"But I just wanted to be liked!" Charm Person and ethics

[Dervag]

My personal opinion is that a human being, or any other creature, has no inherent rights of any kind. Not the right to vote, nor the right to free speech, nor to be something other than a slave, nor even to live. All these things are things human being got together and decided everybody should have. That the world is a better place to live with these freedoms than without them... that we would rise up and butcher any person or group who tries and take them away.

Here's the problem with that interpretation, though:

You're saying that rights are purely constructed. OK. But if you do that, then you end up in the position of saying that ethics and morality is purely constructed as well, because in the absence of rights there is no reason to do or not to do anything for ethical or moral reasons. It cannot be ethically or morally 'right' or 'wrong' to treat a person in a given way, not if they have no rights.

But the point of the exercise in morality is to identify actions which are choiceworthy* for their own sake. Your argument then leads to the conclusion that no actions are choiceworthy for their own sake, because if such actions existed then we could construct ethical or moral rules around them. And there would be definable 'rights' with roots in those choiceworthy actions, such as "people have a right not to be stopped from performing an inherently choiceworthy action."

*"Choiceworthy" as in "it is intrinsically preferable to act in this way, regardless of external or practical concerns."

And that leads to a consistency issue. Your own words suggest that you do not believe that there are no actions choiceworthy for their own sake, because you talk about an orgy of self-destruction and madness like it would be a bad thing. And yet for that to be true, there has to be something about existence and sanity as opposed to destruction and madness. For that to be true, there has to be something to live for.

If I ask you "why do you want to live?" you will presumably have an answer. Either that answer takes the form "because I would rather live than die," or it takes the form "I have something I need to do that I can't do if I'm dead." The first implies that living is an intrinsic good. The second implies that something else is an intrinsic good: either your reason for living is an intrinsic good, or your reason for doing the thing that gives you a reason to live is, or... et cetera.

The fact that you have a reason to live, and to prefer existence and sanity to destruction and madness, indicates that you do in fact believe in intrinsic goods of some kind. But if intrinsic goods exist, they are necessarily not constructed- we can't just have created them out of thin air. To do that we would need a reason, in which case the good in question would be extrinsic- something we do for the sake of something else, and not for its own sake. And, as I said before, if there are intrinsic goods, then there have to be 'natural rights' that people have in order to pursue those intrinsic goods.

If it is intrinsically better to be sane than to be mad, then people have a right not to have their sanity mucked with, and so on.

Thus, your proposition that rights are purely constructed and do not exist naturally contradicts your proposition that sanity is preferable to madness. Or that any thing is preferable to any other thing. For there to be any reason to prefer one thing or another there has to be an intrinsic good hiding somewhere in the underbrush.

Did that make sense?
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Oh, I ackowledge them, all right. I mean, I acknowledge that other people may think different things than I. It's just that I have defined my own view of what the human being is, and I am proud to be able to articulate it. You can take it or reject it, but isn't the point of an argumentation?

No, it isn't, not quite.

The point of debate is that you're supposed to have good and compelling reasons for the things you're saying. If you believe something that lots of other people disagree with, and that you don't have much evidence for, fine. But using that as the foundation for your entire argument isn't a good idea. In this case, your argument seems to be:

"There's no such thing as free will, so it doesn't matter if I use mind-affecting magic to make someone do or want something, as long as I didn't physically harm them."

The problem is that you can't do a very thorough job of proving that there is no such thing as free will. No one can. So this line of reasoning is almost guaranteed to get bogged down. If you want to discuss the philosophy of whether or not we have free will and what "free will" actually means, fine. But if you want your argument to be convincing, you have to start from basic assumptions that make sense to other people.

Making "friend", in my personnal view of the world, isn'T denying anything at all. It's simply changing someone's view of the caster, one that the person simply did not had any choice over to begin with. Either he would have liked the caster, or he wouldn't. He had not choice over it.

Lots of people would argue, with reason, that I have plenty of choice about whether or not I'm going to like you when I first meet you.

Also, keep in mind a person may value the security of their mind and body from tampering just like any other possession. This is why rape is so widely regarded as a horrible crime. It's not the physical harm as such. It's the harm done to the victim's concept of themself and of their own control over their body.

Charm Person attacks a person's security of mind, which makes it a big deal. Does that mean it's always wrong? I'm not sure. But you can't just dismiss the problem by saying "people don't have any power to decide how they feel anyway." Because there's a lot of evidence that people do have that power, and even if they don't have that power that doesn't give you a right to take that power for yourself.

[Azerian Kelimon]

Here's the problem with that interpretation, though:

*Snip*

Dervag, just a small offtopic question: Just how many points did you pour into Critical post?*

Seriously. For some reason, about 95% of the posts you make seem to expose an important piece of information previously ignored, or cause an important erosion in another poster's position.

