Ok then, let’s define this more rigorously, so we have something unambiguous to talk about.
If we’re going with the idea that D&D “Good” and “Evil” are objective measures that follow your definition, then does the following make sense as a rigorous definition of them:
A being’s ‘Alignment’ on the good-evil spectrum is a measure of how well its utility function is coupled to the utility functions of other beings in general.
A “Good” being is compassionate—that is, its utility function has a positive coupling constant (between 0.00 and 1.00, say) to the utility function of other beings in general; it seeks to maximize others’ utility functions as a subset of maximizing its own.
Likewise, an “Evil” being is sadistic—that is, its utility function has a negative coupling constant (between −0.00 and −1.00, say) to the utility function of other beings in general; it seeks to minimize others’ utility functions as a subset of maximizing its own.
Interestingly, once it becomes mathematically spelled out like that, the paladin’s dilemma is just math—“slay evil” isn’t a primary goal, it’s just the only way to resolve the feedback oscillation inherent in wanting to maximize everyone’s utility, including the utility of those whose utility is coupled to minimizing everyone else’s utility.
That would clear up a lot of philosophical issues with the alignment scale (at the cost of making Evil beings rare outside of “a wizard did it” and very hard to play), but it’s not especially consistent with the way D&D uses the words. D&D products tend to conflate Evil with selfishness; some (usually supernatural) Evil beings are described as taking the suffering of others as what we’d call a terminal value, but often they just have a weak coupling constant and happen to be pursuing zero- or negative-sum goals.
Then there are other complicating factors: a few zero-intelligence creatures (mostly undead) are described as Evil even though they don’t have goals, for example. It’s a mess, honestly; a hash of consequentialism and virtue ethics and deontology, and let’s not even talk about how messy it gets once you take the Law/Chaos axis into account.
a few zero-intelligence creatures (mostly undead) are described as Evil even though they don’t have goals, for example
(Complete rationalization mode: ENGAGED.) That’s just equivocation. Being evil (in ialdabaoth’s sense) in D&D attaches some negative energy to the soul (it’s detectable with a Detect Evil spell) which happens to be the same thing that animates undead. So it’s not so much that mindless undead are actually evil, so much as that tests and effects for evil also work on undead.
See, now we’re actually approaching something like a coherent system!
Okay, so this lends evidence to the idea that there’s essentially two different phenomena at work in the D&D world, BOTH of which have been labeled “evil” simply because the only detector that could be constructed, detected both of them.
Now, how could we prove this theory? What would be different if it were true or false?
Now, how could we prove this theory? What would be different if it were true or false?
The correct answer is obviously “Ask your GM.” That aside, maybe you could convince a good or neutral cleric to raise undead, then Detect Evil? (Disclaimer: I have only a basic understanding of D&D mechanics, and the alignment system never made sense to me either.)
You’d probably need a neutral cleric to do that, but they’d have to be careful, since some DMs might make premediated casting of a [evil] spell simply to gain knowledge as something that would push a neutral individual over to evil.
If said cleric casts that Evil spell, but does it unknowingly (e.g. mind control, or other more convoluted scenarios, perhaps involving magical sensory deprivation), are they still considered to have done an Evil act?
Yes, though it’s usually not much of an Evil act. More to the point, in most versions, clerics are prohibited from using opposed-alignment spells, which nicely insulates them from accidental alignment shifts due to spellcasting.
A good wizard, on the other hand, can actually cast protection from good (an evil spell) every day until he feels like committing horrible atrocities.
That sounds like the True Neutral alignment (Neutral on both axes). Druids are quite fond of it, and, in some sourcebooks, it’s compulsory for them. Depending on how loyal they are to the group, they could edge into Chaotic Neutral; they could also edge toward Lawful Neutral if they are more attached to the ideals of the group than the group itself.
Druids are loyal to trees and/or other Druids, but not to much of anyone else?
Is there much of what you might call ordinary nationalism or ordinary prejudice in D&D? I’m not asking about aspects of D&D where the rules map onto real world group loyalties, I’m talking about, for example, inhabitants in a region having a preference for other inhabitants of the region.
Druids are loyal to trees and/or other Druids, but not to much of anyone else?
They are also quite fond of squirrels. Can’t forget the squirrels. Heh. But speaking more accurately, Druids are dedicated to nature, and nature is quite Neutral. At the same time, most Druids do realize that sentient beings (such as Humans or Elves or whomever) are part of Nature. Thus, the Druids seek to uphold some sort of a balance between civilization and wilderness, as opposed to, say, flooding the entire world with squirrels.
