Is any one alignment intellectually superior?

[Wild Gazebo]

Celebrim, you seem to be the only one even coming close to truely disputing the 'none' choice. Before I justify any claim, I would like to ask you one quick question...if you don't mind.

Do you feel that 'empathy' is (mostly) a function of an intellectual choice rather than cultural conditioning?

And yes, I know you are more interested in some sort of obscure social pschoanalysis...but I'd rather avoid that as it can be more than a little touchy.

 

[Starglim]

Machiavelli (butchered the spelling) comes to mind. Anyone ever read How to be a Prince ?

The Prince ? Many times. Let me quote you just about the only recognisable statement of moral theory that Machiavelli (right first time) wrote in that work:

How one lives is so far distant from how one ought to live, that he who neglects what is done for what ought to be done, sooner effects his ruin than his preservation; for a man who wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with what destroys him among so much that is evil.

People who have not read his work often paraphrase Machiavelli to say that the end justifies the means. Clearly, he makes no such claim. He points out the wrongness of many of the tactics that he describes, but argues that ruthless methods are necessary in the conditions, and in the face of the immoral people whom we must deal with in this world, and furthermore that if a ruler feels the need to use evil means, he should at least do evil in the ways that history has shown to be effective.

 

[Al]

I'm still going to advocate the "None" position, but this time I be a little less concise - I managed to get the second post before the discussion had really started.

The fundamental problem with discussing the relative intellectual merits of the various different alignments is that the reasoning process in ordinary rational thought is generally the construction of a chain of events from a certain starting position (A) to a final destination (B). So, a very simple rational response to "I'm hungry" would be "go to the kitchen, get some food out of the fridge, and eat it".

The problem is that even within the *same* alignment, societal goals can be radically different. I would vehemently reject the notion that alignment, religion and politics conform: one can be either a Christian Socialist or a member of the religious Right and still remain a Christian. Two divergent "Good" goals would be the maximisation of happiness for all (altruistic utilitarianism) but this could encompass the use of brutal methods for oppression of some section of the population. "Average happiness" as a qualifier of utilitarianism is similarly subject to problems over methodology: can a good person torture for utilitarian benefits? At the other end of the spectrum, Evil can either be pure egoism, which would entail the maximisation of long-term (or short-term: another potential conflict!) advantage; or the minimisation of the happiness of others (i.e. reverse utilitarianism) even if your own welfare is hampered. Lawful characters can be adherents of the traditional status quo (traditionalist lawful), or advocate of rational reform of decayed structures (reformist lawful) or even in favour of the construction of an entirely new system of government (radical lawful). Chaotic can be a rejection of society per se (anarchy) to the maintenance of some semblance of order with the goal to minimising coercion (libertarianism/minarchism) or any host of other moral/political philosophies.

No alignment can be "intellectually" superior because no alignment is reducible to a single set of canon beliefs, goals or objectives. No alignment is proscriptive in the values derived from it, much less the methods undertaken to fulfil those values. There is no simple A to B chain of reason. Alignment is descriptive, and therefore cannot be "intellectual" at all.

 

[fusangite]

Actually, no it isn't for most people. For most people, freedom is a means to an end. In fact, people happily surrender their freedom for a whole host of ends (much to the annoyance of people who do consider freedom an end) and would you really advocate freedom as an end if it produced nothing but misery and ruin?

This is sophistry here. You could substitute the word "freedom" with any word people see as an end in itself: beauty, love, etc. and say the same thing. Furthermore, with this kind of reductionist logic, the only "end" that could be sustained in this reasoning is "happiness"; you could argue that everything -- freedom, love, beauty, etc. is just a means to happiness. And I know you don't intend to say that because you're pretty consistently opposed to utilitarian theories of morality. So, no -- I reject both your reasoning here and your conclusion. Freedom is a value and an end in itself. And I see that you yourself acknowledge the problem with the line of argument you have put forward here:

To be fair, though, the Lawful or Chaotic character likely does consider either order or freedom to be an end, and is likely baffled by those who simply treat them as means toward an end. This goes back to an earlier exchange about treating Law and Chaos differently than Good and Evil. I'm more concerned with the latter than the former. But you have a point with respect to the former.

In the case of Evil, those means are also an end. Evil doesn't hurt, kill, or oppress for some utilitarian purpose or ulterior motive. It hurts, kills, and oppresses because it enjoys causing pain.

Some evil does this. Some evil causes this pain because it is indifferent to the pain it causes. The rules seem, from my reading, to acknowledge both a sadistic evil and an indifferent evil. The rules don't seem to support the idea that evil always equals sadism; it sometimes equals sadism.

The enjoyment of the torture is the reason the torture is happening.

Would you make that argument in today's world? I'm an annoying Canadian socialist and even I wouldn't go that far.

I would argue (and have argued) that if a character is torturing an NPC toward a utilitarian end (or helping them toward a utilitiaran end), those acts are not necessarily Good nor Evil. What makes a character Good or Evil is that their behavior has no other motivation.

But the rules as written contradict this statement. The DMG specifically says that a DM should not take notice of stated intentions when determining alignment and must only take notice of PCs' actions.

