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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Morrow" data-source="post: 2158029" data-attributes="member: 27012">If you asked me which moral system or alignment was the most "intellectually superior", I'd answer "None".  If you asked me about sports teams, I'd probably give the same answer.  The reason would be the same.  I don't think intellect has anything to do with making either choice and an intellectual answer will depend on other unspecified criteria.  In the case of football teams, I'm personally pretty disinterested in football (which you might not have guessed by my analogy).  In the case of morality, I'm quite interested in it (hence my involvement in a lot of threads about alignment here).  In both cases, my answer are similar, but my perspective of each is very different.Picking a favorite sports team is not simply a matter of intellect.  As a result, the sports team that a person identifies as best on intellectual grounds is not necessarily the sports team that they personally like the most.  Similarly, picking moral systems is not simply a matter of intellect.  As a result, the moral system that a person identifies as best on intellectual grounds is not necessarily the moral system that that person follows or admires the most.As I've said in another reply, in some ways I consider Law to be "reason" and Chaos to be "intuition".  On those grounds, one could argue (and I might) that the Lawful alignments are the most intellectual.  But to assume that I'm Lawful or that I think the Lawful alignments are superior, you'd also have to assume that I think the speriority of a moral system is related to how intellectual I think it is.  Not so at all.  I also don't assume that a person of great intellect would never use their intuition or that a person with great intuition has no use for intellect.It can.  But you can't know for sure unless you really understand why they are giving the answer they are giving.  Their answer, alone, doesn't necessarily tell you anything about the fan.And some people don't necessarily equiate "intellectual" with "best" when it comes to morality or alignment.  That's my point.  The answer, alone, only tells you something about the person if they are answering to their own preference.  Since the question set the preference in this case (i.e., intellectual considerations), that may not be so here.They actually compete with one another.  Read the article that I posted a link to earlier.  It deals with moral decision making and the conflict between the cold rationality of the prefrontal cortex and the intuition of the anterior insula.  The researches claim that by looking at which one has the strongest activity, they can tell how people are going to decide certain moral problems that they are given.  But that still doesn't really answer the question-title of this thread is, "Is any one alignment intellectually superior?"The question was, "Is any one alignment intellectually superior?" and the original explicitly excluded moral superiority as a consideration.  Plenty of people answered in favor of Evil alignments, including Chaotic Evil.  What does that tell you about their philosophical preferences?  And I don't think it does.  In fact, I think many people are favoring alignments that they don't morally like simply because they think they are ruthlessly efficient.  I might pick a Nazi over Mother Theresa if you ask me to pick who would best make the trains run on time but that doesn't mean I'm a Nazi or would want to have dinner with one over Mother Theresa.  Similarly, I doubt that the people who are picking Evil allignment themselves favor Evil.  I think they are simply picking the alignment that they think is the most ruthlessly efficient.  Similarly, "intellectual superior" does not equal either "best" or "correct".  So it all really depends on the criteria a person is using to determine "intellectual superiority", doesn't it?  And I don't think they are all, "What I like best."Evidence?But the question isn't "the best team" or "which team do you like".  The question is, "Which team is the most intellectually superior pick."  And the answer to that question will still fall back to the subjective question of which criteria is being used to define "superior".  For the die-hard fans, I doubt you'd get a different answer.  For others, you might even get answers based on which team has the most creative plays or the most intelligent players.  But it still might have nothing to do with which team that person likes the most.Do you have any evidence to back up this claim?  Or is this simply how you would respond? I disagree with your assertion.  In fact, I think there is strong evidence in this thread that many people are reading "intellectually superior" as "coldly ruthless and efficient" and I doubt that everyone who is respondind in favor of CE or NE is really a serial killer in training.I have a very strong set of moral beliefs.  I also believe that no moral position is intellectually superior.  That's because I believe intellect is simply a tool that can be used to support any moral position.  So my answer looks very much like the answer someone who has no strong set of beliefs might give, yet it doesn't indicate my own personal beliefs.  And I see similar lines of reasoning in other long replies.  So this supports your theory how, exactly?  Yes, but you aren't asking people if they have a strong set of beliefs or not.  You are looking at their answer to a question about the intellectual superiority of alignments.  You are claiming that the answer to the latter will indicate the former.  So what do all the people who answered with Evil alignments indicate to you?Whenever someone starts tossing around the word "surely", I'm reminded of the serpent in the Garden of Eden talking Eve into eating the fruit...Yes, people have sympathies toward certain parts of the alignment system.  But the question wasn't "Which alignment do you like best?" or "Which alignment do you think best matches your own?"  The question was, "Is any one alignment intellectually superior?"  My answer is, "No."  What does that really tell you?  What does it really tell you when someone answers NE or CE or LN?  I don't see any evidence that it means that I don't feel strongly about alignments or morality or that those people who answered NE, CE, or LN are NE, CE, or LN or favor those alignments.Because it's been my experience that one someone states their position as an assertion rather than by providing evidence, examples, or logical train of thought to support it that they often find it difficult to see the issue in any other way and their arguments simply beg the question over and over again or they simply restate their position as a truism.  In such cases, a metaphor can often help.  Of course they don't always work, either, because it becomes far to easy to get hung up on showing why the metaphor doesn't fit rather than trying to understand why it was being made.(Edit: Tag Typo)</blockquote>

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