Colour blindness and human agency.

[Draklar]

Zanzibar, you\'re still violating ceteris paribus statement.
About sun tan, you didn\'t explain anything (I meant how come our perception of skin colour changes, despise everything lacking colours), so to move on:

Originally posted by zanzibar
That makes no sense at all.  Does anyone have a clue what Draklar meant to say here?

You said colours exist only as mind concepts.
So how someone perceives something, doesn\'t have to be true.
If so, when one perceives pencil as red, whilst other as green, it isn\'t relative. Both statements are false, as the colour doesn\'t exist.
You yourself proved the falsehood of relativity for colours.

Originally posted by zanzibar

Originally posted by Draklar
Likewise, good and evil are universal concepts, and to what point people understand (aka social construction) those concepts is the only relative thing about them.
Good job.

And good and evil are most definately not universal concepts.  Different cultures have radically different understandings of what constitutes good and what constitutes evil.

Disagreeing by agreeing. Interesting...
Anyway, it\'s interesting how you throw away possibility of good and evil being universal concepts, because different cultures see it differently. Why? I\'ll explain:
1) Different culture could describe fight of universal forces, that would be more similar to fight between order and chaos. That culture doesn\'t follow such concepts as good and evil, but rather the former ones. But because of similarity, we would consider those to be just different understanding of good and evil. It\'s invalid thinking, because those concepts aren\'t same. It isn\'t good and evil, it\'s something else. There could be infinite number of such cases. So the only safe way to discuss good and evil, is discussion about them in a form present in single, known to you form. Saying other cultures have different concepts of good and evil is invalid statement, as what they believe in, isn\'t what we understand by \"good and evil\". It isn\'t what we\'re talking about.
2) Ignoring the first point, we\'re still to face question why should we assume any culture is right? Maybe finding out what is good and what is evil should be done by constant researching of various worldviews. Expanding our own. Isn\'t that what ethics is about? In past philosophers broadened their understanding of morality. That\'s why today we don\'t have global slavery and other outrageous behaviours.

To sum it up: We consider evil something that causes one to suffer; Good something that causes one to be happy.
Different cultures might lack such concepts, but that only proves that they follow different ones. Not good and evil that we talk about.

Imagine some guy returning to America from Asia and screaming \"Chinese have different concept of box!\", whereas he talks about karate.

[LigH]

My 2 cents:

I don\'t fear most of our \"evil\" people. Several of them I respect, to some extent I could even call them a \"friend\", and I will help them if they need help, like an advice, some money or health. This will of course stop if they attack me or my friends - verbally, or in a fight. This is my way: Being helpful and tolerant. It is my risk of being defrauded one day.

[Sharakaz]

note to Draklar:

sun tan happens because uv-b rays will change the amount of a certain skincell type(which name i ofcourse can\'t remember at this point...) you have under your outer skinlayer. These cells are reflective though as they are breaken down by the uv rays they will vanish or turn to dead cells(in some way i can\'t remember either ) and another type of skin cells will be more dominating. this type of skincells percieve light much better and therefore don\'t reflect light as good as before resulting in an illusion of a darker skin..

well colours are ofcourse only names which depend on how certain people would name them.. now colors aren\'t maybe the best example for this discussion as they can be defined by frequency and intensity. \"good\" and \"bad\" can never be defined as they would never be the same to different people and thus is not \"really real\"

oh well..

[Draklar]

Originally posted by Sharakaz
\"good\" and \"bad\" can never be defined as they would never be the same to different people and thus is not \"really real\"

I\'m not talking about the futility of relativism on and on just so that people will ignore what I said and carry on without answering my statements :|

Good and evil are defined, those words are in dictionaries. If someone considers \"evil\" as something else than \"that which causes harm or destruction or misfortune\", then it doesn\'t mean \'evil\' isn\'t real. It means someone should really get a hold of dictionary and find out what it is.

Again I have a feeling \"good and evil\" is confused with \"right and wrong\".

Good and evil are universal concepts that we gave names to.

We named all that causes suffering as evil and all that causes well being as good. And that\'s all, period.

