Is good the lack of evil?

@MuseEvolution,

MuseEvolution wrote:

I am challenging your statement that it is possible to live life knowing evil without ever having known good.

If you think that this is a response to my point, then you didn't understand my point.

Quote:

If they understand that it's possible to exist free from the evil they know, then they know good in contrast to evil.

I don't care about "understanding the possibility of existence free from evil". What is that? Evil is an experience that can be self-evident without knowledge of good. Developmental studies of young children LONG before they have abstract reasoning have shown an innate recognition of injustice and aversion to violence. Meditating on existential possibilities, as your question openly states, is irrelevant.

Say you're a child living in an orphanage. No one loves you, no one is friendly, you're hungry, you're lonely, and you have no hope of a better life. But you exist and you get by.

You may not know any good in your life, but if someone comes and victimizes and tortures you and brutalizes others around you, you WILL know it as evil (whether or not that word is what you choose).

And if you've never known evil in your life, but someone comes and takes you in, cares for you, provides for you, and nurtures you, you WILL know it as good (whether or not that word is what you choose).

Honestly who cares about metaphysical meditations on the contrapositions of good and evil? How does that illuminate the experience of good and evil, and the recognition of good and evil? Do you honestly think that being beaten and raped is perfectly acceptable to someone who has never known good, but an abomination to someone who has? No way -- it's an abomination to both.

@Aedes,

Aedes wrote:

I don't care about "understanding the possibility of existence free from evil". What is that?

That is what we call "an understanding of goodness."

Aedes wrote:

Say you're a child living in an orphanage. No one loves you, no one is friendly, you're hungry, you're lonely, and you have no hope of a better life. But you exist and you get by.
You may not know any good in your life, but if someone comes and victimizes and tortures you and brutalizes others around you, you WILL know it as evil (whether or not that word is what you choose)

... because you have an understanding of the concept of good.

Aedes wrote:

And if you've never known evil in your life, but someone comes and takes you in, cares for you, provides for you, and nurtures you, you WILL know it as good (whether or not that word is what you choose)

... because you have an understanding of the concept of evil.

Aedes wrote:

Do you honestly think that being beaten and raped is perfectly acceptable to someone who has never known good, but an abomination to someone who has?

I haven't supposed anything of the kind. But someone who is beaten and raped is going to understand that what has been done to them is evil because they also understand that the lack of that experience (being beaten and raped) is good.

@MuseEvolution,

MuseEvolution wrote:

someone who is beaten and raped is going to understand that what has been done to them is evil because they also understand that the lack of that experience (being beaten and raped) is good.

I find that impossible to believe. I'd suggest reading about the way humans viscerally judge good and evil in cognitive science studies. Take a look at the NY Times article on the subject by Steven Pinker.

@Aedes,

Aedes wrote:

I find that impossible to believe. I'd suggest reading about the way humans viscerally judge good and evil in cognitive science studies. Take a look at the NY Times article on the subject by Steven Pinker.

Ummmm. it is basically impossible to take those studies in any sort of factual reference to this conversation.

Here is an example that you might find acceptable.

A boy works on a farm. he has no education, no idea about the outside world, no TV, no computer, no radio. He wakes up everyday and toils until the labor is done and then he rests and goes to bed, never talking to another soul. From the day he was born, this was his life and this is how he dies.

Did he ever consider being a lawyer? Not possible. He never knew what a lawyer was.

Same thing with Good and Evil.

If someone is born into torture (evil), never knows anything else but physical pain, this is how they define their existence, they would not know it as evil. They would know it as life. The torture stopping (good) might even frighten them as they would not know it as good. They may even see it as evil that the torture stopped.

Your fanciful studies do not take into account that information is fed to us from birth.

Another example. A redneck father commits incest with his daughter at a young age and does so constantly. One day she falls in love with him and tries to marry him, not knowing that this is wrong. It is all she has ever known of love. (This happened)

Without some foundation for good, evil does not exist. Without some foundation for evil, good does not exist.

You cannot be happy if you have never known anything but happiness.

@Icon,

Icon wrote:

If someone is born into torture (evil), never knows anything else but physical pain, this is how they define their existence, they would not know it as evil. They would know it as life. The torture stopping (good) might even frighten them as they would not know it as good.

There have even been historical examples of freed slaves being incapable of dealing with their freedom, having been born and raised enslaved.

Good examples, Icon.

@MuseEvolution,

But in that time little was known about the human mind, if anything. If the same kind of release was to happen these days then there'd be psychological help in stages for the released, as some sort of deprogramming for them.

I guess this can be put into the same argument as leaving people alone in ignorance if they're happy, despite the fact they would be bettered with knowledge. It's just a matter of individual differences and opinions.

@Watchy,

You don't seem to see the comedy in this depiction of good and evil of yours.

Cupcakes are good. Is that because the lack of cupcakes is evil?

Is the lack of winning a billion dollars in the lottery evil?

No. It's just the lack of a cupcake.

And if being on a death march is evil because good equals the lack of death marches, then this definition of good negates the BASIC EXPECTATION that the lack of death marches is a ludicrous measure of goodness in our life.

@Watchy,

Put it this way. Is the lack of hitler good, or even evil/bad?
We can only say it's good based on what most feel hitler's actions were. They found his actions towards the removing of lesser peoples "bad" yet many under him and even he himself would probably see it as good. We can't say much besides saying that perspective is everything.

@Watchy,

Could it be said then that good and evil are two opposites on the same scale, or the two are on two seperate scales as seperate things?

