Invented by children under 2yo, trying to make sense of the arbitrary.

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«Fair is what we see, Fairer what we have perceived, Fairest what is still in veil.»
—Nicolaus Stenonius

You can check out their profiles on bunspace.com:

http://www.bunspace.com/view_bunny?bunid=659
http://www.bunspace.com/view_bunny?bunid=660

although we haven't updated those for over three years.

If you want more bunny photos, and are on Facebook, send me a friend request. I've got loads of pictures of the boys there.

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-- Jim Chokey

"Argent, chief embattled tenne. A coney of the field and crossed carrots proper"

I do not concur with your characterization of deontological ethics because it has no correlation to reality. That the moral content of one's act is based on whether one acted out of an ethical obligation has nothing to do with pride. No serious philosopher has ever raised such a charge because it would prove unsustainable. That some who profess to follow deontological systems do so out of pride have no bearing on the essential basis of those systems. A great many so-called followers of various belief systems have, at best, a poor understanding of them. You have raised a straw man.

But, you have also proved my essential point! Further discussion is fruitless.

What does "person" mean. Does it include animals, plants, funghi, or supernatural beings, like gods, spirits, etc.? This should be the normal case as soon as you start to strip off our modern-time "science-based", atheistic and mutually relativistic views (which, IMHO have been proved to harm the structures of transformed societies severely). So "evil" and "good" cannot easily be defined "in a nutural way". Whatever the definition, it will be based on a distinct philosophic concept.


This just means to postpone the problem, doesn't is?



Probably you are right. But who guarantees, that this is really correct? Perhaps some religion or philosophic system demanding pride is right?

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Ich mag den kleinen blauen Elephanten!

I agree with Gronk's basic definition.

There is no reason to exclude animals - or even plants. Evil denotes intention so for harm to a god or spirit to be evil there must be belief that that being exists and that an action actually causes it harm.

"philosophic concept" is not necessary if another definition is being used. For example "Evil" does have at least one dictionary definition that requires no "philosophic concept". And even if "philosophic concepts" may be used to challenge what "evil" or "harm" is by questioning "what is harm?" "harm to who?" etc (or even question the fact of our existance), since it doesn't change the dictionary definition of the words that might as well be challenging the existance of language. Though some definitions the words may change by other descriptions the words retain their meaning and definition despite philosophic or relativistic points of view.

So while some definitions of evil may depend on "philosophic concepts" not all do.

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Member of the CoE (Council of Elitists)

To make it short, is "evil" is a thing per se, and we are back to the problem of universals?

Let's try to summarize:
"Evil" is "intentionally acting against the mores (potentionally to the disadvantage of some being)".
Since the extension of the idea of "evil" depends on the mores (simple speking: the cultural background), one cannot say much more about it without relation to a concrete situation.

Wittgenstein formulated another plausible reason for our problem: We are actually just playing an endless game of words defining the term "evil": Even if we would agree on some definition, it would only be valid in the context of our conversation. Outside this discussion, the term's "meaning" is a different one or will change. When we use the term "evil", we want to transport some idea to another person, but that does usually not work perfectly, because the partner's idea of "evil" has been formed in different conversations.

So, as long as we do not find an commonly accepted stable intension or extension of "evil", we cannot give a crisp definition. It will likely remain somewhat "fuzzy" even in our discussion.

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Ich mag den kleinen blauen Elephanten!

English dictonaries provide such concrete definitions so that we do not need, as a separate group, to create definitions for our own use or debate the meaning of words.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/++evil
e·vil   /ˈivəl/
adjective
2.harmful; injurious.
3.characterized or accompanied by misfortune or suffering.
10.anything causing injury or harm

The word has defined meanings totally independent of philosophical dependency.

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Member of the CoE (Council of Elitists)

Well, "injurious", "misfortune", "suffering" and "harm" seem somehow quite context-sensitive to me (maybe just because I studied too much of theology).

The dictionary provides several "definitions" of the term "evil", particularly those most commonly used when "evil" is used. To do so, it obviously needs at least 10 different "definitions".
From a philosophic logical perspective, it provides the most likely extension of the term, i.e. examples of what people "typically" mean, when they use the word "evil". However, the editors know, that this is not enough. To help the reader find an acceptable meaning of the term, they give further hints, like homonymes, example sentences, and - very important - the term's ethymology und history of its meaning in literature und the language's history. This is all about providing context, to the reader who, for a concrete situatioin - has to decide which meaning the used term has, or whether an idea he wants to express using the term is likely understandable in a given certain context.
This is required, just because the word itself has no clear meaning at all.

Hence, while using a dictionary to clarify the meaning of a word is a nice idea, but actually does not solve the problem. Any dictionary entry provides a partial history on previous logical games played to capture the meaning of a term. It does provide a subset of the term's extension, but does not properly define the intension of the term in any exact way. This is due to the fact, that the meaning of a term like "evil" is never fixed at all. It's ever changing.

