3 ms·

That would be a strange definition. Good is deliberately helping others, evil is deliberately harming others. If no one helped others, but also didn't harm the

That would be a strange definition. Good is deliberately helping others, evil is deliberately harming others. If no one helped others, but also didn't harm them, life would be still be much better without people doing evil things. For example, no volunteer would clean a beach of other's trash, but also no visitor would pollute the beach intentionally.

unsupp0rted 4y ago
> evil is deliberately harming others Oh I can think of plenty of evil acts that don't involve deliberately harming others. But at the end of the day the evil-doer doesn't think they're evil and nothing I say will convince them otherwise. And indeed I can't be sure they're an evil person or a person merely committing evil acts or a person committing neutral acts that seem evil to me. All I can be sure of is that I don't want or need to be around them. It does me no good to hate them or revel in their misfortune. I can be relieved when they stop doing whatever was objectionable to me though.
- ASalazarMX 4y ago
  Yes, there are plenty of edge cases to philosophize about, but for the overwhelming majority of situations, if you intentionally harm others, you're being evil, regardless of how you rationalize it. This implies that everyone is both evil and good to some degree. Even if you debate the edge cases forever, most of the situations where significant harm was purposefully done would be clearly evil.
marginalia_nu 4y ago
> evil is deliberately harming others I don't think this definition of evil survives the trolley problem.
- ASalazarMX 4y ago
  Yet it reflects the natural reaction of not deliberately killing someone for the greater good, because people judge that more evil than the neutral position of not intervening. Also, if you don't intervene, you don't have to answer to the police about why you deliberately killed a man. Murder is murder, even if your intentions were good.
  - Timon3 4y ago
    As mentioned by the comment you reply to, this thought: > Yet it reflects the natural reaction of not deliberately killing someone for the greater good, because people judge that more evil than the neutral position of not intervening. is quickly disproven through the Trolley problem, since it's literally about deliberately killing someone for the greater good - and the average respondent DOES deliberately kill someone for the greater good.

unsupp0rted 4y ago

> evil is deliberately harming others Oh I can think of plenty of evil acts that don't involve deliberately harming others. But at the end of the day the evil-doer doesn't think they're evil and nothing I say will convince them otherwise. And indeed I can't be sure they're an evil person or a person merely committing evil acts or a person committing neutral acts that seem evil to me. All I can be sure of is that I don't want or need to be around them. It does me no good to hate them or revel in their misfortune. I can be relieved when they stop doing whatever was objectionable to me though.

ASalazarMX 4y ago
Yes, there are plenty of edge cases to philosophize about, but for the overwhelming majority of situations, if you intentionally harm others, you're being evil, regardless of how you rationalize it. This implies that everyone is both evil and good to some degree. Even if you debate the edge cases forever, most of the situations where significant harm was purposefully done would be clearly evil.

marginalia_nu 4y ago

> evil is deliberately harming others I don't think this definition of evil survives the trolley problem.

ASalazarMX 4y ago
Yet it reflects the natural reaction of not deliberately killing someone for the greater good, because people judge that more evil than the neutral position of not intervening. Also, if you don't intervene, you don't have to answer to the police about why you deliberately killed a man. Murder is murder, even if your intentions were good.
- Timon3 4y ago
  As mentioned by the comment you reply to, this thought: > Yet it reflects the natural reaction of not deliberately killing someone for the greater good, because people judge that more evil than the neutral position of not intervening. is quickly disproven through the Trolley problem, since it's literally about deliberately killing someone for the greater good - and the average respondent DOES deliberately kill someone for the greater good.