The Campaign Builder's Guild

The Culture isn't devoid of morality, it just has neither Absolute morality (it's predominantly atheistic, though also EXTREMELY non-conformist - there is no "norm") nor totally relative morality.  While obviously far from the utopias of Enlightenment thinkers it also shares a lot in common with Classical Liberalism, which emerged from the Enlightenment.  My point was that I don't think law or "general morality" and culture should be intertwined (otherwise you veer increasingly towards theocracy); that morality should be derived from reason and logic (sometimes phrased as "natural rights") rather than from tradition, religious dogma, or a set of arbitrary cultural norms.  That it's possibly to phrase a system of right/wrong or good/evil distinct both from absolute morality, which presents Good and Evil is as tangible forces (I don't think they are), and total relativism, which seems to exonerate things like genital mutilation or slavery.  The "line" is delineated not by reference to the supernatural but rather "what makes most sense for our society" or "what set of laws will improve our society the most"?  Obviously this leads to a new set of arguments but I think that that set of arguments (about logic and the self-improvement of society) is far more productive than one between relativism vs. traditional/cultural doctrine or dogma.

Back to the subject of the Culture.  Free will is vital to the Culture - it's the whole point of the Culture.  It's communist in the very purest sense: it's citizens are in no way subject to a state or Greater Good with the very marginal exception of Contact.  Culture citizens are free to do literally anything they want (including leaving the Culture); you could spend your whole life just playing games or creating art or doing recreational drugs, if you wanted (and many do).  Machines have automated 100% of labor and everyone dwells on massive self-sufficient space stations/planetoids/huge ships.  I can see why reading the first sentence of the wikipedia page might lead one to envision the Culture as a freedom-inhibiting authoritarian socialist state that subsumes all of its citizenry towards a utilitarian Greater Good, but really it's pretty much 180 degrees from that.  It's liberal anarchy, without property (you can synthesize EVERYTHING you want) or non-friendly competition (wars are hyper-rare and only fought when another, less enlightened civilization starts exterting a destructive influence on large ports of the galaxy - such as the theocratic Idirans in the first book, who declare jihad on the universe).  If you kill someone (also incredibly rare, the only murders are the very occasional crimes of passion, and everyone in the Culture is posthuman so it takes quite a bit to actually kill them) you get slap-droned (a drone follows you around and stops you from killing again) - other than social ostracization, that's the only "punishment."  It's actually not all that far from Star Trek's Federation, which is also relatively post-scarcity.

I didn't say the Culture was realistic - for one we'd need ridiculously more advanced technology to attain anything near its self-sufficiency and thus the elimination of competition for necessities/resources - but I admire its way of doing things and I think that the closer we can get to something resembling the Culture, the happier everyone would collectively be.

On the subject of veils, the question isn't whether veils are considered a benefit or not.  If the women wearing the veils were highly educated, had complete 100% choice about whether to wear the veils, faced 0 social or political penalties or pressures for not wearing the veils (such as stoning to death or anything like that), etc., and still wanted to wear the veils, that's cool with me.  It's not the veil-wearing that I've got a problem with: it's the sexism and oppression that undeniably do exist that I've got a problem with.  The veils are just a sympton.

It's a bit like the Aztecs sacrificing virgins to volcano gods (this is an argument Richard Dawkins makes I believe, and for all his causticity I think he makes a lot of good points).  The women being sacrificed genuinely believed that they were serving the gods.  But if you can prove that those gods don't exist, or that their existence is extremely, extremely unlikely, and fully educate the women-to-be-sacrificed, then they might change their minds.  If, after realizing that the gods they were going to be sacrificed to are almost certainly non-existant and they still want to be sacrificed, fine.  To invoke another comparison, it's a bit like eugenics and doctrines of racial purification.  If you accept that certain races are subhuman and dangerous to the species and no better than animals (or demons) then treating them as such makes a certain amount of sense; but since eugenics and racial superiority can be 100% disproved by science, it totally invalidates any justification of racism.  Relativism too often puts its fingers in its ears when people start proving things (or disproving things) or making any value-judgments.  I just don't think you need Absolute Morality where Good/Evil are tangible forces - like the Alignments - to make those value-judgments.

Murder is just a word.  What matters is whether it makes sense to be killing people if we're claiming to have a healthy society.  Yes the Spanish used to believe that killing heretics wasn't a sin; but once you divorce religion from societal morality, assert that someone holding a particular set of beliefs does no physical harm to anyone, killing the person clearly becomes equivalent to what most would term "murder" - unjustified killing.

