That depends on rather or not you believe in altruism.

What I've observed in personal experience to happen is that Person A stands to gain from the evil act, it's just that Person C stands to gain more.  So, Person A can justify the evil act by saying: "Look, this isn't really evil, look how much person C gets from it!"

What makes an act evil is indeed hard to quantify.  I really seldom hear of someone doing an "evil" act without a rationalization.  Torture is evil, but I don't hear of normal people torturing without some justification: they were ordered into it, as Milgram proved, or they're doing it for "the greater good", as in the recent waterboarding cases.

And you don't think that contradicts your orriginal statement? If everyone performing an 'evil' act does so under orders or for what they believe to be the greater good doesn't that negate teh idea that selfishnes is the root of all evil? At least people who are operating purely from selfish motives do not have such justifications and thus do not engage in such 'evil' activities... It might in fact require some blend of selfishness and altruism, but if you take away the altruism the attrocities go away as well, and from your position the selfishness can never really go away, so altruism is the only factor that can really be focued on.

No.  As I said before, People do evil deeds for selfish reasons, and then justify it.  Altruism is often just one justification.  You are aware of what a rationalization is, right?  You use them all the time.

Yes, I am aware of what rationalizations are. But aside from your stating it as if it were an axiom where is your evidence? All evidence expressed here points to the opposite conclusion and all you offer as a rejoinder is to restate your belief that all evil stems from selfishness. I can just as easilly state with equal conviction *plus* evidence that all evil stems from people believing their actions are justified and that those who insist that evil stems from selfishness do so in order to avoid having to examine the possible effects of actions they take themselves stemming from their own convictions. After all where industry is productive and has made life easier for the vast mojority of the people on this planet those who would oppose it need something to support tehri self-righteousness and justify attempting to make lives harder for those whose lives have been improved by industrialism and greed based companies.

Heh, fair enough.  I suppose if you start with the assumption that altruism doesn't exist, then yes, it follows that altruism can't lead to acts of evil.  For those of us who don't make that assumption, it would seem your argument doesn't hold up, though.

I think if you don't believe in the existance of altruism as a fact then you still have to acknowledge that it exists as an idea and that that idea, whether as justification/rationalization or as it's own selfish motivation (I want to be seen as altruistic) remains the underlying common factor of the great atrocities.
Also  would say that if you do not believe in altruism then saying that evil is caused by selfishness is a meaningless statement since you believe that everything is caused by selfishness. You might as well say that evil is caused by breathing.

I do think silveroak is onto something with that statement. Under a belief of psychological egoism, that people (or indeed all beings) are incapable of doing anything that doesn't benefit them in some manner, altruism is indeed a sham. But, at the same time, doesn't that sorta negate the meaning of evil?

If beings are incapable of doing anything but evil actions, doesn't evil sorta become meaningless? The stigma of evil is that we choose to be selfish at the expense of others. If we can't choose otherwise, what is evil? Does it have any real meaning anymore?

Incidentally, as a psychology student myself, I'm not sure we came to the same conclusion of what the Milgrim experiments legacy was. I personally saw it not through the lens of the power the subjects had over the alleged victim, but rather, in the manner of their relationship to the experimenter, the authority figure. Indeed, the variations in the experiment in which the authority figure was not seen or in the room (via phone or through a proxy), the results tended to be much less extreme.

There have been many variations of the experiments done to this effect, but I think the most extreme, in my view, hint towards this relationship as well. In the early 70s, there was a belief that the subjects of the original might had suspected the victim was fake. So, they tried a variation that used a real victim, in this case, a puppy, receiving real voltage.

But, nonetheless, despite being able to see the effects for themselves, the proportion wasn't significantly different from the original. This was in spite of having a much more visible emotional reaction. Some of the subjects, particularly the women, openly cried at the sight and sounds, but seemingly felt obligated to follow through. I'm not sure such emotional pain would be reflected in an instance where the real issue of importance was the subject's desire to flex it's muscles, so to speak, unless you believe that these reactions were being faked.

There are different definitions of evil. Psychological egoism would defeat the definition of evil as selfishness (or, alternatively, would indicate that every action by a conscious being is necessarily evil). But it would not eliminate other evil things. I believe we can agree that Katrina, or the suffering caused by it, was a form of evil, even though it was not the result of conscious choice.

