I miss CG

[ProfessorCirno]

Have you even read the relevant documents? The US Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, the US Bill of Rights and the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers are nothing but legalism. Granted it took ten years to go from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution, but even the articles themselves were a legalist document.

Not to mention that Jefferson and Franklin were famous in Europe. Heck, one of the issues that lead to everything blowing up is that people (both in the American Colonies and the Continent) were pissed off that Parliament treated Franklin like he was some idiot country bumpkin. The root source of the American War of Independence was that the people living in the colonies were sick of colonialism and actually wanted their rights and prerogatives under British law.

That's nice.

It also has nothing to do with what I said.

Talk to me about the Sons of Liberty and their actions. Talk to me about the Boston Tea Party.

 

[muffin_of_chaos]

You keep trying to draw these fine distinctions that don't really matter to much. I feel quite comfortable in saying that both "devoted to the idea of Chaos" and "Actually Chaotic" can be described as "chaotic" in any edition of the game. These and many other variations on a chaotic disposition or belief system can all be classified as chaotic. You certainly wouldn't describe "devoted to the idea of Chaos" as lawful.

Actually, I could. I probably won't, because it doesn't fit in with the new edition, but I could.

Apparently in the new edition the best we are expected to be able to do is 'unaligned'?

Yeah...there are so many different kinds of "being devoted to chaos" that pinning them into one alignment doesn't make much sense to me. And no one is really devoted to chaos, because it takes an organized mind to be devoted, and an organized mind devoted to chaos would be forced to go insane if they are actually devoted to chaos and not some weird ideal of chaotic action.

If intentionality is the be all end all of evil actions, then by your own admission hardly anyone ever does anything that is evil. This seems to me to cause everything to fall apart, because here you are claiming that an act is only evil based on its intentions but that most peoples intentions are good.

I actually don't think most people's intentions are good. Is that your own contention?

And yet you also seem willing to claim that you can identify the evil consequences of an action. If evil was really defined by its intentionality, how would you ever identify those evil consequences? Surely you could only recognize evil from its motives if evil really was solely defined by its intention. So you must in fact believe that there is some intrinsic quality to things other than how people intended them. And if so, then it seems to me that we can use those instrinsic qualities to define evil. If we don't, then things really do fall apart, because we would be forced to say things like, "Murdering children is not an evil action, it just might have evil consequences."

If you're asking how we can decide whether others are good or evil, I'd argue that we can't. I don't see this as an issue when we're talking about a stat on a character sheet that presumably no other character can see.
You seem to be claiming that the ends define the means. Which I find odd.

And in any event, quite a few people smarter than I have created rigorously argued philosophies of objectivism. It seems to me that in a fantasy world were good and evil objectively exist that objectivism is likely to be the rule of the day.

Objectivism is an interesting idea. Accepting it means that you will never be able to understand moral truth, ever, by the nature of being human. Therefore, any absolute objective moral truth you think that you are right concerning, you are automatically wrong. You cannot consciously do good acts and you cannot do evil acts because you must acknowledge that you can never know the truth unless you take it on the authority of someone else, and then you are rejecting objectivity. Theorists can claim that there is a moral truth, but they'll never understand what it is, and if they will never understand what it is, they'll prescribe to false principles. Even if it's a true idea, it's also completely useless as far as determining moral action.
This still has nothing to do with the actual argument, unfortunately.

No, I'm talking about either one. It seems to me that either the lawful/evil person or the lawfully evil person or the evilly lawful person are all best put in the ethical bucket 'lawful evil'. It's a big bucket, with plenty of room for all sorts of different beliefs and degrees of extremism or sincerety. But I really don't see how a bucket labelled anything else is more descriptive of a person who is lawful and evil.

Emphasis mine.

What the new system does is take away some buckets on justifications "you can't really draw a fine disctinction between nuetral good and chaotic good". But I find that buckets like 'Chaotic Good', 'Chaotic Neutral', 'Lawful Neutral', and 'Lawful Evil' in fact do describe distinctions in belief that make them distinguishable.

Unfortunately, there are so many varieties of each due to the complexity of one's nature with order and chaos that I don't think they're really descriptive at all; the only method by which they're descriptive is when they in fact previously prescribed stereotyped Lawful and Chaotic actions (uphold the man-made law or free the peoplez).

