Now, let’s assume we are not playing a solo game, and that there are other characters in the game, some or all of whom are also (or profess to be) LG. One of these considers it quite appropriate to “pull a 24 and torture prisoners to save someone”. In fact, he even asserts that your character’s refusal to do so means that he cannot truly be PG, as the Greatest Good for the Greatest Number requires we gain this information quickly, which can only be done by torturing it out of this one person. Sucks to be him, but the greatest good for the greatest number absolutely requires he do so.
<snip>
So you, the player who can never be wrong about his character’s beliefs and how they accord with alignment, are 100% certain that torturing the prisoner is violating the LG alignment, and the other player, who also can never be wrong about his character’s beliefs and how they accord with alignment, is 100% certain that torturing the prisoner is the only choice which does not violate the LG alignment. Where do we go from there?
We play the game, don't we? At least that's what my group does.
Why does it have to be any more complicated than that?
As a DM? Fantastic. I have no need to get involved. That's the point of exploring morality in game.
Exactly!
And since you folks keep telling me that multiple behaviours are covered by the same alignment, wouldn't you come to the same conclusion?
This is why, upthread, I suggested that these "shades of grey" and "great swathes of neutrality" ideas are the functional equivalent of dispensing with mechanical alignment.
if the action was so great, that it would be evil and of a degree where it would "insert punishment here" and perhaps even require an alignment change well then I doubt you would have a disagreement at the table.
<snip>
its the little continuous infractions that would have the DM address with the player that his character is slowly sliding down the alignment ladder.
On the first point - why do you think this? In the quote higher up in this post, [MENTION=6681948]N'raac[/MENTION] posits the opposite. And two posters have just recently posted some quite contentious examples in the thread, that I'll respond to in a moment.
On the second, if N'raac as GM believes that killing in defence of others is never good, then a paladin who keeps doing that will probably drift away from LG towards LN. If the GM "addresses" this with the player, that strikes me as pretty close to the GM telling the player how to play a paladin. The player has two choices: stop playing a paladin; or play a paladin in the way the GM thinks is fitting. To me, this is no different from the GM telling the player of the thief that his/her PC is not sneaky enough, and so is going to have to forcibly change class to a fighter (but one who forevermore can use only leather armour).
When faced with a situation where seeming obvious ramifications will cause untold future woe the paladin may choose to commit an evil act (as in an act that reflects the precepts of the alignment axis identified by the name "Evil") in the present to prevent it and fall from grace as a result
In that 24 example, the character (and the player) may well conclude that this Cosmic Good is all fine, and my preference would have been for there to be another way, but there was not. I’d do it again – at least in this case, the ends justify the means.
<snip>
those G characters are too mired in their compassion for those who don’t deserve it to take the necessary action for those who most merit protection and respect.
These examples are contentious. They presuppose, for instance, that utilitarianism is inconsistent with good - despite the 3E SRD defining "good" by reference to "altruism", and utilitarianism being the major moral theory most often defended by its adherents as genuinely altruistic. (Most objections to utilitarianism in the contemporary literature begin from a premise that each individual enjoys a permissible sphere of self-regard.)
Now, in my view at least, a paladin cannot be a utilitarian and be remotely consistent with the archetype. A paladin believes in providence; utilitarianism is about as anti-providential as a moral outlook can get. (At least in its formal structure; its adherents are often prone to Whiggish optimism.) So a paladin who chooses (say) to kill an innocent in order to stave of catastrophe has already committed the greatest error possible - s/he has doubted that providence will deliver, and in a failure of humility has assumed that it is him/her rather than the deity who has to weigh and measure all the consequences of everyone's actions. But the central evil here, at least from the point of view of character drama, is not the killing of the innocent but the betrayal of faith and the error of pride.
That's my take on things, at least. But let's put that to one side, and suppose that, for whatever reason - perhaps the gameworld is REH-style and providence isn't part of it - the paladin character really is correct to believe that but for his/her "evil" act then catastrophe will ensue. Then why should she fall? Why are we fetishising a list of taboo actions, which apparently have no grounding in actual value or right conduct (because, in
this case, upholding value and principles of right conduct
requires doing the "evil" thing)? And why would those "compassionate" people who are too sentimental to actually do what is required (perhaps they're also to squeamish to amputate a gangrenous limb!) be regarded as "good"? Self-indulgent sentimentality is itself a vice.
