what is so hard about identifying good and evil?

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

i would like to emphasize that the title is a question. if you think you know what the problem is, and have a specific example of the difficulty, discuss it specifically.

that said, im sure that i have objectively and certainly identified the difference between the two: if it creates higher average happiness among all sentient creatures, its good. if it makes that average happiness lower, its bad.

i suppose this will take further specifying if someone can think of an example that cant be answered so easily, but i am willing to run 5 laps around ILP naked if anyone can force me to admit theyve found a moral problem that cant be decided with this.

a lot of the problems are going to stem from the ‘end justifies the means’ silliness which seems to imply that it might be better to wait for worse pain in the future instead of quickly ripping off the band aid today. well, the end obviously does justify the means or else there wouldnt be any question about using those means. the problem is only that the people who are going to be utilizing those means probably cant be trusted to accomplish exactly what they say they will (either because they are shady or because there is probability of failure) and if we give them the authority to do it, we are probably going to run into some unforeseen trouble. (torturing terrorists isnt so bad if theres not the slightest possibility that he is innocent. if that possibility exists, i cant think of anything worse)

so the end justifies the means if you are 100% certain that things will go exactly as planned. the difficulty in assessing those kinds of decisions is not morality but estimating the probability of success and weighing that against the morality of the means, which is like comparing apples and religions.

thats the one problem i can see. and ive solved it, or at least pointed out that the problem is more with side effects than with the actual things being done.

cannibals on a boat? come on why would you die of starvation if you dont have to? why would you let somebody else die of starvation if you dont have to? the only problem with killing them quickly and relatively painlessly is that you dont know that a helicopter isnt five seconds away from saving all three of you. if you know for sure that letting him live will result in all three of you dying a horrible death and that killing him will result in two of you living just fine, youd be stupid to let all three of you die slowly, youd be better off stabbing all three of you to death than starving. and if we can assume that the adults are the least fragile, their choice of victim was good as well.

next. Dr Satan im looking at you.

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Future Man,

Please give a brief account on what you understand by happiness, first.

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that brain chemical that you feel. whatever makes it and doesnt prevent other people (or yourself in the future) from making it should be encouraged at all costs.

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Taking this as the goal, what then has been the best society ever?

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the one with the least inequality and least infringement on other places. i think northern europe has gone the farthest with this.

its possible that some obscure culture has focused more than usual on producing that brain chemical (which is what i suppose you are getting at), and depending on what the side effects of this behavior, there is a definite possibility that they contributed the most to average world happiness per size of their population. if they just sat around and had sex with everyone and raised everyones children and ate fruit and docile animals and never had any need for selfishness, imagine that happiness.

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I don’t think its hard to agree on whats good or evil. Its getting people to agree that is hard. Look at good and evil as a peach, the core is the pit that is the basic good and evil. The degrees of good and evil are the meat of the peach, that is the part everyone argues over it is not the pit but the meat surrounding the pit that causes the problems. Too get rid of evil you would have to get rid of good too. One cannot be with out the other. I surely don’t want to live in a boring world with out either.

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to get rid of evil, you just have to stop doing it. if you do that, youll eliminate a few good things like the feeling of triumph over evil, righteous retribution, stabbing osama bin laden, escaping pain. but i dont think those few good things are as good as all of the evil in the world combined is bad. the bad feeling i get from not getting to kill osama isnt as bad as what happens leading up to me wanting to kill him.

i see what you are saying though. life is a lot better if it used to be a lot worse. however, my life has been pretty uniformly priveleged and happy and i really dont want to trade a few bad spots in exchange for feeling a greater appreciation for the good ones. if a midievil peasant were put in my shoes right now, he would be as happy as any of us would be if we died and realized that heaven is really real and we are there. but i wouldnt want to live half my life as a peasant in order to get that feeling, id rather be here and lukewarm the whole time.

if youre in the gray areas, you arent arguing about specifically whether or not its good or bad.

