Not having empathy isn’t enough to be evil. Just like having empathy isn’t enough to be good. You need ideology.
For example, the guy who lacks empathy could use basic libertarian or anarchist ideology for why we shouldn’t hurt people using logic instead of empathy.
Another example would be if you use fascist ideology you can turn empathy into a weapon for evil. The us vs them ideology requires empathy. The idea is that they are going to hurt the people you love just by existing is what dehumanizes them enough for a normal person to attack them.
If we have a utility function, we are capable of assigning any arbitrary physically possible sequence of local world states to a unique real number. We can then designate a discriminant (if the utility function is capable of producing negative outputs, this would typically be 0). We can designate inputs that give outputs higher than the discriminant as “good” and lower as “evil”.
This example has flaws, but demonstrates that the terms good and evil can be well-defined in a useful way that reasonably conforms to platonic ideals of the terms.
So your previous statement was that a specific (unstated) way of defining Good and Evil, while paired with our typical modern worldview implied that Good and Evil didn’t exist? I suppose you’re almost certainly correct if that’s the case, but I don’t find that to be a very interesting statement. The only other way I can interpret this is as a claim that there is exactly one definition of Good and Evil, and anyone who uses a different definition is wrong, but that strikes me as an utterly foolish position.
I wasn’t aware of Hume’s account of definition, but it strikes me as extremely straightforward.
Exactly, I have a loved one who struggles with empathy, but she believes in justice and she has logic and so she winds up with extremely pro social beliefs and behavior. She just can be a bit rough around the edges sometimes when she thinks you’re not making sense
No; compassion and naive morality is usually sufficient. A well-developed ethical system is good, and typically out-performs the former, but avoiding being outright evil without outside influence is easy.
I might have a broader definition of ideology than you because morality and ethical systems are ideology. Look how many different moral and ethical systems we have. Just choosing between what exists requires ideology first.
That’s one way to see it. Another is that empathy is all that’s needed for good, but ideology can be used to manipulate people such that their empathy for a certain group is suppressed.
Not having empathy isn’t enough to be evil. Just like having empathy isn’t enough to be good. You need ideology.
For example, the guy who lacks empathy could use basic libertarian or anarchist ideology for why we shouldn’t hurt people using logic instead of empathy.
Another example would be if you use fascist ideology you can turn empathy into a weapon for evil. The us vs them ideology requires empathy. The idea is that they are going to hurt the people you love just by existing is what dehumanizes them enough for a normal person to attack them.
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Good and evil is ideology. Matter has no ideology, no good, no evil.
If we have a utility function, we are capable of assigning any arbitrary physically possible sequence of local world states to a unique real number. We can then designate a discriminant (if the utility function is capable of producing negative outputs, this would typically be 0). We can designate inputs that give outputs higher than the discriminant as “good” and lower as “evil”.
This example has flaws, but demonstrates that the terms good and evil can be well-defined in a useful way that reasonably conforms to platonic ideals of the terms.
It’s too early for math
The best part of waking up is immediately using math to dismiss a naive philosophical statement.
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Correct.
So your previous statement was that a specific (unstated) way of defining Good and Evil, while paired with our typical modern worldview implied that Good and Evil didn’t exist? I suppose you’re almost certainly correct if that’s the case, but I don’t find that to be a very interesting statement. The only other way I can interpret this is as a claim that there is exactly one definition of Good and Evil, and anyone who uses a different definition is wrong, but that strikes me as an utterly foolish position.
I wasn’t aware of Hume’s account of definition, but it strikes me as extremely straightforward.
Exactly, I have a loved one who struggles with empathy, but she believes in justice and she has logic and so she winds up with extremely pro social beliefs and behavior. She just can be a bit rough around the edges sometimes when she thinks you’re not making sense
No; compassion and naive morality is usually sufficient. A well-developed ethical system is good, and typically out-performs the former, but avoiding being outright evil without outside influence is easy.
I might have a broader definition of ideology than you because morality and ethical systems are ideology. Look how many different moral and ethical systems we have. Just choosing between what exists requires ideology first.
That’s one way to see it. Another is that empathy is all that’s needed for good, but ideology can be used to manipulate people such that their empathy for a certain group is suppressed.
Excellent point.
Great, now I don’t know if I can feel empathy. Better take a 2 min facebook quiz to find out.q