Does Good & Evil Exist

[RichardHresko]

"There are no moral phenomena, only moral interpretations of phenomena."

(For the sake of the argument let's accept the hidden premise here that existence precedes essence.)

But isn't that a very big "only?"

After all, phenomena without interpretation are meaningless.

[The Atheist]

"There are no moral phenomena, only moral interpretations of phenomena."

Mate, you make some excellent posts. That's another.

[The Atheist]

After all, phenomena without interpretation are meaningless.

No.

The tree does fall, regardless of anyone watching.

[jgweed]

"After all, phenomena without interpretation are meaningless."

And if meaning is provided only by humans? And are not good and evil meanings?

Pursue for a moment what seems to be the case: that we apply moral terms only to human actions.

[Jozanny]

Perhaps for good and evil to exist in the abstract, an intelligence needs to exist to perceive it. Richard mentioned Michael Vick, which at first glance looks like a decent example, except that, as observers of carnivore behavior, we tend not to blame lions for being lions, and lion behavior includes:

1. killing other lions, inclusive of lion cubs, males killing other males to take over a pride, and even females being killed off by other pride members.

2. killing off the competition--all high end carnivores do this. I've seen video of wolves killing coyotes and orchestrating attacks against bears, even, and as we do not attribute other species with moral responsibility, I am not sure why we attribute it to ourselves as the one member of the great ape family who made it, and that making it involved a good deal of slaughter amongst ourselves and against other higher end mammals.

Sure, I feel *bad* that Vick's underside associates were cruel to dogs, but apes can be aggressors as well as peace loving over-sexed primates--and I am not sure evolutionary constructs of any sort can be assigned moral value.

The Catholic Church asserts that certain diseases are evil. This is convenient for continuing prejudice against vulnerable members in a group, but is otherwise patently absurd. Diseases aren't conscious. They are processes which mimic the processes of living functions.

[blazeofglory]

As a matter of fact what we call good is an assimilation or fabrication or projection of our own ideas and as a matter of fact there is no such things good and evil.

Go to a jungle and observe all natural phenomena all your borders or lines between good and bad get blurred and all you will see is simply a natural course and it has nothing to do with good or bad, and both are nonexistential in a natural state.

When a tiger pounces upon a victim and it does with a desire, a primeval desire of satisfying its hunger and there are no other motivations at all than filling his stomach and of course it is simply a phenomenon that has nothing to do with our sense of good and bad at all.

Man projects ideas, and most of them are nonsensical and meaningless and he taking into consideration his convenience invents or spins ideas and all these ideas of Christian moralities are baseless and not holistic at all. I decry all these baseless ideas.

Man has to at times be cruel and his cruelties are rooted in the fact that it was necessary for survival.

[RichardHresko]

Originally Posted by RichardHresko
After all, phenomena without interpretation are meaningless.

No.

The tree does fall, regardless of anyone watching.

Your post does not address my statement. I did not deny that there are phenomena in the absence of interpretation. I denied that there was meaning without interpretation which is something entirely different.

[RichardHresko]

Perhaps for good and evil to exist in the abstract, an intelligence needs to exist to perceive it. Richard mentioned Michael Vick, which at first glance looks like a decent example, except that, as observers of carnivore behavior, we tend not to blame lions for being lions, and lion behavior includes:

1. killing other lions, inclusive of lion cubs, males killing other males to take over a pride, and even females being killed off by other pride members.

2. killing off the competition--all high end carnivores do this. I've seen video of wolves killing coyotes and orchestrating attacks against bears, even, and as we do not attribute other species with moral responsibility, I am not sure why we attribute it to ourselves as the one member of the great ape family who made it, and that making it involved a good deal of slaughter amongst ourselves and against other higher end mammals.

Sure, I feel *bad* that Vick's underside associates were cruel to dogs, but apes can be aggressors as well as peace loving over-sexed primates--and I am not sure evolutionary constructs of any sort can be assigned moral value.

The Catholic Church asserts that certain diseases are evil. This is convenient for continuing prejudice against vulnerable members in a group, but is otherwise patently absurd. Diseases aren't conscious. They are processes which mimic the processes of living functions.

The distinction between Mr. Vick and a lion (or Falcon) is that Vick is a rational animal with free choice. Without rationality and free choice there can be no moral behavior.

The Catholic Church does not condemn anything it recognizes as a disease to be morally evil. It does not condemn people who have what it recognizes as diseases as being evil because they have the disease. I will point out that the RC Church ran asylums for lepers for centuries even though leprosy renders a person ritually unclean according to the Old Testament. The Roman Church also has set up many hospices for victims of AIDS.

If there is a specific Papal Bull that you are thinking of, please let me know and I would be happy to research it.

[RichardHresko]

"After all, phenomena without interpretation are meaningless."

And if meaning is provided only by humans? And are not good and evil meanings?

Pursue for a moment what seems to be the case: that we apply moral terms only to human actions.

Those are exactly the questions I am struggling with. With any luck I will be able to avail myself of your help to clear this in my own mind.

Three possibilities:

1) If the meaning is provided only by humans and has no corresponding reality exterior to human conception then would it not be incredibly fortuitous that any meanings ever seem to work at all? How would science be possible if there was not some logic to the exterior world?

2) If the meaning provided by humans is an APPROXIMATION of an order (whether order can be linked to meaning isn't certain, but certainly appears to be a necessary condition for meaning, even if not a sufficient one) that exists exterior to humans is a possibility.

3) I do not think effort need be expended on considering whether humans grasp the universe completely. I would reject this out of hand.

