Alignment myths?

[RainOfSteel]

Evil is so far as I'm concerned the absence of good in the actions of beings possessing a will. It remains evil whether or not anyone judges it evil.

Given: A person who has been traumatized into a total emotional and moral vacuum is operating in life on a minimum, hospitalized and barely capable of anything.

This person has no good in their heart in what little actions he/she might perform, such as talking to doctors and nurses, getting up and going to the bathroom (or using the bedpan), etc. This person has nothing in his/her heart.

In your definition, as provided above, this victimized person is evil just because the essentially meaning-free actions mentioned above had no good in them.

Every act is not evil. It cannot be - otherwise the game's assumptions on the subject of alignment break apart by the seams.

I think your assumptions of alignment break apart at the seams. Mine don't, and they work within the game just fine.

I'm going to go with Storm Raven on this one.

Everyone is impure, prone to evil, and unintentionally causing evil in the world does not equate to 'everyone is evil'.

Nor does the assertion that "Everyone is impure, prone to evil, [...]" equate with reality.

What we can point out here is that I don't know of any ancient ethical tradition that claims right intention, merely 'meaning well', is of such central importance on the subject of what is good and what is evil, what is right and what is wrong, that it overshadows all the others or is even first amongst all considerations. Right intentions alone don't make for right actions, and actions proceeding from right intentions can still be evil even if you didn't mean for them to happen. Innocent intentions don't make for innocent minds.

It isn't a matter of intentions by themselves being enough to specify that an act is right/good.

It is a matter of intentions by themselves being enough to specify that an act is not evil.

And as far as I know, the law won't excuse your folly just because you meant well.

It can, and it does. In many, many cases. It just isn't the most common occurrence.

I don't see why evil and good should be any radically different of things within a fantasy universe than they are in this universe, and it seems to me that fantasy good and evil is most interesting if it relates to how I see good and evil here.

You have just given an excellent and powerful argument for why alignments should be drop-kicked from the core game. Thank you.


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I can't think of an argument why a caster shouldn't know the spell's descriptor, but would be willing to listen to one.

I thought I just offered one. If you missed it, it went, "Because it is interesting."

If you don't mind me saying so, I think that's about the strongest argument for how things should work that can be made.

Certainly it is an argument. However, it is a strong one only for you.

I would agree with Felix. A spellcasting character knows the descriptors and attributes of a memorized spell unless there is reason to believe otherwise. Although I certainly agree it can be played the other way, I would certainly hope a DM who was doing so informed me of this prior to character creation.

 

[Celebrim]

And yet, that is exactly the way I have always read the rules.

I don't think you can fault the rules for your reading of them.

[*]Interpretation: That everyone is going to look at alignments in the same way.

I don't know that this is a myth so much, as very few people hold it.

I think the general problem I have with the 'alignment is useless' crowd, is that in my experience the one thing that is certainly more useless than having alignments is not having alignments. On all these issues, interpretation and what have you, you still have them without alignment. The difference is that you must deal with the problems without any guidelines at all and without any integration into the rule mechanics of the game. It seems to me that you are complaining that some guidelines require DM fiat, so you'd rather use DM fiat. I don't see a net advantage in that.

In any event, the problems you raise are hardly fatal, and in some cases they are trivial. For this you are excused on the grounds that if you haven't paid much attention to it, you are understably unable to say anything interesting about it.

[*]Straight-Jacket: So many DMs treat alignments as a form of straight-jacket. Ok, this is from my gaming in the 1e era, but as far as I am concerned, this is the root of my dissatisfaction with the alignment system.

I'm sure it is. Just as one can develop a poweful adversion to food if you get food poisoning from it and spent the night vomiting it up, you can understandably have a powerful adversion to alignment if it was the crux of some very bad DMing. But personally, I'd rather blame the bad DMing.

All of these problems and issues, and many more, are covered in Dragon magazine article For King and Country, by Paul Suttie, Issue 101.

I haven't bothered with alignments since reading this article, and I think they should be removed from the core game and made an optional part of the rules.

Thanks for the tip. I'll have to read the article when I get the chance.

Now, as for some of your other critiques

Negligence is not necessarily evil.

I think you are going to paint yourself into a corner with that claim if you follow long enough. 'Sloth' is one of the seven deadly sins. It's not particularly hard to make a case for its evilness.

Due dilligence in the middle of a forest? In a pseudo-medival or other type of historical fantasy setting?...You are presupposing that a lack of due dilligence in the context of the likely setting in which this scenario is taking place is a form of incompetence. It isn't. The whole idea of due dilligence isn't even going to exist in the setting in question.