*Here's the stats for Critical Post:

Critical Post
Passive
Levels: 100
Effect: Percentage chance that your post will be insightful, equal to the level of Critical Post.
Cost: 3 points per level.

[Hectonkhyres]

Everybody is different and sometimes these differences are huge. But by and large we can agree on certain things. We don't like the thought of being gutted in the street so we declared murder/assault to be evil. We don't like the though of being left there to die by passing pedestrians and so we declared charity and mercy good. Most men (the half of the population with the power to enforce their will) disliked the thought of coming home to find their wife in bed with another man and so we declared adultery evil.

The reason why some things are considered desirable and some things are considered undesirable is irrelevant. No doubt each case comes down to some detail of the wiring of human brain selected for by a billion years worth of evolutionary pressure combined with a certain amount of random juryrigging. Doesn't matter: evil is what we call things that are either themselves unpleasant or which render the world a less pleasant place to exist.

You post the question 'why do you want to live'. I answer: I'm a stupid monkey who knows no other way to exist. All the monkeys before me who chose differently didn't produce children and removed themselves from the equation. And there is always time for death later, however nice it might happen to be.

As for the orgy or madness and self destruction, I like being at least nominally safe and able to partake of such things as clean running water and electricity. A lot of people happen to agree with me. Some people don't... rather going off to the frontier to endure a brutal existence without luxury or security. I'm happy if someone wants to live like that, but screw them if they want to in any way inflict the barbarian way of life upon me. Civilization is better for people who like civilization, barbarism for those who like barbarism. It doesn't mean either side is right by some magical objective standard.

[GoC]

Domination of the mind, re-writing memory, coercion, other applications of force against another person. Essentially, something that changes them as a person; the examples of "well what if I put on deoderant" is simply a change to make yourself less foul-smelling. Changing someone's perception of you by way of magically altering their mind is crossing the line.

Charm Person doesn't change a person's nature though breaking up with your girlfriend may change her nature.

Being able to issue someone an order to have sex with you, regardless of whether they want to or not, is the same as being handsome and amusing? Really?

Charm Person doesn't work that way.

Oh, and they do want to.

Again, you can issue orders. "Engage in sexual intercourse with me" is neither suicidal nor obviously harmful, so it's a valid order.

You can issue orders only if your charisma is high enough to convince a naturally friendly person to "do it".

In conclusion I wouldn't mind either using or receiving a Charm Person spell.

EDIT: By "wouldn't mind" I don't mean I mightn't be annoyed.

[Azerian Kelimon]

Charm Person doesn't change a person's nature though breaking up with your girlfriend may change her nature.



Charm Person doesn't work that way.

Oh, and they do want to.


You can issue orders only if your charisma is high enough to convince a naturally friendly person to "do it".

In conclusion I wouldn't mind either using or receiving a Charm Person spell.

I hope you don't mind people throwing SUMEo'D's or Pink Tentacles at you.

[GoC]

I hope you don't mind people throwing SUMEo'D's or Pink Tentacles at you.

Throwing what?

[GoC]

I'd make a distinction between the basic use of making someone into your friend, and the potential opposed charisma check.

The first I'd consider generally broadly equivalent to the use of tricks and deceit, while the second is the more like putting a knife to their throat.

Both are probably evil if used selfishly, but the first is in a relatively low level, everyday sort of way if you're not really hurting them.

Wow, didn't see this post. That sums it up perfectly for me.
If this was my thread I'd award it to you!

[Devils_Advocate]

Thus, your proposition that rights are purely constructed and do not exist naturally contradicts your proposition that sanity is preferable to madness. Or that any thing is preferable to any other thing. For there to be any reason to prefer one thing or another there has to be an intrinsic good hiding somewhere in the underbrush.

Did that make sense?

No, not at all. It's entirely possible to prefer something without it being intrinsically preferable. Two people can even have completely opposite, mutually exclusive preferences.

The concept of something being "intrinsically preferable" blatantly makes no damn sense. "Preferable" is a completely subjective property that tells you how someone feels about something. It just means that someone prefers it. There's nothing that's preferred by everything. I would suggest that rocks, for example, have no preferences. "Preferable" isn't a real property of the thing that supposedly has it, like hardness is. The real quality is the preferring of the thing that's done in someone's mind. It's just one of the weird quirks of our language, like saying that Tom offended Jack, as if Jack's reaction to Tom's behavior is something done by Tom, not Jack.

[Azerian Kelimon]

Throwing what?

Super Ultra Mega Enervations o' Doom. In other words, a metamagicked enervation.

