What is the true definition of “good” or “bad”? Further, is either best measured by word or by deed? If person A simply says “we should stand up and prevent rape”, and person B intentionally kills 100 serial rapists, who did the most good?
But there is a difference between saying that someone did good, and that they are good. When you say that they are good, it implies that their moral stance is good.
In your example, if the person B did it out of loving to kill people for fun, and picked those victims randomly or to be able to use it as an excuse, is there any way to say that B is good? I don’t think so. You can say or not that they did good, but not really that they are.
Followup on the spoiler
In the case of Dukat, he killed Winn out of purely selfish reasons, and couldn’t care less about her being evil. If anything, he probably would have otherwise liked her. It’s hard to count something as good, when Dukat had not even a gram of a sense of good when he killed her, and only did it for his personal benefit. He would have absolutely not have done differently (or on the contrary, would have enjoyed it more) if Winn was the most good and benevolent person in the universe.
If your definition of good and bad is purely based on results and not on intentions and morals, then maybe someone like Trump would retrospectively be considered a good person, because he would lead to insurrection and revolutions that would end up making the world better. With this logic, Hitler did a lot of good because now a lot of people hate fascism and nazis. For me, this cannot work, the results can only be considered good if the intentions were good. If you do something good out of bad intentions, then the result might be objectively good, but I won’t count it as something good from you. That’s where my definition of good and evil stands in this case.
Tl;dr: I don’t count as good, something that is basically a side effect of bad intentions.
For me, this cannot work, the results can only be considered good if the intentions were good. If you do something good out of bad intentions, then the result might be objectively good, but I won’t count it as something good from you.
We’re bordering on reinventing Kantianism vs Utilitarianism arguments here because there is no objective definition of “good”. Each of us subjectively decides what is “good”. To illustrate with your position that the intent to do good is the deciding factor, then that would follow that Hitler would be good because his intent was to do “good” as he saw it. Obviously neither one of use would consider Hitler or his actions good.
Here’s your statement with the extra dimension of intent we’re discussing added:
If you do something good (and good by my standard) out of bad intentions (good by your own standards), then the result might be objectively bad, but I won’t count it as something good from you (because even though your intent was good by your standards your result was bad from my standards).
Doesn’t this seems to negate the “intent” element argument returning judgment purely base end result judgment?
The thing is, the definition of “good by my standard” that I’m applying here is quite a basic one: what impacts people positively, without impacting other people negatively. It doesn’t work for the most grey or ambiguous areas, but as a default baseline it works fine I would say.
So Hitler wasn’t having “good” intentions because his intentions were to impact people negatively.
Obviously, if you start digging deeper, this core standard requires additional rules and such. Fighting against rich people would be bad according to this core, but I don’t believe that it is bad; the reason for that is that rich people decide to be rich, and have a negative impact that is too important to neglect. Taxing them would then be good, because it helps people who are living poorer than they should be, by taking from people who are richer than they should be -> this adds a rule/exception of equity and of treating “bad” people under different rules (if you initiate something bad, then you stop counting as much in the balance of things, which varies depending on what you did).
And yeah, this all ends up pretty subjectively, but I don’t think that there is such a thing as an objective definition of good and evil, it depends on the scope. The scope that I’m trying to have is one that leads (or so I believe) to a fair and harmonious society, where people don’t suffer (or as little as possible).
Then you can even nitpick that wanting a fair society is also a subjective opinion (typically, capitalism wants the opposite, since the concept is to advantage some people by disadvantaging others), but there will never be a 100% consensus. Sometimes subjectivity is unavoidable, but I think that generally, decent people will at least have the idea of “feeling happy is good, suffering is bad” and the rest can be built on top of that.
So with this whole thing, in the case of Dukat:
he was a gigantic nazi rapist (which is bad according to my definition, and for anyone that I deem worthy of respect), that ended up killing someone that he didn’t really see as evil (or didn’t care) purely for personal gain. None of those fall in the scope of having intentions of “good” (trying to impact others positively), so the action itself isn’t good from Dukat’s scope, even if it has a good result.
If you analyse, let’s say, Sisko committing crimes of war, he also falls a bit in the evil side for example: he decides to basically destroy a whole planet’s worth of people, just to satisfy a personal vendetta. You could try to argue that the population can be moved, and that the guy would have caused issues down the road if he didn’t get arrested, etc, but when it comes down to it, Sisko didn’t care about that, he was just ready to sacrifice anything and anyone for his personal satisfaction. Therefore his intentions were bad, and the action is bad.