You've some wierd ideas about history. Are you a student of history are are you pulling the claim that criminal culpability is a rather new and modern concept out of the air? Are you supposing that unless someone has plastic barrier tape that they can't be duefully dilligent?

Certainly it is an argument. However, it is a strong one only for you.

Oh, I agree that it is a matter of taste. But it is I think everyone's best and strongest argument. Why did you remove alignment from the game? Obviously, because you think that the game is more interesting that way. If you don't like alignment, ignore it. Many things can be dealt with that way. For me, you've not said anything convincing to get me to switch, but then I've clearly not said anything in this thread convincing to you either.

It is a matter of intentions by themselves being enough to specify that an act is not evil.

That quickly paints one into a corner as well. It's not hard to show that many of the great evils of the world were done by people who had, or who thought they had, the best and noblest of intentions.

Nor does the assertion that "Everyone is impure, prone to evil, [...]" equate with reality.

As I've said elsewhere in the thread, alot of people in the world's history would beg to disagree with you on that. But I'll leave them to do it, as this thread is already clearly on its way downhill.

Given: A person who has been traumatized into a total emotional and moral vacuum is operating in life on a minimum, hospitalized and barely capable of anything.

This person has no good in their heart in what little actions he/she might perform, such as talking to doctors and nurses, getting up and going to the bathroom (or using the bedpan), etc. This person has nothing in his/her heart.

In your definition, as provided above, this victimized person is evil just because the essentially meaning-free actions mentioned above had no good in them.

To a certain extent, this is a puzzle of the form, "If an immovable object counters and irrestible force, what happens?" Of course in these debates we tend to see it in the form that you've just given which is, after we boil it down, "If a person is evil, but they never do anything that is evil, are they really evil?" In the example you posit a person so traumatized that they are a total emotional and moral vacuum and have "no good in thier heart". You then proceed to give as examples of thier actions a person who is acting in large part according to minimal social norms, which isn't what we'd expect of someone who really had been traumatized to a point of being a total emotional and moral vacuum. Greeting ones doctors, acknowledging them as fellow beings, responding to question, cooperating and so forth all imply a certain ammount of remaining goodness, or at least orderliness. The vagueness disguises the problem it has. The natural responce to this objection would be to continue restricting the actions of the hypothetical person until they really represented complete uncaring. The problem with that is that you eventually must place the hypothetical person in a state of catatonia, at which point I can simply respond that the person in question has been traumatized to the point that they no longer possess a will and therefore doesn't fit into the claim I made in the first place.

I think realistically, if you are dealing with some one who has been traumatized to the point of being a moral and emotional vacuum, then either you get catatonia or else a strong tendency to sociopathic behavior. In short, actions are rarely if ever essentially meaning free, and if they are they imply that there is no will behind them. Such an individual in either case would be an excellent example of why compassion is often an appropriate response to evil.

 

[Slife]

To a certain extent, this is a puzzle of the form, "If an immovable object encounters an irresistable force, what happens?"

The irresistable force bounces. Or quantum tunnels through.

 

[Hussar]

According to whom? D&D or some other source?

I am speaking purely from a D&D RAW standpoint.



*snip*.

Actually, you are not. Please reread the section in the DMG regarding alignment change. It specifically states that you can have all the happy, happy joy joy thoughts in the world, but, if you still continue to eat puppies, you're evil.

I think the disconnect comes here partially because I separate alignment of a character from alignment of a given event. The character's alignment is a shorthand reference to how the character will likely react to a given circumstance. However, the alignment of an event is different. We cannot assign moral meaning to events that are purely hypothetical. The universe simply only cares about what is, not what might have been.

I don't believe that I'm painting myself in a corner here. Inaction, in and of itself, is morally neutral. Since you have no impact on the event in question, then how can you be evil or good? I did say that a good aligned character most certainly would be expected to try to save the child. However, not acting doesn't make him evil. It makes him amoral.

No one is going to comment on the saving the princess example?

 

[Celebrim]

I don't believe that I'm painting myself in a corner here. Inaction, in and of itself, is morally neutral. Since you have no impact on the event in question, then how can you be evil or good? I did say that a good aligned character most certainly would be expected to try to save the child. However, not acting doesn't make him evil. It makes him amoral.

Ok, you are correct.

The hardest thing about discussing alignment is shifting world views so radically when you move from one perspective or another.

No one is going to comment on the saving the princess example?

Your saving the Princess example is correct, or at least correct to the extent I think necessary, for the same reason that your counter to the claim the wood cutter is responcible for what the miller does with the wood. The discrete extent of the action is limited to period between the moment of the act of violition and the beginning of the next act of violition. The woodcutter can only be held accountable for the wood after it goes through the hands of the miller if the woodcutter when he performed the act of selling the wood knew what would happen to it. (Actually, I'm not sure that that is strictly true, and I've very tempted to start bringing the technical language of theology into this, but lets just say that even if it is not true it is sufficiently true for these purposes in the same way that pi=3.14159265 is not true but is generally sufficiently true for the purposes that you employ it.) On the other hand, the woodcutter is responcible for the tree falling by his hand because his was the last act of will in that chain of events.

