Bad People

[penfold]

Just before his death Pol Pot said to a journalist that he still believed his leadership had done more good than ill. In China the official line of the CCP is that Mao Tse Tung was 70% right and 30% wrong. Apologists for the Nazis claim fewer than six million Jews died in the concentration camps.

While there may be cynical reasons for these claims (eg much holocaust denial hides a murderous anti-semitism); there is also something significant going on here. It has to do with moral judgement. An interesting commonality of the three examples given above is that they are secular statements. Pol Pot does not claim his genocide was divinely ordered; the CCP is not claiming that Mao was the son of god and so above criticism; and holocaust denial does not require any claim about God's judgement. What is at stake here is not whether such and such an act was Right or Wrong, but whether the people themselves are Good or Bad. So Mao did bad things but only for 30% of his rule, the remaining 70% was good. Therefore Mao, on balance, is a Good Person.

Personal moral worth used to be decided in reference to divine judgement. Good People went to heaven; Bad People to hell. So the fact that King Edward the Confessor once ordered the people of Dover to be killed was irrelevant; his posthumous sanctification by the church defined him as a morally Good Man. In secular societies we have lost the idea of a divine law-giver (or any absolute law giver). Our ethics have become, in general, consequentialist. We look to the results of actions to determine their moral weight rather than holding to absolute moral laws. So a theist's ethical stance on abortion is guided by their belief in the inherent wrongness of murder and the sanctity of life. The secular person, on the other hand, looks at the consequences of an abortion to determine its ethical weight. Thus most theists want no abortion and most secular people allow it in certain circumstances (at its extreme, the only required circumstance being the woman's choice to abort). For the theist murder is wrong because God says so, for the secular person murder is wrong because of its consequences (NB the secular person might say they think murder is always wrong, this may sound absolutist but when pressed you will find that murder is always wrong because the consequences of making murder permissible are so bad. So the consequentialist method does allow for absolute sounding ethical dictums).

When Pol Pot says that he did more harm than good; he is trying to say that, taken as a whole, his actions were Good. Thus Pol Pot himself is really a Good Person. But that seems to me a bad way of deciding such an issue. After all we want to say that Pol Pot was a Bad Person. We could say this on the grounds that he actually did more harm than good. Yet this is unsatisfying. Does the Nazi regime become 'less bad' if we discover that only 5.5million Jew died in concentration camps? It seems to me that such a claim is absurd. Consequential method may be adequate for deciding if a particular action is Right or Wrong (though there is a serious debate to be had on this question â€" problem of counter-factuals); but it seems absurd to argue that it applies to people. The murderer gets no points for all the people he lets live...

So here's the question. How, without divine judgement, do we decide if a person* is Good or Bad? Or should we abandon the idea that people can have ethical worth and insist that only actions do?


* As opposed to an act

[OldGit]

What is a person but the aggregate of their behaviour?

[Tank]

What is a person but the aggregate of their behaviour?

In which case where does the pivot point lay? Is a good person allowed one murder? Is the Scrooge like individual who has never broken a law bad?

No amount of good actions can expunge a really bad action, such as murder. Possibly because the individual has transgressed the bounds of acceptable behaviour so for they are virtually irredeemable? Or maybe a murderer who goes onto carry out many selfless acts of courage can wipe their history clean and become good?

So a person is an aggregate of their behaviour, but some actions weigh more in the balance than others?

[AreEl]

So here's the question. How, without divine judgement, do we decide if a person* is Good or Bad? Or should we abandon the idea that people can have ethical worth and insist that only actions do?

An interesting question...but you've jumped the gun, so to speak. First of all,  what is ''good'' and what is ''evil''?

[fester30]

What about Dexter?  A serial killer who kills killers.  He finds evidence the courts may never see due to laws against illegal searches.  He makes sure they are guilty beyond doubt.  Then he kills them.  He may have been wrong once or twice, but so have juries that have put people to death.  Is Dexter a good person?  At the very least he's very entertaining television.

[Tank]

So here's the question. How, without divine judgement, do we decide if a person* is Good or Bad? Or should we abandon the idea that people can have ethical worth and insist that only actions do?

An interesting question...but you've jumped the gun, so to speak. First of all,  what is ''good'' and what is ''evil''?

[spoiler:1il38d12]Trust a Christian not to know the difference!



Sorry that was too easy.  [/spoiler:1il38d12]

[penfold]

An interesting question...but you've jumped the gun, so to speak. First of all,  what is ''good'' and what is ''evil''?

