Fe v Fi or more?

[miss fortune]

the man and I were in a discussion as to who can actually be considered evil

it started out with Star Trek and some bad guy who thought he was doing the right thing and spun off from there to the following questions of

do evil people know that they are evil?

can you call someone evil if what they are doing is really, really bad, but they genuinely think that they are doing the right thing?

his argument was that if the person genuinely thinks that they are doing the right thing that they can't really be deemed as evil, mine was that if someone is doing something bad and harming people (or I think in this case aliens) that they can be deemed evil...

I was wondering... more of a Fe v Fi thing or something else?

 

[wolfy]

The worst and most powerful evil is evil where they think they are doing the right thing.

 

[KDude]

The important thing is...


Which Trek episode was it anyways?

 

[Jaguar]

Andrea Yates thought she was "doing the right thing" for her children, as she drowned them in the bathtub.

 

[Thalassa]

I don't think this has anything to do with Fe or Fi.

Apparently Hitler thought he was doing "the right thing."

 

[Giggly]

I think there are two levels of evil. The most evil people know that they are doing wrong. It's more of a conscious choice and they consciously use deceit, trickery and denial in order to do harm. They gain pleasure from this and have blatant and indignant disregard of others well-being.

Next there are those who have an inkling and may have even been told that they are harming others, but they ignore that and/or resort to playing dumb or innocent in favor of selfish gains. This is what I would call the "everyday evil", meaning that, it happens most often among people.

I would not consider someone who truly did not know that they have done wrong as evil. I'd just consider them ignorant, which is understandable and forgivable to me. But once they have been shown or told that something is wrong, yet they keep repeating it then they become less and less innocent and more and more ruthless in my eyes.

 

[wolfy]

I would not consider someone who truly did not know that they have done wrong as evil. I'd just consider them ignorant, which is understandable and forgivable to me. But once they have been shown or told that something is wrong, yet they keep repeating it then they become less and less innocent and more and more ruthless in my eyes.

I think there is an important difference between not knowing something is wrong and thinking something is right. The reason I feel people who do evil in righteousness are worse is that they are impossible to reason with. They have no understanding of right and wrong. Or more correctly they have a misunderstanding.

 

[Magic Poriferan]

How often does someone actually carry out a plan that they consider to be bad? Why would someone do that? At most, they could be divided within themselves, struggling with one idea that their action is good and one idea that it is bad. I dare say it might even be impossible that someone can do a thing they entirely consider bad.

So if we took believing your own actions to be bad as criteria for those actions being evil, no one has ever done an evil thing. Being a utilitarian myself, I find a person's intent largely irrelevant to whether or not their actions are morally good or bad.

But you specifically asked if a person was good or evil. I suppose I would say we could roughly throw someone on the side of evil if by the end of their life they had hurt more than they had helped. That seems rather unsatisfying, however. Rather than turning to intent, I've come to reject the entire idea of calling a person evil. A whole person can't be evil, because a person does many different things, with many different results, for many intentions (though, again, they presumably don't consider any of those intentions strictly bad). There's no way to categorize a person as evil that isn't crude enough to miss the point and be useless.

I'm not clear, by the way, which you are attributing to Fe and which you are attributing to Fi.

 

[Giggly]

How often does someone actually carry out a plan that they consider to be bad? Why would someone do that? At most, they could be divided within themselves, struggling with one idea that their action is good and one idea that it is bad. I dare say it might even be impossible that someone can do a thing they entirely consider bad.

Ahh it does happen that someone knows for sure that they are doing wrong, but it is rare. These people usually end up in jail or become really great liars and manipulators. They even begin to lie to themselves in order to continue it.

But you are correct, most people are struggling with the decision. And decisions like that are not always fun to make.

 

[Giggly]

I think there is an important difference between not knowing something is wrong and thinking something is right. The reason I feel people who do evil in righteousness are worse is that they are impossible to reason with. They have no understanding of right and wrong. Or more correctly they have a misunderstanding.

we are all evil according to this definition, considering that everyone has disagreed with someone else at some point in their lives and both people thought they were right.

 

[wolfy]

we are all evil according to this definition, considering that everyone has disagreed with someone else at some point in their lives and both people thought they were right.

That's too much of a simplistic take on it. There is to what extent someone goes to, what action they take.

 

[crack]

There is no such thing as "evil" in the meaning here because you mean universal evil, and all morals are subjective. (Morality comes into play because "evil" = issue of "good or bad", which is an issue of morality/ethics in this sense.)

You can say "according to my definition, that person is evil", but you cannot throw the label of universal evil on someone because 'universal (meaning objective) evil' doesn't exist.

can you call someone evil if what they are doing is really, really bad, but they genuinely think that they are doing the right thing?

You could call their actions evil, and thereby them, I suppose (if they only did "evil" things? (practically speaking)), but it would be incorrect to call the person evil, as in evil-hearted. If you are to tack the evil label onto "them" as the result of their actions, what you are really doing is fusing the man's evil actions and the human responsible for the evil actions into one, calling the actions evil and just throwing the label onto a whole person because the actions emanate from a person. But, if he does not consider what he is doing "bad" (in any amount), the person themselves is not evil.

if someone is doing something bad and harming people (or I think in this case aliens) that they can be deemed evil...

The issue here is your personal, individual moral judgment of "harming people" (or doing "something bad") is "bad." This is not an objective moral, though.

If you want to call someone evil by your own standards, shoot away... but realize this judgment is not objective.

Edit: Also not sure which is Fe or Fi. Perhaps you can either explain or clarify so we can try to figure out where the error is.

 

[Orangey]

There is no such thing as "evil" in the meaning here because you mean universal evil, and all morals are subjective. (Morality comes into play because "evil" = issue of "good or bad", which is an issue of morality/ethics in this sense.)

You can say "according to my definition, that person is evil", but you cannot throw the label of universal evil on someone because 'universal (meaning objective) evil' doesn't exist.

You could call their actions evil, and thereby them, I suppose (if they only did "evil" things? (practically speaking)), but it would be incorrect to call the person evil, as in evil-hearted. If you are to tack the evil label onto "them" as the result of their actions, what you are really doing is fusing the man's evil actions and the human responsible for the evil actions into one, calling the actions evil and just throwing the label onto a whole person because the actions emanate from a person. But, if he does not consider what he is doing "bad" (in any amount), the person themselves is not evil.

The issue here is your personal, individual moral judgment of "harming people" (or doing "something bad") is "bad." This is not an objective moral, though.

If you want to call someone evil by your own standards, shoot away... but realize this judgment is not objective.

Edit: Also not sure which is Fe or Fi. Perhaps you can either explain or clarify so we can try to figure out where the error is.

Agreed.