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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4234689" data-attributes="member: 42582">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).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?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)?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?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.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).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.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.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 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.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.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.</blockquote>

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