I quite willing to agree that you cannot know with a high degree of accuracy when you are or are not doing good or evil actions, and I'm quite willing to agree that no one knows how to act. Neither attack much undermines my position, much less that of a person who is lawfully inclined. Afterall, the fundamental implied tenent behind most lawful philosophies begins something like, "Humans, being of such limited wisdom and perception, are unable to act righteously even if they intend to do so. Therefore a wise teacher has been provided who will provide rules of conduct such that those that obey them will do good and refrain from evil. Trust therefore in these laws even when you do not see a clear path."

Ok...this has nothing to do with whether or not they are actually acting in a good or evil fashion. If it did, good and evil would be defined by causal chains that stretch back into an infinite regress. And those things just suck...
Accepting determinism as a basis for moral philosophy? Doesn't work.

Which would be alright if they didn't also throw in buckets like 'lawful good' and 'chaotic evil'.

This is only a problem if you accept the outdated definitions of lawful and chaotic.

What I'm arguing is that the new system is both suckier (less logical, less thought provoking, less useful) than the old system, and that it is suckier even than having a single axis system with three buckets (good, unaligned, and evil perhaps). In fact, it may even be suckier than having no system at all.

But you've yet to actually give evidence of why the suckiness is sucky.
Anyway, I'd argue that it's more logical (there's no "bucket" that covers a multitude of differing philosophies), more thought provoking (blanket statements of Lawful and Chaotic tend towards defining people into stereotyped personas based on said alignment), and more useful (having no system of alignment has always been more fun than having a system, and this is closer to that if not actually that).

Well, if they did, then they'd be aligned with something right? If you don't have a philosophy how can you feel bad about not doing what you think you ought to do? And if you think you ought to do something, surely that means that you are aligned with something even if weakly.

Unaligned would be anyone who doesn't have a 100% chance of aligning with good or evil under pressure. You can be sort of aligned, but that doesn't make you fully aligned. That's where Unaligned comes in, where alignment goes out the window as mattering.

No it isn't. Hyperdimensionality is a hard concept to grasp. The tri-unity of the Christian God is a hard concept to grasp. Quantum mechanics is a hard concept to grasp. This stuff is still child's play.

Glad to hear it.
What's strange and conflicting is: I agree.

 

[Krensky]

That's nice.

It also has nothing to do with what I said.

Talk to me about the Sons of Liberty and their actions. Talk to me about the Boston Tea Party.

It has everything to do with your comment about your comments that the United States didn't become legalist until much later.

 

[JetstreamGW]

Here is my take.

LG and CE are just descriptors of certain types.

I agree, however, I'd be a little more... classic... with the look of the chart


Also, before anyone says it, I know I"m using the yin yang improperly, I just thought the shape lent itself well to illustrating the point.

I even managed to make something akin to an unaligned graph. Yay, I made paint serve my whim!

 

[ProfessorCirno]

It has everything to do with your comment about your comments that the United States didn't become legalist until much later.

So what, we're agreeing that the chaotic behavior of rebelling against the government (who DID try to help the colonies out and DID repeal some of the taxes sent towards them) led to a Lawful government?

Not entirely unheard of ;p

Besides which, come on, Sons of Liberty! Your thoughts?

 

[pemerton]

I'm pretty sure defending your homeland, your neighbors, and your family, is.

As someone upthread pointed out, this premise entails that nearly every act of guerilla violence is good. That is a claim which is controversial (I can give examples if desired, but I think that, given the board rules, it may be safer not to).

if a law is evil, then a lawful good person works to change the law or better the society.

Why would a Chaotic Good person not do the same, if that was the most effective way to ensure the wellbeing of those affected by the laws?

Assuming only you assume 'freedom' is a thing of enherent absolute goodness. Our American society holds it as such for what I think are good and sufficient reasons

<snip>

Do you advocate that policeman should break down doors without due process any time they suspect a crime may have been committed?

So is a belief in constitutional government and the freedom that it ensures Chaotic (as the first bit of the quote suggests) or lawful (as the second bit suggests)?

The Boston Tea Party is particularly apt because, among other things...

