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  1. #41
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rowan View Post
    Ryan, each philosophy, culture, moral system, whatever have been aimed at discovering and describing an absolute, just like science does but in respect to non-physical questions. Each makes arguments appealing to an absolute, and the reason for choosing any over another is by making a judgment based on the best arguments, just as scientists make judgments about the best theories.
    "Have been aimed at" is very different from "have achieved". In particular, it doesn't even imply that achievement is possible. What I keep trying to say is that the trouble lies in the very notion of being able to decide what "the best arguments" actually are. In science, you perform experiments which can establish to within an estimated error of measurement the charge of the electron, the speed of light, the mass of the sun, or some other fact of experience. In the last of those three examples, since we are dealing with an extended body rather than a fundamental particle, there is additional error (small, but nonzero) resulting from variation in how exactly you define where the sun stops and space starts. A bigger instance of that error happens with "light-year" -- the primary source of error is not in measuring the properties of light, but rather in defining exactly how long "one year" really is! In ethical philosophy, however, there are no rulers or stopwatches to be had. The best we can do is ask people, "does that make you happy?" They will disagree on even the sign (happy or sad), and trying to get them to label magnitudes (e.g., X makes me 5 times as happy as Y) is a nightmare. Even if there were some objectively best morality, humans are so imprecise as measurement devices that even if we did manage to stumble upon it, we would not realize that we had.

    Quote Originally Posted by Rowan View Post
    I was responding to Ryan's attack on moralism as not being based on logic or reason--I was saying that it seemed to me that he had missed the vast, vast body of deep intellectual and rational thought from incredibly intelligent people throughout history relying on logic and reason to discern moral systems and truths.
    I've read much of that body of thought, and found most of it deeply flawed. The only thing I really learned from reading Kant or Augustine or anybody else is not about general principles of the world, but specific aspects of that individual's personality -- I especially learned that I'm usually very glad I never had to share an office with them. My own sympathies lie most closely with Wittgenstein -- I think most of philosophy has always been just playing language games. I would like to associate myself with the mathematical tradition in philosophy, which attempts to use abstract logical principles to construct theorems from axioms. The trouble, though, has always been with the axioms. If you construct your definitions in such a way that you can prove theorems from them (e.g., "when I use the word justice, I use it to mean this and only this..."), nobody else agrees with them, so they needn't even bother to read your conclusions. If you let everyday usage determine your definitions (e.g., "when I use the word justice, I use it to mean whatever most people usually mean when they say justice"), then the axioms start out containing internal contradictions, so there's no point in trying to prove anything from them except that you can't make any progress that way either. As I see it, the main benefit of thousands of years of recorded arguing about ethics is that it has created a large body of standard questions we can ask each other and ourselves to better determine what it is that we actually think. What it is that we *ought* to think is something I feel strongly will always be confined to the realm of pure imagination.

    That is what I mean by what you describe as my "assertion of the essential illogic of moral philosophy" -- it's not that moral philosophy violates the principles of logic, it's that it exists entirely outside the realm of logic. It's more alogical or prelogical than illogical. You cannot use logic to determine what your axioms ought to be; you can only use logic once you have axioms. Morality has always been at root an argument about what axioms should be, so logic is simply not available as a tool. Only by playing upon the emotions of the audience -- whether hope or fear, pride or shame, anger or satisfaction -- has any change in moral axioms ever been successfully advocated. The history of moral philosophy contains a great deal of attempted logic, which I certainly have not missed; it just happens not to be very relevant because said logic was never really applicable to the discussion in the first place. Yes, you can certainly use logic to say which consequences result from a set of axioms, but you cannot use logic to say which consequences are *better* than others. There is ample scope for logic in how one uses the rankings, but not in how they are made.

  2. #42
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rowan View Post
    Would fantasy be so attractive if it were not so often a struggle between Good and Evil or their various shades?
    It would be a great deal more attractive if it never mentioned the ideas of good and evil ever again.

  3. #43
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rowan View Post
    Just and virtuous rulership is bad rulership? Howso?
    "I pride myself on my honor, but I do not deceive myself into thinking personal honor and the honor of a regent are the same thing. A regent does what she must to keep her realm secure -- to do less would be dishonorable and dangerous. As a result, a regent may resort to what seem like dishonorable or questionable actions in order to preserve the integrity of her realm." -- Marlae Roesone, Book of Regency, page 53.

