If he started using those terms he would be making a different argument. Moral theories consist of theories of the good, that is what we should value, and theories of the right, what moral agents should do with regard to what is good.

However my main argument here is that the reasons he is providing to support his hypothesis don't work, certainly not in the context of moral theory.

That depends, these words can be similar but also have wildly different meanings. I would say "evil" and "good" carry stronger connotations than "wrong" and "right".

Case in point: Most people wouldn't fret if I said what they called evil is wrong, but many would probably disagree in a lot of cases if I called what they said was wrong for evil.

(But it isn't about category, evil isn't necessarily to wrong that car is to vehicle... it's more like what fruit is to dessert).

Not at all. See below

Now I'll edit it and change "right or wrong" with "good and evil" without changing any meaning of his post whatsoever. Also I see some spots where "incorrect or correct" would make his intent clearer, so I'll make those changes as well.

To be fair though, all moral theories are inconclusive, amirite? (without deification somewhere)

I'm not interested in evil it's way to loaded so bad, but these are not synonymous terms. In fairness he probably could replace right wrong with good evil but that's a lack of specificity in his approach

yes but that's not to say it's not possible to identify the interesting and non interesting concepts.

Care to make an elaborate attempt at the distinction? That would be interesting.

Join the club. To me the notion of intrinsic/objective moral realism generally just seems incoherent and/or a misuse of language for the sake of anthropocentrism.

I've also never heard a coherent argument for why we should even be concerned with following an objective standard of right and wrong if one somehow happened to exist. In such a case right and wrong would just be pointers pointing nowhere.

If you mean evaluate based on the desirability of the consequences of behavior, I think most people do (non-cognitively or otherwise).

Sorry to interject: the differences seem fairly clear. Right and wrong are evaluations (or expectations) of behaviour, whereas good and evil, in the usage I'm thinking about, are expressions of something that, in some nebulous way, exist and can even be a source of influence for behaviour. But even without going that far, good and evil can be seen as more extreme levels of right and wrong.

Either way, using them interchangeably would be confusing at the least.

Yeah that interjection captures it.

I think we can be more exact on the difference here. "Good" and "evil" in philosophy usually refers to value theory, that is, what things are valuable, important or good. For instance, hedonism is a theory of the good, i.e. that pleasure is good and pain is bad. Theistic ethics will often say that God is good. Kantian ethics claim that human freedom or choice is good. Preference utilitarians say that satisfying human preferences is good. Essentially, the good is the goal or endpoint towards which a moral theory claims we should aim our actions or desires.

The moral weight here is really a matter of picking the correct goal as the good. For instance, if there is a god, and goodness is a matter of being godly, then if you direct your actions towards some other end you are likely to act incorrectly (except insofar as the good you do use to direct your actions correlates with being godly).

"Right" and "wrong" are attributes, not of the goal towards which your actions are directed, but of the actions you take to achieve that goal. A popular framework here is consequentialism, which says that the rightness or wrongness of an action is derived from the effects of that action in achieving the good. For instance, if hedonism is true, but you take actions which lead to pain rather than pleasure, then under consequentialism your action is wrong. Alternatively, if they lead to pleasure then they are right.

A big debate between philosophers is over whether consequentialism or some version of deontology is the best theory of the right. Deontological theories of the right say moral claims do not derive just (or at all) from how effective an action is in achieving some goal, but that there are also independent moral considerations accruing to the kinds of actions you take to achieve those goals.

For instance, a deontologist might say that you can freely choose to direct your life towards whatever you want - maybe you want to achieve great advances in science, or be wealthy, or alleviate suffering, etc. However, there are moral limits on the kind of actions you can take to achieve these goals. For instance, even if killing someone else would be effective in achieving your own goals, you still shouldn't kill them, but find some other means of achieving your goals or picking different goals.

The relevant point here is that a deontologist thinks this action is wrong not because it doesn't achieve some goal, but because it is one of a class of actions which by their nature are wrong.

