Good and Evil

[Rána Eressëa]

Technically something could exist without an opposite. So do they depend on each other? No. If there was no good, it means everything would be evil - not that there would be no evil. If there was no light, it means everything would be dark - not that there would be no dark.

See what I'm saying? It would still exist and still have a name. It wouldn't mean much without something to counter it, but it would still be.

[Insidious Rex]

Originally posted by Rána Eressëa
Technically something could exist without an opposite. So do they depend on each other? No. If there was no good, it means everything would be evil - not that there would be no evil. If there was no light, it means everything would be dark - not that there would be no dark.

See what I'm saying? It would still exist and still have a name. It wouldn't mean much without something to counter it, but it would still be.

I dont think its that simple. Things are defined by our human perception. not by some absolute. Without light the definition of "dark" would not be the same. So yes you need differences to define terms. otherwise they are meaningless. if everything was always dark then dark wouldnt be dark. it would be the norm.

[afro-elf]

The "Yuk Factor"

The other tension in moral reasoning that we hope this activity helps to elucidate has to do with the role of reason and emotion in moral judgements. One of the interesting things which Haidt et al found when exploring people's reactions to the scenarios featured in this activity is that people who have very strong emotional responses to these stories frequently find it difficult to provide an explanation or justification for what they are feeling. According to Steve Pinker, this is because our moral convictions are rooted not so much in reason, as in the evolutionary make-up of our minds. In his words: "People have gut feelings that give them emphatic moral convictions, and they struggle to rationalize them after the fact. These convictions may have little to do with moral judgements that one could justify to others in terms of their effects on happiness or suffering. They arise instead from the neurobiological and evolutionary design of the organs we call moral emotions." (The Blank Slate).

The dangers of rooting moral attitudes in emotion are obvious. It means that a "yuk-factor" might lead us to condemn actions - and even people - we have no good reason to condemn. For example, consider the fate of the untouchables in the Indian caste system. They were not allowed to touch people from the higher castes; they were not allowed to drink from the same wells; on public occasions, they had to sit at a distance from everybody else; and in some regions, even contact with the shadow of an untouchable person was seen as polluting and necessitated a purification ritual. Such prohibitions might sit easily with a certain kind of raw sentiment. They are much harder, if not impossible, to justify in the light of reason.

However, one must be careful not simply to assume that emotion has no role to play in moral reasoning. Indeed, some philosophers claim that it is just a mistake to think that moral judgement involves anything other than emotion. A. J. Ayer, for example, in line with the dictates of his logical positivism, argued that ethical statements are nothing more than the expression of emotional attitudes. He denied that it was possible for ethical statements to be factually true. Rather, they are exclamations of the form 'Hurrah for X!'.

Even if one does not accept this kind of extreme "emotivism", it is still fairly easy to see that emotion can play some kind of role in good moral reasoning. Empathy, for example, would seem to be an important component of a proper moral outlook. It is hard to imagine that the atrocities of the holocaust would have occurred had its protagonists been more able to imagine themselves in the emotional position of their victims. Indeed, the philosopher Jonathan Glover has argued that many of the atrocities of the last century were possible precisely because people's moral emotions had been switched off.

Nevertheless, it is probably right that we are suspicious of moral judgements which are rooted in the "yuk-factor". Steve Pinker, in The Blank Slate, puts it like this: "The difference between a defensible moral position and an atavistic gut feeling is that with the former we can give reasons why our conviction is valid. We can explain why torture and murder and rape are wrong, or why we should oppose discrimination and injustice. On the other hand, no good reasons can be produced to show why homosexuality should be suppressed or why the races should be segregated. And the good reasons for a moral position are not pulled out of thin air: they always have to do with what makes people better off or worse off, and are grounded in the logic that we have to treat other people in the way that we demand they treat us."

[Last Child of Ungoliant]

with recent topics in other threads, i am giving this one a hefty *bump*

[inked]

I shall take the time to read the whole thing! Thanks for the bump.