Is there much of what you might call ordinary nationalism or ordinary prejudice in D&D ?
Is there ever ! Traditionally, Elves hate Dwarves with a passion, which is quite mutual. Underground races such as the Drow, Svirfneblin and Druegar hate surface-dwellers, as well as the regular Dwarves. Human kingdoms quite often all hate each other. Clerics of one god often hate those who follow some other god, especially if their god’s alignment is in opposition to their own.
That said, the specific hatreds depend greatly on the setting, unlike the rules about Druids, which are a lot more uniform. For example, in Iron Kingdoms, Humans are pretty much the dominant race, and their political situation is… quite complicated. In Eberron, on the other hand, there is a state of lukewarm war between a relatively progressive multiracial kingdom (Khorvaine) on the one hand, and a ruthless dictatorship of wannabe mind-controlling transhumanists (Riedra) on the other. The more traditional inhabitants of Khorvaine also struggle with a multitude of internal tensions.
Pejudices can also develope out of a particular party’s experiences. For example, I’ve seen a party adopt a “persecute all halflings that we encounter” policy after getting mugged by a gang of halflings. That same campaign featured the human nation going to war with elves, and an (admittedly evil) PC inciting mob violence against a community of elves living in a human city. This lead to “elven Ann Frank” jokes.
Good point. In addition, Rangers get a “Favored Enemy” class feature built-in, which means that they hate some specific species (which may include, say, Goblins or Elves) so much that they get combat bonuses against them.
Interesting to note though, if I’m not mistaken, that only Evil Rangers can pick their own race as a favored enemy, so there is something else going on there as well...
Depends on the setting. Most commonly that’s a trait of Evil groups and a few isolationist cultures (wouldn’t be cookie-cutter high fantasy without elves sneering down from their wooded fastnesses, after all), but not so much of people in general, or at least it’s not emphasized much.
“Good” implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.
“Evil” implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.
People who are neutral with respect to good and evil have compunctions against killing the innocent but lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others. Neutral people are committed to others by personal relationships.
Being good or evil can be a conscious choice. For most people, though, being good or evil is an attitude that one recognizes but does not choose. Being neutral on the good-evil axis usually represents a lack of commitment one way or the other, but for some it represents a positive commitment to a balanced view. While acknowledging that good and evil are objective states, not just opinions, these folk maintain that a balance between the two is the proper place for people, or at least for them.
Yup, seems to work. I wonder how this ties into the cosmology …
Ok then, let’s define this more rigorously, so we have something unambiguous to talk about.
If we’re going with the idea that D&D “Good” and “Evil” are objective measures that follow your definition, then does the following make sense as a rigorous definition of them:
A being’s ‘Alignment’ on the good-evil spectrum is a measure of how well its utility function is coupled to the utility functions of other beings in general.
A “Good” being is compassionate—that is, its utility function has a positive coupling constant (between 0.00 and 1.00, say) to the utility function of other beings in general; it seeks to maximize others’ utility functions as a subset of maximizing its own.
Likewise, an “Evil” being is sadistic—that is, its utility function has a negative coupling constant (between −0.00 and −1.00, say) to the utility function of other beings in general; it seeks to minimize others’ utility functions as a subset of maximizing its own.
Interestingly, once it becomes mathematically spelled out like that, the paladin’s dilemma is just math—“slay evil” isn’t a primary goal, it’s just the only way to resolve the feedback oscillation inherent in wanting to maximize everyone’s utility, including the utility of those whose utility is coupled to minimizing everyone else’s utility.
That would clear up a lot of philosophical issues with the alignment scale (at the cost of making Evil beings rare outside of “a wizard did it” and very hard to play), but it’s not especially consistent with the way D&D uses the words. D&D products tend to conflate Evil with selfishness; some (usually supernatural) Evil beings are described as taking the suffering of others as what we’d call a terminal value, but often they just have a weak coupling constant and happen to be pursuing zero- or negative-sum goals.
Then there are other complicating factors: a few zero-intelligence creatures (mostly undead) are described as Evil even though they don’t have goals, for example. It’s a mess, honestly; a hash of consequentialism and virtue ethics and deontology, and let’s not even talk about how messy it gets once you take the Law/Chaos axis into account.
(Horrible nerd mode: DISABLED.)
