Alignment on three axes.

[Andor]

Why is this the elephant in the room? I haven't done a comprehensive survey of more obscure thinkers, but of the major moral philosophers since Plato I think that Hobbes is the only one to take this view. All the rest accept that Plato refuted your contention in the Euthyphro.

I don't mean to sound stupid, but how does Euthyphro contradict my argument that objective good is meaningless in a Polytheistic universe. Is that not the entire thesis of the piece?

 

[pemerton]

In Swedish we have a concept of "cultivating your garden" than seems to be much the same, but which is more about self-realization and thus to my mind chaotic.

I don't have any independent view on this, because I don't have any independent view on what counts as law vs chaos. But in D&D, monks are lawful - whereas by what you're saying here, they should come out as chaotic.

As for self-cultivation in general, I'm contrasting (say) orthodox Buddhism with Taoism - the contrast between (i) shaping yourself into a person living a proper or worthwhile life, and (ii) letting nature takes its course. In JS Mill's language, (i) is Socrates and (ii) is the pig.

 

[Andor]

I don't know of any theory of self-cultivation that would count that as an instance - eating ice cream seems to have no connection to any mainstream account of the good life.

Epicurians or other hedonists would happily classify that as pleasurable and hence good, as I understand them.

 

[pemerton]

I don't mean to sound stupid, but how does Euthyphro contradict my argument that objective good is meaningless in a Polytheistic universe. Is that not the entire thesis of the piece?

That's not what I understand to be the standard reading among contemporary analytic philosopher, but as I mentioned upthread I'm not a Plato scholar.

As I read it, the discussion of the "civil war" among the gods is intended to show that the gods value different things, and therefore piety can't be defined as "valued by a god" - because a given action A might be valued by Zeus but not by Hera, and hence might (on the candidate definition) be both pious and impious, which looks contradictory.

This doesn't make polytheism and objective value incompatible unless you think that all the gods of polytheistic universe must (i) have access to the truth about what is valuable while (ii) being in a state of civil war. In D&D, (ii) is generally true - the good gods fight the evil gods - but (i) is obviously false, because there are self-consciously evil gods, who self-evidently therefore fail to grasp the truth about value (because they repudiate the good).

 

[pemerton]

Epicurians or other hedonists would happily classify that as pleasurable and hence good, as I understand them.

Sure, but they're opposed to self-cultivation and favour letting nature take its course. My contrast of Buddhists vs Taoists could equally be Stoics vs Epicureans or Cynics.

 

[Ratskinner]

I think the ongoing argument here, erudite as it may be, is an exemplary reason to just dump alignment. I've never found that it served much purpose. The closest thing to a purpose I've seen it actually serve was to simply divide the universe into team good and team evil, providing a moral justification for slaughtering goblins, etc. If such a thing is needed in a campaign, I'd imagine that a simple keyword system, or any number of more sophisticated systems for representing moral/personality traits could handle the job much better than traditional D&D alignments.

Of course, that's running under the assumption that at-table arguments and indecision about alignments isn't part of the "D&D experience" that WotC is trying to recapture.....and I'm not sure that it isn't.

 

[Starfox]

The closest thing to a purpose I've seen it actually serve was to simply divide the universe into team good and team evil, providing a moral justification for slaughtering goblins, etc. If such a thing is needed in a campaign, I'd imagine that a simple keyword system, or any number of more sophisticated systems for representing moral/personality traits could handle the job much better than traditional D&D alignments.

I'd argue that a moral system that lets us slay goblins with a good conscience is necessary for most of DnD, and also that alignments are a simple label system that allows us to do so. Your argument holds for moving away from the 9 alignments and returning to just 3 (good, neutral, evil - or as they were in 0E, Law, neutrality, chaos).

The point in the law-chaos axis being separate is that it allows differences (such as between lawful dwarfs and chaotic elves) that are not lethal, knife-point conflicts but can be solved with diplomacy.

