some things we can *never* prove, only decide, such as if foo is evil.
See, I want to argue with that. Not because of universal morality, but because I think that evil has a meaning. Although the OED has let me down and defined it as "The antithesis of Good" :-) Sadly, it probably has lots of meanings, and people can argue at cross purposes without realising this. So lets give a few examples, perhaps "evil: a thing that makes people unhappy" Well, this is measurable. At least in as much as people know their own happiness. We may not get it right, but we could get a sample population, kill half their families, and then ask them if they were happy or not, and if they said they weren't we could conclude that killing people's families was "this sort of evil". Or "evil: a thing that makes God unhappy" We could read the Bible, and the books of lots of other religions, and we could argue that there was measurable evidence that god was against killing. or we could argue there was evidence that god was very pro-killing. But there is stuff available to us when we try to work out if killing people is "this sort of evil". It may be practically impossible to know everything to do with god, and nothing may be proovable, but there are a lot of general things we can consult and study to look for trends. Whether or not God is anti-killing is not something we just have to guess. Whether or not killing makes people unhappy is not something we just have to guess.
There's a fuzzyness here, because there's mathematicians proof and historians / scientists proof. But we crossed a lot of those lines when we said things like "Ice cream makes people fat" or "Hitler hated Jews" which I think were both factual-truths, not moral-truths in your ideas. If you take "Hitler hated Jews" as a factual truth you can sort of see the case for "God hates killing people" being a factual-truth - there is (may be) a large body of writings and revalations that support it, and not many opposed... (???)
So if we pin down evil to a definition, then it's sort-of measurable. Or at least investigatable. So the interesting conclusion is if there are some words that are not fully definable - that we *know* what they mean, but can't say it. Intrinstically meaningless (or of meta-meaning) making them intrinsically unmeasurable
no subject
Date: 2005-04-05 04:28 pm (UTC)See, I want to argue with that. Not because of universal morality, but because I think that evil has a meaning. Although the OED has let me down and defined it as "The antithesis of Good" :-) Sadly, it probably has lots of meanings, and people can argue at cross purposes without realising this. So lets give a few examples, perhaps "evil: a thing that makes people unhappy" Well, this is measurable. At least in as much as people know their own happiness. We may not get it right, but we could get a sample population, kill half their families, and then ask them if they were happy or not, and if they said they weren't we could conclude that killing people's families was "this sort of evil". Or "evil: a thing that makes God unhappy" We could read the Bible, and the books of lots of other religions, and we could argue that there was measurable evidence that god was against killing. or we could argue there was evidence that god was very pro-killing. But there is stuff available to us when we try to work out if killing people is "this sort of evil". It may be practically impossible to know everything to do with god, and nothing may be proovable, but there are a lot of general things we can consult and study to look for trends. Whether or not God is anti-killing is not something we just have to guess. Whether or not killing makes people unhappy is not something we just have to guess.
There's a fuzzyness here, because there's mathematicians proof and historians / scientists proof. But we crossed a lot of those lines when we said things like "Ice cream makes people fat" or "Hitler hated Jews" which I think were both factual-truths, not moral-truths in your ideas. If you take "Hitler hated Jews" as a factual truth you can sort of see the case for "God hates killing people" being a factual-truth - there is (may be) a large body of writings and revalations that support it, and not many opposed... (???)
So if we pin down evil to a definition, then it's sort-of measurable. Or at least investigatable. So the interesting conclusion is if there are some words that are not fully definable - that we *know* what they mean, but can't say it. Intrinstically meaningless (or of meta-meaning) making them intrinsically unmeasurable