I’m bored.
People don’t understand what I’m talking about, so now I’m going to reiterate for everyone’s benefit. I write stories, so I’m making this one.
Imagine we, like the philosophers of yore, were sitting at a table. A third person asks us “Are good and evil subjective?”
You respond, “Certainly. Everyone views good and evil differently, and thus good and evil are subjective.”
I ask you then. “What’s good, what’s evil, and what’s subjective?”
You look at me and say “What does that have to do with it?”
“Well, obviously you can’t say something is something unless we know what the somethings are,” I respond.
“Very well then,” you say. “Good and evil are concepts created by humans, and subjectivity is when something has a different meaning depending on who is talking about it.”
“Well I disagree. Good is when existence is furthered, evil is when it is not. Subjectivity is when something cannot be measured or quantified.”
You look at me, confused. “But that’s not what good and evil are!”
“But that is what good and evil are.” I sigh. “Here, tell me this. If something exists, does it have a value?”
“What does that have to do with this?” you ask.
“Just answer me.”
“Well, if something exists and doesn’t have a value…”
“Then that means that nothing that exists has value,” I finish. “And if nothing that exists has value, then it means that everything is pointless and we should be plowing fields instead of debating philosophy.”
“I suppose,” you respond.
“Doesn’t that show that everything has value then?” I ask. “Or at least, that we should pretend everything has value so we can keep sitting here and debating?”
You nod.
“Well then, if everything has a value because it exists, then aren’t good and evil simply that value?” I ask. “Think about it. The value is determined by existence. Thus, if something makes something else stop existing, then the first something loses value, because it has removed another thing’s existence.”
You look at me, confused.
I plow on. “If losing value is caused by making things stop existing, then evil must be when you lose value. For example, if a man kills another for money, the first is decried as evil. This is because he has killed another man, and thus stopped the other man from existing.”
“That’s not how it works!” you protest. “He’s evil because he did it for money!”
“Why then,” I ask, “is he not evil if he didn’t do it for money?”
You pause. “Well, not necessarily.”
“But still, killing someone is usually evil, is it not?”
“That depends on who is viewing it,” you counter.
“But you see, it has to be justified, right?” I ask.
“Yes…”
“Then doesn’t that mean that it’s innately evil, due to the fact that you have to justify it to make it good?”
“That’s…”
“Thus, ending an existence must be evil, if it has to be justified. Which means, by corollary, keeping things existing must be good. If you save a person’s life, it’s usually good right?”
“Depends on who’s viewing it,” you respond. “If you saved a killer’s life, their family would think you’re evil.”
“Well…” I respond. “Aren’t you using circumstance to make my example evil? If you have to make it evil, it’s like justifying that it’s good. Doesn’t that mean that it’s innately good to prolong existence?”
“But wait,” you respond. “Couldn’t you do the same? Aren’t you just justifying the act of saving someone by saying that the people being saved aren’t usually killers?”
“That’s different. You’re arguing that saving a person could be evil. Those two don’t equate,” I explain.
You seem unconvinced.
“Let’s take a look,” I say. “In one case, a person you saved could be a killer. In the other, a person you saved could be not a killer. That’s what you’re driving at right? But you see, they’re very different. In the first one, the person is already defined, the question is whether the person is a killer. In the second, you attempt to make the already defined subject “a killer”, which isn’t what the example states.”
“That’s confusing,” you say.
“Think of it intuitively then,” I respond, tired of explaining this countless times to countless people. “Saving an existence is good, destroying one is evil.”
“Well let’s go back to the question,” you say. “How would your definitions show that good and evil are not subjective?”
“Well, I said that subjectivity was something that couldn’t be measured or quantified, right?”
“Yes,” you respond.
“Well, if all of existence has a value for existing, and if that value can change depending on whether good or evil was done, by my definition of the two, then doesn’t that mean that the value shows whether something is good or evil?”
“Huh?”
“Let’s make an example. A person has a value of one-and-a-half. Another person has a value of one. If the person with the value of one-and-a-half saves the person with a value of one, doesn’t that mean that the first person should have their value increased? And by one?”
“But why?” you ask.
“Well, because existence has value. By prolonging another existing object’s existence, you are increasing your own value,” I say yet again.
You still seem confused, but I can’t figure out how to better explain it.
“Either way, by my reasoning, doesn’t that mean that the person now has two-and-a-half for their value?”
“Yes,” you respond.
“Doesn’t that show that they are good? Because their value is higher, it shows that they have prolonged something’s existence, which is doing good,” I say. “Haven’t I quantified how good this person is?”
“But that’s just the value you gave them! Other people have different values for those people,” you argue.
“Ah, but you see,” I begin. “That’s because I chose to start big. If I started from atoms, that is, with each atom having a worth determined by their potential future good, and then began to build up, using atoms to measure the worth of molecules, using molecules to measure the worth of mixtures, using mixtures to measure the worth of, say, a bacterium, using those to measure the worth of plants, for example, and then animals, and then people, I could find the actual worth of a person, couldn’t I?”
“Yes, but how do you know how much potential future good an atom has?” you ask.
“I don’t,” I respond. “I would have to be omniscient to know.”
“But doesn’t that mean that good and evil are subjective, because you can’t actually know the values of things?”
“Smart of you to think of that, but not by my definition of subjective,” I respond. “Remember? It’s subjective if it can’t be measured or quantified. I just showed how exactly I could quantify or measure it. That makes it objective, doesn’t it?”
“But that’s not my definition of subjective,” you respond. “I defined it as varying depending on a person’s viewpoint.”
I shrug. “That’s why definitions are important.”
That just about sums up the entire argument.