Is any one alignment intellectually superior?

[Lasher Dragon]

Is this a serious question? Seems kinda ridiculous to me to assume alignment has a single thing to do with intellect. Might as well ask which of the primary colors has the highest IQ....

 

[Celebrim]

"The good see the evil as irrationally self-obsessed and destructive to others and themselves, the evil see the good as naive and irrationally altruistic. the chaotic see the lawful as irrationally subservient to authority, the lawful see the chaotic as just plain irrational. They all see true neutral lacking any really interesting opinions and being the most vapid of all."

Again, that is precisely my point, and exactly why this is such a good question. I don't argue that what the question answers is which alignment system is the most intelligent and well thought out; instead, I'm merely arguing that stating which alignment system you believe to be intellectually superior reveals your own conscious or subconscious ethical beliefs.

That the majority believes that no alignment is more intellectually rigorous than the other or that the question is meaningless only proves that the majority is nuetral (as was widely suspected by many people including myself).

To add to your observation above, the neutrals see the other alignments as being irrationally fanatical and perhaps even mentally unbalanced.

 

[EricNoah]

Is this a serious question? Seems kinda ridiculous to me to assume alignment has a single thing to do with intellect. Might as well ask which of the primary colors has the highest IQ....

Green.

 

[Celebrim]

Green.

He's right, of course.

 

[John Morrow]

Looking at the alignment descriptions they all give good reasons to choose each one but I am more concerned with which one (if any) has an intellectual rather than moral edge.

The Law/Chaos axis concerns Means. The Good/Evil axis concerns Ends. Both Ends and Means are independent of intellect and thus have no inherent "edge" in that regard.

(Can morallity even be separated from the intellectual?)

Of coruse they can. You'll find genius intellects all over the moral spectrum in the real world. While many intellects do try to find morality in logic, I personally think that's a fool's errand.

I seem to recall from my classical studies that being 'good' was promoted as the most correct approach to life but then I also remember some jobbie espousing the virtue of 'greed'.

That's an assessment of ends and means, not intellect. Intellect is a tool, neither a method (mens) nor a result (end) and can be applied to any any method or toward any desired result.

 

[Lasher Dragon]

The main problem I see with this question - apart from what I stated earlier - is that I could be a supergenius my whole life, and experience the gamut of alignments. Alignment changes are easy. To change intellect requires some kind of mishap usually - be it head trauma, disease, drugs, etcetera. Usually this would result in less intellect, although the opposite is not unheard of.

 

[John Morrow]

I have to disagree with the assumption that morality and intellect are intimately tied together. Rather, we only have to look at people today who are bright and intelligent, who can think through problems and come up with well reasoned answers; oh, and are greedy, self-centred individuals who would squash anyone like a bug for the right amount of dollars.

Even worse, plenty of quite intelligent people have used the argument that "you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette" to justify the slaughter of thousands and even millions to make life better for others.

A screwdriver is a tool that can be used to fix a car or stab a person to death. Intellect is the same sort of tool. It's not the tool that is good or evil but how it is used and toward what end.

Intellect is the capacity to reason and think, morality is the ability to accept the consequences of your actions and to empathise with the situations of others.

Plenty of serial killers accept the consequences of their action. Morality is largely a function of empathy. This article explains a great deal about how people make moral decisions and why intellect has very little to do with it:

http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~camerer/web_material/latimes050204.htm

 

[John Morrow]

Most people will argue that Good is morally superior to Neutral and Evil-- this is almost seen as a truism. I tend to disagree with this, especially with the version of Good I so often see portrayed in alignment threads around here. That kind of willful naivete and rejection of pragmatic means, while providing a feel-good glow of moral satisfaction, also fails to adequately protect against either self-serving evil or mindless destructive evil.

The truth in that is that alignments, like real world philosophies that can be mapped to them, never work the best in every situation. They all have their strengths and their weaknesses, depending on what the overall situation is.

If a philosophy requires every last person on Earth to adopt it in order to succeed, it is flawed-- and most peoples' definition of Good seems to fall under that unfortunate condition.

It gets even more frightening when you look at what people have done, on utilitiarian grounds, to try to ensure that ever last person in a country shares a philosophy to bring about Heaven on Earth. Millions have died, leaving behind the proverbial road to Hell paved with good intentions.

Neutrality is not necessarily the refusal to decide or the inability to adhere to either Good or Evil; it can also be the conscious and willful decision to maintain a middle path, avoiding the follies of either. Neutrality can also represent a worldview that regards neither Good nor Evil as valid concerns-- such as placing another value, perhaps either stability or freedom, ahead of either compassion or cruelty.

Which is why, in practice, I read "Neutral" as "Pragmatic".

 

[John Morrow]

That the majority believes that no alignment is more intellectually rigorous than the other or that the question is meaningless only proves that the majority is nuetral (as was widely suspected by many people including myself).

I don't think that necessarily follows. If you ask a sports fan who the best Football or Baseball team is, their answer does not necessarily tell you that they are a fan of that team.

 

[fusangite]

The Law/Chaos axis concerns Means.

So, "freedom" is not an end?

The Good/Evil axis concerns Ends.

So, "hurting, oppressing and killing" are ends and not means?

Both Ends and Means are independent of intellect and thus have no inherent "edge" in that regard.

Doing something efficiently does depend on intellect. Not saving Coventry is something Churchill had to have the intellect to know was necessary.

Of coruse they can. You'll find genius intellects all over the moral spectrum in the real world.

Yes but many of us think that the D&D alignment system does not effectively represent "all" or perhaps even the majority of the "moral spectrum in the real world."

While many intellects do try to find morality in logic, I personally think that's a fool's errand.

Again, you're proceeding from the assumption that morality is being represented by alignment but the mechanic/concept may be too incoherent to do so.