Good and evil are interpretations of phenomena (including intention, which is an interesting case). The question of the independent existence of good and evil would, I think, be tied to these three options.

[The Atheist]

Your post does not address my statement. I did not deny that there are phenomena in the absence of interpretation. I denied that there was meaning without interpretation which is something entirely different.

Meaning to who? What? The universe? The statement works the same whichever way you look at it - "meaning" is as subjective as morality.

[Jozanny]

The distinction between Mr. Vick and a lion (or Falcon) is that Vick is a rational animal with free choice. Without rationality and free choice there can be no moral behavior.

I am not sure it is all as neat and pat as that. Biologists are making enormous strides in the areas of cognition and intelligence; even houseflies have central processing units designed to make it difficult to crush them to death. I grant you Vick is not a housefly, and not a lion, but this *Enlightment* notion of human exceptionalism has been gradually giving way. Those of us "down here" looked at Vick "up there", and the reaction to his dog fighting clubs was visceral, but the man was as much a product of the culture he came from as he was of the NFL which groomed and insulated him.

Now, I love my cats, even though they nag me and have destroyed a decent portion of 20 years worth of research while I was recuperating from graft surgery. I would not deliberately be an agent to cause these creatures suffering, because I perceive them as surrogate children, but I am not exactly sanguine on the matter of free agency when it comes to animal exploitation or animal as a family relation.

Free will is very problematic against biological determinism, and I mean that on the genetic level.

[RichardHresko]

Meaning to who? What? The universe? The statement works the same whichever way you look at it - "meaning" is as subjective as morality.

That is a bit better. At least the comment addresses my post now.

To recap:
Jgweed posted a quote, "There are no moral phenomena, only moral interpretations of phenomena."

I responded,
"After all, phenomena without interpretation are meaningless."

Your relevant comment is,
"Meaning to who? What?"

My response:

Meaning is something that can be grasped by a sentient being. That leads to the question whether meaning is external to the sentient being.

The question appears open. The existence of workable science and mathematics (in the sense that they produce predictions in accord with subsequent observations) at least implies that the universe is not a blooming buzzing chaos. There is some structure to the universe that humans are capable of grasping. On the other hand it is not at all clear where the limits to the ability to explain lie. Therefore it is not clear whether morality has an element that is somehow exterior to humanity.

I am not sure it is all as neat and pat as that. Biologists are making enormous strides in the areas of cognition and intelligence; even houseflies have central processing units designed to make it difficult to crush them to death. I grant you Vick is not a housefly, and not a lion, but this *Enlightment* notion of human exceptionalism has been gradually giving way. Those of us "down here" looked at Vick "up there", and the reaction to his dog fighting clubs was visceral, but the man was as much a product of the culture he came from as he was of the NFL which groomed and insulated him.

Now, I love my cats, even though they nag me and have destroyed a decent portion of 20 years worth of research while I was recuperating from graft surgery. I would not deliberately be an agent to cause these creatures suffering, because I perceive them as surrogate children, but I am not exactly sanguine on the matter of free agency when it comes to animal exploitation or animal as a family relation.

Free will is very problematic against biological determinism, and I mean that on the genetic level.

Any being that can conceive of future contingencies and weigh those contingencies and then freely choose among them is capable of moral choice. Human beings have it. Should we find a non-human being that can do likewise that being would also be a moral being.

Biological determinism has certainly not been proven for human beings on any level. I doubt that there is a scientist who seriously suggests that it will be. Not even B. F. Skinner went that far.

[jgweed]

"1) If the meaning is provided only by humans and has no corresponding reality exterior to human conception then would it not be incredibly fortuitous that any meanings ever seem to work at all? How would science be possible if there was not some logic to the exterior world?"

What if there are many kinds (levels, perspectives, horizons) of meanings. Should we demand of these that they operate in exactly the same way, or all "correspond"---for lack of a better word---to reality with the same strength and precision?

Another path of thinking opens up when we ask, are their private meanings, or are all of them linked to and shared with, Others, but in different ways. One opens an old book and finds a flower pressed between two pages. The flower obviously was put there for a reason by Another, and it had a special and private meaning for that person, but at the same time, this meaning (or meanings because I can imagine many interesting stories about it being there) is shared by me.

We sometimes think of science as one way in which we interpret the world as meaningful. It is a very complicated---even for some a specialised--- way that provides meaning to our (shared) world. Yet to call it, loosely speaking, an interpretation need not relegate it to the status of personal preference or (shudder) opinion; that would be to completely misunderstand how it works to provide meaning. We don't "make upmeanings willy-nilly; we find them "ready made."

Wittgenstein argued that a private language was an impossibility; perhaps this applies to meanings as well. [Or at least insofar as meaning itself is tied to language, a path of thinking I mention without wanting to lead to a digression].

We find all sorts of meanings which in fact do seem to work, and have worked in the past and have worked for untold and countless Others.

[blazeofglory]

If you are really confused about what is good or bad go directly to nature and observe natural phenomena you will see that there is nothing called good or bad and things happen their with the same theory

of cause and effect.

In the wilderness they live with primeval motives and there is nothing called good and bad.

They do things not good or bad and there is no judgment at all in nature. We use our judgment here and we value insubstantial things in society.

[Sooperfly]

if you have the inner strength to overcome your unnecessary and hurtfull desires then you will be truly just. man's weakness makes him his own worst enemy. focus not on money or honor,instead on attainment of wisdom and inner peace and you will not fear evil. man creates evil with wicked actions due to lack of self control