<snip>

c) The ethical standard by which the participants justified thier act, that a tax is not moral if it is imposed without the (presumably majority) consent of the persons being taxed ('No taxation without representation!'), was not only a wholy novel idea, but one an inherently 'chaotic' one is as much as it claims social or civic authority is subservient to the individual right to choose.

d) The British Empire against which the colonist were revolting was so far from being an extremely unjust, unfair, unrepresentative, and tyrannical state that it could probably have been considered the most just, most fair, most representative, and least tyrannical empire that hithertoo the world had ever seen. This is afterall the same empire which is by this time more or less jointly run by an elected Parliment, gaurantees basic rights to its citizens, and will shortly use its naval power to end maritime slave trafficing the world over.

Both (c) and (d) make controversial claims (eg about the novelty of the political principle, about the democratic character of the United Kingdom and its empire, about the justice of that empire, etc).

Also, if "no taxation without representation" and associated beliefs in constitutional government are Chaotic, then what sorts of government does a Lawful Good person support? Despotism?

Again, lawful evil exists. I'm pretty sure it's against the law in Germany to say otherwise.

The suggestion that National Socialism is Lawful Evil is highly controversial. For example, Lon Fuller's famous debate with HLA Hart was over the question as to whether or not the National Socialist regime had laws. Fuller denied that it did - which suggests that, by D&D standards, it was in fact Chaotic.

Some where chaotic good - fighting to defend others. Some were chaotic evil - fighting to remove the law. One is good, one is evil, but both team up because they both hate the very lawful evil nazis.

The notion that the Resistance fought the Germans because they hated dictatorship per se is silly - after all, a number of them were Communists who were hoping to establish a dictatorship. They mostly fought the Germans because they wanted self-government (ie for much the same reason as the French fought the Germans in the 19th century even though the German government of the time was probably no more despotic than the French, or as the Partisans fought the Germans in the same war, or as the Spanish fought Napoleon's armies in an earlier war).

As Good (capital g) is commonly understood in the West, the less benefit you derive from helping someone, the more Good it is.

I'm not sure exactly who "the West" is here, but this notion seems somewhat simplistic. For example, the standard understanding of early modern Protestant moral theology is that what is good is the pursuit of one's own benefit (see, eg, Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism). This assertion is also an important part of the rhetoric of most contemporary political parties in the English speaking world (espcially those of the Right and Centre Right). This is also a presupposition of most contemporary economic theory that all individual action is aimed at increasing that individual's personal utility - and this is one of the most important theoretical influences on contemporary public polilcy. But it is controversial to say, I think, that those who design and implement this policy are opposing Good.

That is, all your arguments seem to indicate that you think lawfulness is an unseparatable component of goodness.

Others who have believed this (or something like it) are Lon Fuller, EP Thompson, and most proponents of constitutional government. The traditional D&D alignment system, by presupposing without argument that Law and Good are independent notions, commits itself to a very controversial position in moral and legal philosophy. That is just one of the difficulties that the traditional system faces.

Put at the extreme - how can changing the laws be lawful behaviour?

This is a very good point. A whole lot of this discussion seems to assume that certain contemporary social and political beliefs and experiences (primarily, those one has in the US) are universal. In fact, they are rather particular. And also rather difficult to project onto pseudo-medieval society.

For most of human history, slavery was practiced as a part of normal human society

For most of human history nothing like contemporary constitutional government existed. Indeed, for most of human (pre-)history nothing like government existed. Attention to the historical diversity of the forms of human life is a good reason for abandoing any notion of a nine-place alignment system that is able to properly classify the moral significance of all human behaviour.

Immanuel Kant[/url] would be highly disappointed in your shortsightedness. Considering it's a major school of philosophy dedicated to the idea that Good and Evil are objective and intention independent yet can be ascertained through rational thought I would say your philosophical horizon is rather narrow.

Actually, Kant thinks that intention (ie the content of the will, the maxim in accordance with which one acts) is crucial to the moral character of action. He is perhaps the most thorough-going anti-consequentialist in the European tradition.

What is objective, according to Kant, is the rightness (or at least permissibility) of maxims which accord with the Categorical Imperative and the wrongness of maxims which do not.

