Good and Evil

[Hatshepsut]

Also, take for example someone who is a Muslim and defends his/her book of teaching by saying that the evils it presents (like how a little girl was wed to Muhammad when she was only 6 years old...) ...were considered "correct" or "acceptable" at the time they happened.

As intimated above, I argue the harm. A non-consenting child being traded, as property, to an adult for social and sexual gratification is harmful...

In a culture that lacks a concept of "underage for consent," and for that matter doesn't seek individual consent in most decision-making on any issue regardless of age? People were considered full adults at age 12 to 14 in Muhammad's day, and old enough to assume the duties of a king by age 16. A lot of them were dead by age 25, our own definition of "full brain maturity." And is harm to the youngster inevitable? Or would that depend on whether the adult was gentle versus rough? The Greeks had man-boy love of the kind that gets you in prison now, and such luminaries as Aristophanes and Plato took their turns on the "boy" side of the equation without seeming to have suffered permanent mental harm as a result. Much of the harm of incest, adult-child sex, and so on derives from our shaming of these situations and the walls of silence we've always built up to deal with them.

None of that means today's world should approve of sex with persons under 18. There's a potential for serious harm even if such harm doesn't strike in every case, and we have a social contract guaranteeing a "protected" childhood. In addition to consent or ability to understand, this may be based on the fact that the adult is more powerful and can coerce a child. I don't think we have to refer to absolute morality or to the morals of past ages to defend our decision to put kids off limits. I think morals progress as our society acquires the wealth to afford more protections. There's nothing wrong with Muhammad's actions in the 7th century; what's wrong is people thinking we should still be doing it the same way.

[Ben Davis]

In a culture that lacks a concept of "underage for consent," and for that matter doesn't seek individual consent in most decision-making on any issue regardless of age?

Indeed. This lack of consent is inherently harmful as it attacks our right to self-determination. I would suggest that had the culture been interested in basing their ethical systems on an appreciation of harm, they would have been able to judge their actions in the same way that we do now, in Europe in the 21stC. Cultures may have changed drastically in the past 1400 years but the basic human being, our capabilities and processes, has changed very little.

And is harm to the youngster inevitable? Or would that depend on whether the adult was gentle versus rough?

That depends on the type of harm. Eroding our rights to self-determination attacks us at our very core identity, our self-worth, our will. The damage isn't directly physical but can be far more profoundly harmful than many types of physical abuse.

The Greeks had man-boy love of the kind that gets you in prison now, and such luminaries as Aristophanes and Plato took their turns on the "boy" side of the equation without seeming to have suffered permanent mental harm as a result.

The greek model of 'man-boy love' is far from the predatory paedophilic one that you seem to be imagining. 'Boys' were pubescent and consenting; pre-pubescent sex was seen as a wicked perversion by the ancient greeks, too although they weren't as damning of rape as we are today.

Much of the harm of incest, adult-child sex, and so on derives from our shaming of these situations and the walls of silence we've always built up to deal with them.

No, most of the harm comes from the lack of consent and physical immaturity of the victim. There is harm caused by the concepts of victim-shame which you mention but those concepts are defense mechanisms set up by the predators because they understand that their actions cause harm and they feel the associate guilt, requiring them to cover their tracks.

None of that means today's world should approve of sex with persons under 18.

That's not what paedophilia is: it's sex with pre-pubescent children. People all over the world are having sex far younger, with full consent, in the framework of a 'loving partnership' without causing or suffering harm.

There's a potential for serious harm even if such harm doesn't strike in every case, and we have a social contract guaranteeing a "protected" childhood. In addition to consent or ability to understand, this may be based on the fact that the adult is more powerful and can coerce a child. I don't think we have to refer to absolute morality or to the morals of past ages to defend our decision to put kids off limits. I think morals progress as our society acquires the wealth to afford more protections.

Agreed. And not only 'wealth' but 'capability'. You don't need to have a lot of natural resources to have empathy or behave empathically, it just helps.

There's nothing wrong with Muhammad's actions in the 7th century

Yes there was. People likely knew it but did it/allowed it anyway.

what's wrong is people thinking we should still be doing it the same way.

QFT

[Hatshepsut]

Now, the question here is: are good and evil truly points of view?

Yes, they can be nothing else as ethics are subjective.

