Knowledge of Good and Evil

[DIKL]

Dear everyone,

thanks for sharing your views on evil. I will now try to summarize the discussion so far. As I see it, the following definition of evil meets the most agreement.
Evil is intentional and avoidable physical and/or mental suffering caused in a living being by a human.

Some comments (also open for debate):
-Why 'a human'? It wasn't explicitely mentioned in the discussion, but I believe it is part of the 'intent' parameter. Most people don't think animals are capable of evil, as it is assumed they can't act against their instincts. Humans have at least partial free will.
-The 'joy' parameter is left out. An act is evil regardless of the emotional state of the perpetrator.

There seems to be less consensus regarding the 'lesser evil' parameter. Here, Käthe introduces a new parameter/distinction:
Necessary vs. unnecessary evil
Evil is always evil. Even if an evil act prevents greater suffering, it is still evil. Nevertheless, most would opt for it if they think it's necessary.

Another point of less consensus seems to be harm done to non-living objects. Is littering and meaning-less destruction evil or not? If yes, is it evil because it (indirectly) causes suffering in humans? Would it still be evil if no human ever saw it? (This is tied to the question "what is life?" If one believes even a rock lives, and it can suffer, then it would fall under the first definition.)

Yet another point of less consensus is taijasi's addendum to the definition of evil:
Evil is an act which needlessly slows or prevents the progress of the human soul on its long pilgrimage from darkness to light, from ignorance to wisdom, and from death to immortality.
Maybe it could be restated like:
Evil is the intentional and avoidable hindrance of human intellectual and emotional development.

---
My thought was that we could start our journey towards 'Knowledge of Good and Evil' by defining how we see evil today. When we have reached 'enough' consensus, we could start looking to our past. What definitions of evil have been used throughout history? For what reasons?

The question now is, do we have 'good-enough' agreement on our definition of evil?

[juantoo3]

Kindest Regards, DIKL!

How much of morality, "good and evil," is subjective, and how much is objective?

[bob x]

"May I ask what it is you see regarding the development of morality in humans?"
We are reaching the point where humans must take other humans into account, or we will extinguish ourselves as a species. Of course we do have both co-operative and competitive instincts, and could not have gotten to where we are without either. But co-operation is now more vital to our survival: evolutionarily speaking, this does not mean that we will necessarily WILL grow into more co-operative creatures, but that we EITHER will do that, OR die out. Which? That is entirely up to us.

[juantoo3]

Kindest Regards, bobx!

Thank you for your post!

Originally Posted by bob x

We are reaching the point where humans must take other humans into account, or we will extinguish ourselves as a species. Of course we do have both co-operative and competitive instincts, and could not have gotten to where we are without either. But co-operation is now more vital to our survival: evolutionarily speaking, this does not mean that we will necessarily WILL grow into more co-operative creatures, but that we EITHER will do that, OR die out. Which? That is entirely up to us.

This is a very good response! How would you suggest we carry forward? Is looking to our animal nature as a valid source for morality a viable option?

[bob x]

I am not one of those who believes we have two different natures, an "animal" nature and a "spiritual" nature. There is no such thing as "disembodied spirit", but on the other hand there is no such thing as "dumb matter" either. Our spirituality is part of our animal nature.

[juantoo3]

Kindest Regards, bobx!

Thank you for your post!

I am not one of those who believes we have two different natures, an "animal" nature and a "spiritual" nature. There is no such thing as "disembodied spirit", but on the other hand there is no such thing as "dumb matter" either. Our spirituality is part of our animal nature.

I am still mulling over your response.

On the one hand, I can see "spirit" as natural, innate and integral. On the other, I still see something that separates humans from other animals. What caused the development of conscious thought in humans? What environmental stimulus could lead humans, and possibly other creatures, to rational thought? Why did "nature" select those homonids that became human to develop these things, and not others in the ape family as well (or other creatures, for that matter)? What is it about being able to consider future consequence, and why have not other creatures followed suit? And how does this apply to the development of morality?

[DIKL]

Originally Posted by juantoo3

Kindest Regards, DIKL!