So it would be fair to use "evilly" instead of incorrectly here? It appears you'll say no, but this person has to face the facts if he's working towards other ends doesn't he? Can he escape this by stating he's acting irrelevantly/incorrectly?


And this is why I expect you'll say no, seeing as you've started your distinction here, now referring to actions as opposed to goals, even though your previous example included the same framework.

So, yes, using evilly is fine from the deontological perspective?

No.

What facts? That he wants something that isn't good? Not really.

Sure, the good and the right are related ideas. As I said before, consequentialists claim that the rightness or wrongness of an action is the result of whether or not that action leads to good consequences. Thus, while "right" and "good" are conceptually distinct ideas, it is impossible to develop a consequentialist theory of morality without some account of what is good.

Not really. I think what you are suggesting here is that because deontologists say that some actions are by their very nature wrong that they are saying that those actions are evil. This is a misunderstanding. Instead, deontologists are rejecting this entire framework of reducing wrongness to evilness or rightness to goodness. That is, they want to claim that what makes the action wrong is something about the action itself, not the effects of the action.

Another way of putting it is that consequentialists believe that the good has priority over (or determines) the right, whereas deontologists believe that the right has priority over the good. However, this doesn't mean that for deontologists that the right just is the good.


*Blah, blah, blah. I am running roughshod over the actual complexity of the moral theories here and using consequentialism and deontology as contrast cases.

So consequentialist theories need the concept of 'good', as right alone is insufficient to form a complete theory. Do they also then have the concept of 'evil'? If consequentialists have an ends justify the means approach, then some ends, whether purposefully pursued or not, should be classified as 'evil'. Correct?

So in your example :

Surely good cannot be simply annunciating or choosing the correct goal. If ends are classified as good or evil, and the result of ones actions turns out to miss the goal, evil hath occurred.

Yes, I think that is correct.

Okay?

Well if we can agree that evil has occurred, that's a start.

So to your example again:

If the consequentialist agrees that evil has occurred, but only admits that the outcome of his action was evil, who does he attribute this evil to and where was its inception? He wrought this outcome into existence, and its inception was in his acting.

It appears he has contrived this model to avoid any responsibility and it comes off as intellectually dishonest. It's no wonder that competing models exist.

Surely his acting was where evil was set in motion, and thus it is correct to finish your quote with "evilly".

He attributes the evil to the state of affairs. It was caused by his actions. Notice how it is not an implication (as you seem to assume) of either of these claims that his action was evil. This is just like it is not an implication of painting a house red that painting is red, or of cooking a healthy meal that cooking is healthy.

Nah, you just don't understand it. The competing models more or less agree with consequentialism on this point.

Nope. I'll go further and say that it isn't even necessarily correct to call his action wrong (think of how a plus EV bet in poker can still lead to you losing a hand).

I'm only implying that a housed painted red was painted with red paint.

If a blue house is good, why is there a red paint soaked brush in the consequentialists hand?

Okay.

Here's a more generous response. I don't care what terms you wish to use. I think it is useful to agree on a common terminology, but if you want to use different words for the same concept, whatever. What I'm doing here is describing a conceptual distinction that is common in Anglo-American moral philosophy between what is typically called the "right" and the "good." I think this conceptual distinction is useful in describing some of the differences between popular moral theories, such as consequentialism and deontology.

If you think consequentialism is false, or doesn't take proper account of moral responsibility, fine. But that isn't the issue here. I'm just trying to describe part of the common conceptual space of moral philosophy. If you want to disagree with me on this, then what you'll need to do is show how this isn't actually a relevant or important distinction in contemporary Anglo-American moral philosophy, or that the concepts of the right and the good I described here are incoherent. The merits of consequentialism is not relevant to that discussion.

Sorry if this is a bit too meta:

How does someone get to their particular meaning of what right and wrong is to them? i.e. obviously a theist might consider right to be closely following the wishes of their god, but a non-believer could never think that way, and for them 'doing the right thing' might mean behaving well.

