Does evil exist?

[112233]

"Entropy is the natural tendency of all things to disintegrate. Evil is the addition of intention to that process. Hate is like cold. It has an end. Love is like heat. It does not."

---AAM

 

[PowerfulMedicine]

How would you define "evil"? And on that note, how would you define "morality" and what does an "objective morality" entail?

Well I already gave my definition of evil, but I'll repeat it:

Evil is when a being who is both aware of and in control of their actions purposefully causes undue harm to another living being.

I see morality as the ability to conceive of and differentiate between the concepts of good and evil and to act accordingly based on the capacity for empathy.

And objective morality is most easily defined by what it is not. In the case of the genocide or hate crime perpetrator, the moral code of the perpetrator is defined such that they are not evil. This is subjective since another person may disagree. It only pertains to this particular situation. While anyone who can analyze the situation from the standpoint of reason will see the perpetrator as committing an act of "evil". This is objective morality.

So I guess subjective morality would be morality as defined relative to a specific person or situation. Since there are many subjective ideas of morality and many of these ideas contradict each other, some ideas regarding morality must be wrong. Objective morality is a unified idea of morality that is logically coherent. I see it as the ultimate form of morality because it is unaffected by the bias of the individual or society.

I also agree that "evil" is a construct of the human mind. But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist amongst the ranks of those who can understand what "evil" means. As long as "evil" is strictly defined, it can exist in objective reality. "Evil" is not just an abstract concept. In an objective and dichotomous sense, it can be thought of as the classification for a well constrained set of behaviors.

 

[thymamai]

Matt Groening. Anybody ever read his Life in Hell comics? Brilliant.

We are trapped in linguistic concepts. All that "is" is metaphor.

But metaphor is a linguistic device that compares two seemingly unrelated subjects in order to demonstrate some similarity. If that is all that is, then language is all there is.

I understand that you mean that language is limiting, but we would be far more limited without language. How could we make quasi-metaphysical statements without language?:thumb_up:

How delightfully nerdy. Like poetry annotating a mathematics text.

Language is limited. Limited. That it is only useful to an extent, whereby it transmogrifies itself into just so many oats and carrots.

And, just to be sure, by language I am not talking about body language, territorial pissings, morse code, photosynthesis, the digestive system, culinary arts, ecology, honorifics, trade regulations, pheramones or anything but talking, or typing as it were.
Thumbs up too, brother.