FRom a human perspective yes. From the perspictive of life forms which have existed in teh area for millions of years whose life cycle is dependant upon the period hurricaine to upset the soil and otherwise disturb the area I'm sure we are the evil.

I don't think Natural Disasters are evil, nor do I think the suffering caused by them is evil either, because I don't think any entity knowingly causes them to happen.  Even if someone came up with a weather machine and used to summon natural disasters, that still doesn't make the natural disaster evil, or the suffering evil.

But then I don't think Good and Evil are any more than subjective. That doesn't necessitate that there aren't ways to reliably determine what the human mind considers Good and Evil on average, but Evil is not physical, it's a human concept.

Nature is Amoral.
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:33, Wed 26 May 2010.

Natural evils are a possible exception, of course. But most people aren't asked to resolve themselves of natural evils, unless you'd like to say that having a disease is sinful, or that higher beings inflicted the ailment intentionally. Such are the domain of moral evils. We humans play a much lesser, if any, responsibility for the evils we cannot control or that don't result from our decisions. Aside from dealing with the pain they cause, I don't believe many of us would say they're something we need to concern ourselves with.

And, as the previous posters argue, I don't necessarily think that most of us can agree such disasters are evil. For myself, evil has to derive from some manner of intent, be it malicious, self-serving, ignorance, negligence, or something along those lines. The result of deliberate decisions. I have a hard time seeing natural disasters as evil, unless I were to think they were result of some action taken by a sentient being. In my view, natural disasters like Katrina or the quake in Haiti are not evil; they are, however, very tragic and unfortunate.

Of course, if psychological egoism was true, and every being cannot help but act selfishly, regardless of whether or not Katrina was evil, I feel it might have rather unfortunate implications about the beings that create such an existence. Let's just say that it would not surprise me if said deity were to intentionally set natural evils about, upgrading them, so to speak, to irrefutable evils.
This message was last edited by the player at 08:43, Wed 26 May 2010.

Natural disasters are evil by definition, they are "harmful" and "injurious".

I'm not really getting the point of this discussion, evil as it applies to people has to do with being immoral or wicked, and it is fairly cut and dried. You can argue that what is considered evil in one society might not in another and vice versa, but that's splitting hairs and you pretty much know what evil is in modern western morality.

It's not the same as law, selfishness, putting yourself first or greed, although those can lead to evil.

Fixed your statement. ;)

But in seriousness, that is only one defintion. To decide what constitutes evil requires a common acceptance of the definition of that word. I don't quite equate all the Merriam-Webster definitions of evil with the same weight, particularly when matters of morality and injustice are being discussed.

Adding a qualifier to my statement isn't a fix, the word has a definition and there is no need to qualify every word used by referring to the fact words have definitions.

A pink wall is pink because pink is defined. Evil is evil when it meets the definition of evil. It really is that simple. It doesn't matter if one definition has more "weight" in your mind than another, all definitions in the commonly accepted reference for the language in use apply.

There are gray area's, some might consider abortions evil, some might argue they are not, but these gray area's are few and far between and honestly most can be defined with certainty by definition as well, even if some people might be uncomfortable with the outcome.

"It doesn't matter if one definition has more "weight" in your mind than another, all definitions in the commonly accepted reference for the language in use apply."

Debatable.

In matters of morality and reward therefrom, 'evil' is going to have a much broader definition than in other instances. The reason dictionaries have multiple entries for words is that one definition does not always apply.


For example, take the word 'weasel.'

There will be cases in which one definition carries more weight than another. If say, I call the BP execs handling the oil-spill in the Gulf 'a bunch of weasels,' you can likely be sure I do not mean that they are small carnivorous mammals nor are they amphibious vehicles.

In such a manner, the discussion of evil and the rewards which individuals or societies gain from said evil acts requires a defining of terms, for not only do differing cultures/societies/philosophical systems have differing opinions on the meaning of the word, so too might different people.

And that matters not one whit to the point of them being weasels or not being weasels. Either they are weasels by definition or they are not.

