f12hte wrote: ↑Thu Aug 15, 2019 1:12 am
I would not go so far as to say that we are mostly the same and only a little bit different.
Well, good thing that's not what I said.
I said it's possible to overemphasize difference at the expense of any possibility of commonality or communication, and that that excessive view, on the other side, would result in the stultification of all discussion.
People learn to do evil by experience.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Aug 13, 2019 2:50 pm
Hold that thought.
What do you mean? From what do they "learn," and what "experience"? How can a creature that is morally neutral or good suddenly turn "evil" because of some "learning" or "experiences," when within them is no instinct to respond to such things?
1. We are born blank slates, with a few genetically bred hardwired capabilities and some in utero learning.
Well, two things: if we have any "hardwiring" or "in utero learning," then the "slate" isn't blank. Secondly, it's generally accepted in psychology and sociology that human nature is a combination of "nature and nurture," that is, of intrinsic capacities and predispositions plus subsequent learning.
Would you wish to gainsay the general expert opinion in that regard? On what basis?
2. We learn our personality and morality from what we experience in life. We do not learn isolated facts, but, at time of acquisition, each new datum is integrated with total previous experiences; with all of memory; with everything we have learned before. That is to say that each new thing is learned in terms of the old things we already know. Experience is like a ball of twine that keeps winding up on itself. Little influences from early on can account fore big differences in the final value system.
Well, the problem here is this: how does "evil" get into this equation? If people are all basically good or neutral, and their slates are blank at birth, then so are the "slates" of their parents, and of their parents' parents...and so on ad infinitum.
So now you've told us nothing about how evil can possibly get into the world at all. In fact, your theory would make it impossible...unless there's some other factor you have forgotten to mention so far.
...they can stretch back into an indistinct eternity....
You've still got the problem: you need some kind of an explanation for evil...that is, assuming you still wish to talk about it. So far, all you've suggested is that there's no reason it can possibly exist at all. Nobody and nothing is responsible for it.
The universe is deterministic.
If so, there's no evil at all. Then, there is only "what is," and "what is," is necessarily neither good not bad: it just "is."
Moreover, now not even human beings can be responsible for evil, because each of them is merely playing out a predetermined sequence of actions. They could not have done otherwise than they did, and so have the most perfect excuse for anything they do -- "I couldn't help it; it was predetermined I would molest children, beat my wife, and steal pensions from old ladies...I had no choice."
Even those three things, then, are not "evil" by any deterministic account.
So I think we're still very far off being able to say how your highly punctuated word at the beginning of the OP can be an issue at all, on the account you've provided so far.