On 1/2/2013 5:24 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Wednesday, January 2, 2013 6:21:27 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
On 1/2/2013 2:24 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
That really has nothing to do with Evil though, except in sloppy reasoning.
True
Evil is about intentionally initiating social harm. Getting smallpox is not
evil,
it is just unfortunate. Giving someone blankets known to be infected with
smallp
On the contrary it is sloppy ethics to confine 'evil' to intentional social harm.
First, it implies that socially bad is bad simpliciter, but values are ultimately
personal values.
Speaking of sloppy. I'm not sure what that was intended to say. Without some
explanation of why you say that evil is other than intentional social harm, it sounds
like you are just saying that you disagree.
Second, it implies that as soon as we find a physical cause (he was
drunk, he had
YY chromosmes, his father beat him) for a behavior it's not longer evil.
It implies that only to those who think that personal intention is not a physical cause
in its own right. Just because someone was drunk when they commit an evil act doesn't
mean that it wasn't an evil act.
But all behavior has a physical cause.
All physics is an experiential effect.
So I'm ok with just dropping the term 'evil' and just referring to good/bad
for
individuals and good/bad for society as derivative. But I think it's a
hangover
from theodicy to refer to human actions as evil but not natural events -
it's part
of the idea that humans are apart from nature.
I agree that dropping the term 'evil' as a formal term is the more enlightened way to
go. I don't have a problem with it as an informal hyperbole that is reserved for
intentionally cruel behavior though. I think that we can separate intentional human
cruelty as a class of attitudes and effects unlike any other, though I would not apply
any supernatural significance.
I would say that there is a hidden hypocrisy in allowing no expectation of self control
on the part of individuals
Where did anyone express that expectation?
while taking it for granted that exactly that kind of moral control is to be expected
from a law enforcing society composed of those same individuals. If it's not evil for an
axe murderer to execute people at random, how can it be evil for a society to call that
person evil and seek to execute them?
You don't have to call them evil, just guilty.
Brent
If we want to be humane toward outlaws that's fine, but I don't think that we should do
it out of the assumption that human behaviors are under no more human control than
storms and earthquakes.
Craig
Brent
Ethics is, at bottom, the art of recommending to others the
self-sacrifice necessary to cooperate with ourselves.
--- Bertrand Russell
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