Hey everyone!
Something came up in class today that I thought started an interesting discussion, that unfortunately was cut short, and I thought you all may find some interest in this.
The overall topic that I was interested in was the idea of 'good' and 'evil' only being valuable in comparison to one another. We started talking about the Stoics and possible objections to the Stoic's view on God. Of course, the usual problem of 'how is there evil in the world?' came up.
Many students agreed with the Stoic explanation that vice or 'evil' was not intentionally created, rather, it was not the purpose of the the all good God, but that it was more like a 'by-product.' That because of the reltionship of opposites evil came into being because good was created. This was found to be a pretty good argument for why there is evil; however, I thought that it would also be in the God's power to negate the relationships of opposites as to diminish evil in the world and that they would do this if it is for the sake of humans that we were created. The Gods could have also created humans in a way that would have our value-judgements be based on something other then the relationship of opposites (which I think may be the case).
It was asserted that this is the way we make value-judgements about our experiences, by comparing them to alternative experiences. That even if there was all good in the world we would take the least amount of good and use it to compare to the rest and would then call this 'evil.'
Before I say what I think about all of this, completely, I am curious what everyone else thinks about the following:
Are 'good' and 'evil' intrinsically valuable, or do they rely on consequences to have value?
Does a religious account of 'good' and 'evil' require that they be intrinsically valuable?
Are our value-judgements based on comparisons?
Start philosophizing!
-A
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5 comments:
Before answering your specific questions, I just wanted to reiterate my point from our "Problem of Evil" discussion about how there are at least two issues for theists to deal with: (1) the bare existence of evil and (2) the magnitude of evil. Both questions must be answered for traditional theism—or any sufficiently similar view—to work.
As for your specific questions:
Are 'good' and 'evil' intrinsically valuable, or do they rely on consequences to have value?
Here is the bottom line of a dilemma I have pushed against moral realists: If the consequences of something are completely irrelevant, how can its value be assessed? And if the value of something relies on its consequences, how can it be intrinsic? (This is oversimplified a bit, though I have yet to hear a satisfactory answer to even this version of the question.)
Does a religious account of 'good' and 'evil' require that they be intrinsically valuable?
Only if that view is also committed to moral realism. A religion need not accept moral realism, however. Buddhist ethics (sila), for example, are instrumentalist; and Divine Command Theory is a subjectivist moral philosophy (though many don't realize it).
Are our value-judgments based on comparisons?
I don't see how they could be anything else. You need at least some vision of how else something could be before you can decide that one is better or worse than the other. There might seem to be cases of brute dislike for something—that is, where you dislike something but don't have any replacement in mind—but in those cases you would just prefer that the offending thing/experience not exist.
I do not believe that good and evil could possibly be intrinsically so. If you hit a baseball through someone’s window and it kills a cat, most people would agree that was wrong what you did. But if the baseball knocked out a burglar, then we would say it was good. It is not this simple though. I believe that all we can really measure in moral action is one’s intention, because much of what happens as a result of our actions could never have been foreseen.
But if there are inherent moral properties, I would have to agree with C.S. Lewis on how evil came into being, that all evils began as something good. Rape originates from sex, murder from battle, etc. So in that respect they are based on comparisons, as one is a product of the other.
Here is a thought experiment to test the credibility of the assertion that an act could be immoral without regard to its consequences:
Suppose that throwing pennies against a certain wall in France is believed to be intrinsically immoral. There are absolutely no negative consequences to throwing pennies against this wall, but it is considered immoral all the same. One day, a wealthy eccentric decides that for every penny thrown at the wall during a 24 hour period he will donate $100 to whatever cause the thrower chooses—including his or her own bank account!
Why shouldn't you throw pennies at the wall all day long? Regardless of whether you think it is a worthwhile thing to throw the pennies, is it at all plausible that it could be immoral in these circumstances? Morality, if it is to be a philosophically interesting phenomenon, has to be something to care about (no reason to be moral = no objective morality). But with only positive consequences resulting from throwing the pennies, how could any system that treats it—and all relevantly similar situations—as immoral be something to care about?
Matt, I love your example. I think it gets the heart of the issue: how can we judge the value of something apart from it's consequences? We conflate the cause with the effect, and end up labeling the cause itself as bad, rather than the effect. But what if the effect could be changed? That would change our perception of the cause completely. You show it's the effect that we are valuing, in truth.
But I think this gets tricky when we see that the effects can be valued differently by different individuals. To take the most extreme example that comes to mind, there's the Holocaust. A fervent Nazi would take the ultimate effect of exterminating Jews as a positive (creation of master race, say) and thus the extermination itself is "good". Take the Jew who sees no value whatsoever in creating an Aryan society, and we see that the Holocaust would be evil, because the effect is perceived as evil.
How do we get around this difference in perceptions? Isn't there some absolute test? Can't we say that the Holocaust is fundamentally evil because of the loss of innocent life. That no matter the "positive" effect of a master race in the eyes of some, if this includes unwarranted murder, it is always evil. Doesn't this set a path for intrinsic good, ie human life?
What do you think?!
How do we get around this difference in perceptions? Isn't there some absolute test?
No, I don't think there is. Moral realists want some sort of absolute or objective test, but no such thing exists.
Here's the dilemma again: morality must either be consequentialist or non-consequentialist (C v ~C). You have already agreed that non-consequentialist moralities should be set aside. But you have also noticed that consequences have different values to different perspectives. We would need to appeal to something beyond those perspectives in order to decide which view was "correct." But what would we appeal to? Another perspective? That will be just as subjective as any other. A principle (such as the principle of greatest happiness)? This has more promise, but notice that whether or not the Holocaust was a good thing or not now depends on whether there are more Jews or more Hitlers in the world. It's all perfectly legit just so long as the anti-Semites achieve a majority before going genocidal.
But at this point, we no longer have a moral theory but some descriptive theory about when people can get away with something. Moreover, utility principles (such as the principle of greatest happiness) are based on a subtle equivocation. They take something that is best a prudential good (happiness) and speak of it as if it were also a moral good. So even if we believe that happiness is objectively or intrinsically good we have no reason to believe that it is objectively or intrinsically moral. Moral goodness and prudential goodness are not necessarily the same thing.
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