Oddly that ethics is largely subjective, yet it does admit analysis using measurable and meaningful criteria, giving it an element of objectivity you wouldn't see in art history, for instance.

I would suggest that had the culture been interested in basing their ethical systems on an appreciation of harm, they would have been able to judge their actions in the same way that we do now, in Europe in the 21stC.

But their very conception of "harm" may well have differed from ours. For ancient peoples, the safety of family or tribe was more important than the safety of the individual. The latter could be sacrificed if needed. And there were good reasons for it to be that way: The world didn't have strong central governments or police in that era, leaving people to band together for their own protection usually under a system of kinship ties. Most of these child marriages were arranged to cement alliances between one group and another. High-status people of any age weren't allowed to marry for love, and the marriages had to take effect while relations were good; waiting risked the possibility the groups would become enemies in meantime. (Though curiously, low laborers may have had more freedom of mate choice since no one would be concerned with diplomatic results.) Basically the individual wasn't safe unless her kin group was. Which makes me careful regarding anachronistic projection of contemporary moral standards onto earlier eras.

I won't style myself a child psychology expert, and freely concede the known hazards of child sex you have listed. Yet I doubt these hazards were well appreciated in medieval times, especially given that individuals were expected to subordinate their own welfare to that of their kin groups. It took more self-sacrifice and pain to live in that era than it does in ours. I can see an argument where sexual use of others by powerful people became excessive even by whatever standards they did have, so that Muhammad may not be completely off the hook.

[paulpablo]

It's a good question, and I think a lot of the answers are questionable.

Say if you think evil is sadism and causing needless suffering of any animal then you run into a few complications.  What if someone sees the suffering they are causing as not being needless, or if someone sees suffering as being needless but there is a need for it?

The bottom line is that what is necessary punishment, harm and suffering is debatable, changes with time.  It's debatable on more than one level also, what is necessary can be related to a persons standards. Standards of what they see as necessary to achieve in the future in their life and standards of living which they are at. Also related to how aware or paranoid a person is. 
To put it basically, there's some situations where doing something cruel and seemingly unnecessary might have a cause.

The best example I can think of right now is the jackson family, was their dad being evil?  He abused the family mentally and physically and forced rehearsals.  They all became rich, some of them seemingly became a bit mentally disturbed though also.  I don't know if it was good for them or not.  They were living in pretty bad conditions.  A black family in Chicago, 10 brothers and sisters living in a 2 bedroom house, but then they all turn successful and rich.  I don't know if it was good for them to be rich but seemingly mentally disturbed or if they would have been better or worse living in a small house in chicago with a huge family doing whatever else they could do to survive outside of show business.  I don't even know if their dad's discipline was the cause of their success but Micheal Jackson did credit it as being the cause.

If you think sadism is evil then you're probably arguing that a lot of humans and other animals are inherently evil. 
If you look at the excitement on a cats face when it realizes it has the opportunity to kill and hurt something it isn't that much different from a mans face while playing call of duty or GTA if their character is beating a prostitute to death or watching the blood fly as bullets go through people.  Also the ridiculous amount of consensual rough sex that goes on between humans leads me to think that maybe we enjoy this now because we just got used to doing it like that for thousands of years.  I mean things like tying or chaining people up, role play rape and so on.

[Pyrrho]

@dahrling

How can we argue against this if good and evil aren't universal truths, if they are only based on culture?

before I can try to give my answer, can you say what you mean when you use the words "Good" and "Evil"? I can't say whether it is universal if I don't know what you mean by it.

That is an excellent question, which most people never really properly address.

I have my answer to that question, already given, which is Hume's answer to the question.  No one else, though, has expressed any interest in that answer in this thread.  Of course, if someone does not agree with Hume, one may come up with one's own answer to the question.  Hopefully, whatever answer one comes up with will somehow be relevant to the way the terms are commonly used, though since different people have different ideas on the subject, no matter what one comes up with, it will not perfectly match all of the ways the terms are used by various people.  But that looseness is explained in Hume's treatment of the subject.  The pure subjectivist approach does not fit as well with common use as Hume's treatment of this, as people do commonly distinguish between personal preferences and what is right and what is wrong.  If ethics were purely a matter of personal preference, then, because I like Mozart, I would be right in saying that people who dislike Mozart are immoral.  That, though, is not how one normally speaks, except as a joke.  And that is why the pure subjectivist approach should be rejected.

