What if "good and evil" are constructs?

[Nero]

What if the concepts of "good and evil" and correspondingly "right and wrong" are constructs? Well, think about it: they don't exist in nature. A cheetah does not recognize good and evil, it recognizes only life and death. To go on living, it kills and it does not think about whether this is good or bad. Killing = food = life is all it knows. Why do humans differentiate? Are good and evil constructs the same as any other human thing? Made-up? Unnatural? Especially if we take religion out of it?
What purpose does good and evil serve? Surely humans would go on living regardless. Animals do.

[lisagurl]

Humans are social animals.  In order for us to survive we need to depend on other humans. That leads to justice which needs to be agreed upon by the group. Differences in what justice is, can be called good and evil.

[Hannah]

Well yeah they're constructs. It's probably a symptom of an evolved mind, remember we are creatures trapped halfway between beasts and divinity. When you look at it from a Darwinian perspective, humans do a lot of things that are very anti-survival and yet we are the dominant species. The concepts of monogamy and loyalty, the violation of which are frowned upon are very anti survival. Yet, most of us feel compelled to embrace them at some point.

I think a lot of emotion is overstated in terms of it's origins. Our love for our babies is caused by hormones that are there to keep us from eating our young. They are born helpless and therefore the most sucessful humans were those who evolved with this system. Over time the baby eaters (just an example) died out and only the baby lovers remain. Actually eating babies isn't going to end the world or effect the cosmic balance in any way, we've just evolved to find it abhorrent. Similar concepts could probably be worked out for every human value and modified to account for higher thinking processes; monogamy could be related to the baby hormone, loyalty the product of millenia of observing how much easier individual mammoths fall if you split the herd.

[Miniar]

Culturally, we as a species can not agree on many points of what is good and what is evil.
And even those things we can agree on as good or evil are situational.

So obviously (from where I'm sitting anyhow), good and evil are man made constructs, not factually existing forces.

[jesse]

evil or good for that matter are not human constructs but are infact palatable forces that exist wether or not we chose to believe in them in fact the very example nero gives can be used to illustrate this the animal eating to survive is neither good nor evil it is a fact of life. however that same animal say a dog for instance has been known to key on individuals for no apparent reason only to find out later that the person was a rapist or a murderer. if it the evil of this person was situational how is it that the animal can sense it. did the animal know that the person was about to murder the his owner (preminition) or did he in fact sense the persons evil intent. Do we not sense prior to something bad happening a feeling of forboding a sixth sense if you will. this is not a human construct. fear has been called palatable. meaning it can be sensed not only by other people but by animals.
jessica

[Miniar]

Over 70% of human communication is body-language.
Animals, that do not use language per say, communicate even more by body-language.

The sensing of intent is thus, most probably, the subconscious recognition of micro-expressions of the face and body.
There's nothing magical or supernatural involved.

And they're not seeing "evil" in a murderer, but hostility.
Hostility isn't necessarily evil.
A dog will protect his owner from the police, even if the owner is the murderer in the situation.
Thus it's situational who the dog will sense as the negative force.

[Dryad]

I think you can't 'just' say it either is or isn't. Simply because of faith.
A lot of people will say Good and Evil are forces greater than humanity, because they believe that. I think that's a statement wáy too bold to make, and flying in the face of rational thought, so.. I'll disagree. However, being fair, that means that my own belief, namely that it ís a construct, should also be left at that: A belief.

I think that 'good' and 'evil' as such do not exist beyond cultural morals. I do believe, however, that they are mainly based on an instinctive urge to create a beneficial environment for our species.. Which would look a lot like 'good.' Things that go against this would look 'evil.'

Is the Cheetah evil for killing prey? No; it is good for killing prey. Because killing prey, if not done overly, is beneficial to the cheetah.
From the prey's point of view, it's definitely evil.

[Silver]

Is this alive?

They are constructs. Good is anything that improves the chances of reaching a certain goal. Evil is anything that hurts/destroys it. Generally, good is that which benefits order and productivity in a society. Society is a good because it keeps us out of "the state of nature. . ." The whole is greater than the sum of its parts in this case.

[Nicky]

I think they are constructs. What is evil for me may not be evil for you, therefore they have to be constructs. (Unless you believe in universal evil or good - but then what sort of arrogance would you have to believe that what you think is right or wrong actually applies equally to everyone?)

But I think there are some biological basis for a lot of our 'morality'. From a biological perspective anything which decreases a species chances of survival collectively could be seen as evil. For example, the taboo against incest. But it is not always easy to see the ramifications of our actions on the species. There will always be grey areas.

[Tammy Hope]

What if the concepts of "good and evil" and correspondingly "right and wrong" are constructs? Well, think about it: they don't exist in nature. A cheetah does not recognize good and evil, it recognizes only life and death. To go on living, it kills and it does not think about whether this is good or bad. Killing = food = life is all it knows. Why do humans differentiate? Are good and evil constructs the same as any other human thing? Made-up? Unnatural? Especially if we take religion out of it?
What purpose does good and evil serve? Surely humans would go on living regardless. Animals do.

I have LONG taken the position that if there is no superhuman source for "good and evil" or "right and wrong" or even "human rights" then these cannot logically be anything BUT human constructs.

Frankly, the only universal truth is "might makes right" - it's only a matter of the "might" is in the hands of humans or something above humans.