people disagree about morality because they are dogmatic (a.k.a. should shut the hell up) or because they are arguing about an ends-justifies-means scenario with an uncertain probability of success or uncertain comparison between the exchange of varying degrees and amounts of happiness. and that makes sense, it should be argued about because there is a lot of pertinent information in those scenarios.

but some people seem to have this silly idea that there is not even such a thing as good or bad at all. the whole concept of something being universally good or bad is a big conspiracy made up by jerks for no good reason. and its impossible to decide and unfair to decree that certain specific things should or shouldnt be done by everybody.

if you think im wrong, and that there truly are no universally good or bad things, tell me why.

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What if what makes me the happiest is torturing others. How would that affect the average ‘feel goods’ for all sentient beings? This sounds like there are far to many variables for a determining measurement.

“so the end justifies the means if you are 100% certain that things will go exactly as planned”

You will never be able to be 100% certain of the course of events; thereby you will never be able to justify any course of action in advance. You would not even be able to exist; thereby since you do exist, we must live in a immoral world. To bad I guess.

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if you are so sadistic that your torturing people makes you so happy that it counteracts the pain that you cause well… you should be killed immediately so that nobody has to go through your torture and you dont have to go through the pain in between torture sessions. i think the pain that you feel when not torturing people (since you are so amazingly insane) would equal if not surpass the pain caused by ending your life

and even if you are happy in between torture sessions, fuck it ill kill you anyway. thats not arbitrary or capricious either. sadism is a very specific kind of happiness that can be identified and eliminated.

and ill add that unilateral transfers of happiness from one to another are always bad unless they aim at some greater good. we all already knew that, im not desperately patching this up, im swatting a fly.

if the certainty of success is 90%, and the amount of pain caused by failure is 5% higher than it would be if no action is taken, and the amount of pain saved if successfull is 50%, do the math.

i know its variables of two different classes, but to say that there is no correct choice in these situations simply because we cant exactly compare different variables seems a little harsh.

what do you mean i wouldnt be able to exist?

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Is it moral to torture someone who double parks somewhere in Manhatten, in the middle of Times Square, New York City?

I guarantee that as soon as the practice is implemented there will almost instantanously come about an end to double parking. Now, this will increase everyone’s happiness manyfold – in fact, on avg., it will make most people much happier than the unhappiness of the few and their families who violate the law.

Simple, straightfoward, Benthamian utilitarianism – that’s what you propose. Now answer the question: is it moral? (Remember your own moral theory now… Oh… these darn philosophical commitments)

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Are you proposing that those people who now don’t have to worry about double parking anymore would receive a greater amount of happiness than the unhappiness felt by the tortured man?

I assume you’re taking into account that since many people receive the benefits of the lack of double parking, it is more important than the unhappiness of a lone martyr.

Which may be true, but it seems to me like these are relative terms. How do we decide when the pain of one outweighs the pleasure of many? Does it ever?

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There is good and there is evil. You can be evil and think that you are being good and visa versa. You can be good and do an evil thing thinking is was good. You can be evil and do a good thing thinking it was evil. I guess in the end you can only live up to your own standards and let the chips fall where they may. Society has its own standards also which may differ from yours, then you have choices to make either live by society standard, get out of that society, or stay there and do your own thing and pay the consequences. All in all you really only answer to yourself for the choices you make. It is how you wish to live that decides this question.Screw the rest of the universe.

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i believe evil to be objective as well. if someone gets pleasure from inflicting pain onto another sentinent creatures who is not tryong to harm anyone, then they are evil. if someone takes delight, in helping others, then they are probobly good. people on here seem to be mistaking good and evil, with rite and wrong. evil is a force that is opposed to love. P.S. SOME OF THE TREES ARE ON HER SIDE.

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Yes, being that there is a much greater number of them. There are 8 million people in nyc. Add it up.

The pain of one doesn’t outweigh the pleasure of many, if you buy into Future Man’s idea of morality, which is quantative utilitarianism.