Part of this problem is that dictionaries (and philosophers) depend on using language relying on terms to communicate their ideas about the meaning of terms, which does not lessen the problem. Every translator - actually any user of language - deals with that problem day by day, when he tries to explain what he actually wants to express exactly. And it took philosophy no more than some thousand years to discover this to be a real unsolvable problem - and that this is actually part of all the fun with it.

Other, pure axiomatic languages, as mathematic notations, avoid this problem, but only for the price of a quite limited expressiveness. This is part of what Wittgenstein discovered between the "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" and his "Philosophical Investigations".

I do not say, that it is fruitless to have discussions on the meaning of terms - on the contrary: it is a quite necessary process. I just say, that we will not come to a definite end with it.

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Ich mag den kleinen blauen Elephanten!

D-Man said:


Xris said:


Oy! Now we are talking about fruit! Shouldn't this be in Turin's thread

Joking aside; you will see that 'a definitive end' is not what Xris considers 'fruit' in this excercise....could it be that the process/dialogue is 'fruit' in this case? I do not know.

I wonder if D-man considers the fruitless discussion to also be pointless..or if like Xris he considers root, bud and flower (but no fruit) to be worthwhile?.......................

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Plots and schemes are the same thing..

Then I posit to you that nature is the greatest evil of all. And if nature is the result of intelligent design, then its creator is the most evil son-of-a-bitch out there, because nothing has produced more suffering (human, animal, vegetable, or mineral [think of the poor, poor rocks, man!]) than nature.

Ergo, God is evil. QED.

Wait, did I just win?

Yeah, let's change channels



Or, saying it with Wittgenstein's words: "How can I know what he means? I only have his words!"
Lesson learned.

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Ich mag den kleinen blauen Elephanten!

Well, there I was in this garden, the one holding that tree...

Bearing those fruits...

And then I stubbed my toe on a rock.

And I knew the rock as evil.

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«Fair is what we see, Fairer what we have perceived, Fairest what is still in veil.»
—Nicolaus Stenonius

If God is all-powerful and all-knowing then any action he takes - knowing the result beforehand - the harm that results would certainly have to be considered premeditated evil. Indeed if god created the devil, the world, or nature - again knowing the result beforehand - he would have to be responsable also for all the evil and harm the devil commits.

And to create man and at the same time make man in a way that he desires sins that they would then be condemned to eternal punishment for - yielding suffering certainly either in life or afterwards (or both).

So it does follow that god cannot be both all-powerful and all-knowing and good (ie not-evil). Perhaps the good could outweigh the evil eventually but only an all-knowing entity could judge that.

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Member of the CoE (Council of Elitists)

That's a commonly held belief. But look to the book of Job to find a theological answer to that. God's ways are unknowable to man and who is man to question god?
Since man is not all-knowing he just may not be able to understand god's ways.

In the end we are once again before the question of how the term 'evil' is defined.

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"The purpose of the game is to entertain the players and the GM. The rest is just semantics."
-by Munin from the forum-

The answer is: "evil" is defined bad.

Or even better: worse?

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Ich mag den kleinen blauen Elephanten!

Well, if this is the definition of evil, I guess all carnivores are inherently evil?

Evil IS to a point defined by societal mores, and one society may look at another societies differing mores and think that society is indeed "evil".

So, I guess a member of one society who is "evil" by violating that societies mores could be looked on by another society as "not evil", since that said person is not defying the other societies mores?

I guess evil is in the eye of the beholder. And since there are no "Eye of the Beholders" on Harn (they are an AD&D invention), then no evil exists on Harn

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

I think that many would find that a species or individual creature that, instead of killing quickly for food and eating, killed slowly, lengthening the pain and suffering and/or killed when they didn't need food might qualify as "evil".

Even when a creature or process is of limited/no intelligence harm and suffering might be attributed to evil.

Also there is some differing uses in the definition - although the descriptions are clearly related - when evil is used as an adjective vs a noun. I suppose a description of an aspect of something as opposed to "evil" as a separate recognizable whole.

Killing might be harmful and thus "evil" but is a part, not the whole existence, of the carnivore. The carnivore may have committed "evil"/harm but not be completely or even majority evil.

And why limit to carnivores? Herbivores clearly harm plants.


Even a being that went around destroying plants and tromping on flowers without reason might be considered evil in a common, generic understanding of the word.

Challenge to the truly evil:
"no matter how bad a person you try to be, no matter how evil you think you are, every time you breathe you make a little flower happy..."

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Member of the CoE (Council of Elitists)

So I guess cats are inherently "evil" then?

In all seriousness though, I think "evil" is a broad brush stroke designed to show who the good guys and bad guys are.

There are far to many factors involving decisions and why they were made to attribute anything to one cause such as evil or good.