How much of morality, "good and evil," is subjective, and how much is objective?

Hi juantoo3,

it depends on what you mean by subjective and objective. If
subjective = Proceeding from or taking place in a person's mind rather than the external world
objective = Based on observable phenomena

then, IMO, morality is entirely subjective. It's a concept we make up.

How do you regard morality?

Regards,
DIKL

[bob x]

Deep questions, all. But briefly: we have limited information-processing ability, and the logically unavoidable Godel's-Theorem problem that any finite logical system that deals with an infinite number of possible cases must be subject to error. We cannot fully perceive the extent of our interdependence, and thus even if we fully perceived the pain we bring to others (which we also fail to) we would not really recognize the importance of that or give it the weight it deserves. That is, I take a "gnostic" view of morality, that what is right is what we would do if we fully appreciated what we are really doing: Hitler could not have wished the Holocaust if he felt every one of those millions of horrible deaths.

What sets us apart from the animals is the level at which we process information. Many of the more intelligent mammals have some facility with abstraction, sorting concrete objects into categories, but we are able to do meta-abstraction, sorting abstractions in turn into categories: "It must have taken long ages for man to realize that a couple of days, a pair of eyes, and a brace of pheasants were all instances of the number Two, and even longer to realize that Two, Three, and Four were all instances of Number" (quoting the memory, I don't remember the guy's name but it is not my original).

Evolutionarily, it was very difficult to get here, as evolution must build step-by-step using what is already available, passing only through stages each of which must work in its own terms. We have a multi-layered mind reflecting the inheritances from the early stages: my private term for the "three brains" is the Snake, the Dog, and the Monkey.
The Snake can only model physical causality among objects. The Dog can model the minds of others and forecast others' behavior. The Monkey works in abstract concepts.
Faced with lightning and thunder, the Snake thinks "Loud noise, burnt smell; probably hurts; should get away". The Dog thinks "Thor must be a very angry creature to be so destructive all the time". The Monkey thinks "Electrical discharges move large quantities of energy along a path of least resistance".
The Snake works on principles of pleasure/pain. The Snake's morality is that "good" is what is rewarded, and "bad" what is punished.
The Dog works on principles of love/hate. The Dog's morality is that "good" is what the group-leader wants, and "bad" is what leads to social ostracism.
The Monkey works on principles of beauty/chaos. The Monkey's morality is that "good" is what makes sense in terms of general principles applied across the board, and "bad" is what could not be so understood.

[juantoo3]

Kindest Regards, DIKL!

Thank you for your post!

it depends on what you mean by subjective and objective. If
subjective = Proceeding from or taking place in a person's mind rather than the external world
objective = Based on observable phenomena

This is pretty close to what I was getting at. I see subjective as how each culture arrives at somewhat different conclusions. Like how many cultures view theft as immoral, yet in other cultures theft is a rite of passage.

By contrast, an objective view would be a morality "etched in stone." Something all cultures inherently recognize. Love your neighbor as self is about as close as I can come.

then, IMO, morality is entirely subjective. It's a concept we make up.

For the most part I am inclined to agree. So if morality is "entirely subjective," then it would be impossible and pointless to try to achieve a concensus view (a 'good-enough' agreement on our definition of evil), because none can be reached when asking across multiple cultural boundaries.

Not to mention, depending on philosophical inclination, "evil" may well be a sliding scale. What is evil today because of circumstances, may not be evil tomorrow under a different set of circumstances.

A side note, if by "we" you mean humans ("{morality is} a concept we make up"), then how does one explain morality in herding and pack animals?

How do you regard morality?

Good question. I am still learning.

A part of me wants to believe there is an underlying basis for morality, something inherent to what I view as creation, something I feel is attached to spirit, and as Luna has pointed out in the past is tied to love. These things are not provable in the scientific sense, but are proven well enough in my own personal subjective view.

But that view is still growing, still changing. I like the way Thomas put it, ask me tomorrow and you will probably get a different answer.

[juantoo3]

Kindest Regards, bobx!

Thank you for your thoughtful post!