The philosopher who undermined that philosophy was John-Stuart Mill, and also, Dostoevsky – who did it a lot more poetically. Mill had tried to re-work Bentham’s utlitarianism into a qualitative system as opposed to Bentham’s quantative version (Bentham actually had mathamtical formulas to calculate net happiness gained – a joke). Mill would, for example, approach the problem by saying that the pleasure gained from the 8 million New Yorkers, who would no longer be bothered by people who double parked, is of a much lower quality than the pain of the few totured offenders. Which makes it immoral, according to Mill. (Mill, however, has boatloads of inductive problems to grapple with – the main one being, the definition of happiness itself).

Dostovesky however, raises the point much more brilliantly in The Karmazov Brothers, when he has his athiest character Ivan question his religious brother Aloysha, asking him, if to create heaven on earth God had to have one innocent child suffer, would Aloysha be in favor? So that if God could create paradise, Ivan asked, but before he did, one innocent child had to be tortured or something terrible like that, would Aloysha consent? Would you?

That is utlitarianism.

I’m not all against utlitarianism however; practially speaking utilitarianism is used most of the time in making rational judgements about what actions to take. But, it still comes far too short of achieving anything close to moral truth or moral certainty – just ask Kant who really loathed it.

Also, if you ask me, morality just boils down to instinct and emotion. You should have seen my last PhD, the great Dr. of philosophy, condemn what the Nazi’s did as being wrong, on philosophic grounds, pun intened, by stomping his foot on the classroom floor and exclaiming: “IT’S JUST WRONG!” Just pleas to his emotions. Thing is, I don’t think the Nazi’s felt the same way as he.

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I would love for Future Man to show me what is right and wrong on rational grounds. Otherwise, we’ll just have to sit back, relax, and watch a man plead out his instincts on what is right and wrong, desperatly trying to justify them with this or that philosophy – which is what will occur.

GalacticHeart wrote:

What if I love Adolf Hitler?

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[quote=“Simpson”]
What if what makes me the happiest is torturing others. How would that affect the average ‘feel goods’ for all sentient beings? This sounds like there are far to many variables for a determining measurement.

torturing others does not make everyone happy in general, so according the Future man it will be defined as evil. That is, unless everyone tortured is masochist ( unlikely )

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Then I am not opposed to your loving of Adolf Hitler. I am opposed to you doing anything about it, like say, imitating him. Why? Because he was hateful and opposed the love of Jews, making him evil.

(Not really my belief, I’m just going with the flow here)

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What if I love the Jews, but hate socialists? Am I then half-evil, half-good? Perhaps you’ll say, 4/5ths good and 1/5th evil? or is 2/9ths and 7/9ths?

What if I love evil? Or engage in evil-love? Ah! I see, there can be no evil love for all love is good. Yes, that’s it, right? All love is good? I love Hitler! I will do anything for the fuhrer, because I love him. Unless he asks something evil of me, like killing my only son. But then again, if I really, really, really, love my fuhrer, then of course, I’ll kill my only son; it’s out of my great love for the fuhrer afterall. Surely, action out of love cannot be evil, for, it was said, “evil is a force that is opposed to love.”

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But would that be loving towards your son? I do see the complications. I’d say evil would be doing anything that makes me shiver. But that’s not a very universal definition, is it?

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pxc wrote:

Now, please allow the self-indulgence, it is for your own good, I quote myself, a few posts above:

"I would love for Future Man to show me what is right and wrong on rational grounds. Otherwise, we’ll just have to sit back, relax, and watch a man plead out his instincts on what is right and wrong, desperatly trying to justify them with this or that philosophy – which is what will occur. "

I should change that to men and women.

Ask Abraham.

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And man oh man, what to do about all those Jewish-socialists!

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And by what decree should we accept this as the gospel truth?

You have indeed distinguished what is good from what is evil, but only subjectively and in your own headspace.

Personally I find that kind of egalitarian crap to be without precedent.