Well I avoid the word evil, I find it too bound up in Christian notions of sin. As for what is "Good" and "Bad", that is a pertinent question.

I would make two points.

First I don't think you will find definitions of these words that are philosophically satisfying. I think any coherent definition of "good and bad" will fail to cover some behaviour we would want to call good or bad, and so be incomplete. A corollary of this is any complete definition of "good and bad" will contain contradictions and so be incoherent. "Good and bad" are best defined as being a set of behaviours, the boundary of that set can only really be defined by examples.

Secondly, while this definition by examples is seemingly weak, that should not tempt us to be sceptical of the meaning of "good and bad". While we can play the sceptic and argue to the conclusion that "good and bad" are meaningless terms, to do so seems to fly in the face of our actual experience of the world. So even a weak definition of "good and bad" is preferable to none.

[The Magic Pudding]

So here's the question. How, without divine judgement, do we decide if a person* is Good or Bad? Or should we abandon the idea that people can have ethical worth and insist that only actions do? * As opposed to an act

Intent must be important, the legal system seems to think so.
Some start looking cool like Mugabe, maybe Mao.
The 70/30 thing doesn't look too good, I wouldn't like to share the road with a bunch of 70 percenters.
Probably need to balance actions, intent and outcomes.
So many problems are annoyingly complicated.

[penfold]

Intent must be important, the legal system seems to think so.
Some start looking cool like Mugabe, maybe Mao.
The 70/30 thing doesn't look too good, I wouldn't like to share the road with a bunch of 70 percenters.
Probably need to balance actions, intent and outcomes.
So many problems are annoyingly complicated.

Well I agree with all of this regarding the ethical question of whether a certain course of action is Good or Bad. But let's say we could resolve that problem (even in a weak way - by example); then assuming we can say "That behaviour was Bad", can we move from that to "This person is Bad"? Or are such statements meaningless?

[The Magic Pudding]

Well I agree with all of this regarding the ethical question of whether a certain course of action is Good or Bad. But let's say we could resolve that problem (even in a weak way - by example); then assuming we can say "That behaviour was Bad", can we move from that to "This person is Bad"? Or are such statements meaningless?

I don't think there is an objective bad, subjective badness isn't uncommon.
Someone who does bad repeatedly with no redeeming actions, yes I'll call them bad.
An apple can go bad, a human can too.
It's probably a bit late to ask but what is our working definition of bad?

[februarystars]

No amount of good actions can expunge a really bad action, such as murder. Possibly because the individual has transgressed the bounds of acceptable behaviour so for they are virtually irredeemable? Or maybe a murderer who goes onto carry out many selfless acts of courage can wipe their history clean and become good?

I think there's a blurry line here, and I'll throw in an example. My uncle, to whom I was very close, was considered a pretty "bad guy" when he was younger. He was into drugs and bar fights, had been to jail many times and was covered head to toe in tattoos. When he got older, by the time I was born, he had really calmed down, met his wife and started a family, and his home became a harborage for foster kids from really traumatic backgrounds. The way he was able to work with these kids who were so psychologically disturbed and get them to make progress was astonishing if you knew how he used to be.

Then out of the blue, he shot himself, and there was all this speculation that he might have killed a man where he worked. We still don't know what the heck really happened.

In my mind, he's always been a good person, since the only side of him I ever knew was the older, married, foster parent, awesome uncle side. I had only ever heard stories about his younger days, and his suicide (possible murder/suicide) was a shocking, traumatic incident for me. But in the minds of those who knew him when he was younger, the incident was not shocking, as if it was just a matter of time before it inevitably happened.

So anyway, I suppose what I'm getting at here is that what makes a person good or bad depends on who you ask. Everyone sees different sides, and in the end, we never see the inside at all. We can really only make judgements based on observable actions or spoken thoughts, and the complex nature of the "goodness" or "badness" of these actions make it difficult in many cases to apply these actions to the character of the person in such a black and white way as "good" or "bad."

[Stevil]

What's the point in tagging a person with a Good or Bad label?

The way I see it, if the person is a threat to society then lock them up. If they have commited a serious crime then lock them up.
If you are writing a history book then write of their actions, let the audience decide for themselves if they must decide between good or bad.
There are alot of people that believe in what they are doing, even if they are grossly misguided.

[Melmoth]

@penfold.

Consequentialism is more sophisticated than deontological ethics purely because it's more complex. It takes into account the subtlety of circumstance, extraneous to action, which makes it a lot more versatile. But ultimately it's no more grounded. How do you determine whether a consequence is positive or negative? You can invent arbitrary imperatives here, ie. "the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people" or inversely "the least amount of suffering for the greatest number of people" but how do you qualify these without a moral sense to validate them?