What good means to someone doesn't seem like it is something you reason to. But it doesn't seem like a presupposition either. Or an assumption. While people do change their mind about what good means to them, at any given moment it seems to be held at some sub-conscious level and I'm not sure how it gets described.

This is a question of Moral Psychology rather than philosophy. We come to hold moral views by a variety of means, we may get taught some, we respond emotionally to certain stimulus that we infer some moral characteristic from. But generally people won't have a consistent view on what is good, at various times on various questions it will be what pleases her, what she thinks is right, what corresponds to some other value, but there will not be a consistent description of what is good that applies to all moral questions.

But this is not surprising, among philosophers there is disagreement on what is good or whether moral goodness ever obtains. I wouldn't expect people to have a philosophically consistent account of what is good. But this doesn't seem to mean we can't reason about what good is if indeed it exists.

I think using "behavior" as opposed to 'action' here is odd in the same way it would be odd to say "my behavior preflop was call" rather than saying "my action preflop was call".

If the application of morality is to create a legal system, then where the law is breached denotes egregious evil. But again, as in my critique of Original Positions model of consequentialism, it shouldn't be overlooked that evil begins even before the breach, as you've noted as well.

Ultimately...agreed.

In contrast to 'good' or 'evil', 'right' and 'wrong' are exactly like 'correct' and 'incorrect' and seem fitted for math or logic problems. I suppose moral arguments have logic components, but a moral theory with only correct or incorrect and no mention of good or evil hasn't even approached the issue of morality.

remember "confusing at the least?" (why not use 'good' and 'evil'?)

'Tis a tough question.

My simple answer is follow the law in general, and for specific day to day actions listen to the good 'voice'.

Do you mean reason about what is "right" or about what is "good"?

"Right" seems to have a built in epistemology problem.

Plato's "Form of the Good" is apropos here with the disclaimer by
Aristotle who stated that the "Form of the Good" does not relate to our sense bound reality and therefore is untrue due to lack of inclusiveness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_of_the_Good

Of course Aristotle is the Greek philosopher to which we, in the West, East too, look when we justify materiality and sense bound activities via "logic". Its amazing that modern Man sees Aristotle in this way though his teacher was Plato. Could it be that he was really this obtuse or was it that our modern scholarship has weegeed down Aristotle to fit our preconditions? Too me, probably so.

The problem is that in this thread all considerations are related only to the individual without consideration as to whether "morality" or the "good" is a universal not created but working through the human soul. Plato speaks to "ideas" and of course there is the "idea" of the "good".

In the modern view we are led to the contrast between "nominalism" and "realism". Is the "form of the good" merely a name not associated with sense bound reality (nominalism) or an active entity which is the real "realism".

It appears, according to the reference, that Aristotle chose Nominalism while Plato, of course, along with Aquinas and Goethe chose Realism.

The question becomes and has always been: is there a higher world and is there a connection to our sense bound reality ? This is the work, to clarify through the evolution of the intellect the reality of Plato's "realm of ideas".

There is obviously much more but aphoristically the "beings" of the thought world are immersed in and are a morality as in the spiritual world morality is such as we might call our laws of nature.

A human being can be called a "moral tone poem" who in his sojourn between lives he is appreciated as such. Man knows "the form of the good' to which the individual man carries with him into each life for the "Good" is within each individual man as a cosmic being working the earth but always impressed as a being of soul and spirit.

No matter how you cut it there isn't a one of you who , in some way, attempt to better one's self on a daily basis and this betterment is inextricably tied with the "good" economics, utility, and materialism notwithstanding. Yes , some fall from grace and I believe it was earlier said that being human is not an animal with control and management of the terrors of Pandora being our work; nothing new here Mr. Atheist, straight from the religious and philosophy or any that denies only the material in their life, whether consciously or unconsciously and the work is to effect these matters into consciousness.

Within Man is the "Good" and the manifoldness of the human spirit brings forth a creative substantiality, the flowers of life.