Even philosophers who disagree with Kant do not contend objective ethics structures create inability to define moral action.

I am a philosopher who disagrees with Kant. I don't understand the phrase "objective ethics structures create inability to define moral action" so I don't know if I contend that it is the case or not.

I do think that if, in order to apply the D&D alignment system, one has to agree with Kant, then that is an objection to it, because Kant is controversial.

A bigger objection to the system is that, in order to apply it, the players of the game have to agree on a wide range of moral propositions, the truth value of which cannot simply be read off the genre. If the new system will remedy this problem, by only defining alignments which are adequately characterised by the genre, then it will be a signficiant improvement.

 

[pemerton]

Have you even read the relevant documents? The US Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, the US Bill of Rights and the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers are nothing but legalism. Granted it took ten years to go from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution, but even the articles themselves were a legalist document.

Not to mention that Jefferson and Franklin were famous in Europe. Heck, one of the issues that lead to everything blowing up is that people (both in the American Colonies and the Continent) were pissed off that Parliament treated Franklin like he was some idiot country bumpkin. The root source of the American War of Independence was that the people living in the colonies were sick of colonialism and actually wanted their rights and prerogatives under British law.

Good post. Given that individual posters cannot, in their own posts, maintain consistency as to whether constitutionalism is a Lawful or a Chaotic notion, their assertions that the difference between Law and Chaos is unequivocal strike me as dubious.

 

[Celebrim]

So is a belief in constitutional government and the freedom that it ensures Chaotic (as the first bit of the quote suggests) or lawful (as the second bit suggests)?

The American constitutional document is an attempt to enshrine values that are in D&D terms enherently chaotic and born in large part out of a generation of radicalism and rebellion. Of course, the framer's themselves would not have for the most part used the term 'enshrine' as I have, as the never intended or expected the document to be enduring and socially protected in quite the context 'enshrine' implies. So what you have in America is something of an apparant contridiction, in that for example 'conservative' economic values in America are what in most parts of the world are called 'liberal'. In America we have an essentially Libertarian system which is codified in an increasingly baroque system of laws. For example, you won't find hardly anywhere that has quite the same values of 'Freedom of Speach' as the American system, nor will you find hardly anywhere that has quite the same commitment to individual gun rights as America. Likewise, the United States isn't a single unified government, but a patchwork quilt of governments and laws with degrees of sovereignty going all the way down to the local level. It is almost unique in this. A person from France would probably be shocked to learn that local elected officials - Sheriffs - with a constuiency of a few thousands in some cases can in practice and theory excercise soveriegn jurisdiction rights within thier county. France, for those that don't know, has a single national police system.

Of course, this originally vibrant and Libertarian system is increasingly ossifying, but that doesn't change its original character - minimalist, individualist, and populist.

And sure, not every founder could be said to have a chaotic disposition in D&D terms. Notably, men like Washington and Hamilton are classic examples of 'lawful' minded individuals. But on the whole, the country was founded by a bunch of radical firebrands.

Both (c) and (d) make controversial claims (eg about the novelty of the political principle, about the democratic character of the United Kingdom and its empire, about the justice of that empire, etc).

It's hard to make a claim that isn't controversial, but I'm prepared to defend them.

Also, if "no taxation without representation" and associated beliefs in constitutional government are Chaotic, then what sorts of government does a Lawful Good person support? Despotism?

More or less, yes. Lawful minded individuals always favor government by the few, by the able, or by the elect. Rule by the mob is always feared by the lawful minded. Democracy is not an inherently 'lawful' system of government in the D&D sense of the word. A lawful person in an existing democratic system can have allegiance to that system, even an unwavering one, but then again a lawful system can have a chaotic ruler too. Nothing forbids things getting complicated and messy, and in a realisticly detailed system we would expect them to.

I think you get a good contrast in how a chaotic system views the law when you notice that the Constitution is subject to ammendment, and not just ammendment by anyone or someone, but by everyone. Contrast that with the account of the government of Persia recorded in the Book of Daniel, where it reports that the law 'of the Medes and Persians' was by inflexible custom not even overturnable by the sovereign ruler who excercised by todays standards virtually unlimited autocratic authority. I think it is pretty easy to see which system holds the law and which individuality on the higher platform. We have no notions of irrevocable law. We largely take for granted that all customs are overturnable. We even have a word 'fashion' which refers to the customs that change with the seasons according to whim.

