Overheard at the Law School

"I don't like it when people try to be friends through adverse possession."

Of Myth and Truth

But when he came to study those who had thrown off the old myths, he found them even more ugly than those who had not. They did not know that beauty lies in harmony, and that loveliness of life has no standard amidst an aimless cosmos save only its harmony with the dreams and the feelings which have gone before and blindly moulded our little spheres out of the rest of chaos. They did not see that good and evil and beauty and ugliness are only ornamental fruits of perspective, whose sole value lies in their linkage to what chance made our fathers think and feel, and whose finer details are different from every race and culture. Instead, they either denied these things altogether or transferred them to the crude, vague instincts which they shared with the beasts and peasants; so that their lives were dragged malodorously out in pain, ugliness, and disproportion, yet filled with a ludicrous pride at having escaped from something no more unsound than that which still held them. They had traded the false gods of fear and blind piety for those of license and anarchy.

-- H.P. Lovecraft, "The Silver Key"

Good and Evil

Some of you know that there is a Philosophy message board I post on occasionally (The link is on the right). One of the perennial topics there, and in general, is whether good can exist without evil. I thought I'd post some of the discussion here.

Asaris: Sure good can exist without evil. Consider the nature of the two -- evil is parasitic on good. No person ever commits an evil act for the sake of evil, but for the sake of some good. For example, someone might do something evil for the sake of money, or for the pleasure. But people do perform good deeds merely for the sake of good -- not because it gives them pleasure or otherwise benefits them. Or, looking at it another way, good is a prerequisite for evil. You can't commit an evil action without having some good thing. Power is the easiest example here. You have to have some power to do something evil, but power is itself a good. So we can see that evil cannot exist without good, but the relationship is asymmetrical. So good can exist without evil.

Roachboy: but good and evil are relational terms. one implies the other. i dont think the question is whether at any given point you can imagine someone acting entirely "for the good" but more whether one can have the good without its opposite.

the story of the fall would have you think no:
but the complication is that the story is more about free will, which cannot be exercized without the possibility existing of the rules being broken--without that, there is no choice, and without choice no free will (which exists in practice, not in principle). so without an opposition good/evil there can be no free will.
without evil, good cannot be defined, and vice versa.

Asaris: Merely because two terms are opposites doesn't mean that one can't exist without the other. For example, you could have light without darkness or darkness without light. And I don't see why you couldn't have the good without its opposite. It may be true that you cannot have good without the possibility of evil (though I would argue that this would be the case if God had not created). But that is merely because good is capable of gradation, so its existence entails the possibility of things having different grades. But this does not imply that the existence of good entails the existence of such things. Possibility is not the same thing as existence.

Roachboy: the basis of this is simple enough, so maybe we might shift gears for a minute:

it depends on whether you believe that meanings are the reflections of forms or not.
if you do believe in such forms, then your argument follows.
if you dont, then mine does.

this is not a chicken-egg argument either: it comes down to how you understand meanings to come about--whether they are effectively divine creations or if you see them as historical in some way. when it comes to referencing data or scenarios, both lend themselves equally to abstractions that are pushed back into some mythical prehistory--so it is a matter of dispositions, how you approach the question, what assumptions you bring to it.

Asaris: I think the problem with your line of reasoning is that it doesn't really answer the question -- the question already presumes the reification of good and evil. If you mean to make the linguistic claim that *we* couldn't have developed the concept of good without also developing the concept of evil, I would tend to agree with you. We live in a world that contains both things generally described as good and things described as evil, and given the obvious relation between the two concepts, it would be very strange if one developed independently of the other.

However, I don't think that's what people usually mean when they ask this sort of question. Rather than the linguistic* question, they mean to ask the ontological question of Good existing without Evil. And as I mentioned, this presumes some sort of existence of the two concepts independent of language. I don't think either the question or my answer to it requires some sort of platonic existence of the Good, and I really hope it doesn't, since I don't believe in that any more than you do.

*I'm sorry about the use of the word 'linguistic', since I'm sure there's a better word I'm just not thinking of. I hope you won't hold it against me.

I might post more of the discussion if it keeps being interesting.

Now with more heart

Okay, so this is kinda embarrassing, but there's this show on Toon Disney I rather like called W.I.T.C.H. A description of the show is here. Why do I like it? Well, the artwork is a little above average, and the plot is certainly above average, but really why I like it, is it does a good job of showing heart.

At least some of you, I'm sure, remember the old show Captain Planet. Five kids got rings that gave them special powers. Four of them were pretty cool -- fire, earth, air, and water. But the poor fifth kid got the power of heart. What did this let him do? Well, pretty much, you needed him to summon Captain Planet, but that was about it. He was the youngest, tagged along, and was generally annoying. Perhaps the creators of the show failed to realize that the team's cute sidekick shouldn't himself be a member of the team.

Will, by comparison, is also the heart of the team. In some ways, her role is similar to that fifth kid's in Captain Planet. Her powers aren't as showy as her teammates. But she's the leader of the team, and so the heart in a much more real sense than that kid. She keeps the team together and guides them.

So I guess what I'm saying is that WITCH is better than Captain Planet. Talk about damning with faint praise...

A Durham Story

Last night, the Duke lacrosse rape case came up, and I was surprised to find that some friends of mine still believed that the Duke players were guilty of rape. I've been following this case with some interest, since I have a particular interest in prosecutorial misconduct. But I wasn't sure then, and am still unsure now, that I could really prove it on my own. So I'm providing some links to blog posts and newspaper articles which make this case.

First, Durham in Wonderland. This blogger, K.C. Johnson, has been following the case in great depth for a very long time. I'll probably link to several posts from here.

Second, this recent editorial, by Johnson, in the New York Post, explaining how DNA evidence exonerates the lacrosse players.

Third, a post by Johnson comparing Nifong's behavior to that of more reasonable prosecutors.

Fourth, a post by Johnson summarizing the history of the case.

Finally, let me close with a quote from the Raleigh News & Observer.

The test results from DNA Security of Burlington found DNA from at least four unidentified men in and on the accuser and excluded the entire lacrosse team as the source.

Simply put, there is no credible evidence that the four men accused of rape committed any crimes.

Best Sentence Ever

From a case involving the Drug Analogue Statute:

In addition to being used as a nutritional supplement, 1,4- butanediol has long been used as a common industrial solvent. See, e.g.,146 Cong. Rec. H55-03 (Jan. 31, 2000).

Just the sort of stuff *I* want to use as a nutritional supplement.