Originally Posted by bob x

we have limited information-processing ability, and the logically unavoidable Godel's-Theorem problem that any finite logical system that deals with an infinite number of possible cases must be subject to error. We cannot fully perceive the extent of our interdependence, and thus even if we fully perceived the pain we bring to others (which we also fail to) we would not really recognize the importance of that or give it the weight it deserves.

So (if I am reading this correctly), even though we have come a long way evolutionarily, there is no way we can solve this puzzle? There can be no "universal" morality because of our limited view?

what is right is what we would do if we fully appreciated what we are really doing

I like this.

What sets us apart from the animals is the level at which we process information.

I agree.

We have a multi-layered mind reflecting the inheritances from the early stages: my private term for the "three brains" is the Snake, the Dog, and the Monkey.
The Snake can only model physical causality among objects. The Dog can model the minds of others and forecast others' behavior. The Monkey works in abstract concepts.

I see this, although by different terms. The reptilian brain, as I recall, deals with survival; heart rate, breathing, etc. The sub- (or un-) conscious mind
dealing with instinct, and the conscious mind in humans dealing with thought.

The Snake works on principles of pleasure/pain. The Snake's morality is that "good" is what is rewarded, and "bad" what is punished.
The Dog works on principles of love/hate. The Dog's morality is that "good" is what the group-leader wants, and "bad" is what leads to social ostracism.
The Monkey works on principles of beauty/chaos. The Monkey's morality is that "good" is what makes sense in terms of general principles applied across the board, and "bad" is what could not be so understood.

I hesitiate here, I do not wish to offend. I see anthropomorphing. Humans can and have, depending on culture and time, used all of these as cultural norms and philosophies within recorded history. The Greeks had Epicurian Hedonism (principles of pleasure/pain). Pleasing the group seems to me a driving concern in many cultures, not least Christianity in the Middle Ages. Beauty / chaos as I recall has its roots in Greece as well, but is seeing a resurgence in modern times, particularly in science. I suppose it is possible, if these are all a part of human make-up (I do question beauty/chaos), that we might be subject to any one of them (or more) at a given point in time.

Well, I have company that just arrived, so I must go for now. Thank you again for a very insightful post!

[bob x]

I see this, although by different terms. The reptilian brain, as I recall, deals with survival; heart rate, breathing, etc. The sub- (or un-) conscious mind dealing with instinct, and the conscious mind in humans dealing with thought.

This is a different way of parsing the brain, into its major constituent suborgans. The medulla oblongata or "brainstem" is what controls heart rate, breathing, and other "autonomic" functions. The cerebellum is what stores "programs" of sequential co-ordinated muscle movements that we do not have to think about: for example, we think about "walking" across the room and not "raise left foot, move it forward, lean a little bit so I don't fall over, now put it down" as a baby first learning it has to do; or more extremely, I may get in the car and suddenly "find myself" at work, although I meant to go to the grocery store, because I was not thinking about what I was doing and the "program" kicked in. In humans, the cerebellum starts out fairly blank: a horse by contrast knows how to stand and walk (at least a little) from birth; these inborn programs are what are called the "instinctual" behaviors.

The cerebrum is the more complex information-processing organ; sometimes the cerebrum and cerebellum are grouped together as the "forebrain" as opposed to the "hindbrain" (medulla, and its immediate attachments) and the "midbrain". The midbrain suborgans are numerous, thalamus, hypothalamus, amygdala etc. and rather difficult to characterize in simple terms because of the multiple connections and ways of functioning. For example the hypothalamus acts directly on the pituitary, but the hypothalamus is electrical while the pituitary is strictly chemical, issuing "control hormones" that direct the release of other hormones by glands all over the body, so the pituitary is not considered "part of the brain" although it is surrounded by the brain. The pineal is very hard to classify: it acts chemically to set the "body clock" by rising and falling levels of melatonin (not to be confused with melanin, the brown skin-prigment) over the course of the perceived day-night cycle, which it resets based on electrical signals from the visual cortex in the cerebrum (in many reptiles, the pineal is on the surface with its own visual receptors, a "third eye" but one that perceives only light/dark without image-processing); and the pineal also acts chemically on the electrical systems through the "neurotransmitter" chemicals (serotonin, dopamine, etc.) that govern the rate of propagation and suppression of various kinds of electrical signals.