[Edwardo Piet]

Objective and universal values are completely different. Read the Moral Landscape. Hume didn't get it right, values don't exist apart from the individuals who hold them. There is no fact value distinction, scientists appeal to scientific values all the time when dealing with facts. Hume's fact value distinction isn't a law of the universe. Sam Harris got it right.

[Neo-Scholastic]

If what is good for the virus is not good for me as a human, then there cannot be a greater good that connects both of us. There is simply no common ground between the good of a deadly virus and the good of a human individual…there simply cannot be any overarching "good" that would transcend the individual interests of the components of the system… Conflict, in other words, is the rule, and we cannot discern a "right" and "wrong" side in absolute terms.

I never claimed there was an overarching moral code that applies to every component of the physical universe, from electrons to elephants. You cannot draw such an absurd conclusion from my examples. There is no right or wrong kind of triangle. There are however better or worse examples of a triangle.
The same applies to humans. The average army ranger is a better man, i.e. more discerning, emotionally in control, and physically fit, than I am on my best day. It is not a moral question to discern how well a person displays the essence of what it means to be human. The moral question is whether the choices people make take them closer to or further away from their humanity: rational and loving animals.
Suppose someone substituted the concept of wise/foolish for right/wrong. Would their choices be any different? No, because anyone can see that making wise choices are what bring someone closer to his or her humanity and anyone can see that that is good.

Since the thread has already correctly discounted pure essentialism as adequate fount for ethics, we now see why science, which does so well at questions of nature, is nearly helpless before questions of value.

If based on the critique by AdamLOV, your dismissal in premature.

[AdamLOV]

Hi dahrling (I can't type that without thinking of Black Adder Goes Fourth),

Now, the question here is: are good and evil truly points of view?

Yes, they can be nothing else as ethics are subjective. From my perspective, I navigate the grey areas using definitions of the 'harm' that might result from action/inaction.

Is there anyway to define good and evil in an universal sense - a definition that everyone, from every culture, can agree on?

I'd argue that there's no such thing as 'absolutely' good or evil, once again due to the subjectivity of ethics. I don't like the terms 'good/evil' as they polarise thinking and trick people into using broad classifications which detract from deep consideration of the questions at hand. I'd ask you to consider if anyone can really be 'absolutely' evil (did Genghis Khan love his mother, for example)? So for me, you could define the terms however you like but since they don't add value to my ethical framework, I won't use them. Consequently, universal acceptance is impossible.

And is being "selfless" truly a good thing - what makes it so? It may be "good" for others, but is it good for you? And is being selfish then "evil"? Putting your own desires and necessities first? Is there a limit to it? A line?

It's a trade-off. A certain amount of selflessness is a good thing. I'd suggest that someone who acts with no selflessness at all would risk doing harm to themselves and others (for example, being unkind to others therefore being socially excluded to their detriment). To the corollary, someone who acts only with selflessness would risk doing harm to themselves (for example, not defending themselves against attack). So there's a balance which can be struck both personally and socially.

Also, take for example someone who is a Muslim and defends his/her book of teaching by saying that the evils it presents (like how a little girl was wed to Muhammad when she was only 6 years old, and how their marriage was consummated when she 9) were considered "correct" or "acceptable" at the time they happened. How does one respond to this? How can we argue against this if good and evil aren't universal truths, if they are only based on culture?

As intimated above, I argue the harm. A non-consenting child being traded, as property, to an adult for social and sexual gratification is harmful. It may have been 'accepted' at the time, by the local culture, but it was still causing harm and people would likely have known it (I wonder how many of Aisha's female relatives would have felt sorrow at the transaction?). The trade-off was that the benefits to Mohammed were a greater consideration than the harm done to Aisha. In a 21st C, UK context, we would grant (in law) the lack of consent to be the overriding consideration, given that we honour individual rights to personal autonomy and freedom of expression (it's a shameful thing, indeed, to own another). Since the transaction resulted from an ethical framework based upon patriarchal, misogynistic, bigoted slave ownership, I would say that it was unethical.