[GoC]

Super Ultra Mega Enervations o' Doom. In other words, a metamagicked enervation.

Yes I would mind. Why wouldn't I?

[Curmudgeon]

Contrary to intuition, Alter Self can be used on people other than yourself.

Uh, how is this possible?

Alter Self
Transmutation
Level: Brd 2, Sor/Wiz 2
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: 10 min./level (D)

(I'm excepting scenarios involving familiars of the same type as yourself, and treating them as "people".)

[Dervag]

The reason why some things are considered desirable and some things are considered undesirable is irrelevant. No doubt each case comes down to some detail of the wiring of human brain selected for by a billion years worth of evolutionary pressure combined with a certain amount of random juryrigging. Doesn't matter: evil is what we call things that are either themselves unpleasant or which render the world a less pleasant place to exist.

What I'm saying is that whatever chain of events led to you thinking that, you do think that, and your reasons have to trace back to something. The something may very well be "I enjoy this" or "It amuses me to do so."

If so, you are making a statement that it is better to be amused than to not be amused. Why? At this point you've hit something that can only be desirable for its own sake. The only reason to seek out amusement is because it is preferable to be amused than to not be amused. Thus, we wind up with an objective standard for judging what should and should not be done: amusement.

As for the orgy or madness and self destruction, I like being at least nominally safe and able to partake of such things as clean running water and electricity. A lot of people happen to agree with me. Some people don't... rather going off to the frontier to endure a brutal existence without luxury or security. I'm happy if someone wants to live like that, but screw them if they want to in any way inflict the barbarian way of life upon me. Civilization is better for people who like civilization, barbarism for those who like barbarism. It doesn't mean either side is right by some magical objective standard.

This itself implies an objective standard- that people should be able to pursue the style of living they like. In short, that you have a right not to be impeded in living with a society with clean running water, et cetera. While Hrun the Muscular has a right not to be impeded in living in a society without those things, because he feels that not having running water makes him more badass.

Relativism implies an objective standard too- that of tolerance. States that give you civilization and Hrun barbarism are objectively preferable to states that force you to live in Hrun's barbarism or Hrun to live in your civilization. Or, worse yet, involve Hrun living in civilization and you living in barbarism. Because that just sucks.

When I talk about objective judgement criteria, I'm talking about them in the abstract. Perhaps the objective best is the system that maximizes the number of people that are amused, or that live in the style they would like to live, or whatever. The question of what is objectively best is bigger than I am and I admit it. It must be resolved by discussion. There may not be an obvious answer.

The question of whether some state of affairs can exist that is objectively preferable to some other state of affairs that can exist for intrinsic reasons, on the other hand, I think can have only one answer. Determining whether such states exist in general as a far simpler question than finding out what they are in specific, and one that the normative nature of preferences doesn't have any bearing on.
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No, not at all. It's entirely possible to prefer something without it being intrinsically preferable. Two people can even have completely opposite, mutually exclusive preferences.

The concept of something being "intrinsically preferable" blatantly makes no damn sense. "Preferable" is a completely subjective property that tells you how someone feels about something. It just means that someone prefers it. There's nothing that's preferred by everything. I would suggest that rocks, for example, have no preferences. "Preferable" isn't a real property of the thing that supposedly has it, like hardness is. The real quality is the preferring of the thing that's done in someone's mind. It's just one of the weird quirks of our language, like saying that Tom offended Jack, as if Jack's reaction to Tom's behavior is something done by Tom, not Jack.

I don't really agree, you see.

To start, I define the phrase "outside our heads." This refers to things which, if they do not have a physical existence in the portions of the universe not directly controlled by a human mind, are manifest in that universe. For instance, the inverse square law of gravity is not a physical object. You cannot fill a teacup with inverse square law of gravity as you can with water or sand or plasma or some other physical substance. You cannot point to the inverse square law of gravity. If someone asks for directions to the inverse square law of gravity, you will not be able to provide them with such directions, as you would be able to give them directions to Carnegie Hall or Angkor Wat or Aldebaran.

And yet, the inverse square law of gravity exists "outside our heads," according to my definition. Its workings are equally binding upon all. Sufficient examination of the things they work on will reveal their existence to any adequately capable and open mind. It is there, even if I cannot point to it. It is part of how physics work.
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I maintain that there are philosophical truths which, like the inverse square law of gravity, exist "outside our heads." They are not something that some intelligence had to decide on; they are simply true. We may or may not be able to grasp these truths or make use of them, because we may not be examining them sufficiently. Or we may not have adequately capable and open minds to perceive them. But they're still there anyway.

One of the major categories of such truths, I maintain, is that of things which are 'intrinsically preferable'. As in, it is better, more choiceworthy, more deserving of your preference, to have things this way.