And how does this relate back to the question of which alignment has an intellectual edge?

My Coventry example relates back in the following way:
(a) intelligence appears to be a criterion for alignments that permit means-ends distinctions; the more sophisticated the means-ends distinctions, the narrower the range of alignments available.
(b) I brought up Coventry because the D&D alignment system poorly aggregates the data in any situation where a group is sacrificed for a greater good and produces essentially incoherent results

With respect to the things that the D&D alignment concerns itself, I think it does OK. Just don't expect it to model distinctions in the moral spectrum of the real world that it doesn't address and don't be suprised if it creates some strange bedfellows.

This term "strange bedfellows" I assume is what you mean by the fact that anyone with a complex relationship between their goal and strategy is returned as "neutral" under the system. This, returning to Coventry, is my point: I think there is something wrong with the system when it places radically dissimilar individuals in the "neutral" category simply because their goals and strategies exist in a sophisticated or complex relationship to one another.

But regardless, I think you'll also find geniuses and morons across the D&D alignment spectrum, if you want to think of that as a distinct spectrum.

While true, I would argue that D&D is predisposed to place geniuses in the "neutral" category, which is especially annoying because that's the same category it uses for creatures too stupid to have a morality.

 

[Al]

I brought up Coventry because the D&D alignment system poorly aggregates the data in any situation where a group is sacrificed for a greater good and produces essentially incoherent results

Bit of a side-issue, but recent scholarship has reached the broad consensus that Churchill did not allow Coventry to be bombed, but rather was unaware that it was the primary target. At the very least, it's a contentious issue and shouldn't be used as a solid argument.

Having said that, the fundamental point still stands (needs of many v. few)

 

[Storyteller01]

Care to take a stab at the 'none' reponse? I really haven't seen any sound argument against it yet.

Trying to argue for it without actaully saying so. Guess it didn't work ...

 

[Celebrim]

Do you feel that 'empathy' is (mostly) a function of an intellectual choice rather than cultural conditioning?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean. Do you mean by 'empathy' all the things that we might attach value to, say clothes and big screen TV's, or do you mean specifically the compassion we might feel towards other human beings? Either way, I suppose my answer is the same, but I at least want to make clear that my answer addresses (I think) both cases so that you don't misunderstand.

I think you can't really separate 'intellectual choice' from 'cultural conditioning' all that much. The two things shape each other. Cultural conditioning is really only the data by which you are making your intellectual choices, and in turn this encourages you to or discourages you from seeking out new kinds of data. You cultural conditioning encourages you to place value on something and to respond to that something in a loosely ritualistic way. Our life gets filled with these little rituals. How we act when there is a football game on TV. How we respond to the presence of food. What we do when we get home from work. How we greet our friends and so forth. The fact that these values are something which were held before we held them and which are generally held reflexively doesn't mean intellectual choice hasn't gone on. Our field of choices is smaller, but they are still thier and our own particular set of rituals and biases becomes a nuanced subset of the rituals and biases offered by our culture. We don't ever stop intellectually responding to our surroundings, and the more intelligent you are the more this is true. Even John's forebrain-hindbrain reactions don't seem to me nearly as distinct as John feels they are. Maybe this is because I work in an evolution lab and see the hindbrain merely as 'evolutionary conditioning' and 'legacy intellect' which you are carrying with you as part of your whole intellectual process. John claims that the hindbrain's decisions aren't 'rational'. I don't necessarily agree. Nor do I find in my own mental experience that higher intellectual experience can't be and doesn't summon forth powerful emotions.

The most powerful way that cultural conditioning works in my opinion is the way humans instinctively react to the unknown information. Whenever someone tells you something that you have never encountered, or most especially when you see a group discussing something you don't know, you're first instinct is usually to believe the data and even go so far as to pretend as if you'd heard something or thought something like that before because you don't want to appear ignorant. (Small children do this alot.) Thereafter, your tendency is to become a strong defender of that initial data because you do not want to appear to be ignorant. You become emotionally invested in your commitment to defending that data, because each time you defend it, it increases the (emotional) consequences of having been wrong all those times. So, when we encounter contridicting data, we almost never immediately give up our convictions and jump to the new position immediately. The results in our first exposure to any opinion being more shaping than any other. But I would never go so far as to suggest that we stop being intellectually engaged in the doubts and defences of the opinion or that we are all doomed to be clones of our parents, peers, or society. Intellectual choice and cultural conditioning are universially present.

Now you are probably going to say to me, 'But I'm a skeptic. My instinct is to disbelieve.' Ok, fine, I'm a skeptic too, but generally its because this new thing I encounter isn't really new, but a variation on some old thing that I'm busy defending by my ritual of disbelief.

As for specific empathy, I think it comes in part from that stored legacy of rationality which teaches us that empathy improves fitness, but it too is obviously shaped by intellect and culture in some sort of complex exchange.

And yes, I know you are more interested in some sort of obscure social pschoanalysis...but I'd rather avoid that as it can be more than a little touchy.