(Complete rationalization mode: ENGAGED.) That’s just equivocation. Being evil (in ialdabaoth’s sense) in D&D attaches some negative energy to the soul (it’s detectable with a Detect Evil spell) which happens to be the same thing that animates undead. So it’s not so much that mindless undead are actually evil, so much as that tests and effects for evil also work on undead.
See, now we’re actually approaching something like a coherent system!
Okay, so this lends evidence to the idea that there’s essentially two different phenomena at work in the D&D world, BOTH of which have been labeled “evil” simply because the only detector that could be constructed, detected both of them.
Now, how could we prove this theory? What would be different if it were true or false?
The correct answer is obviously “Ask your GM.” That aside, maybe you could convince a good or neutral cleric to raise undead, then Detect Evil? (Disclaimer: I have only a basic understanding of D&D mechanics, and the alignment system never made sense to me either.)
You’d probably need a neutral cleric to do that, but they’d have to be careful, since some DMs might make premediated casting of a [evil] spell simply to gain knowledge as something that would push a neutral individual over to evil.
… Spells are also categorically Good or Evil?
If said cleric casts that Evil spell, but does it unknowingly (e.g. mind control, or other more convoluted scenarios, perhaps involving magical sensory deprivation), are they still considered to have done an Evil act?
Yes, though it’s usually not much of an Evil act. More to the point, in most versions, clerics are prohibited from using opposed-alignment spells, which nicely insulates them from accidental alignment shifts due to spellcasting.
A good wizard, on the other hand, can actually cast protection from good (an evil spell) every day until he feels like committing horrible atrocities.
Yes, see for example in the 3.5 SRD how “Animate Dead” has the bracketed Evil after it here.
How does this system handle having strong loyalty to a group but being neutral to negative towards outsiders who are themselves not especially evil?
That sounds like the True Neutral alignment (Neutral on both axes). Druids are quite fond of it, and, in some sourcebooks, it’s compulsory for them. Depending on how loyal they are to the group, they could edge into Chaotic Neutral; they could also edge toward Lawful Neutral if they are more attached to the ideals of the group than the group itself.
Druids are loyal to trees and/or other Druids, but not to much of anyone else?
Is there much of what you might call ordinary nationalism or ordinary prejudice in D&D? I’m not asking about aspects of D&D where the rules map onto real world group loyalties, I’m talking about, for example, inhabitants in a region having a preference for other inhabitants of the region.
They are also quite fond of squirrels. Can’t forget the squirrels. Heh. But speaking more accurately, Druids are dedicated to nature, and nature is quite Neutral. At the same time, most Druids do realize that sentient beings (such as Humans or Elves or whomever) are part of Nature. Thus, the Druids seek to uphold some sort of a balance between civilization and wilderness, as opposed to, say, flooding the entire world with squirrels.
Is there ever ! Traditionally, Elves hate Dwarves with a passion, which is quite mutual. Underground races such as the Drow, Svirfneblin and Druegar hate surface-dwellers, as well as the regular Dwarves. Human kingdoms quite often all hate each other. Clerics of one god often hate those who follow some other god, especially if their god’s alignment is in opposition to their own.
That said, the specific hatreds depend greatly on the setting, unlike the rules about Druids, which are a lot more uniform. For example, in Iron Kingdoms, Humans are pretty much the dominant race, and their political situation is… quite complicated. In Eberron, on the other hand, there is a state of lukewarm war between a relatively progressive multiracial kingdom (Khorvaine) on the one hand, and a ruthless dictatorship of wannabe mind-controlling transhumanists (Riedra) on the other. The more traditional inhabitants of Khorvaine also struggle with a multitude of internal tensions.
Pejudices can also develope out of a particular party’s experiences. For example, I’ve seen a party adopt a “persecute all halflings that we encounter” policy after getting mugged by a gang of halflings. That same campaign featured the human nation going to war with elves, and an (admittedly evil) PC inciting mob violence against a community of elves living in a human city. This lead to “elven Ann Frank” jokes.
Good point. In addition, Rangers get a “Favored Enemy” class feature built-in, which means that they hate some specific species (which may include, say, Goblins or Elves) so much that they get combat bonuses against them.
Interesting to note though, if I’m not mistaken, that only Evil Rangers can pick their own race as a favored enemy, so there is something else going on there as well...
Depends on the setting. Most commonly that’s a trait of Evil groups and a few isolationist cultures (wouldn’t be cookie-cutter high fantasy without elves sneering down from their wooded fastnesses, after all), but not so much of people in general, or at least it’s not emphasized much.
That’s not bad, actually. Hmm...
Yup, seems to work. I wonder how this ties into the cosmology …