[placeholdername]

The Ancient Egyptians had an interesting view on this.  I can't remember where I found this quote, but here is a definition of the Ancient Egyptian concept of 'Ma'at' (often translated as truth):

"Ethics" is an issue of human will and human permission. It is a function of the human world of duality. What is "ethical" for one group is sin for another. But Ma'at, the reality that made all groups what they are, is transcendent of ethics, just as a rock or a flower is amoral, a-ethical, without "truth or falsehood." How can a flower be "false" or "ethical." It just is. How can the universe be "ethical or moral, right or wrong"? It simply is. That is Ma'at.

It's an interesting way of thinking about things.

[Robin.]

Isn't everything a construct?  What something is depends on what is thought of it. Good and Evil may be constructs but that does not make them unreal. I'd say inconsistant, alterable even, but definitly real. Perhaps nothing more than a classification concerning the value of something to the classifier.

[tekla]

Isn't everything a construct?

Quantum mechanics would suggest that everything, even our perceived reality, is a construct.

[Robin.]

Isn't everything a construct?

Quantum mechanics would suggest that everything, even our perceived reality, is a construct.

I hate to ask, as i may devalue my own argument, but wouldn't this be a paradox if quantum mechanics is a construct as well?...

[tekla]

Well it is, but matter and energy are not, they seem pretty real.

[Cindy]

Let us construct Cindy's Islands. One is (forcibly)populated by evil people the other by good. What would evolve, in the short term, if the inhabitants were able to live.
Would the evil island have a range of evil in which the very evil were defined as evil; and the lesser evil as good? On the good Island would the very good look upon the lesser good as evil?
If so the definitions are purely constructs.

Cindy

[finewine]

Let us construct Cindy's Islands. One is (forcibly)populated by evil people the other by good. What would evolve, in the short term, if the inhabitants were able to live.
Would the evil island have a range of evil in which the very evil were defined as evil; and the lesser evil as good? On the good Island would the very good look upon the lesser good as evil?
If so the definitions are purely constructs.

Aha, and would the inhabitants of "evil island" actually consider themselves evil?  Or would their frame of reference lead them to view the inhabitants of "good island" as evil?

Some would probably tag the islamic militant terrorists as evil (or at least the acts they carry out) and they, in turn view us in the west as evil, or at the very least morally corrupt.  They even dubbed the US as "the great Satan".  Both viewpoints have constructs of good and evil that are, predictably, rather parochial in the view of good vs evil, morality & ethics, etc..

[Genevieve Swann]

They are constructs and may be needed for we humans. As you pointed out some animals kill for survival and it is needed to keep a balance in nature. The only animals that kill for no good reason are chimps and humans. Chimps may kill over territory. Many times humans kill over a God no one has ever seen.

[alexia elliot]

I am impressed by show of intellect and proud to be a member of such a group of people. I am not sure I can add anything significant however, it seems that our brains are constructed in such way as to continuously make sense of our surroundings. Survival depends on quick assumption of a situation, as a build in surge protector brain has an ability to construct clear understanding even for otherwise unexplainable phenomenon. As it is understood, brain has evolved as a survival-feed mechanism, when conditions of evolution grew complex so did the brain developing more power to calculate scent, vision, taste in order to feed the host. With the animals becoming more aware of potential danger, the carnivorous counterparts had to evolve more and more brain power to outwit their meals on fast legs. Brain in the essence is the survival killing machine. As I form the understanding of my life I clearly see these concepts underlying every thought. As we dwell evil and good, we simply use our hunter / pray instincts to construct fuzzy understanding of otherwise non understandable flow of quantum soup. It almost feels that nature by increasing brains power created, totally as a side effect, our abilities( or perhaps disabilities) to venture into realm of ethereal, poetry, conceptual though things which have nothing to do with pure survival. We spend most of our daily time in the non-existent dream world, and are bombarded by concepts such as good and evil.

[Cindy]

Aha, and would the inhabitants of "evil island" actually consider themselves evil?  Or would their frame of reference lead them to view the inhabitants of "good island" as evil?

Some would probably tag the islamic militant terrorists as evil (or at least the acts they carry out) and they, in turn view us in the west as evil, or at the very least morally corrupt.  They even dubbed the US as "the great Satan".  Both viewpoints have constructs of good and evil that are, predictably, rather parochial in the view of good vs evil, morality & ethics, etc..

I can see more flaws in my arguement. If Cindy's loyal troops, the stiletto armed sisters; AKA the SAS forcibly inhabited the islands then Cindy and her SAS are more evil then the evil. So we need to define evil.
In finewine's post he mentions that the US is referred to as the great satan by (some) Islamic countries. There was a barely literate US President who managed to define a group of countries as an axis of evil. How can a country be evil?
Do evil people regard themselves as evil? The truely good, as in Saints (if such things exist), cannot regard themselves as truely good as it would then be a sin of pride. Would a truely evil person be good if they recognised that they were evil (Ahm not sure about that one). Certainly there are people whom any 'sensible' person would define as evil that didn't recognise evil in themselves, eg Hitler, Mengles etc. Hitler it could be argued was insane. I have never heard that Mengles was.

Many rapists don't consider their crimes as evil, yet they are, in my mind, some of the most terrible crimes a human can carry out.
Being TG or Gay or lesbian are considered horrifically evil by some people and yet I have never to my knowledge found any evil in the people on this site. OK some get banned for breaking basic rules, and some are rude but evil?
In my Australian Essential Dictionary, evil is defined as wicked or harmful. Aussies seem to be fairly basic in definitions .

So what is good and what is evil?

Sorry, it's a windy wet evening and I'm bored so I'm also hyperactive in the head.

Cindy

Cindy