    That's a canon good guy who knows Machiavelli was right!

  4. #44
    Site Moderator AndrewTall's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ryancaveney View Post
    It would be a great deal more attractive if it never mentioned the ideas of good and evil ever again.
    Except of course that one of the common arguments used against some of the detractors is precisely that roleplaying does (or more accurately can be used to) teach about good vs evil - generally good being used to mean opposing greed, cruelty, wanton destruction, and supporting teamplay.

    Hmmm, I need to revise the alignments of some PC's in games I've dm'd...

    Some systems of thought do look for fairly broad-brush ideals that appear common in all societies, generally these are not good and evil in the classical sense but come down (in terms of good morals for the general population to have rather than specific individuals) to 'honesty is good as long term lying is counter productive', 'reciprocity is good as it encourages trust and mutual support' and the like however drawing up such a system would probably exclude much of what is commonly terms as good and often sacrifice 'ideals' for 'practicality'.

    Much morality is of course relative rather than absolute, many people today think that individualism and choosing ones destiny is good - many other cultures would decry such morality as chaos or selfishness. Similarly tolerance is seen as good to some cultures (generally stronger cultures) and abhorrent to others (generally weaker cultures fearing dilution/absorption). Almost all cultures see themselves as good by some ideals with the possible exception of those cultures which are actively ruled by terror.

    I'd suggest to people wanting to use good and evil in their campaigns that they draw up some 'obvious truths' that mark a person as good (i.e. killing any who insult your honour, scorning inferiors and absolute obedience to superiors are good; granting mercy to surrendering foes and accepting religious free will are evil) and then asking players to pick alignments based thereon.

    My own tuppence on fantasy filling the good vs evil void left by the absence of religion (an exaggeration of the quote admittedly) is that the only difference nowadays is that the author doesn't claim divine truth supports their work... My main trouble with religious morality tends to be that the logic chain (in the rare cases that it is present) tend to be connected to unsubstantiated supporting 'facts' and as such the logic of the chain of sequential thought is therefore irrelevant.
    Last edited by AndrewTall; 02-13-2008 at 10:58 PM.

  5. #45
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    Ryan, do you dismiss the concept of "self-evident truths?"

    It would be a great deal more attractive if it never mentioned the ideas of good and evil ever again.
    I recognize that you and others might like it this way; I have merely asserted that most people wouldn't agree. Were those elements to be removed from fantasy, I doubt it would survive long in the mainstream. I can't think of anything widely acclaimed as "good" or "popular fantasy" that doesn't deal primarily with the struggle between good and evil.

    That's a canon good guy who knows Machiavelli was right!
    Well, Machiavelli made the state the highest good AND made individual persons all but irrelevant in the context of the state's good. I don't know that that was what Marlae was going on about. Personal honor usually involves recognizing the worth and dignity of others. I agree that "good" rulers may commit some evil, but the idealistic test (what Augustinian was getting at) is that they seek to do the least evil possible and only to prevent greater evil. In that case, the least evil, as necessary, becomes a sort of good. Perhaps not intrinsically good, but intentionally good.

  6. #46
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    Quote Originally Posted by AndrewTall View Post
    generally good being used to mean opposing greed, cruelty, wanton destruction, and supporting teamplay. Hmmm, I need to revise the alignments of some PC's in games I've dm'd...
    As I read the alignment descriptions in the PHB, the standard dungeon crawl adventuring party, paladins included, is obviously Chaotic Evil -- they invade people's homes, kill them and take their stuff, because they seek personal power and glory. "But orcs are evil!" is just a rationalization for the selfsame acts of theft and murder which they claim to be preventing or avenging.