The suggestion that National Socialism is Lawful Evil is highly controversial. For example, Lon Fuller's famous debate with HLA Hart was over the question as to whether or not the National Socialist regime had laws. Fuller denied that it did - which suggests that, by D&D standards, it was in fact Chaotic.

I would strongly agree that the leadership of the Nazi party were highly 'chaotic' individuals for the most part who governed not through laws but rather through personal relationships and decrees. However, this core 'chaotic evil' leadership harnessed the naturally highly organized culture of the German people which on the whole was lawful in inclination to set up a very efficient police state. So again, you have a tension in that you can't easily classify the whole system, but bits and peices of it are quite clear.

I'm not sure exactly who "the West" is here, but this notion seems somewhat simplistic.

Well, of course it is. What am I supposed to be doing, writing a book?

For example, the standard understanding of early modern Protestant moral theology is that what is good is the pursuit of one's own benefit (see, eg, Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism).

While that is true, its easily dismissed by noting that you've substituted 'what is good' for the essential question, 'what is most good'. Protestantism broke to a certain extent from traditional Christianity by denying the inherent moral value of poverty, reading for example the beautitudes as 'blessed are the poor in spirit' rather than 'blessed are the poor', but it did not in doing so claim that charity to strangers was rendered less good than miserliness. Rather it moved prosperity up into the virtuous category without displacing charity as a value.

This assertion is also an important part of the rhetoric of most contemporary political parties in the English speaking world (espcially those of the Right and Centre Right). This is also a presupposition of most contemporary economic theory that all individual action is aimed at increasing that individual's personal utility - and this is one of the most important theoretical influences on contemporary public polilcy. But it is controversial to say, I think, that those who design and implement this policy are opposing Good.

I don't think it is necessary to suggest that to suggest that in the ideal the West holds altruism as being more virtuous than mere prosperity, even if in practice we may celebrate something different.

Others who have believed this (or something like it) are Lon Fuller, EP Thompson, and most proponents of constitutional government.

Then in D&D terms we would hold that those individuals are lawful good.

The traditional D&D alignment system, by presupposing without argument that Law and Good are independent notions, commits itself to a very controversial position in moral and legal philosophy.

Woah. Woah. Woah. The traditional D&D alignment rules make no argument that good and law are independent notions. In fact, if anything traditionally, D&D has had as its implied assumption - perhaps in error and perhaps not - that 'lawful good' is more good than other sorts of good. D&D has traditionally reserved its most saintly and virtuous descriptions for the followers of 'lawful good'. So I don't think you can argue that at all.

I think primarily, the traditional D&D alignment system makes no argument about which moral philosophy is the 'right' one. It traditionally has not forced you to play anything, and in particular in earlier systems only very weakly or not at all encouraged you to play 'Good' or choose 'goodness'. As far as the D&D alignment system is concerned, any of the nine subgroups could be righly aligned at the top of the chart as the most correct set of beliefs. It isn't forcing a particular interpretation on you. It is merely suggesting that for the purposes of fantasy, these are useful philosophical groupings, and that you can only get further with them by examining the philosophical and literary value of terms like 'good', 'evil', 'law', and 'chaos'. Certainly there is nothing within the D&D system which suggests that the adherents of the various philosophies with in the game universe admit the truth of say 'Nuetral Good' as the highest good if they themselves believe something different. Perhaps it could be that real goodness as you define it is found by embracing the tenents of law and evil, and not the one conventionally labeled 'good' at all.

In fact, this balance between the systems was so inherent in 1st edition AD&D that I was convinced shortly after encountering it that the designer of the cosmology had to be a student of Hinduism, Taoism or one of the other Eastern religions promoting 'harmony' as its highest virtue.

This is a very good point. A whole lot of this discussion seems to assume that certain contemporary social and political beliefs and experiences (primarily, those one has in the US) are universal. In fact, they are rather particular. And also rather difficult to project onto pseudo-medieval society.

