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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack Simth" data-source="post: 4221266" data-attributes="member: 29252">And yet, the peices are all in place, and you continue to not see.Exercise for you:Prove that logic and/or reason are the basis of ethics/morality.  Kant couldn't.  When it came down to it, he simply defended it with a question, that amounted to "what else?"When it came down to it, Aristotle was attempting to build a logical "why?" behind existing, in-place behavior and judgement.  His arguments were generally supported by observations of what people were already calling "good" or "bad".  He was doing observational ethics.When people evaluate a ethical system, they almost always end up comparing it's results to some pre-existing notions (which usually amount to gut instinct).You're requiring reason on a question of ethics, when reason as the foundation of ethics has never been actually proven.  You dismiss gut reaction as irrational out of hand, when it is demonstrable that any given system of ethics has foundational tokens of things that cannot be logically proven.  This is one aspect of why you are unlikely to see the other side.  There are fundamental tokens involved in the call.  I don't know you well.  It would take extreme lengths to get there.  You appear to be approaching things primarily from an "ends" view.  I gave  examples where the ends are the same, but the methods different, and one is considered "bad" and the other, not ... and you don't see the why, or how it does properly relate.  And the fundamental tokens are such that I can't straight-out tell you (I have), as it simply won't work (it didn't).Compare the king who occasionally sends a thousand conscripted peasants to defensive wars every few years, getting them killed in the defense of the country, to the king who feeds a thousand peasants a year to demons as part of a defense pact, rendering defensive wars unneeded.  One's evil, the other's neutral, possibly good.The king who occasionally sends the conscripts is weighing options that aren't good, and picking the one that does the least damage.  He's neutral, possibly good.The king who feeds demonic armies is weighing options that aren't good, and picking the one that makes him the strongest, even if he isn't all that much stronger for it, despite pain inflicted on others.  He's evil.In both cases, the peasants have negligible choice in the matter (neither conscripts nor sacrifices have a the option to say "no" in a way that matters).  Using Summon Elemental sacrifices by way of a Vampric Dagger, you're probably going to end up temporarily killing dozens of them on any given adventuring day if you're investing in this method of healing.  The elementals are not given any chance to defend themselves against the thing that's going to make them missing for a full day rather than a handful of rounds.  And for all that, you're only saving a small amount of cash over a rather long period of time (depending on your assumptions, wands of lesser vigor are maybe double the cost of sacrificing elementals to a vampiric dagger over the course of 10 levels).  This is the option of the most pain for others, for fairly small gain compared to other existing options.The combat summons, on the other hand, are generally going to be limited to a relative handful - the game is designed around four encounters per day, and battles don't last long enough for summoning much more than that.  Likewise, there's very little that will do the job of a combat summon.  Additionally, the combat summons have the opportunity to fight back against the thing that going to arrange for them to be missing for a full day rather than a handful of rounds.  If nothing else, there's a pretty steep magnitude difference between the two.This has been pointed out in less verbose terms by other people in this thread.  Are you only reading a portion of the thread?  It's not too bad - only four pages long at this point.  You primarily want eamon's post in response to Infinity2000 on page 2 - look for "violence for violence's sake". ... and you're still missing the why of the usage of that particular example, even when I've specifically pointed it out.  Are we speaking the same language here? It's not bailing out.  It's a statement that I don't want to put in as much work as you'll require to make you comprehend due to the nature of the differences involved.That's because I'm taking obvious ones for the purposes of demonstrating the basic principle.  It can take a very long time to determine where such things are hiding when you don't know the full background of the other person.  "Extreme effort" as I mentioned earlier.  Shucks - I even pointed at this aspect of it earlier - "In the case of North/South, time, distance, and the extremity of the case have conspired to make it a fairly simple matter to point out where to find the disconnect between the two. It's not quite so clear-cut here. It is, however, demonstratable that there is one" in response to one of your posts.  Are you not reading what I type? Not in and of itself, no.  There are other factors involved, which I've already pointed out, as have others.... and you, or someone like you, will probably come right back with more questions and attempted contradictions.  Because it takes an absurd amount of typing for such instances of disagreement on fundamental assumptions when they're not highly specific differences to begin with.</blockquote>

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