If I can return to a counterexample someone else mentioned, if a Blackgaurd threatens to kill a child if the Paladin doesn't drop his weapon, the Paladin is not (even partially) responcible for the death of the child (doesn't have to atone at least, and again within what is sufficiently true for our purposes) if he doesn't drop his weapon, because that's not the last act of will in this chain of events and no one is responcible for the Blackgaurds actions but himself. The Paladin would, if he bothered to respond to such a threat at all, simply note that he cannot prevent the death of the child by either dropping or not dropping the weapon, and therefore what happens to the child is entirely up to the Blackgaurd's choice.

But let's change the scenario abit. Suppose the Blackgaurd puts the child in a devious trap which goes off if someone approaches within 30' and kills the child. Now, if the Paladin approaches the trap knowing the consequences, the Paladin is at least in part responcible for the death of the child (and should atone) even if his intention was to save the child because the Paladin's action is the last one with violition in the chain of events. The Blackgaurd has done the more abominable thing, but the Paladin has still helped kill the child.

 

[Storm Raven]

The woodsman OTOH, is not. He knows whether his actions are moral or not. The good woodsman feels remorse and should pay restitution for his actions. If his actions were morally neutral, why should he feel any remorse? I posited this question a while ago and never received any answer. His actions directly lead to the death of an innocent. (Note the innocent part there. Killing the guilty is a whole 'nother ball of wax) If his actions were neutral, then he should not have to pay any restitution and should be absolved of any wrong doing the same as if the child was never there in the first place.

Feeling responsibility is possible without an act being evil. In point of fact, the feeling of responsibility and remorse is one of the things that helps to define the woodcutter as good, and not evil. His action in cutting the tree was morally neutral. His sorrow over the death of the child indicates empathy with the child and the child's loved ones. It does not, however, indicate that the act was evil. It merely indicates that the outcome was regrettable. All things that are regrettable are not also evil.

 

[Storm Raven]

I don't believe that I'm painting myself in a corner here. Inaction, in and of itself, is morally neutral.

I believe that there is a strong strain of western philosophy that would disagree with you here. Do you remember the the quote "all evil requires to prosper is for good men to do nothing"? That clearly indicates that inaction is, incertain circumstances, morally reprehensible. Now, most legal systems don't place a burden upon bystanders to intervene to aid someone, but there is certainly a strong moral strain of thought that says doing nothing under those circumstances is morally wrong, otherwise the term "moral responsibility" would lose much of its meaning. (And, on a tangential note, we would not have had several weeks worth of discussion in my 1L torts class concerning the nature of "acting" verses "not acting" and what the law should encourage people to do).

 

[Glyfair]

some of the most contentious discussions tend to center around alignments

I think that's your biggest alignment myth right there.

Yup, no contention in this alignment discussion

 

[Celebrim]

I believe that there is a strong strain of western philosophy that would disagree with you here. Do you remember the the quote "all evil requires to prosper is for good men to do nothing"? That clearly indicates that inaction is, incertain circumstances, morally reprehensible.

Agreed, and you are right. But nonetheless, Hussar is right also. It took me a while to see it too, because I was looking at the problem from the standpoint of 'good' and I had to back up a bit.

As far as good is concerned, the absence of good is evil. Good detests the amoral as well as the immoral and doesn't necessarily draw a great distinction between them. Good considers it as (or almost as) abominable to stand by and watch someone drown when you could help as to push them in the first place.

But Hussar correctly pointed out that although the inactivity violated one of the commandments of good to take action, it made it only 'not good' rather than 'evil'. And then, reminding me of what I had wrote not many posts earlier, it becomes clear that 'passive not good' is nuetral under the D&D system.

Just just because something is nuetral doesn't necessarily imply that it isn't detestable to good. Interesting, this line of thought is the strongest attack I've seen available thus far on Hussar's wood cutter example, and I don't recall anyone making it (though I could have missed it) in the haste to focus on the notion of 'intention'. I'm pretty sure it doesn't hold but it would have been I think a more interesting argument nonetheless.

 

[tx7321]

In real life this all boils down to one thing guys; does the person commiting the act know what they are doing is evil. I think in D&D (all versions) there is an assumed base of knowledge in this regard, so that "universally" everyone understands what good and evil are. Also consider the fact that their are forces of good and evil which regularly communicate, even materialize and visit, these forces could create the basis for this understanding.