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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Clint_L" data-source="post: 9190436" data-attributes="member: 7035894">In general, when discussing ethics from a philosophical perspective, we don't use the terms "good" and "evil." They are completely subjective and usually just confuse the issue at hand.Ethics is concerned with the methodology used to determine morally preferable actions in general so that we know what to do in particular contexts. There are two main schools of thought: consequentialists basically believe that the morality of an action can only be stood in the context of its outcome. So is, say, stealing right or wrong? Depends on the result. In effect, ethics becomes a kind of algebra, where you are constantly doing sums while taking into account complex variables.Deontologists believe that ethics can be reduced to universal rules, determined through logical reasoning, such as Kant's categorical imperative - to know if an action is right or wrong, imagine a world in which anyone could do it any time for any reason, and if that is not a world a reasonable person would want to live in, then that action is not moral. Ever. No exceptions. Outcomes don't matter.Obviously, there is a lot more nuances here, and many different flavours of these two branches.Good and evil as concepts basically come from virtues ethics, which are barely even ethics (there's no real system to them). Basically, virtues ethics are moral rules that are followed because an authority said so. Ten Commandments, that sort of thing. Completely subjective and not particularly useful as a way of discussing ethics in a general context because every argument more or less boils down to "because God/the King/my Mom said so."So is mind control better or worse than murdering someone? A consequentialist would say that it depends on context, but if you mind controlled someone so that you didn't have to murder them, then that is almost guaranteed to be the most moral choice and you should definitely do that. A deontologist might have a harder time - I would imagine that they might see mind control as definitely not passing the categorical imperative, and murder definitely doesn't pass, so they would conclude that they are both wrong; thus, you should never do either, in any circumstances, even to save lives.</blockquote>

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