  7. #47
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rowan View Post
    Ryan, do you dismiss the concept of "self-evident truths?"
    Ah, truth. What constitutes truth for me is "confirmed to within expected statistical error by the great majority of well-conducted experiments." As such, it pretty much applies only to science, and inherently contains the idea that improved experimental technique in the future could prove wrong everything we thought we knew for sure. As far as people and the morality of actions are concerned, the closest we can approach to this is to ask them what they think is bad and why, and measure whether their actions accord with their stated beliefs. By this standard, the only evident truths about murder is that some people do in fact commit it, and most people would rather it not happen to them. Everything beyond that -- is state-sanctioned killing in war permissible? what about the death penalty for those who commit murder? how does one reconcile "thou shalt not kill" with "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live"? is abortion murder or not? how about euthanasia? is it allowed to kill a burglar in your home? -- is evidently a matter of great disagreement, and always has been. We can measure -- that is, learn the truth about -- what moral systems currently exist, but we can never measure -- that is, learn the truth about -- which hypothetical ones "ought" to exist, or which current one is "better" than the others.

    If you look up my user profile on the web site, you will see that I am a physicist who currently resides in Manassas, Virginia. As a physicist, trained in quantum mechanics and general relativity, it is painfully clear to me that what seems most self-evidently true is often utterly false, and the real truth is often too strange to be self-evident to anyone. As a resident of a town in Jefferson's home state which is famous only for a pair of battles fought here during the U.S. Civil War, it is equally clear that the reason for that war and basically all politics before or since is deep disagreement over which ideas are considered truths, and which so-called truths deserve to be considered more self-evident than others.

    In Birthright, given the requirement to have a bloodline to collect the RP necessary for most domain actions, one would think that the divine right of kings was even more self-evidently true in Cerilia than it used to be thought to be in Europe. Yet there are still many discussions to be found in the archives over how to represent republics and other non-monarchical governments with BR domain rules, and I can have a perfectly fine, purely monarchist BR game without believing there were ever gods to bestow divine right on anything.

    Quote Originally Posted by Rowan View Post
    the idealistic test (what Augustinian was getting at) is that they seek to do the least evil possible and only to prevent greater evil.
    Except that as I have been saying, there is little general agreement on how to go about doing the least evil. Politicians and pundits who demonize each other's ideas are really just disagreeing about what evil is in their opinion the lesser one.

  8. #48
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
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    A realist approach to game design is to look at how the game world works (by looking at the core mechanics, such as bloodline, domains, setting history, and then the gods/temples and their ideologies) and construct an ethics based on the setting.

    Its a role playing game. I don't role play to just re-enact my real life (and its values) in a cloak and borealis. Constructing a game ethics apart from my own is part of the role playing enterprise. So my birthright ethics (and there are presumably many) may be abhorrent to my real life.

    For example, honor and chivalry, fighting over perceived slights to honor, the whole noble warrior's code, is nothing I want for my own life. I don't want to fight my rivals in a physical contest to demonstrate my courage and prowess. I'm a middle class person, I want to avoid conflicts and settle disputes with words or just suck things up. The gentlemen's code which killed Alexander Hamilton strikes me as very cool for role playing, but a terrible code by which to live a life.

    There are things I want to be like the world I know. Basically anything that isn't determined by the setting's metaphysics (bloodlines, for example) should be like the real world, because its hard enough to invent new things for the things that are new (like explaining how elf or goblin domains work). I want a familiar politics, because accounting for Haelyn, Roele, and the rest is hard enough.

  9. #49
    Birthright Developer irdeggman's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ryancaveney View Post
    Ah, truth. What constitutes truth for me is "confirmed to within expected statistical error by the great majority of well-conducted experiments."
    Wait isn't that better "classified" as "fact" and not "truth"?

    The two are not necessarily the same thing.

    The data involving the use of lie-detectors (I just love Myth Busters) proves (at least as well as can be done with a limited laboratoy data set) that it is possible to tell "the truth" without it being "factual".

    One of my favorite comparisons is when talking about the Bible.

    "Everything in there is the truth, and some of it actually happened."

    Focusing on the difference between "truth" and "fact".
    Duane Eggert

  10. #50
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
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    Truth refers to things that are true. For Aristotle, poetry was a better guide to truth than history, because history was filled with contravening evidence. A psychopath who murders his family and has no remorse is a fact, but it doesn't invalidate the truth that people hold their families as their greatest loyalty. A psychopath by definition has no remorse for his bad acts. But examining facts in history (or real life) to establish truths (universals) requires that you explain all of the exceptions. In poetry (by which Aristotle means what we would call literature), the author has stripped away evidence that undermines his main theme.

    Another way of putting it is that truth is not concerned with the single fact, but with the accumulation of all facts. Math people would refer to these exceptions as outliers.

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