To elaborate on my reply to [MENTION=6701124]Cadence[/MENTION] above, about fatuous ideals, this sort of pointless fetishisation would be an example of such fatuousness.
And for an example of this scenario actually playing out within the D&D canon, I point to Sturm Brightblade in the Dragonlance Chronicles, who realised that the Knights of Solamnia's fetishisation of their rules was actually
preventing them from doing good. Those books, at least, took this as evidence that Sturm was a
better knight, not a fallen one.
It is a compromise of one tenet of Good (not killing or hurting others) in the course of upholding another (defense of the innocent). Cutting that person down in the street because, maybe, he might resort to violence is a very different context from defending the innocent from his attack.
<snip>
Where striking a person down in the street is much more likely an evil act, the same act in the defense of an innocent person is mitigated.
<snip>
A better act might well be talking the attacker down, or defeating him without killing him.
I don't understand the point about preventative violence. Very few theorists of self-defence think that the principles of defensive violence licence the sort of preventative violence you describe. There is an epistemic difference - in the case of an actual attack, the threat to the innocent is immediate and manifest, whereas who knows whether the "blackhearted" person might ever actually lash out. There is also a metaphysical difference - in the case of the actual attack, the threat is actual. In the case of the "blackhearted" person, the person might always reform, and curb his/her "evil" tendencies. (For a paladin, this "providential" dimension of the situation might be particularly important.)
(And lest I be accused of introducing philosophical analysis where it's not warranted, the above principles are pretty fundamental to the law of self-defence, and of attempts, in at least most common law jurisdictions, and I suspect civil law ones also.)
The suggestion of "mitigation" is quite contentious. The normal legal treatment of self-defence is not that it is an excuse (say, like duress) but that it is a justification. (Ie there is no wrongdoing that would require excusing.) That's also the most common moral analysis.
And finally, as I stated in the post to which you replied, of course it would be better if the innocent could be saved with no need to kill the attacker. But that we can imagine a better outcome does not mean that the actual outcome, and the action that leads to it, is not good. Hence the category of the superogatory. More banally, from the fact that a person might give his or her whole fortune to a beggar, it doesn't follow that giving a single gold piece is therefore not good but only neutral.
Let’s take a different tack. The culpable attacker has also made an enemy of a black hearted villain. As the attacker charges the innocents, that villain steps from the shadows, and cuts the attacker down. “Let that be a lesson to all who would cross me.” Is he now Good because he saved the innocents, or does the motive behind his act change its character?
Suppose that motive changes the morality of the action - how would that show that when the
paladin engages in defensive violence out of an
admirable motive that s/he is not performing a good act?
And to actually answer your question:
[sblock]We suggest that an individual A finds himself in affray with B if and only if:
a. A is endangered by his physical proximity to violence perpetrated by B;
b. B’s threat to A is not licensed by A’s culpability;
c. B is not culpable for the danger posed to A; and
d. A is reasonably perceived to be a threat by B…
In effect, being stuck in a fight endangers A, which gives him the right to defend himself. But, if he manifests the possibility that he will exercise that right, he becomes a danger to everyone else, which gives them the right to use force against A also. That is the nature of affray, and is summarized in the following principle:
Affray–privilege principle: Where two parties A and B are in affray with respect to one another, then each of A and B acquire symmetrical privileges to commit harm to each other, subject to requirements that the harm be necessary and proportionate…
Consider the following … :
WRONGFUL ATTACK: Wrongdoer (W) culpably attacks Victim (V). Consequently, W forfeits his rights not to be harmed. V proceeds to fight back. Inadvertently, bystander Smith becomes involved in the conflict. That is, Smith is endangered by his proximity to the conflict between W and V.
In this situation there are a number of courses of action open to Smith. As we noted above … a bystander such as Smith could attempt to make it clear that he is no threat to anyone. If Smith succeeds in this regard, then although he presumably enjoys the privilege to use force against both W and V to protect himself, he does not enter into affray with either, because he does not satisfy condition (d).
