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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4707797" data-attributes="member: 4937">While I agree with your general thrust, a note of caution on that.&nbsp; Actions are nothing more than realized beliefs.&nbsp; Having a belief that murder would be wrong is somewhat meaningless, if you are never in a position to contemplate murder.&nbsp; Only when you are in a position to act on your belief does your belief really have alot of substance.&nbsp; Which isn't to say holding beliefs strongly isn't going to substantially effect how you act, but it does suggest that a person who acts one way when their stated beliefs are another maybe does not actually actually have the beliefs that they think that they do (or say that they do).Let me add to your criticism by saying that alot of people who are saying, &quot;I believe alignment is merely how you act.&quot;, are missing the point in another very important way.&nbsp; In D&amp;D we don't usually go from how a person acts and then try to construct an alignment.&nbsp; In D&amp;D alignment is an attribute we assign the character, and from that we try to construct how the character would act.I have said absolutely nothing which disagrees with a statement like, &quot;Alignment is the sum of a character's actions.&quot;&nbsp; I have also done very little to address what the basis of ethics ought to be - intention, consequence, or virtue.&nbsp; I don't know why people feel compelled to state things as if they were contridicting me when I've not spoken about them at all.&nbsp; But in any event, such a simple statement as &quot;Alignment is the sum of a character's actions.&quot;, tells us very little about how alignment is or should be used, and it gives us very little answer to the questions which prompted this thread fork like, &quot;If alignment is the sum of a character's actions, how is not just a short hand and wholy inadequate description of personality?&quot; I believe that what I have stated still describes what alignment is regardless of which contriversial position we take on free will vs. predestination or consequentialism vs. deontological ethics.&nbsp; I'm trying to avoid taking stands on such things because I think they are largely irrelevant to describing what alignment is and what it is used for, and I don't want to get bogged down in arguments to which there may be no satisfactory answer.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 4707797, member: 4937"] While I agree with your general thrust, a note of caution on that. Actions are nothing more than realized beliefs. Having a belief that murder would be wrong is somewhat meaningless, if you are never in a position to contemplate murder. Only when you are in a position to act on your belief does your belief really have alot of substance. Which isn't to say holding beliefs strongly isn't going to substantially effect how you act, but it does suggest that a person who acts one way when their stated beliefs are another maybe does not actually actually have the beliefs that they think that they do (or say that they do). Let me add to your criticism by saying that alot of people who are saying, "I believe alignment is merely how you act.", are missing the point in another very important way. In D&D we don't usually go from how a person acts and then try to construct an alignment. In D&D alignment is an attribute we assign the character, and from that we try to construct how the character would act. I have said absolutely nothing which disagrees with a statement like, "Alignment is the sum of a character's actions." I have also done very little to address what the basis of ethics ought to be - intention, consequence, or virtue. I don't know why people feel compelled to state things as if they were contridicting me when I've not spoken about them at all. But in any event, such a simple statement as "Alignment is the sum of a character's actions.", tells us very little about how alignment is or should be used, and it gives us very little answer to the questions which prompted this thread fork like, "If alignment is the sum of a character's actions, how is not just a short hand and wholy inadequate description of personality?" I believe that what I have stated still describes what alignment is regardless of which contriversial position we take on free will vs. predestination or consequentialism vs. deontological ethics. I'm trying to avoid taking stands on such things because I think they are largely irrelevant to describing what alignment is and what it is used for, and I don't want to get bogged down in arguments to which there may be no satisfactory answer. [/QUOTE]

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