"Good" & "Evil," versus "Help&q

[rhoenix]

This is more of a philosphical question here, but I'd like to see what sort of responses I'd get from all of you.

When I first began looking into religion and philosophy again, one thing struck me about certain religions and certain beliefs is the predominant belief in "good" and "evil." I came to the conclusion that these two concepts are misleading, and can be ultimately harmful.

To call something or someone "good" can imply different things depending on the speaker, but in general, it refers to something that has a more positive effect than negative for the person speaking. By the same token, to call something "evil" is to in general imply that the something in question is more negative than positive.

However, it was due to the inherent subjectivity that I grew to dislike both terms, as I've observed recent religious debacles of varying sorts. They are absolutes of being, not of action or necessarily intent, and in my opinion, better left to beings with much more absolute thinking, should we one day meet one.

The concepts of "help" and "harm," as they normally pertain to actions, ideas, and such, only seem to indicate specifics, and are not normally applied in blanket fashion.

Now, I'm quite aware that it wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility for the concepts of "help" and "harm" to take on the same meanings and connotations as "good" and "evil" over time, but I think it would be more difficult to use them in blanket fashion for places, groups of people, and ideas normally associated with "good" and "evil."

If this entire line of musing/thinking is fallacious, please let me know, but I'd like to know what you think. Seeing the various threads about religion on these forums started me thinking about this again.

[rhoenix]

Ack, the title messed up. If a wandering mod feels the inclination, would you mind fixing it to something like "Good & Evil" vs. "Help & Harm"?

[General Zod]

The problem is you're still thinking in black and white terminology. Help & Harm implies that something must either be helpful or harmful. There's always going to be cases where there's going to be a scale of something that can help but can harm at the same time as well. Polarizing morality is far more harmful than coming up with something that covers a wide range of things with rational explanations behind them.

[Darth Wong]

I like to think of ethics as a system for deciding what is the best choice to make when faced with a particular choice, rather than trying to divide up all actions and ideas into two opposing categories.

Of course, some ideas are so horrible that you could legitimately say they are incredibly harmful in any remotely realistic situation, hence "evil". But that really does nothing to help resolve more difficult ethical questions, and that's where all of the disputes lie.

[Ariphaos]

The idea behind the word 'evil' derives from greed, selfishness, etc. It is ultimately limiting to the development of society and so, well, it's evil.

[Darth Wong]

The idea behind the word 'evil' derives from greed, selfishness, etc. It is ultimately limiting to the development of society and so, well, it's evil.

But it's not an on/off condition. Everyone has greed. Everyone has selfishness. The question is in what proportion this quality is present, and in what proportion the counteracting influences such as sympathy are present. Dividing up the world into "good" and "evil" is pointlessly oversimplistic, and in fact, this very division is itself harmful.

[lazerus]

The problem is you're still thinking in black and white terminology. Help & Harm implies that something must either be helpful or harmful. There's always going to be cases where there's going to be a scale of something that can help but can harm at the same time as well. Polarizing morality is far more harmful than coming up with something that covers a wide range of things with rational explanations behind them.

I disagree. While there is obviously a spectrum of good and bad, you could, were you so inclined, classify every action into Good or Evil based on if it brings net positive or net negative effects into the world. Of coures, to classify all effects into positive and negative, you have to make so many moral judgements about what's good and bad you might as well just say "This is good and this is evil cause I say so."

[Darth Wong]

The problem is you're still thinking in black and white terminology. Help & Harm implies that something must either be helpful or harmful. There's always going to be cases where there's going to be a scale of something that can help but can harm at the same time as well. Polarizing morality is far more harmful than coming up with something that covers a wide range of things with rational explanations behind them.

I disagree. While there is obviously a spectrum of good and bad, you could, were you so inclined, classify every action into Good or Evil based on if it brings net positive or net negative effects into the world. Of coures, to classify all effects into positive and negative, you have to make so many moral judgements about what's good and bad you might as well just say "This is good and this is evil cause I say so."

Such classification, however, has the effect of being less informative, in the same manner that most of the information in a colour or even grey-scale picture is lost if you convert it into monochromatic format.

[lazerus]

The problem is you're still thinking in black and white terminology. Help & Harm implies that something must either be helpful or harmful. There's always going to be cases where there's going to be a scale of something that can help but can harm at the same time as well. Polarizing morality is far more harmful than coming up with something that covers a wide range of things with rational explanations behind them.

I disagree. While there is obviously a spectrum of good and bad, you could, were you so inclined, classify every action into Good or Evil based on if it brings net positive or net negative effects into the world. Of coures, to classify all effects into positive and negative, you have to make so many moral judgements about what's good and bad you might as well just say "This is good and this is evil cause I say so."

Such classification, however, has the effect of being less informative, in the same manner that most of the information in a colour or even grey-scale picture is lost if you convert it into monochromatic format.

Absolutly. All I was saying is that "Everything is a shade of grey" dosn't mean there's no such thing as good and evil. It just means that good and evil are like "Left of your position" and "Right of your position", their meingfull, but woudln't an exact distance be more usefull?