You're right that this is somewhat tangential in relation to alignment, but the thread seems to have evolved partly into a debate about absolute vs. relative morality, and I was trying to weigh in with something of a third or middle option in what I thought was an interesting argument.  I'm certainly not trying to be hostile!  If you'd rather ditch all talk of morality beyond gaming (difficult to do if you want to create a realistic game-world), fine.  I personally find it hard to talk about Alignment without talking about morality more generally, but perhaps I should just stay out of the thread.

Quote from: sparkletwistA rather striking (and disturbing) modern example has been the practice of some tribes of ritually mutilating the genitals of young girls. Some spineless/heartless/brainless anthropologists have even halfheartedly defended this practice as "their culture." No. This behavior is bad. That's all there is to it.

What are your thoughts on ritually mutilating the facial cartilage of young girls?

Ok just something to note here. Abstract morality is something completely separate from any one persons feelings. It is what our world functions on. You may think that something is just plain wrong. But unless everyone else on earth agrees with you then you have an abstract moral system. Sure the mutilation of young girls is a horrible thing for us and I personally think it should be stopped. However, those that are doing it think that it is a good thing to do. If they didn't they wouldn't be doing it. It is indeed a part of their culture and thus swings towards the good side of their moral compass.

Does this mean that it isn't wrong? Absolutely not. You see moral relativism has nothing to do with the fundamental truth of a society. It is there to encompass all the facets of a society when the absolute rights and wrongs cannot be found. For all we know one of the religions got it right (as a christian I am of course going to lean towards it but I won't start a religious debate here). If that's the case you still have an absolute morality based world that has to be symbolized with abstract morality because not everyone agrees.

Yar to what Nomadic said.  I guess my point of view is that we're never going to discover which if any absolute morality system governs us (until the Day of Judgment/Ragnarok/whatever).  So we have to pick a set of rules (abstract morality) to govern ourselves.  I don't think that complete moral relativism, where we can discount potentially horrific acts as simply part of a culture, is the responsible choice to make as a species; or in other terms I don't think we should all completely embrace moral relativism.  I also don't think that we have to simply pick an absolute morality system and hope that we've got lucky (although we might choose to do so personally, I suppose, just so long as we don't force this system on anyone else - including our offspring.  We don't force our children to share our politics, nor should we force them to share our religious/moral inclinations).  I think a third option - neither an absolute moral system that may or may not be correct nor a complete abandonment of value-judgments (total relativism)- is in order.  And I think that the path to that is through reason or logic divorced from cultural or religious traditions...

Quote from: MonikerSome cultures see cannibalism as evil and wrong. Some tribes eat their enemies to absorb their memory, and even their own family members in tribute to their ancestors. Hell, Christians take the sacriment, which is the literal/aliteral flesh and blood of their god.

Ahem. Only the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Christian churches (as far as I know - certainly only them amongst the major churches) believe in the Sacrament as the literal body and blood of Christ (transubstantiation). None of the Protestant Churches (as far as I know, certainly not the Anglican Church, the Methodist Church, the URC or the Baptist Church) include transubstantiation as one of their official beliefs. :P

Moving onwards from that... I've always disagreed with alignment. It seems to me to be an arbitrary and completely failed attempt to class something which is relative into nine stereotypes. It works for your generic stereotypical fantasy game, but for anything even vaguely deep, it's just too simplified.

QuoteThe "politically correct" view is that every culture is more or less equal, and something that is objectionable only seems objectionable because of one's cultural outlook. When we're talking about things like dress, art, language, literature, and cuisine, I'll go along with that-- they all have their distinguishing traits. Even regarding morality, there's a lot of flexibility. However, it's not all relative. Some have some moral views that are just plain wrong. If culture A has shunned slavery as it was practiced in, say, early 1800s America, and culture B has not shunned this practice-- then culture A is right and culture B is wrong, and that's all there is to it. A rather striking (and disturbing) modern example has been the practice of some tribes of ritually mutilating the genitals of young girls. Some spineless/heartless/brainless anthropologists have even halfheartedly defended this practice as "their culture." No. This behavior is bad. That's all there is to it.

Well, the thing is, that's the point. As far as we're concerned, that's absolutely morally wrong. But had history developed differently and these tribes developed the technology and subjugated us, it's quite possible that we would be seeing NOT mutilating the genitals of young girls as wrong (although, true, the feminist revolution may have occurred, etc, etc, but I don't really want to delve that deeply into an alternate-history analogy).

Quote from: Halfling FritosWhat are your thoughts on ritually mutilating the facial cartilage of young girls?