The threefold distinction among hindbrain, midbrain, and forebrain is not what I meant by "Snake/Doggy/Monkey". The reptilian brain does include "midbrain" and "forebrain" organs although the cerebrum is not very large (it processes the pressure senses, feeling/hearing, and also has a visual cortex; the olfactory senses, smell/taste, are processed in a separate vomeronasal organ, vestigial in us); to what extent the Komod dragon is "conscious" I could not say (I suspect that, actually, the question is itself ill-formed). But the Komodo dragon does not feel "sorry" for the dragon hatchlings it eats because it has no emotional circuitry at all, and does not have the ability to model the hatchlings as "other dragons like me", perceiving them only as "tasty snacks". What the mammalian brain adds, besides an enlarged cerebrum integrating all the senses, is a "limbic" network with all kinds of mysterious feedbacks between the forebrain and midbrain organs; somehow this governs emotion (even if I was expert in neurology, I could not explain because the experts themselves is just starting to grope). The crucial functioning here is the ability to construct an internal model of another mind and imagine how the other will respond.

What the "Monkey" adds is a great expansion of the cerebral cortex, with novel connectivity in "Broca's region" and "Wernicke's region", whose functions are even more difficult to unravel than the limbic system, but damage to those areas result in aphasia (loss of language ability) or lesser linguistic malfunctions like dyslexia. Abstraction, and meta-abstraction, are the functionalities here.

I suppose it is possible, if these are all a part of human make-up (I do question beauty/chaos), that we might be subject to any one of them (or more) at a given point in time.

We are subject to all of them, at all points of time, to various degrees. The later-acquired sections of the mind do not kick in until later in life: we are all born as "Snakes", incapable of perceiving anybody beyond ourselves, or putting importance on anything beyond immediate pleasure and pain. We become socialized into "Doggies" who go along with what the pack tells us to do. Eventually, usually in our teens, our "Monkey" becomes dissatisfied with thinking only at that level.

"Kohlberg" is a name you should Google; he had a theory of "stages of moral development" (at its most basic, with three stages based "reward/punishment", "social approval/disapproval", "universal principles"; divided into six or more substages in his more refined papers) which has given rise to a huge body of literature, especially as it relates to the classifying of the differing ethical systems we find in various cultures and religions. Fundamentalist Christianity is a classic "Doggy" system: the pack-leader tells you what to do; the "Snake" is to be kept chained up, and the "Monkey" is blindfolded. Arguments between atheists and fundamentalists often end up talking past each other: the fundamentalist accuses the atheist of wanting to loose the Snake, when the atheist really wants to open the Monkey's eyes.

[juantoo3]

Awesome post, bobx!

Thank you for the reminders and the pointers. I knew I should have paid a little better attention in that one lecture in Psych 101...

[juantoo3]

Kindest Regards, bobx!

Just wanted to take a moment to let you know I did look up Kohlberg and his work. I am going through the material now. Interesting stuff!

I also noticed how certain names kept popping back up in relation to this subject, not least Jung, Kant, and even Glenn Morton. So much on this subject seems to tie together across different lines of research.

[bananabrain]

seems to me that the "monkey" is not all that advanced if it considers things that don't fit in with "universal" principles to be "chaotic" and therefore not "beautiful". sounds very utilitarian to me. also very utopian. kind of like communism. amazingly enough, we figured this one out a long time ago. just look at the midrash on the story of nimrod, a "mighty hunter before G!D"....

b'shalom

bananabrain

[bob x]

The Monkey reaction "I can't make sense of it, so I don't like it" is almost as deeply ingrained in us as the Doggy "They aren't part of our pack, so I don't like them". The ability to truly accept that large parts of the universe are just beyond our comprehension is rare.

What do you mean by "the" midrash about Nimrod? I could Google "Nimrod" and come up with ten thousand stories but I assume you have a particular one in mind.