About 5yr. log retention

[Sean R. Lynch]

On Tue, Dec 12, 2000 at 09:09:04AM -0800, James A. Donald wrote:
[...]
> If morality is merely relative, then what is wrong with murdering a few 
> million jews, kulaks, or people as irritating as James A. Donald?  All a 
> matter of perspective, isn't it?

Believing that evil is a matter of perspective does not necessarily make
one a moral relativist.  I believe that both good and evil do not exist
objectively.  However, I don't kill people because a) I would feel bad
about it and b) I don't want people killing me back, and c) The type of
society I'd like to live in wouldn't function very well if people just went
around killing each other willy nilly.

>  > "evil" could, I believe, be *defined* as "the term pretty much
>  > everyone uses to describe his or her enemies".
> 
> People who use this definition have a disturbing tendency to define entire 
> social groups, races, classes, as their enemies.

I fully agree with this definition, yet I don't define anyone to be my
"enemy" except those who deliberately stand in the way of the things I want
to do (nobody right now except maybe the govt).

> The reason we define certain killings as murder is not because "the bible 
> tells us so",  but because we want to know if a killing indicates that the 
> killer is apt to kill murderously.

I'm assuming by murderously you mean arbitrarily, which makes them a danger
to others.

> In practice we notice that one piece of metal is like another, and other 
> kinds of metal unlike, and we call one such group of pieces of metal 
> "iron", "iron" being our word for that commonality that makes them 
> alike.  The naming does not make it iron, but the character of the metal 
> itself.
> 
> Similarly we observe that one deed, and one man, is like another, and 
> another unlike, and we call one such group of men and deeds "evil", "evil" 
> being our word for that commonality that makes them alike.

When you call someone evil, you're begging the question of their evilness.
I've heard lots of people (including myself) called evil to further someone
else's aims, that the word no longer has any meaning any more.  I'd rather
hear "he kills arbitrarily" than "he's evil."

I do use the term "evil" occasionally, but it's usually referring to ideas
or nasty hacks, and usually in a jocular fashion.

> Let us look at how real people in real life use the word "evil":
> 
> Immediately after the bombing of Serbia, lots of US government officials 
> went out on TV to argue that the bombing of Serbia was necessary and 
> advisable because the ruler of Serbia was
> "evil".  I do not have a transcript, but it seemed clear to me that they 
> did not argue that he was evil, therefore deserved to have his soldiers 
> blown up, but instead argued that he was evil, therefore his soldiers were 
> likely to cause harm, therefore it was a wise precaution to blow his 
> soldiers up.
> 
> They unhesitatingly drew an empirical conclusion from a normative fact, and 
> they reasonably expected that everyone listening would find the alleged 
> normative fact compelling evidence for the empirical conclusion.
> 
> They crossed the "is ought gap" without the slightest difficulty, and so 
> does everyone else except for monsters and philosophers.  I find it 
> striking that many of the philosophers who have such great difficulty with 
> this alleged gap have some connection to monstrous regimes.  Not all of 
> them by any means, but most of them.

At first I thought in this section you were arguing against this particular
use of the term 'evil,' and then you go on to say that the use of this term
made it possible for the govt to convince people that bombing Serbia was a
good thing without having to argue about it, and you say that this is good?
How many other groups of people do you think have been convinced to do
violence this way?  I guess it's OK when the US does it, but not OK when
Hitler calls Jews evil?

Evil *is* a subjective concept, and whenever you hear it you should
immediately become *very* suspicious and ask why, regardless of whether you
think it's obvious that someone's evil, because I think sometimes the
answer will surprise you.

-- 
Sean R. Lynch KG6CVV <seanl at literati.org>   http://www.literati.org/~seanl/
"Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem!"
-Ronald Reagan, 1984     540F 19F2 C416 847F 4832  B346 9AF3 E455 6E73 B691
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