Abstract morality is something completely separate from any one persons feelings. It is what our world functions on. You may think that something is just plain wrong. But unless everyone else on earth agrees with you then you have an abstract moral system. Sure the mutilation of young girls is a horrible thing for us and I personally think it should be stopped. However, those that are doing it think that it is a good thing to do. If they didn't they wouldn't be doing it. It is indeed a part of their culture and thus swings towards the good side of their moral compass.[/quote]
Interesting, and the perfect way to bring this back
 :ontopic:

Outside of cartoons and comedies, it's rare that villains rub their hands together and comment on how evil they are. Just because a character is evil doesn't mean they don't think they are doing the right thing (particularly Lawful Evil)-- even if that standard is deplorable to the rest of the outside world. I'd say that if your character's subjective moral compass is in significant opposition to the "universal concept of good," that is what makes your character evil.

Just like sparkletwist says the evil people generally don't see themselves as evil.

Anyway from all the discussion on the boards it seems to almost boil down to a strict almost libertarian view of things. As long as no one else is hurt it doesn't matter what I do.

[blockquote=sparkletwist]Outside of cartoons and comedies, it's rare that villains rub their hands together and comment on how evil they are. Just because a character is evil doesn't mean they don't think they are doing the right thing (particularly Lawful Evil)-- even if that standard is deplorable to the rest of the outside world. I'd say that if your character's subjective moral compass is in significant opposition to the "universal concept of good," that is what makes your character evil.[/blockquote]And I guess what I was getting at before I went into fully rantomatic mode was that in such a reality where right/wrong are privileged over good/evil (i.e. "Evil," that is tangible, supernaturally embodied or Absolute Evil as a genuine force in the universe), Good and Evil get emptied of any real meaning.  The "Universal Concept of Good" might very well be wrong, so Good and Evil degenerates completely into "Us" and "Them."  You might as well call Good and Evil "Red" and "Blue."  Sure Blue might be outnumbered, but so were the rebels in Star Wars...

What strikes me as a more realistic world where Absolute Morality exists and is easily testable (Detect Evil and the other Detect___ spells) is that a big charter gets written up that summarizes the consequences of every action recorded.  Look up "Murder for Vengeance" and you get "A Neutral Evil Act," vs. "Stealing to Feed Yourself and Your Family" and you get "A Chaotic Good Act," etc.  Unless a whole group of people reject the charter (thus emptying Good and Evil of value and turning the moral absolutes into a system of Us and Them), you end up with a rather boring if well-behaved world.  

I feel the need to come to the defense of moral relativism!

Quote from: sparkletwistThat's exactly the sort of thing a moral relativist would say :P

I used to work for a certain human rights NGO.  I worked on promoting democracy and civil society in my capacity as part of the program staff.  But I don't believe there is such a thing as a "natural right," nor do I think that moral absolutes are necessary for human rights to exist.

There are only two possible sources of rights: God (or "nature" if you prefer) and Man.  If you think God/nature has given us rights, fine - you can be an absolutist.  But if you're not prepared to do that, then you must accept that rights in general, and human rights in particular, were devised by men for the purposes of men.  As repellent as it sounds, there is no absolute basis on which to say any practice is "barbaric."  The concept of barbarism itself is invented.  There is no such thing as objective morality and never has been, nor is there such a thing as "natural rights" (sorry John Locke).

But I am still a proponent of human rights, and I still judge other people's form of morality against my own.  I believe that murder is wrong, but I accept that it is wrong according to my human-made idea of morality, and I'm OK with that.  I am a proponent of human rights because I believe a world with them is a better world than a world without them.

In my opinion, "absolute morality" is a crutch for people who are uncomfortable with the idea that morality only amounts to their own opinions.  They don't like to say "my opinion on the matter is better than yours," so they craft the idea of an absolute that they can point to and say "it's not just my opinion that murder is bad; it's objectively immoral."  This is the same tactic used by 19th century imperialists to say that natives were categorically inferior: take your own cultural morality and say it is universal and absolute, then condemn everyone who doesn't conform as barbaric reprobates who are defying natural law.

I am a moral relativist, but there is an important distinction to be made here - the stereotypical, politically correct, much-maligned moral relativist says "we can't judge" and twiddles their thumbs, unable to take a stand without absolutes.  That isn't really moral relativism; that's cowardice.  I am a moral relativist who says "we can't judge objectively - but I can judge subjectively."  I am willing to work and fight for my personal and cultural morality because I believe the world is better for it, and I don't feel I need to craft a spurious idea of absolute morality to justify myself.

