Good and Evil

[Neo-Scholastic]

Good = stuff that I say is good

Evil = stuff that I say is evil

Whoops, I forgot I'm not God.

Speak for yourself.  As God of my own existence, I hereby decree myself, and only myself, qualified to decide what is good or evil.

Charles Manson said the same thing.

[Hatshepsut]

Good declares evil is evil, leaving good and evil.
Evil declares good is evil, leaving only evil.
It's all bad.

[robvalue]

I hate the "evil is the absence of good" thing.

No it's not. Absence of good is neutral. There's a big difference between someone not helping me and torturing me.

Also keep some change in your wallet for emergencies.

[Ben Davis]

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.

Potentially but it depends on the framework. The ethics of Feudalism, for example, are almost immeasurable in every respect, dependent as they are on the whims of the feudal Lord. Humanist ethics, in contrast, lends themselves well to objective measurement because they deliberately try to identify 'maximally positive' positions on matters; even then there's so much potential variation that there will always be some subjectivity (e.g. promotion of physical health vs the right to smoke - a microcosm of State vs Individual). 

But their very conception of "harm" may well have differed from ours.

Their conception of harm would likely have been similar. Remember that humans have undergone very little physical/neurological change over the past couple of millennia; what hurts us now would have hurt us then. The difference was in the perception and acceptance of that harm (an example of what I referred to earlier as 'the trade-off') as you intimate here:

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.

True. People were driven by social mores to make different sacrifices but that hits the point right on the head: people knew that they were sacrificing. They had an appreciation of harm similar to ours today (think of the modern resonance of ancient literature as an analogy) but their ethical frameworks discounted individualistic concerns in favour of tribal ones. Imagine if the weighting been in the other direction.

Which makes me careful regarding anachronistic projection of contemporary moral standards onto earlier eras.

Whereas my understanding of our similarities lends me to greater confidence.

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

Not necessarily. If we look at medieval literature, we sometimes see themes of childhood trauma being stated as the cause of both adult derangement in villains and drivers for heroism. That suggests to me a clear appreciation of the harm that children could suffer and the consequences of success/failure in dealing with the emotional fallout of that harm. Here, the social framework is the issue, as you outlined above.

It took more self-sacrifice and pain to live in that era than it does in ours.

Not necessarily. There are still many impoverished parts of the world, where pain & self-sacrifice are standard currencies. We're not without insight to medieval standards of tribal totalitarianism.

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.

Well, there were standards of debauchery back then, too! His marriage to Aisha wasn't officially considered abuse but I'm sure that there were people back then who thought that child marriage was 'sad but necessary'.

[bennyboy]

Speak for yourself.  As God of my own existence, I hereby decree myself, and only myself, qualified to decide what is good or evil.

Charles Manson said the same thing.

And he wasn't wrong.

[Whateverist]

After careful consideration I'm going with pro-good, anti-evil and pro-naughty. Why isn't there a poll?

[Mudhammam]

Charles Manson said the same thing.

And he wasn't wrong.

He was wrong! Per me!   But in all seriousness, why would anyone resist laughing me out of the room if I said the following statement?
"As God of my own existence, I hereby decree myself, and only myself, qualified to decide what is true and false." Or, instead of true and false, "rational and irrational." Or, "scientific and unscientific." Just as we believe there are critics of art who have more experience in determining what is good art versus bad art, and experts in the sciences who are better at interpreting data (which we also determine in large part by the consensus of expertise), and so on and so forth, why wouldn't we also believe there are moral philosophers who have also spent more time analyzing different states of the mind and situations whereby people experienced greater fulfillment out of life so as to trust their judgment (supported by facts and reasons, of course) about ethics in the same way that we rely on other experts?

[Neo-Scholastic]

And he wasn't wrong.

He was wrong! Per me!   But in all seriousness, why would anyone resist laughing me out of the room if I said the following statement?
"As God of my own existence, I hereby decree myself, and only myself, qualified to decide what is true and false." Or, instead of true and false, "rational and irrational." Or, "scientific and unscientific." Just as we believe there are critics of art who have more experience in determining what is good art versus bad art, and experts in the sciences who are better at interpreting data (which we also determine in large part by the consensus of expertise), and so on and so forth, why wouldn't we also believe there are moral philosophers who have also spent more time analyzing different states of the mind and situations whereby people experienced greater fulfillment out of life so as to trust their judgment (supported by facts and reasons, of course) about ethics in the same way that we rely on other experts?

Maybe because they are elitist pinko academics with totalitarian impulses.

[Mudhammam]

He was wrong! Per me!   But in all seriousness, why would anyone resist laughing me out of the room if I said the following statement?
"As God of my own existence, I hereby decree myself, and only myself, qualified to decide what is true and false." Or, instead of true and false, "rational and irrational." Or, "scientific and unscientific." Just as we believe there are critics of art who have more experience in determining what is good art versus bad art, and experts in the sciences who are better at interpreting data (which we also determine in large part by the consensus of expertise), and so on and so forth, why wouldn't we also believe there are moral philosophers who have also spent more time analyzing different states of the mind and situations whereby people experienced greater fulfillment out of life so as to trust their judgment (supported by facts and reasons, of course) about ethics in the same way that we rely on other experts?

Maybe because they are elitist pinko academics with totalitarian impulses.

I'll go with the few academics with totalitarian impulses over the mass of ignoramuses with totalitarian impulses.

[Hatshepsut]

The ethics of Feudalism, for example, are almost immeasurable in every respect, dependent as they are on the whims of the feudal Lord.

I was under the impression that the rules & obligations were pretty definite on both sides, the problem being they were so frequently honored in the breach. Feudal lords owed protection from outside predators and relief of poverty resulting from factors considered beyond the tenant's control, say if one household's field got blighted but neighboring fields on the same estate didn't. The system may even have been relatively "fair" in theory, if one makes allowance for the limited personal freedom offered, though of course enforcement mechanisms were lacking and lords often absentee. I see their system's lack of practical recourse for the aggrieved, i.e. no police and no central high courts to discipline wayward lords, as more of a problem than the measurability of its ethical criteria.

Their conception of harm would likely have been similar. Remember that humans have undergone very little physical/neurological change over the past couple of millennia; what hurts us now would have hurt us then...

Physically, sure. Having your leg sawn off hurts in any era. My point, which maybe I should clarify, was that medieval societies discounted an activity's harm to individuals if that activity benefited the group. Today we are so much more reluctant to transgress the individual's boundary that we often allow the group to suffer in preference. Take the 2nd Amendment in the USA for instance, a carte blanche for gun ownership rights for which we pay a blood price of 30000 lives annually.

If we look at medieval literature, we sometimes see themes of childhood trauma being stated as the cause of both adult derangement in villains and drivers for heroism...

The Miller's Tale (Chaucer) sprang to mind, but the lass was 18 and the trauma inflicted by Absolon's red-hot poker in the arse an adult one...inadvertently done to the poor sot who just wanted to take a dump! O well, my imagination faileth me at the moment.  

...why wouldn't we also believe there are moral philosophers who have also spent more time analyzing...situations...so as to trust their judgment (supported by facts and reasons, of course) about ethics in the same way that we rely on other experts?

I'm inclined to agree. I'd rather have the pompous professor from Purdue making the ethics recommendations than get them from Bo Gritz, the onetime lunatic presidential contender who wants to take the U.S. out of the UN and put us back on the gold standard so we can rereun the Roaring '20s all over again.