@Watchy,

Good and evil aren't really opposites, they are merely differing views in something. Somebody who feels it is "good" or "right" to kill would kill while the majority of people who follow set social standards would say that to kill is "wrong" or "evil" and that they shouldn't have done it. Yet, they go against that by sentencing aforementioned killer to the death penalty.

@Watchy,

Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't good and evil just judgment calls based on perspective?

@Watchy,

Watchy wrote:

Good and evil aren't really opposites, they are merely differing views in something. Somebody who feels it is "good" or "right" to kill would kill while the majority of people who follow set social standards would say that to kill is "wrong" or "evil" and that they shouldn't have done it. Yet, they go against that by sentencing aforementioned killer to the death penalty.

This is my point. Good and Evil do not exist. They are not physical nor are they objective. Subjective entities can change at any point. In my mind, this limits the validity of their existence. Good can become evil by the choice of the person viewing the situation. Thus good and evil are not truly there. Only action and the lack of action.

Left or right. Not good or bad.

@Watchy,

Simply put, using a definition of good and evil that implies or outright states that they do not objectively exist makes further discussion completely pointless.

I conceed entirely that it can be truly stated that objective good and evil don't exist, as Icon has stated (more than once). But that is all that can then be said. The topic is closed unless someone takes it in a different direction.

I would like to posit, however that there is nothing innately "good" about cupcakes.

@MuseEvolution,

MuseEvolution wrote:

I would like to posit, however that there is nothing innately "good" about cupcakes.

Or anything else, but that's not the issue. We have the innate ability to make the judgement that something is good.

One point that needs to be made is that there is a difference between bad and evil. An unpreventable natural disaster is bad. If a volcano suddenly erupts and kills 1000 people, that is bad. But it's not evil.

A genocide is evil (and I don't mean innately -- I mean in terms of how we apply that judgement). And what differentiates evil from bad is that something that is morally unacceptable is what rises to the level of evil.

And THIS is why I cannot remotely agree that the conception of evil is necessarily contraposed against some reciprocal good.

The absence of genocide is not "good", because genocide is unacceptable. It's not bad or unfortunate -- it's an outrage. The absence of genocide is the bare minimum we expect -- it's normal. In other words, genocide is a huge deviation from baseline standards of acceptability (or normality), and it is in THIS that we find it evil.

The same is true for "good". In normal life we have our common courtesies and manners and things. But if some rich benefactor donates $100 million to some noble cause, that is way above this norm. So this good is contraposed against a run of the mill normal. It's not that the absence of this good is evil.

Finally, I don't want to hear this stuff about how genocide may be acceptable depending on one's point of view. I mean the Nazis took great pains to cover it up, they dynamited the gas chambers and razed camps to the ground, they swore the concentration camp operatives to secrecy under penalty of death, they made sure operational orders never appeared in writing, and NO ONE ever defended the Holocaust during the various tribunals after the war. They all either denied knowledge of it, minimized their role, or blamed others. So much for a moral defense of genocide.

(Parenthetically, there may indeed be something innate in the chemical makeup of a cupcake that triggers us to judge its flavor as good; though we would at the same time judge its nutritional value as bad)

@Aedes,

Aedes wrote:

(Parenthetically, there may indeed be something innate in the chemical makeup of a cupcake that triggers us to judge its flavor as good; though we would at the same time judge its nutritional value as bad)

Even this is inconstant, however, in that we do not all register flavors the same. My significant other finds peppers to be sweet (they taste good), while I find them to be quite bitter (they taste bad).

I may have missed something, but I don't recall anyone stating that there has been any good or positive result stemming from the genocidal actions taken by Hitler or the Nazi's. I personally stated that when such things happend, the conceived definition of those actions would change from good to evil. Others have stated similar things. So, while I empathize with your viewpoint, I don't see what it's in reference to.

@MuseEvolution,

MuseEvolution wrote:

Even this is inconstant, however, in that we do not all register flavors the same.

That is true, though there may be a common denominator with only a small amount of variability. At a biochemical level this is true for both of our chemical senses (olfaction and taste), though a lot more probably goes into "good". I mean it's not a biological difference that makes Brits hate peanut butter and love Marmite.

Quote:

I may have missed something, but I don't recall anyone stating that there has been any good or positive result stemming from the genocidal actions taken by Hitler or the Nazi's.

That's not what I was implying. What I was implying was that if we're going to talk about things that are good and things that are bad in order to analyze the nature of such judgements, we need to use commonly accepted extremes as examples. If we are to have a "bad" or an "evil" to talk about, genocide is a pretty easy one. People DO occasionally contend around here that genocide wasn't morally bad to the Nazis, so how can we universalize the judgement of evil upon them. But I have problems with that point of view for a number of reasons.

And again, my contention has always been that evil and good are neither opposites nor are they judged in relation to one another. They are both judgements of remarkability in contrast to unremarkability. Genocide is judged as so bad because it's such a huge deviation from the unremarkably normal, not because it's the opposite of good.

@Watchy,

Could you not then say that genocide is judged as so good because it's such a huge deviation from the unremarkably normal? (Not saying it is, just following the logic) There's probably an addition to this that you've stated elsewhere that's not stated here to deal with determining whether a remarkability is in a good or bad fashion, but there are many posts on the forum, so looking for it may prove difficult for me.

@MuseEvolution,

MuseEvolution wrote:

There's probably an addition to this that you've stated elsewhere that's not stated here to deal with determining whether a remarkability is in a good or bad fashion

I haven't stated that, but you're right, that is the missing piece. The more extreme something is, the more unanimity there is about whether it's good or bad.

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Is good the lack of evil?

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