Take Vlad the Impaler as an example - He is a hero locally, though the Turks hated him and would have though of him as "evil". Apparently the common folk prospered under his rule, other than the constant warfare.

He did have thousands impaled. Is thie evil? Or is this a method of protecting his country from the Ottoman's the best he could?

Take it to more modern times. Was the Fire bombing of Dresden and Japanese cities, that inficted huge casualties on innocent civilians "evil"? Any more or less evil than the launching of V2's at England? If basing it soley on civilian casualties, the fire bombing was "more evil". Not to mention the use of the atomic bomb.

In the WW2 war trials, Admiral Donitz was given over 11 years of prison time. The US sub commander was praised as a war hero. Neither rescued survivors after sinking merchant ships, what is one of the things Donitz was charged with.

"Evil" IMO is too far broad of a term, and is it's definition is generally dictated by the eye of the beholder.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

Evil is relative...

Take my example, when I eat chili, my famliy would say that I'm evil an hour latter.

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Ok, let me get this straight. These guys come in, trash the place, slap Agrik & Larani around, and the most intelligible thing they said was "Zog!"?

I know I should let this go, but there are some things that humans need to recognize as "unacceptable behavior" (is this a better term than "evil"? If so why?) and that such acts will be sanctioned in the most lethal ways as a deterrent to others. Examples should be "Death Camps" (Cambodia's Re-education Camps of the Pol Pot regime, Stalin's forced Collective Farms, Nazi's Final Solution) Terrorism of Civilians (Norway's Anders Behring Breivik, Saudia Arabia's Osama bin Ladin, America's Terry Nichols) and the serial kidnapping & killing of others (John Wayne Gacy, Mexican Zeta Cartel).

I feel morally offended by such acts. Perhaps my religious upbringing bias my viewpoint, but I have trouble accepting that such actions can be defended by the rest of humanity.

Note: Rushed for time. Incomplete thoughts ....

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...and I'm not dead yet...

I always felt strange about Cats...



Sorry, even plants need to breathe, so even this does not hold after nightfall.

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Ich mag den kleinen blauen Elephanten!

How about dropping incediaries on a city to kill hundreds of thousands of civilians? Or the use of an atomic bomb that kills a hundred thousand civilians, and the bomb hits areas that are not high along the lines of "military targets"?

What's interesting by your examples here - Western society has determined "good" or "evil" it seems, as killing of a few thousand civilians in the twin towers is "evil", whereas the pre-contemplated killing of hunderds of thousands of civilians does not make the list.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

Though I agree that both are evil and societies can be very biased in their labeling, OTOH the atomic bomb ended a war and may have saved hundreds of thousands of lives from a war that would have dragged on for years and brought peace, while the Twin Towers started a war that killed hundreds of thousands.

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Member of the CoE (Council of Elitists)

Even though I did not list the Dresden (fire)bombing, I must agree that this was an inherently evil act. Targeted bombing (a somewhat oxymoronic phrase with WW II technology) would of done the job as well. The use of incenderies was designed to "terrify" the population and thus counts as a terrorist act perpertrated by the allied nations.

As I mentioned before, good people can commit evil acts in support of a just cause. This should not be condoned, it must not be ignored or forgotten else we shall repeat such horrific acts again and again.

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...and I'm not dead yet...

Ah, the killing of civilians in regards to the "big picture".

Two things here - First of all, lets look at the Assyrians, considered by many almost an "evil" culture. When they defeated another state, the also massacred much of the civilian population, particularily any leaders.

Now, they could say that they did this to avoid the defeated state from building back up again and starting another war. And these could be endless wars, so perhaps by brutally killing a portion of the population (others becoming slaves), they indeed stopped any future wars with that state. Similar to the Atomic bombs dropped on Japan.

Ghengis Khan as well as the Romans (particularily against Carthage) used these same tactics. If one said it was OK for the Aliies to drop the atomic bomb, then one must give moral leniance to the Assyrians and others like them as well.

Now, there would have been other ways to end the war with Japan. Accepting a negotiated settlement as oppsed to an unconditional one would be one, blockading them and starving them into impotency or submission was another, or even dropping one bomb on a visible but low population area would have been another. But there were some who were excited about testing our new weapon, and it's effects on a mass population. Not much different than the "research" the Japanese were doing in Manchuria that we viewed as "evil".

Now, we can say we were fighting for the greater good, fighting against the genocide of the Nazis (which really we knew almost nothing about til the end of the war), or fighting against the ruthless Japanese doing experiments on the Manchurians (though I must say there is a parallel between that and our atomic bomb).

But, remember we were only about 50 years removed from Wounded Knee. What if Britain or France would have wanted to invade us because of our ruthless treatment of the American Indians? I'm sure we would not have looked kindly on that. Or if they wanted to invade us in the 1850's as we were one of the only "civilized" countries practicing slavery?

Evil is in the eye of the beholder, and it is very easy to judge another culture while being blind to the "evil" of one's own culture.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....