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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7670889" data-attributes="member: 42582">The question still arises.How do I tell that a person is judging so-and-so to be altruistic? I need criteria for concept-individuation, and how am I going to do that?If I'm trying to work out whether they are talking about chairs or tables or trees or mountains, the problem is not too bad: I look at what they point to when they teach the word to a child.But what is the common anchor for my belief about Bahamut's behaviour, your belief about it, etc, such that we can all be said to be judging that he is altruistic?I wouldn't expect a typical D&D group to stumble onto the problem in exactly the terms I've put it, but I think the problem is a real one. The way I think it would most likely manifest itself would be via a more obvious vicious circularity: good is defined as "What everyone judges to be good", and we explain the content of various peoples' concepts of good by pointing to the Upper Planes. I don't know the Planescape texts well enough to know whether or not they present this sort of circularity, but I would not be surprised if they do.</blockquote>