My intuition around whether some people are intrinsically bad (as opposed to bad at some things), is that it’s an artifact of systems of dominance like schools designed to create insecure attachment, and not a thing nonabused humans will think of on their own.
I think this would be valuable to work out eventually, but this probably isn’t the right time and place, and in the meantime I recognize that my position isn’t obviously true.
As far I remember, among the people (prison guards, psychiatrists) who work with… problematic humans the general consensus is that some small percentage of those they see (around 5% IIRC) are best described as irredeemably evil. Nothing works on them, they don’t become better with time or therapy or anything. There is no obvious cause either.
This seems completely false. Most people think that Hitler and Stalin were intrinsically bad, and they would be likely to think this with or without systems of dominance.
Kant and Thomas Aquinas explain it quite well: we call someone a “bad person” when we think they have bad will. And what does bad will mean? It means being willing to do bad things to bring about good things, rather than wanting to do good things period.
Do you think Nate’s claim was that we oughtn’t so often jump to the conclusion that people are willing to do bad things in order to bring about good things? That this is the accusation that’s burning the commons? I’m pretty sure many utilitarians would say that this is a fair description of their attitude at least in principle.
I would be a bit surprised if that was explicitly what Nate meant, but it is what we should be concerned about, in terms of being concerned about whether someone is a bad person.
To make my general claim clearer: “doing evil to bring about good, is still doing evil,” is necessarily true, for exactly the same reason that “blue objects touching white objects, are still blue objects,” is true.
I agree that many utilitarians understand their moral philosophy to recommend doing evil for the sake of good. To the extent that it does, their moral philosophy is mistaken. That does not necessarily mean that utilitarians are bad people, because you can be mistaken without being bad. But this is precisely the reason that when you present scenarios where you say, “would you be willing to do such and such a bad thing for the sake of good,” many utilitarians will reply, “No! That’s not the utilitarian thing to do!” And maybe it is the utilitarian thing, and maybe it isn’t. But the real reason they feel the impulse to say no, is that they are not bad people, and therefore they do not want to do bad things, even for the sake of good.
This also implies, however, that if someone understands utilitarianism in this way and takes it too seriously, they will indeed start down the road towards becoming a bad person. And that happened even in the context of the present discussion (understood more broadly to include its antecedents) when certain people insisted, saying in effect, “What’s so bad about lying and other deceitful tactics, as long as they advance my goals?”
My intuition around whether some people are intrinsically bad (as opposed to bad at some things), is that it’s an artifact of systems of dominance like schools designed to create insecure attachment, and not a thing nonabused humans will think of on their own.
I think this is very unlikely.
I think this would be valuable to work out eventually, but this probably isn’t the right time and place, and in the meantime I recognize that my position isn’t obviously true.
As far I remember, among the people (prison guards, psychiatrists) who work with… problematic humans the general consensus is that some small percentage of those they see (around 5% IIRC) are best described as irredeemably evil. Nothing works on them, they don’t become better with time or therapy or anything. There is no obvious cause either.
This is from memory, sorry, no links.
This seems completely false. Most people think that Hitler and Stalin were intrinsically bad, and they would be likely to think this with or without systems of dominance.
Kant and Thomas Aquinas explain it quite well: we call someone a “bad person” when we think they have bad will. And what does bad will mean? It means being willing to do bad things to bring about good things, rather than wanting to do good things period.
Do you think Nate’s claim was that we oughtn’t so often jump to the conclusion that people are willing to do bad things in order to bring about good things? That this is the accusation that’s burning the commons? I’m pretty sure many utilitarians would say that this is a fair description of their attitude at least in principle.
I would be a bit surprised if that was explicitly what Nate meant, but it is what we should be concerned about, in terms of being concerned about whether someone is a bad person.
To make my general claim clearer: “doing evil to bring about good, is still doing evil,” is necessarily true, for exactly the same reason that “blue objects touching white objects, are still blue objects,” is true.
I agree that many utilitarians understand their moral philosophy to recommend doing evil for the sake of good. To the extent that it does, their moral philosophy is mistaken. That does not necessarily mean that utilitarians are bad people, because you can be mistaken without being bad. But this is precisely the reason that when you present scenarios where you say, “would you be willing to do such and such a bad thing for the sake of good,” many utilitarians will reply, “No! That’s not the utilitarian thing to do!” And maybe it is the utilitarian thing, and maybe it isn’t. But the real reason they feel the impulse to say no, is that they are not bad people, and therefore they do not want to do bad things, even for the sake of good.
This also implies, however, that if someone understands utilitarianism in this way and takes it too seriously, they will indeed start down the road towards becoming a bad person. And that happened even in the context of the present discussion (understood more broadly to include its antecedents) when certain people insisted, saying in effect, “What’s so bad about lying and other deceitful tactics, as long as they advance my goals?”
I agree that this exists, and claim that it ought to be legitimate discourse to claim that someone else is doing it.