Are Good and Evil Objective?

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How’s that related

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E( 3 characters)

This is riddled with non sequiturs and just straight up false statements. Let’s start from the top

If I can estimate how much I like one flavor of ice cream on a scale of 1 to 10 is it not subjective?You’re arguing that the value of everything is measurable but in order for it to be measurable doesn’t there need to be a finite amount of measurements for it? Different belief systems have different standards for determining what’s good and what isn’t. The ways of measuring value in accordance with each of them will differ in their results regardless of omniscience

:fr: do I need to explain why this is wrong?

If nothing has any value then every action is equally valuable so there is just as much reason to abandon the debate as to continue it and even if we did not see any objective value in it, we aren’t perfectly logical creatures anyway. A robot may not see any value in anything, and an animal may not stop to consider whether anything really has value without that impairing its normal functioning. We would still act instinctively or out of habit or because we were conditioned by society or our prior experiences to do certain things. Becoming a nihilist doesn’t mean you have to radically alter your behavior, just accept that human psychology is more complex than only motivating people to do things they see objective meaning in. Now, subjective values are different. You could say that whatever we want is personally valuable to us and from there argue that even the horse and the robot, without realizing it, value things but these values are based on what we want and that varies from person to person

This doesn’t really follow. If causing any increase or decrease in the total value merits an increase or decrease in the causal agent’s value, then shouldn’t this be a self-perpetuating cycle until their value goes to infinity or negative infinity? Other utilitarians would argue that the causal agent’s value is determined by their future prospects and what they did in the past would only matter insofar as it predicts future results

I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not but just in case, I’ll act as if I was sure you are. Justifying something can explain why you think it’s good but it’s usually good or bad independently of whether you can justify it or not. You don’t make it good by justifying it. If you were to tell someone that you killed someone without giving them other information their first impression might be that it was evil but this assumption isn’t because killing is innately evil, it’s because killing is usually evil in certain contexts in the minds of many people. However, that’s not a universal truth. It’s a product of the specific conditions of our society. If, in a different time and place, more killing was justified than not justified, or even if it wasn’t but the justified killings were more salient in the minds of the people, then they might’ve tended to assume, given only the fact that a killing occurred, that that killing was good unless otherwise proven. This has to do with the influence of stereotypes, not innate wrongness or rightness

exactly what I SAID

I didn’t copy your comment if that’s what you’re saying lol

nah you didn’t

When it comes to morals, good, evil, right, and wrong are all words based off of a perspective and could fluctuate over time

y e s

Evil is just what we think evil is. It’s a psychological construct we use to pin all the bad things in life on. It’s subjective to the person and their beliefs, what would be evil to me might not be evil to someone else. That’s subjective. Personally I see (most) self preserving acts as good and (most) self satisfying acts as bad, with some being on different levels of scale. A thief stealing food to live is better than a thief stealing out of greed. A man killing other men for the freedom of his people is better than a man killing other men just to satisfy some desire/emotion. These are my views on what I think are good and evil, to varying degrees.

Usually what tends to be a common “evil” in society/whatever power is controlling the people is referred to as “evil”. One of my favorite (and now non-canon) representations of evil is The Idea of Evil from Berserk, who is essentially God. It was brought into existence to answer humanity’s reasons for sadness, pain, death, etc. What I like about it is that it was created by the minds of men. The minds of men are subjective and so is the concept of evil. That’s about it. Thanks for listening to my ted talk.

:bowing_man:

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thank you sir

Most of this wall is just examples. If you don’t want to read it all, you can just read the last paragraph. It sums this whole thing up.

In all of @Danny_Zou’s examples, it is easy to quantify. If you kill someone, you’re bad. Otherwise, you’re good. If you kill a bad person, you’re good.

But it gets a lot more complicated.

For example, the Sackler family started a business selling opioids. Through false advertisements and overprescription, they advertently gave many people an opioid addiction that eventually kills them. The Sackler family knew that their opioids were causing harm, but they did nothing about it because they were making billions of dollars.

Is the Sackler family evil? I would argue yes. They caused the death of people. However, you can’t quantify that with the rules you’ve given. You could probably come up with a new rule to quantify that. Maybe, if you cause the death of someone, even if you didn’t directly kill someone, you are bad.

However, what if you are a family member. You tell someone else to come to your house for Thanksgiving. They get on a plane and fly over. However, the plane crashes into the ocean and that person dies. They would not have been in that plane were it not for you. You caused their death. Are you evil? I’d argue no. You could not have possibly known that that would kill them. However, according to the rules, they are evil.

You could come up with a new rule. Perhaps, if you are unaware that your actions will cause a death, you are not evil. But, what about drunk driving. Most drunk drivers don’t think that their actions will cause someone’s death. Are they evil? Maybe, they are evil. Maybe, gross negligence is evil. But then, are all risks evil? Or, maybe, drunk drivers are not evil, just stupid. In that case, would imprisoning a drunk driver be evil because you are incarcerating an innocent person? Perhaps you could come up with a new rule. Harming an innocent person is fine if it protects others.

Let’s return to the Sackler family example. They caused the death of people with their opioids. If they are evil, according to your rules, then killing them is fine. However, most people think that killing the Sackler family is not good and doesn’t make you a hero. You could probably come up with a rule for that. Maybe, killing someone who didn’t directly kill someone else is fine.

But then where do you draw the line? What kind of negligence makes someone worthy of death? At what point does killing someone become justified? You could come up with rules, but there will always be more counterexamples. You can come up with rules to counter each counter-example, but there will be disagreement. If there is disagreement among reasonable people, morality is not objective. The rules you put in place and the lines you set are yours. Most people will disagree with at least one of your rules. Thus, morality is subjective.

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Legit the entire “objective equation” is completely pulled apart by considering the value of the variable representing a crime/viture’s severity/potency. Which is entirely subjectively determined based on a multitude of countless factors such as what each person involved meant to you

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This is exactly what I was trying to say, but it took me 511 words.

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By the time this is over AO would have been finished already.

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Philosophers have argued this for thousands of years. Our week-long debate is relatively short.

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Ya, and that’s basically what the argument devolved into lmao.

And if it is based on your personal thoughts then it is subjective. Simple as that.

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Too long and complicated. I have a much simpler equation.

If spider;
–> Evil
Else if math;
–> Evil
Else;
–> Still kind of evil but not as evil as math or spiders