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[blockquote=Polycarp!]I am a moral relativist, but there is an important distinction to be made here - the stereotypical, politically correct, much-maligned moral relativist says "we can't judge" and twiddles their thumbs, unable to take a stand without absolutes. That isn't really moral relativism; that's cowardice. I am a moral relativist who says "we can't judge objectively - but I can judge subjectively." I am willing to work and fight for my personal and cultural morality because I believe the world is better for it, and I don't feel I need to craft a spurious idea of absolute morality to justify myself.[/blockquote]Hear hear!  You expressed perfectly what I've been struggling to say.

What I posted above is probably why I have difficulty with absolute morality systems in games.  Perhaps it is my weakness as a role player, but the idea of an actual, absolute morality totally baffles me.  How is it possible to have a creature with free will who is also "evil" by nature?  I understand that it's a nice, simple mechanic to give the paladin the ability to smite "evildoers," but it's always been a concept I just can't wrap my head around.  When you bring real absolute morality into a game the whole system of values becomes so convoluted and distorted that we end up with big discussion threads like this with people debating what "evil" means and what will cause your paladin to fall.  It tends to give me a headache, and I prefer to just drop it entirely and go with how I perceive the world to actually function.

Quote from: sparkletwistOutside of cartoons and comedies, it's rare that villains rub their hands together and comment on how evil they are. Just because a character is evil doesn't mean they don't think they are doing the right thing (particularly Lawful Evil)-- even if that standard is deplorable to the rest of the outside world. I'd say that if your character's subjective moral compass is in significant opposition to the "universal concept of good," that is what makes your character evil.

I think what we are having here is some confusion on the type of moral relativism being discussed. Moral relativism in a RPG does not use good or evil. It uses the individuals own moral compass. This is because in an abstract system you don't have any spells or abilities that requires good and evil. It is 100% about interaction between people. So you don't care if society views a person as bad. All you need to know is what the people interacting view each other as.

Quote from: sparkletwistNote that I'm not talking about relative vs absolute in the grand scheme of the universe/multiverse/whatever you believe in here-- however, if one takes one's frame of reference as "a human living on Earth in 2008" (i.e., the real world), there are some things that apply across that entire frame of reference-- for all intents and purposes, absolutes.

mean[/i] anything considering living in modern times on this planet is all that we (as a species) know. To me, the "absolute standard" comes about because some views are just plain better for the human race than others.

Quote from: Polycarp!I am a moral relativist who says "we can't judge objectively - but I can judge subjectively."  I am willing to work and fight for my personal and cultural morality because I believe the world is better for it, and I don't feel I need to craft a spurious idea of absolute morality to justify myself.

objectively[/b] better for humanity? I suspect it's closer to the brand of morality that you advocate than the one that they do. To me, that makes it an absolute. (again, at least within the realm of "modern humans living on Earth")

So what I'm trying to say, I guess, is that my brand of "absolutism," as such, is drawing a line in the sand with those types and proclaiming: The civilized world agrees with me, not you. If you can't see that, gtfo our planet.

Quote from: SteerpikeThe Culture isn't devoid of morality, it just has neither Absolute morality (it's predominantly atheistic, though also EXTREMELY non-conformist - there is no "norm") nor totally relative morality.  While obviously far from the utopias of Enlightenment thinkers it also shares a lot in common with Classical Liberalism, which emerged from the Enlightenment.

