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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7963565" data-attributes="member: 42582">This claim is not very plausible. Our epistemic access, in real life, to the reality of brutal and arbitrary violence, is often pretty robust.This is why I have been asserting that what is doing the work is not an explanation of how and why we know orcs to be brutal and arbitrarliy violent but rather an implicit theory of permissible violence.The second paragraph may be true. But it is the slaying, not the evil, that is doing the work. Or in other words, where the moral certainty lies is not in the evilness of the orc, but the permissibility of using violence against it.As far as the "footprint" of the game goes, I've already posted about that not too far upthread. Early versions of the game took for granted that orcs, goblins etc could be negotiated and allied with: that is why there were reaction rolls, rules for recruiting hunanoid troops (complete with racial attitude tables) and the like. And early editions of the game - and to the best of my knowledge, current ones also - drew no distinction between the permissibility of killing orcs and the permissibility of killing bandits, cultists and the like.As far as LotR is concerned, it doesn't posit that orcs must be killed per se. It posits that orcs, because they are violent and cruel and aggressive, are just targets of defensive and retributive violence; and being so violent themselves, orcs can hardly complain when they suffer violence. As Gandalf says, "Many that live deserve death." Most orcs may well be among such. But it is their motivations and behaviour, not their metaphysical status, that explain that desert.</blockquote>

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