Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3291395" data-attributes="member: 4937">That's possible.  Up until now I'm be operating under the assumption that Hussar position and mine were close enough to be treated as the same thing, but lets simplify this and say 'my position' so that I don't have to speak for Hussar and we don't have to argue over what someone else meant.Hussar may have made an unfortunate turn of phrase, but mostly I think he was just being pithy.  I feel that understanding of his question depends on seeing the implied condition, 'Assuming all the actors are wise and understand what they believe and what it implies, why would anyone care...'.  The reason I feel this is implied is that the actions of fools and of people who don't know what they believe or what thier beliefs implies don't tell us alot about the nature of a particular system of morality (be it NG, LE, or CN or whatever).  Before the action meaningfully relates to the morality system, we must make assumptions about it.  Certainly there are, as I said, people who will feel remorse without cause (by which I mean, without cause under thier own system of beliefs) or who will act remorseful because they think its the right thing to do and who don't want to be blamed, and so forth.  But this doesn't tell us alot about moral system except where those actions are the appropriate to the moral system.  So, returning to Hussar's rhetorical question, he ask 'Why would anyone care if the action was morally neutral?'.  And the answer is I think, if the act was morally nuetral then no one who was wise would care.  The good aligned person won't feel remorse because he hasn't done anything wrong.  If the act is as morally neutral as flipping a coin for sport, if it is indeed mere random results, then why should a good person care whether the result was heads or tails.  The neutral aligned person won't feel remorse because the act was of neutral value, and the evil person won't feel any especial glee because well there is nothing especially satisfying to an evil person about morally neutral acts.But on the other hand, if we assume that the act is morally evil (to at least some extent) even in the absence of evil voilition (which would make the act both evil and abominable), then we see instead the expected range of emotion.  The good person feels remorse.  He makes restitution and is contrite.  The neutral person blames the child, or the universe, and takes the steps he thinks necessary to see that the child or the universe is blamed rather than himself.  The evil person finds this an unexpected delight, having not intended to do evil but managing to achieve such a spectacularly satisfying result (assuming the child isn't a friend), he delights in having killed the stupid little thing in a way that he probably won't get blamed for, he exalts in having removed the weak minded idiot from the gene pool, and otherwise secretly (or not) takes pleasure in the act.  In most societies, where murder is frowned on, he publicly acts like the nuetral, but amongst truly vile companions he may lie and brag that he meant to do so to glorify his own role in the tragedy.  And so forth.  All of this follows because the act is not morally neutral.I don't have a book handy, but as I recall the RAW if the act had been intentional, the Paladin would have been stripped of status and could not have atoned for it sufficiently to restore himself to his former pure state.  It's only because the evil act was unintentional that the Paladin is allowed to atone for it.</blockquote>

Verification