[zanzibar]

Originally posted by Draklar
Zanzibar, you\'re still violating ceteris paribus statement.
About sun tan, you didn\'t explain anything (I meant how come our perception of skin colour changes, despise everything lacking colours), so to move on:

Light has frequency, but not colour.  Does that explain it for you?

Originally posted by Draklar

Originally posted by zanzibar
That makes no sense at all.  Does anyone have a clue what Draklar meant to say here?

You said colours exist only as mind concepts.
So how someone perceives something, doesn\'t have to be true.
If so, when one perceives pencil as red, whilst other as green, it isn\'t relative. Both statements are false, as the colour doesn\'t exist.
You yourself proved the falsehood of relativity for colours.

Ah, that\'s another can of worms!  It\'s completely within social theory to say that a persons expectations might cause them to think they saw something which they really didn\'t.  So, if a school bus goes by really fast and you don\'t get a good look at it, you might remember it being \"schoolbus yellow\", when really it was a different shade of yellow or orange.

Originally posted by Draklar

Originally posted by zanzibar

Originally posted by Draklar
Likewise, good and evil are universal concepts, and to what point people understand (aka social construction) those concepts is the only relative thing about them.
Good job.

And good and evil are most definately not universal concepts.  Different cultures have radically different understandings of what constitutes good and what constitutes evil.

Disagreeing by agreeing. Interesting...
Anyway, it\'s interesting how you throw away possibility of good and evil being universal concepts, because different cultures see it differently. Why? I\'ll explain:
1) Different culture could describe fight of universal forces, that would be more similar to fight between order and chaos. That culture doesn\'t follow such concepts as good and evil, but rather the former ones. But because of similarity, we would consider those to be just different understanding of good and evil. It\'s invalid thinking, because those concepts aren\'t same. It isn\'t good and evil, it\'s something else. There could be infinite number of such cases. So the only safe way to discuss good and evil, is discussion about them in a form present in single, known to you form. Saying other cultures have different concepts of good and evil is invalid statement, as what they believe in, isn\'t what we understand by \"good and evil\". It isn\'t what we\'re talking about.
2) Ignoring the first point, we\'re still to face question why should we assume any culture is right? Maybe finding out what is good and what is evil should be done by constant researching of various worldviews. Expanding our own. Isn\'t that what ethics is about? In past philosophers broadened their understanding of morality. That\'s why today we don\'t have global slavery and other outrageous behaviours.

To sum it up: We consider evil something that causes one to suffer; Good something that causes one to be happy.
Different cultures might lack such concepts, but that only proves that they follow different ones. Not good and evil that we talk about.

Imagine some guy returning to America from Asia and screaming \"Chinese have different concept of box!\", whereas he talks about karate.

You\'re very mistaken.

First, a culture doesn\'t have to be right or wrong.  Maybe they\'re all right, or all wrong, or maybe there\'s no such thing as right and wrong.

More importantly however, in our society we most definately DO NOT consider \"good\" to be what makes people happy and \"bad\" to be what makes people sad.  For instance, let\'s say that someone wins the lotery, and spends the rest of his time drunking, sleeping with prostitutes, gambling, doing drugs, watching television, and swearing at people.  He\'s happy as a pig in crap during his entire life!  Is this a good life?  Some people will say \"No\".

Originally posted by Draklar
Good and evil are universal concepts that we gave names to.

We named all that causes suffering as evil and all that causes well being as good. And that\'s all, period.

I\'m afraid that the dictionary isn\'t useful here. *laughs*  And no, Good and Evil are not universal concepts.  If they were universal concpets, then all cultures would exhibit them, and exhibit them in the same way.  This is not the case.  And I\'ve already shown you how your definition of evil is completely wrong.

[dragonfire999]

Things that are \"good\" to some can be \"bad\" to others, and so nothing really affects everyone postitively. Example: Forests get cut down to build new homes, people moving into the homes are happy, while some are angry about the trees being cut down. While cutting them down is not \"good\", it is still positively affecting some people.