Same with evil, either something is defined as evil or it is not. It doesn't matter if one definition has more "weight" in your mind than another, all definitions in the commonly accepted reference for the language in use apply to the use of that word, if one of the definitions of weasel applies to the execs then they are, by definition, weasels. That's what words are all about. If you want to omit some of the definitions of a word in use then you need to use adjectives that do so or some other modifier to make the definition more pointed.

In reply to Astron (msg #50):

I beg to differ and I'll leave it that.


In any case, back to the matter, natural disasters are not, in my mind, evil. They may be unfortunate and deadly and disasterous to those living in their path, but may also be part of the natural system of the larger world/environment and therefore removed from the dichotomy of good/evil.

Good/evil, such that we perceive it exists, is largely a matter of perspective and human ethics/morality. Perhaps even a uniquely human condition (given the current absense of evidence of other developed cultures in the universe).

Natural disasters that cause harm are by definition evil. That is simply a fact of word definitions.

Evil is also defined by morality, obviously, since the definition of an evil act is usually defined along the lines of being morally reprehensible or immoral.

Then, by that same definition, nearly everything is evil because nearly everything is harmful to something else.

Perception is everything. Harm itself is a matter of perspective and perception.

A hurricane is "evil" because it causes harm to the shoreline, the ecosystem, animals (including humans) living in its path.
A hurricane is "good" because it can be relied on. They behave in a similar manner over time. They bring rains to areas of drought. They wipe clean areas affected by depredations, over-building, and pollution.

By encompassing both sides of good and evil, what is it?

Perhaps a hurricane (or a flood, a natural fire, an earthquake, a meteor strike) is a natural force with no will or intent acting in a manner proscribed by the system in which it exists.

Sunlight is harmful in excess, so too much sun is an evil thing, but that doesn't make sunlight in general evil, just harmful instances of sunlight evil, in the same way a hurricane that doesn't cause harm is not evil yet one that does is. Something is only evil when it is harmful, it is not evil when it is not harmful.

That is how a definition is applied, it does require some common sense, as opposed to a motivation to take things to absurdity without the benefit of common sense because you don't agree with Webster.

actually urricains clear polution and re-start teh ecosystem, being overall generally benign to teh ecosystems which ahve develoepd with a consistant (over millenea) presence of hurricaines.

Hurricanes might have some benefits in some instances, but generally they cause a lot of pollution rather than clearing it much of the time, and a gentle rain can clear pollution with much less harm. The ecosystem isn't "restarted" by a hurricane to the extent that an atomic bomb "restarts" it, and "restarting" an ecosystem isn't a good thing in and of itself. Hurricanes are not generally benign, they are violent and destructive, I've been through several and aside from the eye they are not much fun to be in.

There is no doubt that a hurricane that causes harm is evil by definition. Not all hurricanes cause harm, but very little good comes from their violence and those that do cause harm are certainly evil.

Hurricanes also redistribute heat energy.  If they refused to do so, the heat would accumulate in one place, which would violate the laws of thermodynamics, which would in turn upset all of known physics, and that would lead to the breakdown of the universe as we know it.  That would be bad, right?

The philosophy of ethics generally holds "intent" as the prime factor in morality.  Ergo, good samaritan laws, you are not a murderer if, in trying to save someone's life, you accidentally kill him.  Hurricanes, as far as I know, show no intent.

Now, had you said Tornados, that would be different, because we all know they go for trailer parks.

no, actually the ecosystem in areas regularly affected by hurricaines has a life cycle which is dependant on the hurricaines to prevent stagnation, in which cetain plants only flourish soon after teh hurricain goes through and tehse prepair the soil for the plants in the next stage and so on. yes on teh macro scale it looks liek a disaster and it is certainly inconvenient to humans but it is as much a part of the cycles of nature in those areas as spring and fall. Actually given teh lattitude of those regions it is generally *more* of a part of those cycles.

There are many successful ecosystems without hurricanes so obviously hurricanes are not needed for ecosystems in general, so I'm sure there would still be a thriving ecosystem on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts without hurricanes, especially since there are stretches of it that haven't had hurricanes for quite a while and still have ecosystems.

Can you show some basis for this claim about ecosystems and hurricanes?

Aside from that, being a "cycle of nature" means nothing where the definition of evil is concerned, a hurricane that causes harm is evil by definition.