It is obviously true to me that the particulars of the US culture and government are extremely particular. In fact, I dare say that I believe them to be more particular than you do unless you are a particularly 'extremist' sort of person yourself. But it is not at all obviously true to me that any argument I'm making depends on these particulars, and I've repeatedly made reference to other systems and cultures separated from modern America in both time and space.

For most of human history nothing like contemporary constitutional government existed. Indeed, for most of human (pre-)history nothing like government existed.

Agreed, and agreed.

Attention to the historical diversity of the forms of human life is a good reason for abandoing any notion of a nine-place alignment system that is able to properly classify the moral significance of all human behaviour.

Even to the extent that I agree with you, I don't see how that follows from what you've said. More ancient systems are actually typically easier to classify than more recent ones by the virtue of the fact that they are generally much simplier, much less internally diverse, much smaller, and so forth.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Pemerton: This is why posting in the wee hours of the morning leads to misunderstandings. I'll try to explain my positions on the matter more fully.

Actually, Kant thinks that intention (ie the content of the will, the maxim in accordance with which one acts) is crucial to the moral character of action. He is perhaps the most thorough-going anti-consequentialist in the European tradition.

We aren't so much disagreeing here on terminology. You are drawing a hard line between Maxim and act whereas my readings of Kant always tended to give the impression Maxim and Act are one and the same at a certain level. For example, the Maxim: Humans must always be considered not a means but an end in themselves. This maxim is like a metatemplate for actions. All acts which consider humans as ends in themselves are Good, those which consider humans a means to an end are Evil (to use D&D terms). The Maxims are broad categories which could be broken down into individual self-contained Maxim/Action units. Similarly while it's probably me who is using the term wrongly Consequentialism is not what I was attempting to convey. I was moving from deontological rather than consequentialist reasoning. That the Alignment system of 3e/etc. were deontological absolutist systems in which the moral weight of the act is purely in the act not the results thereof. We can see this in the older system from the objective and material nature of alignment in the mechanics. Kant was both an objectivist and an absolutist, the only issue really is that his insistence on intent was a result of the free will/determinism conflict. Which in certain contexts strikes me as missing it's own point, this is one of them. The quality of individual actions having an objective, absolute, and quantifiable morality in themselves independent of intent does not preclude free will. The ability to act in an unconstrained and non-deterministic fashion is preserved. What causes a fit is that modeling certain religious systems they have presupposed unequal weights between the Good and Evil ends of the moral spectrum and assigned differing validity to them based on this. Mostly in postulates that benevolance is an integral or foundational part of free will.

I am a philosopher who disagrees with Kant. I don't understand the phrase "objective ethics structures create inability to define moral action" so I don't know if I contend that it is the case or not.

This was one of those early in the morning garbles. I was responding to an argument from what seemed to be a primarily utilitarian view that objective ethics cannot be judged because there is no way to know their consequences. What I was attempting to convey is that the morality of actions do not become undefined or imperceivable in a system that holds to an objective morality standard. It's the criteria by which they may be known that change. An system such as Kant's or the 3e Alignment system does not operate on a consequentialist basis thus it cannot be measured using consequentialist criteria. But that does not mean it cannot be measured at all. Muffin of Chaos was attempting to evaluate the morality using improper criteria for that particular system and coming up with a null value answer. Expected, but he jumps to the conclusion that because one set of criteria give no value all must give no value.

A bigger objection to the system is that, in order to apply it, the players of the game have to agree on a wide range of moral propositions, the truth value of which cannot simply be read off the genre. If the new system will remedy this problem, by only defining alignments which are adequately characterised by the genre, then it will be a signficiant improvement.

No arguing with you here in that such a simplification seriously cuts down on potential discord. I just hate to see such a full system, with such a unique basis and ideas go away. Especially when it's a system that can cause a game to spawn serious philosophical considerations on the nature of morality. And especially that its constraints and nature are so different than RL.

 

[Hambot]

I am so glad that alignment is back to its original intent - to give you a framework to imagine your characters overall world view, before you leave it behind and create their personality and actions.

I like playing D&D.

I don't like playing "your neutral good character wouldn't stab that tied up goblin in the head because he has good in his alignment descriptor. The fact that he was killed by goblins 10 days ago is irrelevant because he would see them as being like simple animals. He wakes up and can't cast druid spells any more because his god abandons him."