The claim that mysogynistic and patriarchal belief systems are immoral is a strongly normative stance. One may be of the opinion that such norms are unacceptable, but one cannot objectively prove their demerit vis-a-vis, say, misandryous and/or matriarchal social systems. I am not saying misogyny and misandry are the only choices available to societies, but it nevertheless seems to be the case that social systems tend to harm either men or women disproportionately. It could even be argued that so-called patriarchal societies have harmed men in greater proportion and to a greater degree than they have harmed the interests of women. Furthermore, I fail to see the connection between Islam and the purported harming of women's interests. One could argue that the veil protects women from the unwanted advances of men. In order to ascertain whether Islam really does lead to misogynous discrimination of women, we would need access to unbiased surveys of women living in Muslim countries, and even then we would not be completely sure that such polls tell the whole story. In short, the issue is a bit more complex than is regularly supposed.

---

If what is good for the virus is not good for me as a human, then there cannot be a greater good that connects both of us. There is simply no common ground between the good of a deadly virus and the good of a human individual…there simply cannot be any overarching "good" that would transcend the individual interests of the components of the system… Conflict, in other words, is the rule, and we cannot discern a "right" and "wrong" side in absolute terms.

I never claimed there was an overarching moral code that applies to every component of the physical universe, from electrons to elephants. You cannot draw such an absurd conclusion from my examples. There is no right or wrong kind of triangle. There are however better or worse examples of a triangle.
The same applies to humans. The average army ranger is a better man, i.e. more discerning, emotionally in control, and physically fit, than I am on my best day. It is not a moral question to discern how well a person displays the essence of what it means to be human. The moral question is whether the choices people make take them closer to or further away from their humanity: rational and loving animals.
Suppose someone substituted the concept of wise/foolish for right/wrong. Would their choices be any different? No, because anyone can see that making wise choices are what bring someone closer to his or her humanity and anyone can see that that is good.

Since the thread has already correctly discounted pure essentialism as adequate fount for ethics, we now see why science, which does so well at questions of nature, is nearly helpless before questions of value.

If based on the critique by AdamLOV, your dismissal in premature.

Why would the question of whether a human plays the "role" of human assigned to him/her by "essence" (whatever that means) be of greater importance than the performativity of a virus? If the wise choice were to consist in behaving according to one's own nature, then it is still incomprehensible why the survival of a human being should matter more than the self-replication of a virus. Furthermore, if we understand the human to be a kind of virus, a destrictive infestation whose purpose in life seems to be solely self-reproduction, why would the continued survival and reproduction of such a destructive species constitute a moral "good"? So what if humans are capable of "attaining their human potential"? Any creature is capable of realizing some kind of potentiality. This still does not exclude the possibility of mutually-exclusive potentialities. There morality must be considered relative after all. It matters a lot to myself whether I realize my own potential, but for salmom swimming in the Atlantic Ocean, my self-realization may even be an ecological burden, an obstacle to the realization of their own fish-potential.

---

So as to really annoy believers in truth, I would also like to throw in a quote from Michel Foucault:

"'Truth' is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, circulation and of operation of statements. 'Truth' is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which extend it. A 'regime' of truth."

While I find Foucault's logocentrism disagreeable, the quote captures nicely the conundrums relating to the question of truth.

[Hatshepsut]

Hume didn't get it right, values don't exist apart from the individuals who hold them...

Values don't exist apart from evaluators of some kind, of course. But they need not depend on the viewpoints of single individuals. Values can be held collectively. Drunk driving remains wrong in the USA even for people who don't agree that it's wrong. Whether a 51% majority subscription establishes a value, or a firmer supermajority of say 80% is required, to me is an open question, yet it's clear that a value will be recognized as in force across a society once enough members of a society accept it. The power brokers have more say than other people do in matters of value (per Focault), yet even there a single powerful person usually cannot change prevailing ethics without first getting a lot of support. Nixon couldn't make burglary a respectable campaign tactic.

Since the thread has already correctly discounted pure essentialism as adequate fount for ethics...

If based on the critique by AdamLOV, your dismissal in premature.

Adam LOV introduced the question of whether essences are real in any meaningful sense, which I concede is still open. But one can point to the sociological essentialism holding that traits like race, ethnicity, and gender are immutable. This essentialism was cited to help support colonialism and racial apartheid policies no longer considered ethical. We now hold that race, ethnicity, and gender are all social constructs. An individual still can't change her own race, an ascribed status; however society can change its definition of racial categories and thus reclassify her at any time.