My point was that I don't think law or "general morality" and culture should be intertwined (otherwise you veer increasingly towards theocracy); that morality should be derived from reason and logic (sometimes phrased as "natural rights") rather than from tradition, religious dogma, or a set of arbitrary cultural norms.
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  That it's possibly to phrase a system of right/wrong or good/evil distinct both from absolute morality, which presents Good and Evil is as tangible forces (I don't think they are), and total relativism, which seems to exonerate things like genital mutilation or slavery.  The "line" is delineated not by reference to the supernatural but rather "what makes most sense for our society" or "what set of laws will improve our society the most"?  Obviously this leads to a new set of arguments but I think that that set of arguments (about logic and the self-improvement of society) is far more productive than one between relativism vs. traditional/cultural doctrine or dogma.
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Back to the subject of the Culture.  Free will is vital to the Culture - it's the whole point of the Culture.  It's communist in the very purest sense: it's citizens are in no way subject to a state or Greater Good with the very marginal exception of Contact.  Culture citizens are free to do literally anything they want (including leaving the Culture); you could spend your whole life just playing games or creating art or doing recreational drugs, if you wanted (and many do).  Machines have automated 100% of labor and everyone dwells on massive self-sufficient space stations/planetoids/huge ships.  I can see why reading the first sentence of the wikipedia page might lead one to envision the Culture as a freedom-inhibiting authoritarian socialist state that subsumes all of its citizenry towards a utilitarian Greater Good, but really it's pretty much 180 degrees from that.
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  It's liberal anarchy, without property (you can synthesize EVERYTHING you want) or non-friendly competition (wars are hyper-rare and only fought when another, less enlightened civilization starts exterting a destructive influence on large ports of the galaxy - such as the theocratic Idirans in the first book, who declare jihad on the universe).  If you kill someone (also incredibly rare, the only murders are the very occasional crimes of passion, and everyone in the Culture is posthuman so it takes quite a bit to actually kill them) you get slap-droned (a drone follows you around and stops you from killing again) - other than social ostracization, that's the only "punishment."  It's actually not all that far from Star Trek's Federation, which is also relatively post-scarcity.
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On the subject of veils, the question isn't whether veils are considered a benefit or not.  If the women wearing the veils were highly educated, had complete 100% choice about whether to wear the veils, faced 0 social or political penalties or pressures for not wearing the veils (such as stoning to death or anything like that), etc., and still wanted to wear the veils, that's cool with me.  It's not the veil-wearing that I've got a problem with: it's the sexism and oppression that undeniably do exist that I've got a problem with.  The veils are just a sympton.
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It's a bit like the Aztecs sacrificing virgins to volcano gods (this is an argument Richard Dawkins makes I believe, and for all his causticity I think he makes a lot of good points).  The women being sacrificed genuinely believed that they were serving the gods.  
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But if you can prove that those gods don't exist, or that their existence is extremely, extremely unlikely, and fully educate the women-to-be-sacrificed, then they might change their minds.  If, after realizing that the gods they were going to be sacrificed to are almost certainly non-existant and they still want to be sacrificed, fine.
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 To invoke another comparison, it's a bit like eugenics and doctrines of racial purification.  If you accept that certain races are subhuman and dangerous to the species and no better than animals (or demons) then treating them as such makes a certain amount of sense; but since eugenics and racial superiority can be 100% disproved by science, it totally invalidates any justification of racism.
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  Relativism too often puts its fingers in its ears when people start proving things (or disproving things) or making any value-judgments.  I just don't think you need Absolute Morality where Good/Evil are tangible forces - like the Alignments - to make those value-judgments.
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Murder is just a word.  What matters is whether it makes sense to be killing people if we're claiming to have a healthy society.  Yes the Spanish used to believe that killing heretics wasn't a sin; but once you divorce religion from societal morality, assert that someone holding a particular set of beliefs does no physical harm to anyone, killing the person clearly becomes equivalent to what most would term "murder" - unjustified killing.
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You're right that this is somewhat tangential in relation to alignment, but the thread seems to have evolved partly into a debate about absolute vs. relative morality, and I was trying to weigh in with something of a third or middle option in what I thought was an interesting argument.  I'm certainly not trying to be hostile!  If you'd rather ditch all talk of morality beyond gaming (difficult to do if you want to create a realistic game-world), fine.  I personally find it hard to talk about Alignment without talking about morality more generally, but perhaps I should just stay out of the thread.
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Real life morality isn't on the table, just D&D morality.  I'm not saying your wrong (well not much, but hey) so i don't expect you to reply to my question, just explain how you are not promoting an absolute morality and yet don't want an absolute morality
from
EE

I had a rather inflammatory idea of juxtaposing two quotes together, but I'll play nice.

I did have more comments to make based on quotes, but I'm sticking to just this, for simplicity's sake.

Quote from: sparkletwist

Quote from: Polycarp!I am a moral relativist who says "we can't judge objectively - but I can judge subjectively."  I am willing to work and fight for my personal and cultural morality because I believe the world is better for it, and I don't feel I need to craft a spurious idea of absolute morality to justify myself.

objectively[/b] better for humanity? I suspect it's closer to the brand of morality that you advocate than the one that they do. To me, that makes it an absolute. (again, at least within the realm of "modern humans living on Earth")

I'd probably take out the Taliban reference, to avoid invoking some modern variation of Godwin's Law, but otherwise, I agree. If I were to take a purely moral relativist stance here, accepting that all of my beliefs are ultimately only opinions, then they have no weight for me to stand behind. "Right" and "Wrong", "good" and "bad", could just as easily be relabeled as "Orange" and "Blue". Working toward "right" in the world is just as silly as working toward "Orange" in the world.