Now we’re going down a rabbit hole.
What is the true definition of “good” or “bad”? Further, is either best measured by word or by deed? If person A simply says “we should stand up and prevent rape”, and person B intentionally kills 100 serial rapists, who did the most good?
It is for sure a philosophical debate.
But there is a difference between saying that someone did good, and that they are good. When you say that they are good, it implies that their moral stance is good.
In your example, if the person B did it out of loving to kill people for fun, and picked those victims randomly or to be able to use it as an excuse, is there any way to say that B is good? I don’t think so. You can say or not that they did good, but not really that they are.
Followup on the spoiler
In the case of Dukat, he killed Winn out of purely selfish reasons, and couldn’t care less about her being evil. If anything, he probably would have otherwise liked her. It’s hard to count something as good, when Dukat had not even a gram of a sense of good when he killed her, and only did it for his personal benefit. He would have absolutely not have done differently (or on the contrary, would have enjoyed it more) if Winn was the most good and benevolent person in the universe.
If your definition of good and bad is purely based on results and not on intentions and morals, then maybe someone like Trump would retrospectively be considered a good person, because he would lead to insurrection and revolutions that would end up making the world better. With this logic, Hitler did a lot of good because now a lot of people hate fascism and nazis. For me, this cannot work, the results can only be considered good if the intentions were good. If you do something good out of bad intentions, then the result might be objectively good, but I won’t count it as something good from you. That’s where my definition of good and evil stands in this case.
Tl;dr: I don’t count as good, something that is basically a side effect of bad intentions.
We’re bordering on reinventing Kantianism vs Utilitarianism arguments here because there is no objective definition of “good”. Each of us subjectively decides what is “good”. To illustrate with your position that the intent to do good is the deciding factor, then that would follow that Hitler would be good because his intent was to do “good” as he saw it. Obviously neither one of use would consider Hitler or his actions good.
Here’s your statement with the extra dimension of intent we’re discussing added:
If you do something good (and good by my standard) out of bad intentions (good by your own standards), then the result might be objectively bad, but I won’t count it as something good from you (because even though your intent was good by your standards your result was bad from my standards).
Doesn’t this seems to negate the “intent” element argument returning judgment purely base end result judgment?
Well, you are right.
The thing is, the definition of “good by my standard” that I’m applying here is quite a basic one: what impacts people positively, without impacting other people negatively. It doesn’t work for the most grey or ambiguous areas, but as a default baseline it works fine I would say.
So Hitler wasn’t having “good” intentions because his intentions were to impact people negatively.
Obviously, if you start digging deeper, this core standard requires additional rules and such. Fighting against rich people would be bad according to this core, but I don’t believe that it is bad; the reason for that is that rich people decide to be rich, and have a negative impact that is too important to neglect. Taxing them would then be good, because it helps people who are living poorer than they should be, by taking from people who are richer than they should be -> this adds a rule/exception of equity and of treating “bad” people under different rules (if you initiate something bad, then you stop counting as much in the balance of things, which varies depending on what you did).
And yeah, this all ends up pretty subjectively, but I don’t think that there is such a thing as an objective definition of good and evil, it depends on the scope. The scope that I’m trying to have is one that leads (or so I believe) to a fair and harmonious society, where people don’t suffer (or as little as possible). Then you can even nitpick that wanting a fair society is also a subjective opinion (typically, capitalism wants the opposite, since the concept is to advantage some people by disadvantaging others), but there will never be a 100% consensus. Sometimes subjectivity is unavoidable, but I think that generally, decent people will at least have the idea of “feeling happy is good, suffering is bad” and the rest can be built on top of that.
So with this whole thing, in the case of Dukat:
he was a gigantic nazi rapist (which is bad according to my definition, and for anyone that I deem worthy of respect), that ended up killing someone that he didn’t really see as evil (or didn’t care) purely for personal gain. None of those fall in the scope of having intentions of “good” (trying to impact others positively), so the action itself isn’t good from Dukat’s scope, even if it has a good result.
If you analyse, let’s say, Sisko committing crimes of war, he also falls a bit in the evil side for example: he decides to basically destroy a whole planet’s worth of people, just to satisfy a personal vendetta. You could try to argue that the population can be moved, and that the guy would have caused issues down the road if he didn’t get arrested, etc, but when it comes down to it, Sisko didn’t care about that, he was just ready to sacrifice anything and anyone for his personal satisfaction. Therefore his intentions were bad, and the action is bad.