Is there an objective difference between good and evil?

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Good and evil, they are a running theme through out Literature, Politics, Philosophy, and Religion. I would say that most people can draw an intuitive distinction. But is there an objective criteria, a litmus test, that could tell you if a given action or person is good or evil? Can anyone give me an objective difference between them? Or does it all grind down to the subjectivities of intention and interpretation?

No, everything is completely relative. One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.

Let's see, I'd say that the demarcation between good and evil would possibly be the following:

1) The accordance to a moral document that the speaker accepts. This can be somewhat objective, as the document can be analyzed, and provided that one does not hold to a strongly subjective hermeneutic.

2) There are rationalist theories of ethics, and according to these theories of ethics, the demarcation between the two is clear.

As for whether these are built upon intuitions, well, all weightings of evidence are built upon the intuition. So, I would deny the strong intuitive-objective divide that you would use, as what it often falls down to is that some people are better at formalizing their intuitions than others, and this holds for many subjects.

Everything? The above self-referencial statement seems rather absolute...

So - of what real use are the concepts of good an evil if their distinction depends entorely on the POV?

*Solinoure kicks himself for not having gotten around to reading his copy of "Godel, Escher, Bach" yet*

A good question, and I agree entirely with that criticism.

Here is where the subjectivity creeps in...

I suspect that the difference between good and evil boils down to the difference between better and worse.

Better and worse can be looked at a a scalar value where better > worse. But most things are not scalar, but rather many dimensional - and in many dimensions better and worse have no meaning.

So, it comes down to deciding what method you use to project the many dimensional down to one.

Some people would like to believe they know what is good and evil, but someone else may have come to the exact opposite conclusions of what good and evil are. Is there good and evil? Who knows, if you find out what is unequivocally good and evil, be sure to let me know as I am anxious to find out.

Well, the document is objective though, so it is an objective standard. Not only that, but there is nothing that a person cannot attempt to reject. Some people with Cotard's Syndrome reject their own existence! Now, we can say that these people are brain damaged, but some people would say that we, aspies/auties, are brain-damaged. So, to be honest, I do not see an objectivity issue, particularly given that the document can be argued from an objective position by some.

As for better and worse, well... that actually is more subjective than morality claims to be. Some people think it is better to have a lot of flowers as they are pretty and smell nice, others do not like flowers and are burdened by this due to the space necessary and possible allergies. Morality, however, tries to claim universality.

I share your anxious desire and determining this unequivocal difference is exactly the point of this thread.

I am hoping that dialog between aspergian minds will yeild some interesting outside-of-the-box thought on the subject.

Thanks for playing guys.

Made this. http://kxmode.deviantart.com/art/Truth-72919946

Last edited by kxmode on 05 Apr 2009, 7:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It is not the objectivity of the document the I question, but the choice of the document. Why choose one document over another? It is in the choosing of the document that the subjectivity infiltrates itself.

And it is for this reason that I quoted this from you:

Last edited by solinoure on 05 Apr 2009, 7:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

*sits next to hester and waits* I have also always had to conclude it is entirely subjective and circumstantial.

kxmode - to say that we have both good and evil in us, when we have yet to determine the objective diference between the concepts, is trite and useless.

But thanks for the lovely pictures...

Yes, but your question was about whether a difference could objectively be known. A document could knowledge, and some would argue that one actually does, and they use argumentation to promote one document over another. Now, we can easily say that there is no document that is better than another document, but we cannot say that it is logically impossible for this to be an objective grounding for determining X to be ethical or unethical.

The reason I used "that the speaker accepts" in my comment is not a matter of subjectivity, the speaker is presumably choosing what he thinks to be true to be the truth, but rather to clarify that I am not presenting a particular document for this position. Rather I am just presenting a logical possibility, to basically claim that a moral claim can piggyback off of the evidence for another position.

In any case, I also have countered that subjectivity enters the evaluation of all claims, however, I think that people of religion do claim that their religions are correct, and that they do or can use a level of rationalization that is acceptable for other branches of life. This does not mean that they are correct at all, but I am not going to dismiss a scripturalist off-hand in a discussion that is put forward without additional metaphysical claims.(you didn't say that religious beliefs couldn't hypothetically provide standards at all, even if you reject the idea that they do)

In any case, I submitted 2 possibilities, a scripturalist one because it is known, and the position of ethicists, who argue for rational ethics on many many occasions. Now we can argue that the field of ethics is uncertain, but we cannot say that they do not attempt to create rational understandings of ethics.

AG I don't think you are helping this very much and I have yet so see any completely objective distinction between good and evil proposed by you.

I appreciate and I am gratefull for your contributions, but too tell me that some people can make objective distinctions using criteria from a document that is otherwise arbitarily choosen I like building a versy solid building on a very weak foundation - it is ultimately useless. Likewise, to tell me that some ethisists attacked this problem in the past without at least outlining thier arguments is equaly useless.

So lets move from arguments from authority and get some possible criteria rolling. I'd propose some - but everyone I can think of, I can also discount.

I doubt in the very place that the terms "good" and "evil" do make any sense all.

We can say that something in a specific context for a goal harmful or neutral or supportive. But this not absolute. Let say in society of uneducated people the suppression of religious freedom could be seen as necessary for upholding the peace in the society and killing some religious dissidents is a lesser harm than a civil war. In this sense an atheist Great Inquisitor would be a reasonable handling person for the common good. In modern society religious suppression would be much more the cause of civil war.

When we try to understand our interest properly, I am certain that a reasonable society would be the logic consequence. So the question is not "Is it evil or good", but "Is it reasonable or not?".