The thread has also discounted pure subjectivism as well. Essentialism and subjectivism are the endpoints of a spectrum of views on ethics. There's obviously something "in" a wrong to motivate us to call it wrong, it can't just be personal opinion. But the fact that ethics evolve over time shows that whatever's "inside" situations of right and wrong isn't immutable, that is, it isn't a pure essence like "triangleness" is for triangles.

[Pyrrho]

Objective and universal values are completely different. Read the Moral Landscape. Hume didn't get it right, values don't exist apart from the individuals who hold them.

With that comment, I see you do not understand Hume.  Hume did not say that values exist apart from beings that value things.  This is basic to his system of ethics, so if you don't have this right, you don't understand Hume's position at all.

There is no fact value distinction, scientists appeal to scientific values all the time when dealing with facts.

Scientists, being people, have feelings and make value judgements, like everyone else.  This does not mean that the values themselves are a part of science.  Though, of course, why people have values is something that can be studied by science.

Hume's fact value distinction isn't a law of the universe. Sam Harris got it right.

From an article by Sam Harris:

For those unfamiliar with my book, here is my argument in brief: Morality and values depend on the existence of conscious minds -- and specifically on the fact that such minds can experience various forms of well-being and suffering in this universe. Conscious minds and their states are natural phenomena, of course, fully constrained by the laws of Nature (whatever these turn out to be in the end). Therefore, there must be right and wrong answers to questions of morality and values that potentially fall within the purview of science. On this view, some people and cultures will be right (to a greater or lesser degree), and some will be wrong, with respect to what they deem important in life.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris...15742.html

Thus far, there is no disagreement with Hume.  But here Harris goes awry:

While the analogy may not be perfect, I maintain that it is good enough to obviate these three criticisms. Is there a Value Problem, with respect to health? Is it unscientific to value health and seek to maximize it within the context of medicine? No. Clearly there are scientific truths to be known about health -- and we can fail to know them, to our great detriment. This is a fact. And yet, it is possible for people to deny this fact, or to have perverse and even self-destructive ideas about how to live. Needless to say, it can be fruitless to argue with such people.

The valuing of health is certainly not a matter of science.  That people generally do value health is a matter of fact, but that they ought to so desire it is something quite different from a mere poll of what people value.  Here Mr. Harris is simply begging the question, and making a valuation while pretending that he isn't.

It is, as he says, "fruitless to argue with such people," because Harris lacks a proper argument for this point.

As for why this is not normally an issue, that is because people are such that they virtually all have basically the same feelings on such matters.  When a patient goes to a doctor with a broken leg, the patient almost always wants the leg to be mended, and that is what the doctor almost always wants as well.  It is that "wanting" that is important on this.  That "wanting" is a feeling, not something that one discovers out in the world about how things should be.


More Harris:

Again, the same can be said about medicine, or science as a whole. As I point out in my book, science in based on values that must be presupposed -- like the desire to understand the universe, a respect for evidence and logical coherence, etc. One who doesn't share these values cannot do science.

Harris is confusing the motive to do science, with a principle of science.  The two are not the same at all.  The motive to do science is not a part of science (though, of course, one can study people's motives scientifically).

Yet more Harris:

There is no problem in presupposing that the worst possible misery for everyone is bad and worth avoiding and that normative morality consists, at an absolute minimum, in acting so as to avoid it.

In other words, he has no problem with begging the question.  Thus his system is based on fallacious reasoning.

Harris appears to be letting his feelings guide him, without realizing that that is what he is doing.

Even if I (and Hume) are wrong that feelings are the root of morality, and that instead it is somehow based on reason, Harris' system isn't based on reason; it is based on a fallacy.


Edited to add:

Harris' position seems to be basically a retelling of John Stuart Mill's position, but with different terminology.  The biggest difference seems to be that in Mill's case, he was smart enough to realize he was the begging the question at a fundamental level, though, like Harris, Mill did not find that too problematic to be acceptable to him.  But it is what pretty much everyone who rejects his theory [rightfully] uses as a reason to reject the theory.