ON GOOD AND EVIL

THE SOURCE OF GOOD AND EVIL

If you cut off a man’s arm he will feel pain. If you torture him and people he cares for he will suffer. If you break a rock with a sledge hammer, does the rock feel pain? If you think the rock is beautiful you may feel loss when the rock is cracked open but does the rock itself feel loss? Without perceiving, feeling beings there can be no perception of evil

An earthquake causes death and destruction and, in its wake, long hard suffering. Is the cause of suffering evil? Is the earthquake evil?

There is a military coup. The new military leaders kill people likely to give immediate resistance, imprison and torture men, women and children from areas sympathetic to the deposed regime. There is long hard suffering. The military government and its supporters are aware of and intend the nature of their acts. Is the cause of suffering, in this case, evil?

Without beings who understand and choose their actions there can be no perpetration of evil

Perception, action and choice have common origins in adaptation. There is no kind of being [particular beings can, due to injury and so on, have severely diminished capabilities] that can perceive but not choose and act and there is no being that can [be said to] act without perception and choice

Perception, action and choice are the marks of the agent. We expand upon the concept of agent to include other features such as thought, feeling, will but these are implied by the basic marks: perception, choice and action

The agent is capable of good. The agent is the source of the creation of the good. Agency is necessary for the existence of the good. But the “mechanisms of agency” include choice, action and perception which imply the possibility of the perception and the perpetration of evil. There is no built in mechanism that will constrain the agent to absolutely refrain from evil – there cannot be such a mechanism, that would contradict the ability of the agent to make choices. There can be, of course, built in and learned mechanisms and behaviors that dispose the agent to abhor, to attempt to avoid or to stem evil

Human beings are agents. The idea of the agent is an abstraction from our own human experience what it is in [human] being that makes possible the institutions of civilization – including good and evil. But that does not at all imply that other species cannot be possessed of agency; or that human being is – or is not – the pinnacle of agency

Document status, June 7, 2003: no action needed

Key idea: evil does not exist without understanding, feeling and choice