A second alternative is that Smith responds to the danger merely by threatening the culpable party, W. In this scenario, with respect to V, Smith does not satisfy criterion (d), and is not in affray. Nor are Smith and W in affray, because criterion (c) is not satisfied. So the conflict simply becomes an extension of a traditional self-defense case, where Smith and V are together fighting off the unjust attacker W, and W fails to obtain any privilege to commit violence against either.
A third alternative is that Smith responds in a way that threatens V. This could happen because he aligns himself with W or because he responds in a relatively indiscriminate fashion, using force, or threatening to do so, against both W and V. Whatever the case, we assume that Smith is not culpable for threatening V. Smith is excused of culpability, either in light of duress or ignorance. Consequently, Smith becomes a nonculpable threat to V, much as V is a nonculpable threat to Smith. A situation of mutual endangerment has arisen, and Smith and V are in affray with respect to each other.
Not only does this give rise to privileges to commit violence on the part of both V and Smith, we believe it also gives rise to privileges to commit violence on the part of W. This is because, in addition to privileges to inflict harm that arise from the opportunity to defend oneself, there are also privileges to inflict harm arising from the opportunity to defend others. For instance, suppose that W can see that V and Smith will kill each other unless W intervenes to shoot Smith first. If W were struck by a pang of remorse and wished to minimize the harm that he will cause, may he shoot Smith? We suggest he may.
We are not suggesting that the criminal law does or should permit such behavior; but we are suggesting that, in the absence of a suitable institutional framework to limit the use of violence (in a Lockean state of nature, for instance), this last act would be permissible. After all, the wrongdoer’s deed does have the effect of saving an innocent party from death.
We suggest the following principle as a rough attempt to identify the privilege to defend others in these sorts of circumstance:
P. Anyone who is witness to one party A threatening another party B, provided B is not herself culpably threatening A, acquires a privilege to use harm against A to defend B, subject to certain proportionality and necessity constraints.
A potentially alarming feature of this principle, however, is that it appears to entail that the wrongdoer W may kill V, against whom he initiated the original unjust threat! We stand by this feature, despite its counterintuitive nature. We do, however, wish to stress the distinction between the permissibility of killing, as opposed to blameworthiness for the eventual harm that comes about. W is to a large degree culpable and blameworthy for the deaths of either V or of Smith, if either should happen to die, even if it is at the hands of each other, rather than by the deed of the wrongdoer. But because of the circumstance of affray that has arisen between Smith and V, the wrongdoer W – in virtue of P – obtains privileges to kill either party, subject to suitable proportionality and necessity constraints. And it is this fact about the rights that is of most relevance when determining permissibility…
Someone who rejects P might maintain that the stain of the wrongdoer’s initial culpability remains with him, even if he later has the opportunity to minimize harm by inflicting harm on some of the parties to an affray. Such a person would presumably put forward a revised version of P that licenses intervention only to parties that are not culpable for the existence of the conflict; or would license intervention only with certain intentions. Suppose that, in consequence of some such revision, it remains impermissible for the wrongdoer to kill a party against whom he culpably initiated an unjust threat. Pushed to more extreme cases, this seems absurd. Suppose the conflict between W, V, and Smith develops into a much larger battle, involving many more parties. If W has the opportunity to prevent a massacre of dozens by killing V, whom he originally intended to murder, then this is surely permissible. P supports this claim, and we ask those who would deny it to supply a more plausible alternative.
A second possibility is that we might think using violence in defense of others, in the absence of a motive of self-defense, places one under greater restriction to use force only against those who are culpable for the threat they pose. According to this view, P would have to be revised to only apply when witnessing one party culpably threatening another, rather than to the broader category of nonrighteous threats that we have favored. Again, this will lead to the absurd outcome that outside parties will be unable to intervene to prevent a massacre between nonculpable parties to a conflict.
It is plausible, however, to suppose that a principle like P is subject to more stringent proportionality constraints than a principle of self-defense. If someone attempts to cut off your arm, one presumably obtains the privilege to inflict lethal harm in self-defense, if that is necessary to prevent the attack. But if Smith is only endangering V’s arm, and not V’s life, then it seems improper for W to kill Smith in order to protect V, even if that is necessary to prevent the attack.[/sblock]
