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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wayside" data-source="post: 767393" data-attributes="member: 8394">RE: The SigilThis may look funny because I typed it all out in word for fear of the boards eating it.  EDIT: It was too ugly and convoluted without proper quoting so I went and fixed it all.  mleh.Actually, I don’t think either myself or Elder-Basilisk has brought up anything a quick search on google couldn’t clarify.Ok, now remember you said that.  Nevermind that your answer skirts the issue of moral authority, as there is no real resolution to this issue anyway.  For D&D the authority is that the core books say so, which to me means there is no moral authority at all; but which, to many people, stands as an authority inviolable.Well first, please don’t mistake the argument for my personal beliefs.  Personal beliefs have no business on this board, and believe me mine would get a thread closed down in about 2 seconds, so I just won’t go there.  Now, I understand what you mean about assumptions, but this isn’t entirely true, since pure logic is mathematical and arguably requires no assumptions.  Extreme proponents of strong epistemological views would say otherwise, but there aren’t any here right now.Your point that logic itself would not be evil is fine.  It’s a small semantic point though, meaning it only refutes the way I phrased the issue, not the issue itself.  Elder-Basilisk’s point was that evil is not valuable in itself, to which I responded sure it is, but only in a moral relativist (or secretly absolute) system, where Diogenes can follow the dictates of logic and think himself good, while Tertullian looks on in disgust at what he perceives (or knows) to be Diongenes’ evil actions.  In your D&D world with it’s Book of Vile Darkness and all that, Elder-Basilisk’s argument is a good one, and no amount of moral psychologizing is going to dissuade him from holding that position because the argument comes down to ‘which theoretical view do I hold?’  We just have differing views on whether evil is conceivably valuable in itself, in a moral system where good and evil are facts about the world.In the relativist system, the Vatican can believe itself in service of the greatest good by burning Aristotle’s books and forcing Galileo to recant his physics, while allowing Vergil to read because of the Messianic Ode.  This is a church that, for all intents and purposes, spurns the use of logic whenever it leads to conclusions which conflict with its religious views, making even pure logic sometimes evil.  Athens did something similar by putting Socrates to death, and if Aristotle hadn’t fled they would have, in his words, sinned twice against philosophy.This is a fairly lay argument, but I won’t touch it because I think you are trying to defend religion to me, though I am not attacking it.  Let’s just say that philosophers do not so much seek assumptions, though they often rely on them, as, like physicists, they attempt to interpret what the-way-the-world-is means.  Part of the reason for the decline in ethical and metaphysical philosophy over the past century is an increasing awareness among philosophers that logic has difficulty dealing with this area because of the nature of the radical assumptions we make on an everyday basis.Well, briefly, since Elder-Basilisk doesn’t recall it offhand either: Alexander comes to Corinth, and all the people come out to greet and congratulate him except the great philosopher Diogenes.  When Alexander learns that Diogenes has not come to pay him respect (knowing who Diogenes is), he seeks him out and finds him sitting in his tub in the sun.  Then: “I am Alexander the Great,” and “I am Diogenes the Cynic.”  Alexander then asks what service he can render him, and Diogenes says “Stop blocking my sun.”  When his troops laugh at the old philosopher, Alexander says “If I were not Alexander, I should wish to be Diogenes.”The story, though, is not important to the argument.  I was just saying that Diogenes wouldn’t bow to the emperor, even if it meant dying. But you already said that in D&D good and evil, law and chaos are absolute.  If that is the case then the mandates of the deity are irrelevant, because a Paladin couldn’t serve a deity that wasn’t a paragon of the good.  Either the good is good because the gods say so, or the gods say so because it is so.  If the former, then the good is arbitrarily assigned (or logically derived) by the gods, and is therefore not absolute, ruling that scenario out for standard D&D.  If the latter, then the good exists as an absolute, independent of the gods, meaning a Paladin can only serve a god that is essentially synonymous with the good.Let’s say then that good in this world mandates mercy and reform for criminals.  This is also what the law in this world is conducive to.  Now, what does the person who takes the law into their own hands become?  Although good is absolute, they still disagree with it, defy it openly.  They do not consider themselves to be evil, but they do value what they do in itself, and since good in this world is absolute, what they are doing *is* evil.  Characters aren’t prohibited from believing that good is wrong just because good is absolute in your D&D world.  Belief and fact rarely coincide.It could be, but let’s assume it is how I phrased it above.  Now what?This depends on your campaign.  In mine there is no absolute good; there are no gods in the standard D&D sense, no celestials or fiends or devils, and no random assortment of planes with names randomly picked from 20 different world mythologies.  I try to play it a little more sophisticated than this.  Hodgepodge fantasy just irks me.There are a few things wrong with this.  When discussing the idea of an antipaladin, there are a lot of possibilities, including the possibility of a warrior who does the opposite of serving a higher power.  It is perfectly plausible that the paladin serves a good god as an end in itself, while the antipaladin serves an evil god as a means to an end.  That is what makes them opposite.  You could argue the antipaladin serves no god at all as well, depending on how opposite, or what quality of opposite, you want to be.Also, I would think that the crux of tragedy (from the Poetics) that Elder-Basilisk brought up would lead you to the conclusion that it is in fact entirely possible to be honorable and still have to do something you know is wrong.  His example was what does Antigone do when her brother is killed as a traitor, since she has two conflicting duties, one to family and the other to country?  Mine was what does Orestes do when his mother, Clytemnestra, murders his father, Agamemnon?  Here there are again two conflicting duties, both to family this time.I’m sorry you think this is a poor argument.  Feel free to take it up with Aristotle.  (In case you don’t see the relevance, if the Goodguy King kills your sister, you may find yourself with two conflicting duties: one to good and your King, another to your murdered sister.  Both Antigone and Orestes chose the duty to family as the greater of the two).As any practitioner of logic will tell you, you should have correct premises before attempting to draw conclusions from them.  The argument is still valid, but because a premise (2) is not, neither is the conclusion.  The examples from tragedy show explicitly how wrong premise 2 is (and you don’t need premise 1 in there either).  Also, we’re still operating under the assumption that an antipaladin just has to be honorable and just, while being all evily.  I’m not sure this is the way to go though.btw, that is an interesting way of denying the consequent with a double-negative.  It took me a second to realize you weren’t actually affirming the consequent.  Just for everybody else, in the argument ‘if p then q; p, so q’, p is the antecedent and q is the consequent.  ‘If I hit you then it will hurt; it doesn’t hurt, so I didn’t hit you’ is denying the consequent (I *didn’t* hit you; in the example, ‘I do not not commit dishonorable acts).Sounds about right to me.Well, lucky for everyone else we aren’t debating logic itself (it is, after all, an evolving field, just like mathematics).  We’re just trying to make sound arguments.Well, if good is absolute, then the hierarchy is set.   And, if good is absolute, then the Paladin does not need a god to rank them, because they are beyond the gods’ sphere; he only needs his god to reveal their ranking.I think of it this way though: if there is a hierarchy of moral imperatives, either they are arbitrary, or there are reasons for their ordering.  If there are reasons for their ordering, then right reason can (re)discover that ordering, unless we say something like “the gods have their reasons, which reason does not know;” which, to a philosopher, is a copout, while to a religious person being a perfectly sensible view.</blockquote>

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