Actually, I'm most interested in systems for quantifying how many people in a population - say a village - will be of each alignment for the purposes of simulation. I'd also be interested in knowing to what extent different populations differed in alignment choices.

 

[Celebrim]

While true, I would argue that D&D is predisposed to place geniuses in the "neutral" category, which is especially annoying because that's the same category it uses for creatures too stupid to have a morality.

I think the fundamental problem with the D&D alignment system is that it has been so poorly and so variously described by different writers who had different ideas about what alignments meant. From that several extremely complex but in my opinion deeply flawed systematic approaches for determining alignment have developed in the fan community (one of the most popular being good/evil is the 'ends' and law/chaos is the 'means'). This intellectually simplifies the problem but invariably leads to difficulties because things like 'ends' and 'means' aren't as completely separate and distinct of things as people try to make them, nor are means always so value nuetral with respect to good and evil or ends so value neutral with respect to law and chaos.

So in any discussion about alignment, you invariably get alot of contridicting answers and worst of all some of these contridicting answers are well thought out, complex, and compelling to some degree.

Part of the problem is that a person's take on the alignment system will be biased by ones own alignment preferences.

As I understand it, the original alignment system was a single axis law vs. good. This system was informed by Gary Gygax's reading, and I would presume own moral beliefs and sympathies for eastern ethical systems like Buddism and Confucian. Naturally though, this did not satisfy your average western player who found law and chaos to not be nearly so black and white as a Confucian (who we could prelimenarily assign as LN) would tend to believe. I believe Mind Flayers and Djinni are the classic examples. One could even argue that this initial difficult was caused by a failure to properly define law and chaos in the first place, because it defined Mind Flayers as lawful relative to themselves, rather than relative to thier place in the cosmos. To keep a single axis which was sufficiently black and white, it was necessary to assign Mind Flayers as Chaotic because they didn't belong in this universe.

The two axis system worked better for Western players, but was immediately skewed by the original single axis system. This is best seen by the fact that almost all D&D works hold the completely contridictory bias that 'lawful good' is more good than 'pure good'. For example, paladins are invariably examples of 'most good'. You even see this continue in writers that ought to know better like Aaron Loeb is the otherwise excellent 'The Book of the Righteous' (In his defence, I think he was trying to create a cosmology that explained this D&Dism.) Invariably though, this leads to confusion because it has effectively two axis of 'good' judged by two different and contridicting standards. ALOT of the confusion over what good means comes from this.

D&D literature and publications only confuses the problem. Gygax's and RA Salvatore's description of Drow elves is (at least in his early novels) almost certainly a depiction of a Lawful Evil society rather than a chaotic evil society.

Chaotism becomes invariably associated with criminality, which it isn't necessarily. For example, Mel Gibson's character in Payback is one of the best examples of a Lawful Evil character in fiction IMO, but I would imagine that people's first instinct would be criminal = chaotic, and I'd bet some of them would assume that because he's a sympathetic character that he's also non-evil. Sympathetic IMO does not imply non-evil.

One of the most confusing statements in all of D&D alignment discussions comes at the end of the Chronicles of the Dragon Lance when the author has the Good god Paladine make the statement that the Pre-cataclysm priest king was the most good person ever (or something to that effect) and that's why his destruction was justified. This is a statement from the perspective of TRUE NUETRALITY and basically has a good dietry arguing against the supremacy of goodness, and instead arguing that the most correct intellectual and moral position is nuetral. I can only assume that Margaret Weiss is responcible for this insanity and slipped up because she herself believes in ideas like 'the golden mean' and 'ying-yang' and other balance/harmony ethical systems which affirm the necessity of evil and the evil of fanaticism. Tracy Hickman is I happen to know himself a Mormon, which I bring up simply to point out that he would almost certainly bring a different set of ethical biases to the table and that he is himself probably after Gygax one of the most influential early shapers of D&D.

what I think that this leads to is the fact that in any situation that is sufficiently complicated, the D&D system falls on its face for the average player (or even average designer) simply because the 'rules' by are entirely incoherent and contridictory. Faced with a moral system that doesn't fit into any of the rules as he understands them, or which doesn't fit the simplistic understanding he's been told to use, the average player or designer simply throws his hands in the air and assigns 'neutrality' not so much because it fits, but because it is an easy catch-all.

 

[TerraDave]

Who would say there is some corelation between moral and intelectual superiority: a bunch of philosophers is who: Philosopher King this and Dialectics and Synthesis that...

A bunch of 19th century Germans trying to "prove" what ethics is...with the prussian state as its ultimate embodiment...

With a few exceptions, I never cared much for that sort of thing.

 

[Umbran]

I would define intellectually superior in this context to mean which (single or groups of) alignment hold greater rational reasons, rather than emotive reasons, to warrant being adhered to over the other alignments. "Greater" means the sum of it's quantity and the weight of it's quality of (rational) reasons combined.

I've only managed to skim the thread, but I'll toss in $0.02 that someone else has probably already espoused...

There is no objective measure of "rational" weight - there's no one reason that universally will be "greater" than another. Any such weighting is subjective to the individual doing the weighting, and includes that person's own emotive insights. Ergo, there's no such thing as intellectual superiority.