On Sun, 11 Jan 2004, Ray Evans Harrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Arthur do you really believe there
>is no evil in the world and that pure self interest will rescue us all?
I'm with Arthur, there is nothing about the world for which the
explanatory power of the concept of "evil" is not thoroughly
trumped by simple ignorance and pathological socialization,
and occasionally pathological genetics. There is something
philosophically fundamentally broken about the whole notion
of "evil" as a cardinal principle, wherein the "evil" actor
must necessarily have a perfectly functioning rational facility,
yet analyzes all situations, identifying the most wholesome and
beneficial course of action, and while fully understanding that
in all its implications, nevertheless chooses a narrow self serving
behaviour regardless of its negative consequences to all around him.
Sorry, but for me this doesn't compute, and the problem is in
the premise. The actor is defective, not capable identifying
the most beneficial course of action, and therefor his action
is made out of ignorance. "Evil" is just a crude pole point for
those who need to paint a world in primary colours to avoid
the complexity and ultimately the paradoxical nature of the
real thing. This is certainly not how I perceive you, so I
simply presume we are having a semantic failure of some sort
here, and by "evil" you mean something other than what I understand
it to be.
-Pete Vincent
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