[General Zod]

I disagree. While there is obviously a spectrum of good and bad, you could, were you so inclined, classify every action into Good or Evil based on if it brings net positive or net negative effects into the world. Of coures, to classify all effects into positive and negative, you have to make so many moral judgements about what's good and bad you might as well just say "This is good and this is evil cause I say so."

Such classification, however, has the effect of being less informative, in the same manner that most of the information in a colour or even grey-scale picture is lost if you convert it into monochromatic format.

Absolutly. All I was saying is that "Everything is a shade of grey" dosn't mean there's no such thing as good and evil. It just means that good and evil are like "Left of your position" and "Right of your position", their meingfull, but woudln't an exact distance be more usefull?

When you consider that some actions that might otherwise be considered evil can be seen as good in the right circumstances, and vice versa, it makes it much harder to assign those kind of absolutes to any particular action.

[drachefly]

Especially when you're looking at actions which carry risk. It MIGHT be very good, but it's more likely to be mildly harmful (like a lottery ticket); or it MIGHT be very bad, but it's more likely to be mildly good (like not buying insurance, or driving drunk, or stepping in to defuse an escalating situation)...

Cramming that into even a scale of grays is going to be hard. Even a scale of grays based on context.

[Ariphaos]

But it's not an on/off condition. Everyone has greed. Everyone has selfishness. The question is in what proportion this quality is present, and in what proportion the counteracting influences such as sympathy are present. Dividing up the world into "good" and "evil" is pointlessly oversimplistic, and in fact, this very division is itself harmful.

The original division wasn't black and white, either. It was more of a 'do mind keeping this in check, okay?' that morphed into the word it's become.

The whole 'evil is the absense of God' thing notwithstanding.

[Winston Blake]

The concepts of "help" and "harm," as they normally pertain to actions, ideas, and such, only seem to indicate specifics, and are not normally applied in blanket fashion.

Now, I'm quite aware that it wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility for the concepts of "help" and "harm" to take on the same meanings and connotations as "good" and "evil" over time, but I think it would be more difficult to use them in blanket fashion for places, groups of people, and ideas normally associated with "good" and "evil."

I think what makes help/harm better than good/evil would just be that 'good' and 'evil' are purely adjectives. However, 'helpful' and 'harmful' are made from verbs that imply 'Helpful or harmful to who?' and 'What does it do to help or harm people?'. This helps avoid the mental shortcut of ignoring that morality should be based on how actions affect people, rather than based on simplistic virtue.

All I was saying is that "Everything is a shade of grey" dosn't mean there's no such thing as good and evil. It just means that good and evil are like "Left of your position" and "Right of your position", their meingfull, but woudln't an exact distance be more usefull?

You're using the terms 'good' and 'evil' as substitutes for right and wrong. When people say Good and Evil don't exist, they're saying the absolutes 'Always Right' and 'Always Wrong' don't exist. If you're classifying choices as right or wrong depending on whether they're better or worse than a particular one, then you've already accepted that morality depends on the other options available, so a particular choice is not absolutely right or absolutely wrong, i.e. good and evil don't exist. There isn't really a dispute here.

[rhoenix]

My apologies for the belated reply - I haven't had much time on the computer this week.

The problem is you're still thinking in black and white terminology. Help & Harm implies that something must either be helpful or harmful. There's always going to be cases where there's going to be a scale of something that can help but can harm at the same time as well. Polarizing morality is far more harmful than coming up with something that covers a wide range of things with rational explanations behind them.

I like to think of ethics as a system for deciding what is the best choice to make when faced with a particular choice, rather than trying to divide up all actions and ideas into two opposing categories.

Thanks to both of you for pointing this out, as this shows that I did not elaborate on this particular aspect of my post as much as I should have.

My intent was not to neatly box everything into two polar opposites, as I acknowledge that nothing is truly only harmful or helpful. The thought behind my semi-coherent OP was the conjecture regarding terminology - that if people were forced to quantify what was helpful or harmful about any specific topic of discussion, instead of using the blanket "good" or "evil" terms, then people would be more inclined to listen critically. To elaborate, and to use an example, to express "I don't like gay marriage because I think it's harmful to the institution of marriage" is much more swiftly and clearly rebuted than "Gay marriage is evil." However, I acknowledge now that the above may have been a bit idealistic.

Of course, some ideas are so horrible that you could legitimately say they are incredibly harmful in any remotely realistic situation, hence "evil". But that really does nothing to help resolve more difficult ethical questions, and that's where all of the disputes lie.

To elaborate a bit more on the above, my intent with that was to hope that people would be forced by virtue of the terms to be more specific, instead of simply dropping a vague negative remark in a debate and having to be called on it.

[rhoenix]

I think what makes help/harm better than good/evil would just be that 'good' and 'evil' are purely adjectives. However, 'helpful' and 'harmful' are made from verbs that imply 'Helpful or harmful to who?' and 'What does it do to help or harm people?'. This helps avoid the mental shortcut of ignoring that morality should be based on how actions affect people, rather than based on simplistic virtue.

This is precisely what I was hoping to show in my original post, though I see now that wasn't very well presented. Thank you for pointing this out.