If we take the latter imperative, for instance, we could destroy the entire planet, kill everyone on it, and hey presto! No more suffering. Does this mean that we should destroy the world? Or does it mean that we should discard that idea and come up with a better one. If the latter, then why? Because destroying the world is 'bad'? And what does 'better' mean, unless you already have an established moral spectrum to measure it against? I might just as credibly say "the greatest suffering for the greatest number of people" and take that to be my imperative. But nobody would accept this.

We construct our moral systems around an already assumed, yet transient and difficult to express, set of moral certainties. It's not an attempt to discover the basis of morality but simply to define and rationalise what we already think we possess in entirety. We measure the worth of all moral systems against our assumed, ungrounded certainties, and this is the only thing that can give or take away their integrity. You illustrate that nicely, here:

When Pol Pot says that he did more harm than good; he is trying to say that, taken as a whole, his actions were Good. Thus Pol Pot himself is really a Good Person. But that seems to me a bad way of deciding such an issue. After all we want to say that Pol Pot was a Bad Person.

Ultimately consequentialism falls back on the same principle as deontological ethics. Be it actions, consequences or intentions; things are only good or bad, just because.

[AreEl]

The various posters who have contributed to Penfold's discussion here have had interesting things to say about Good vs. Bad. I especially liked Melmoth's post; the wording is a bit dense but the ideas are crystal clear:

@penfold.

Consequentialism is more sophisticated than deontological ethics purely because it's more complex. It takes into account the subtlety of circumstance, extraneous to action, which makes it a lot more versatile. But ultimately it's no more grounded. How do you determine whether a consequence is positive or negative? You can invent arbitrary imperatives here, ie. "the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people" or inversely "the least amount of suffering for the greatest number of people" but how do you qualify these without a moral sense to validate them?

In other words, ''goodness'' depends on the relation a thing has to human need or want, and on the value it has been accorded by social factors. Inversely, the same would be true for ''badness.''  Value judgements are by social consensus; there is no such thing as pure ''good'' or pure ''evil'' in the metaphysical sense.

@penfold.

If we take the latter imperative, for instance, we could destroy the entire planet, kill everyone on it, and hey presto! No more suffering. Does this mean that we should destroy the world? Or does it mean that we should discard that idea and come up with a better one. If the latter, then why? Because destroying the world is 'bad'? And what does 'better' mean, unless you already have an established moral spectrum to measure it against? I might just as credibly say "the greatest suffering for the greatest number of people" and take that to be my imperative. But nobody would accept this.

I made the word ''should'' bigger above because they surprised me! You can only let the word ''should'' into your vocabulary when you have adopted an ''established moral spectrum'' (to use your words). Disclaimer: I understand that you were making a point here.

We construct our moral systems around an already assumed, yet transient and difficult to express, set of moral certainties. It's not an attempt to discover the basis of morality but simply to define and rationalise what we already think we possess in entirety. We measure the worth of all moral systems against our assumed, ungrounded certainties, and this is the only thing that can give or take away their integrity.

Excellent observation! The atheist says ''Good and bad are determined by cultural consensus and are a matter of opinion''  whereas the Christian would say, ''Good and evil are determined by God and are objectively known.'' The atheist conception of Good vs. Bad necessarily denies the possibility of absolutes in relation to moral knowledge. (Hmmm...now I'm sounding dense myself!) In other words, you can't really determine what is good or bad, so forget about it. Live and let die.

[Davin]

Excellent observation! The atheist says ''Good and bad are determined by cultural consensus and are a matter of opinion''  

I'm not sure who "the atheist" you're talking about is, but hastily generalizing does not a good argument make.

whereas the Christian would say, ''Good and evil are determined by God and are objectively known.''

Do you have an objective means in which to acquire these "objectively" known good and evil determinations?

The atheist conception of Good vs. Bad necessarily denies the possibility of absolutes in relation to moral knowledge.

You're responding to Melmoth, not to every single atheist. This is like me quoting the Cult of Cthulhu and saying "the theist believes there is no point to the world and we're all going to be devoured no matter what." You know, becuase they believe in the god Cthulhu, they are theists, you're a theist, therefore you share the same beliefs.

(Hmmm...now I'm sounding dense myself!) In other words, you can't really determine what is good or bad, so forget about it. Live and let die.

In whose other words? Who said anything close to this?