Matt_Simpson comments on The Danger of Stories - Less Wrong
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I'm not sure I can answer this coherently; I came to the conclusion that good and evil are not objectively real, or even useful concepts, long enough ago that I can't accurately recreate the steps that got me there.
I do occasionally have conversations with people who use those words, and mentally translate 'good' (in that sense) to 'applause light-generating' and 'evil' to 'revulsion-generating', 'unacceptable in modern society', and/or 'considered by the speaker to do more harm than good', in estimated order of frequency of occurrence. (I often agree that things labeled evil do more harm than good, but if the person doing the 'evil' thing agreed, they wouldn't be doing it, so it's obviously at least somewhat debatable.) I don't use the word 'evil' at all, myself, and don't use 'good' in the good-vs.-evil sense.
Those words are also curiosity-stoppers - it's not very useful to label an action or viewpoint as 'evil'; it's much more useful to explore why the person doing that thing or holding that attitude believes that it's correct. Likewise, labeling something as 'good' reduces the chance of thinking critically about it, and noticing flaws or areas that could be improved.
Rough definitions: good for agent X - net positive utility for agent X, evil for agent X - net negative utility for agent X. Or possibly: evil for agent X - a utility function that conflicts with that of agent X.
Good and evil don't have to be "written into the structure of the universe" to be coherent concepts. I assume you make choices. What is your criterion for choice? I also assume that you aren't completely selfish. You care about the welfare of other people at least to some degree right?
Of course, if two people/agents truly have differing utility functions, what is good to one may be evil to the other, but that doesn't invalidate the concepts of good and evil.
That's not 'good and evil', just 'desired and undesired' - much milder and broader concepts.
I call an action "good" when it is what you should do - i.e. it has normative force behind it. This includes all choices. So, yes, it is a broader concept than traditional 'goodness,' but thats fine.
I usually reserve "desired and undesired" to refer to the psychological impulses that we sometimes fight and sometimes go along with. I may desire that second piece of chocolate cake, but if I really think it through, I don't really want to eat it - I shouldn't eat it. The economist's utility function probably refers to desires since the goal is to model actual behavior, but the ethicist's utility function is built with a completely different goal in mind.