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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6408596" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think you misunderstood my point.You can delete the alignment line from all 4e monsters and NPCs and, except for a very few marginal elements that [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] mentioned upthread, the game and the cosmology stand unchanged.This is not true for the Great Wheel, which can't even be described without reference to alignment.*************************It's interesting to see the two of you embracing what [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] presented as a type of reductio ad absurdum!The claim that each individual ony has the capacity to care so much about a given value set is an extremely doubtful proposition of moral psychology. For instance, I have two children. A work colleague of mine has four children. I doubt very much that she loves each of her children ony half as much as I love each of mine! The idea that human emotional and affective commitment is a finite quantity is a conjecture with little evidence to support it.A further issue, when it comes to L/C and G/E, is that (at least in AD&amp;D) law and chaos were presented as different means to the ends of good (or different ways of disregarding good, for evil characters). And if you are committed to goal X, and believe that action A is the only means to X, then you will be committed to A - and that commitment to A doesn't dilute your commitment to X, it affirms it!If making sense of 9-point, 2-axis alignment requires abandoning common sense in the philosophy of action and moral psychology, that for me is yet another strike against it.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6408596, member: 42582"] I think you misunderstood my point. You can delete the alignment line from all 4e monsters and NPCs and, except for a very few marginal elements that [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] mentioned upthread, the game and the cosmology stand unchanged. This is not true for the Great Wheel, which can't even be described without reference to alignment. ************************* It's interesting to see the two of you embracing what [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] presented as a type of reductio ad absurdum! The claim that each individual ony has the capacity to care so much about a given value set is an extremely doubtful proposition of moral psychology. For instance, I have two children. A work colleague of mine has four children. I doubt very much that she loves each of her children ony half as much as I love each of mine! The idea that human emotional and affective commitment is a finite quantity is a conjecture with little evidence to support it. A further issue, when it comes to L/C and G/E, is that (at least in AD&D) law and chaos were presented as different means to the ends of good (or different ways of disregarding good, for evil characters). And if you are committed to goal X, and believe that action A is the only means to X, then you will be committed to A - and that commitment to A doesn't dilute your commitment to X, it affirms it! If making sense of 9-point, 2-axis alignment requires abandoning common sense in the philosophy of action and moral psychology, that for me is yet another strike against it. [/QUOTE]

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