 

[Andor]

This doesn't make polytheism and objective value incompatible unless you think that all the gods of polytheistic universe must (i) have access to the truth about what is valuable while (ii) being in a state of civil war. In D&D, (ii) is generally true - the good gods fight the evil gods - but (i) is obviously false, because there are self-consciously evil gods, who self-evidently therefore fail to grasp the truth about value (because they repudiate the good).

I personally have never seen any sort of definition set of objective good which was not anthropocentric. I am not widely read in contemporary philosophy so perhaps I simply missed the current thinking. And honestly it's not much of a problem because in reality we are the only language using species we have yet encountered so there is no one to argue with our anthropocentrism.

In D&D however you have scads of different intelligent species with quite radically different needs and drives and it seems to me that this must quite explode the entire concept of obective value. Certainly where good is concerned. Even something as apparently universally good as a simple healing spell can be readily demonstrated to be "not good" as it would harm a Xeg-yi, an intelligent non-evil creature, thus being harmful to something which does not oppose good.

What common good will be found for fire and ice elementals? Or for the Thri-Kreen and the Lizardmen, who require desert and swamp, respectively?

Does a being like a Demon which is "Always Evil" have free will if he cannot choose to do good? And if he does not, how can he be evil, without choice?

 

[Ratskinner]

I'd argue that a moral system that lets us slay goblins with a good conscience is necessary for most of DnD, and also that alignments are a simple label system that allows us to do so. Your argument holds for moving away from the 9 alignments and returning to just 3 (good, neutral, evil - or as they were in 0E, Law, neutrality, chaos).

I think that makes far more sense. Although, really, there's no purpose I can see beyond just a "Good" keyword and an "Evil" keyword, to use for appropriate triggers etc. The rest of the world just "is".

The point in the law-chaos axis being separate is that it allows differences (such as between lawful dwarfs and chaotic elves) that are not lethal, knife-point conflicts but can be solved with diplomacy.

I guess I don't see that as a very salient point. It "allows" such differences?!? ...more like "creates".

Is negotiation between LG and CG factions outside the party a big part of people's D&D play? Since we can't even agree on what exactly LG and CG mean, does having them around help that? It certainly doesn't seem to help such negotiations at the table amongst the party, since they usually degenerate into "What does it mean to be <alignment>?" and who was doing a better job living up to these vague descriptors. Would these distinctions in motivation and character not be better modeled with free descriptors on a character sheet (e.g. "Loyal to Queen Valisa" vs "Loyal to the Kingdom of Luggage" vs "Freedom Fighter") and some mechanics to bring them into play as so many games like FATE, BW, etc. have done?

 

[pemerton]

I think the ongoing argument here, erudite as it may be, is an exemplary reason to just dump alignment.

No argument from me on that score. As presented in D&D books, alignment is a useless system of classification that bears no connection to any actual moral system in use. And it has a fundamental incoherence of trying at one and the same time to describe a full range of actions from a neutral perspective, while also endorsing some as good and condemning others as evil.

As a mechanical system it's pernicious too, in my own view, in practically inviting the GM to tell players how to run their PCs.

there's no purpose I can see beyond just a "Good" keyword and an "Evil" keyword, to use for appropriate triggers etc. The rest of the world just "is".

This is roughly how 4e does it, and also B/X, although with different classificatory schemes (4e is team gods vs team primordials; B/X is a bit more Morcockian).

Would these distinctions in motivation and character not be better modeled with free descriptors on a character sheet (e.g. "Loyal to Queen Valisa" vs "Loyal to the Kingdom of Luggage" vs "Freedom Fighter") and some mechanics to bring them into play as so many games like FATE, BW, etc. have done?

The first time I saw this advocated was in Dragon 101, and I have not used alignment in my games since then (though obviously the Dragon article did not have the mechanical sophistication attached to its free descriptors that you see in Fate, BW etc).