. (via anthony beavers in an upcoming paper I’ve read)
Imagine there is a machine that, unlike humans due to our fragile emotions and poor intellect, would always choose to act in accordance with morality. Whether this is Kantian morality or what have you it doesn’t matter so long as its the one that’s right (whichever that is). It is omniscient. “Doing the right thing” would become synonymous with “Doing what the machine said”. Would it be moral to make it so that all agents had to obey this machine, thereby losing their moral agency?
This one is a real mind fuck.
Capacity to do evil doesn’t make you evil
Then moving from this statement, is it evil to create something with the capacity for evil?
Not if the goal is an agent with free will, and if that in turn implies the capacity to do good, morally neutral, and evil things. The mythology says god gave man free will, but free will doesn’t work without capacity to do both good and evil.
[tab]I suppose you could however say that god places certain limitations on human beings - physical limitations via laws of nature, and these nonetheless don’t affect our capacity for free will. God could have created a moral [physical] law of nature that prevents people from doing evil, then go on to say that in the same way physical laws of nature as we understand them today aren’t inconsistent with free will, so physical laws of nature aren’t inconsistent with free will when this moral law is among them. If doing evil was a physical impossibility much like floating, then not being able to do evil would impact free will in the same degree that not being able to float does, namely zilch.
What’s to say you have free will when you’re unable to choose to float, but don’t have free will when you’re unable to choose to do evil?[/tab]
Yes it does. At the very least it admits evil intention. From there, the only question left to ask is: why aren’t people committing evil left and right??
The end of that logic is: people don’t commit evil in american society because human rights protect us, and anybody can do whatever they want as long as it doesn’t infringe upon my personal, human rights to life and happiness (immediate gratification).
Now I personally don’t believe this bullshit, but most other americans and westerners do. Go ask them yourself if you don’t believe me. I’ve done a lot of arguing in my life.
capacity to do x doesn’t imply intention to do x
With the exception of accidents, yes.
But good and evil are not accidental, are they? So accidents are ruled out. Good and Evil is only intended. Therefore to think about anything qualifying as “good” and “evil” is only intended.
Good and Evil can never be accidental, ever. That wouldn’t make any sense, for somebody to accidentally commit a “Good” or “Evil”.
For example, a guy is a moron, and drinks 12 beers, and drives his truck, and murders a family of 4 on the road. Did he commit an act of “Evil”? No, it was an accident. Unless you claim he did it on purpose.
you’re not following me
I know, you’re not following me either. I’m trying to lead.
Could you please name some evil things? Or potential evils?
Don’t really think your whole concept is clear to me.
Maybe it seems that you wants to see evil, where to me there is none.
I agree that a truly free will requires the capacity to do both good and evil. However, it may be the case that free will (moral agency) itself is an immoral concept.
Now this is a lead I hadn’t thought of before… Let’s see where it goes!
Which is precisely the problem I’m faced with. It seems that in the creation of NEW agents, like babies or advanced robots, the arguments for moral agency aren’t nearly as strong. However taking agents who are already moral agents and “fixing” them might be easier to prove wrong.
Indeed. Free will, sure. But moral agency? No.
Not true. Only the capacity to form evil intentions. It only means that it is a possibility that you might form evil intentions.
This is the other argument I’ve been working with. Mill’s On Liberty goes into this, I think.
But what if moral evil was to be defined as infringing upon someone’s personal human rights? We would lose moral agency if that were the case.
So what do you believe then?
Evil can be accidental. Have you ever heard of Natural Evil?
What about a Tornado? It can’t have intentions.
Terrible example.