Hobbes or Rousseau

[Doobz]

you know, Calvin and Hobbes kicks ass, dude

[Lexington_Steele]

Originally posted by Airlift
Yes, it is what we consider evil which makes evil a subjective concept.

However we do have a general consensus on what things are evil.

In most cases of murder I think all of the world would agree that it is evil.

Now murder is a word that has to cover billions of differnt types of killing scenarios. I believe that there is a conceptual murder that everyone on the planet would agree is evil. Now all other murders are compared to this conceptual murder. The closer the specific case of murder is to the conceptual case, the more that people would agree that the murder is evil.

The same goes for stealing or cheating.

So this means that there is a concrete idea of what good and evil is within each one of us. However applicating this conceptual idea to real world scenarios becomes a bit fishy. We all have different criteria of how much a specific scenario can deviate from this conceptual evil before it becomes acceptable.

The important thing is that there is a pure good and pure evil for which to begin to build a moral compass or other philosophy upon.

[Bighoss]

if you think about it our moral values mean nothing because they are simply opinions that mean nothing to others except that the majority enforces theres upon others. So murder is not wrong nor is it right. It is a perfect balance inbetween.

[Airlift]

A general concensus does not objectivity make.

[Lexington_Steele]

Originally posted by Airlift
A general concensus does not objectivity make.

How about this very strict scenario:

What if someone (of a sound state of mind) murdered a 5 year old child (who possessed no defects) for no reason? Can't we all agree that this act was evil

I don't think I have ever met anyone that would find this action acceptable.

Now I am not saying that this scenario is the one that you compare all other murders to, in order to judge whether a murder is good or evil. I would suggest, that since there would be almost unilateral support that this behavior was unacceptable, this is very close to the conceptual idealistic evil murder. I am sure that we can come up with other murder scenarios that are would find even more supports as to being evil, and would be even closer to the idealistic evil murder.

The idealistic evil murder would not be only generally regarded as evil, but would be universally regarded as evil. Pure good and pure evil do exist.

When we are judging whether a specific action is good or evil we are comparing it to the conceptual pure good an pure evil. For this type of comparison there is not necessarily a right answer. It is up to the individual to determine how far from the idealistic good and idealistic evil a specific action was and determine if they feel it is a good action or evil action.

So a person's actions can never be truly judged by the universe or it's inhabitants as good or evil because they will never mimic exactly the pure good and the pure evil. However this does not mean that the pure good and pure evil do not exist as reference points for us to make our own personal conclusions about what is good or evil.

In short, no action is truly good or evil. It is somewhere inbetween. However, conceptually, good and evil do exist.

[Airlift]

I don't think it makes a difference how widely held a belief is, it is still a belief. I agree that murder is evil, especially the murder of a child. However, the fact that we concur about whether something is evil does not speak to the objectivity of the concept.

Is murder in the service of your country evil, or the service of God?
Is it evil to murder in the course of preventing a greater evil?

BTW, I'm not arguing against the existence of conceptual good and evil. I'm just saying that no matter how many people agree on a concept, it is still a concept and is very much ruled by perspective.

[Arshune]

An act in and of itself can be considered both good and evil at the same time. Take the thing with the bread. The act of stealing is evil, however, the purpose the theft serves can sometimes be good. You can't really apply a hard term like good or evil to most things because they're such abstract concepts.

[SandTrout]

No sane person thinks that they, as a person, are evil. They may do evil things , and admit that those actions are evil, but they will have a justification for their actions. At the most, they may consider what they have been/done to be evil, but will not contiune to do that "evil" deed.

For a con-man(or woman, damn PC) the justification is that they should only be looking after themselves. For Suiside bombers, their justification is that they are serveing god.

The concepts of good and evil only exist because humans are sentient(sp?), which allows us to look at others and compare ourselves. I'm not quite sure the difference between "objective" and "subjective", but I'm with whichever one refers to a person's point of view.

Most of us have a general consensus about what is evil because we are from a similar point of view(western civilization). However, other cultures may consider what we consider evil to be good.

The NAZIs are a fine example: They thought that the "perfection" of the human species, (and more specificly the Aryian race) was being prevented by "lesser" races, and they should thus be eraticated so that they could not polute any more. Some felt differently from the NAZIs, but they didn't fight back because they valued their lives more than those of strangers.

I have goals in my life(such as ending civilization) that my seam evil to some people, but to me that goal is good.