If alignment is understood as a certainty within the game world, why would there be guilt over destroying evil?
Confusion about alignment in the metagame doesn't imply confusion about alignment within the game world.Because the greatest good is not the destruction of evil, but its conversion into good.
(Go and sin no more)
Evil which can be converted is not a great evil to begin with.
Although false conversion does grant many wonderful opportunities to corrupt Good organizations from within.
I imagine it a bit like all the good aligned deities send avatars of themselves to Nirvana (neutral good plane) and sit down and agree on what constitutes good. It probably takes a while to get everyone to agree, and they get side tracked a lot because law and chaos creep in but eventually they all agree to certain things. So basically the deities come to a mutual agreement over what is good.
And would the good gods define evil as well? Would the neutral or evil gods have any role? What happened when the good Dou Bral turned into evil Zon Kuthon or when Cayden Calean, Iomedae, and Milani ascended to become good gods?
As far as physical being possibly defining alignment, while some deities have been noted to change not all deities need be made equal. Not that the lore is accurate, but the lore on Apsu and Tiamat does seem to set them apart on a different level of deific nature. If this was the case, they would be unable to change alignment, though the concept wouldn't mean anything to them because they would never want to do anything that wasn't in agreement with their alignment. I will add, we do know for certain that there are varying degrees of deific power.
They would be unable to change alignment because they are the definitions. If they cannot act outside of how the alignments are already defined, however, then alignments are fixed and they are defined by the alingments, not the other way around. If they do something and it is good or evil because they do it, then they are defining alignment.
Again, these are just theories. I'm not suggesting that either is actually accurate. In fact, my point is more that we can't actual say any are accurate because we don't have enough lore published from would could be considered objective sources to make strong conclusions.
We do have the in-world objective definitions of the alignments and the fact that gods change alignments.
You're almost to the point. Language shapes the way a person thinks. It allows expression of one's ideas to others, but it also limits a person to thinking in certain sounds. That's why it's difficult to think of sounds that can't be expressed in one's own language. Much as it would be difficult for beings of inherently limited will to conceive of true free will.
Try to think of a sound you cannot spell.Musicians do this all the time, and so do people who never learned how to spell.
The gods don't have to have free will to create mortals with free will. It could just be an emergent feature of the fact that mortals are not bound by cosmic portfolios and alignment.
"Those creations of yours are wierd and floppy."
"Yeah, I made them like little copies of us but I didn't put in bones. Actual god bones don't work at that scale. They don't have nearly as much structure, but they can bend in ways we can't. It's pretty neat."
You're almost to the point. Language shapes the way a person thinks. It allows expression of one's ideas to others, but it also limits a person to thinking in certain sounds. That's why it's difficult to think of sounds that can't be expressed in one's own language. Much as it would be difficult for beings of inherently limited will to conceive of true free will.
Try to think of a sound you cannot spell.Musicians do this all the time, and so do people who never learned how to spell.
The gods don't have to have free will to create mortals with free will. It could just be an emergent feature of the fact that mortals are not bound by cosmic portfolios and alignment.
"Those creations of yours are wierd and floppy."
"Yeah, I made them like little copies of us but I didn't put in bones. Actual god bones don't work at that scale. They don't have nearly as much structure, but they can bend in ways we can't. It's pretty neat."
I find this unlikely. Has any programmer ever created a program that had unexpected capabilities beyond even the programmers own capability?
Sure, you could use the excuse of "they're deities, so they can do anything", except free will apparently lies outside their great power.
In the Forgotten Realms there are 20 deities that are lawful good. In Golarion there are 9. In Eberron there are 3. The idea that alignment is handed down from the gods requires some extreme justification to function at even a cursory level. It simply isn't an idea that is compatible with the game.
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Oo!
The divine command theory paradox.
My answer is that the true deity of the universe defines alignment. Perceptible deities are either a manifestation of the true-God or not the true-God just relevant Gods.
If Xenophanes existed in your campaign world, he would not think the deities were truly Gods.
In PF, we know the true-God of the universe to be the GM. An in-game explanation requires outlining cosmological principles that are true in all universes not just the PF one or the one we exist in.
In the Forgotten Realms there are 20 deities that are lawful good. In Golarion there are 9. In Eberron there are 3. The idea that alignment is handed down from the gods requires some extreme justification to function at even a cursory level. It simply isn't an idea that is compatible with the game.
Who else but the divine could be a source of morality in a game setting? Are you suggesting that all morality within the game world is inherently humanist in origin?
Good and Evil are universal forces, that aren't adjudicated by any beings or powers, rule over deities, aren't spread by the gods, and yet somehow everyone knows what they are and how actions interact with them.
A bit confusing.
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In the Forgotten Realms there are 20 deities that are lawful good. In Golarion there are 9. In Eberron there are 3. The idea that alignment is handed down from the gods requires some extreme justification to function at even a cursory level. It simply isn't an idea that is compatible with the game.Who else but the divine could be a source of morality in a game setting? Are you suggesting that all morality within the game world is inherently humanist in origin?
Good and Evil are universal forces, that aren't adjudicated by any beings or powers, rule over deities, aren't spread by the gods, and yet somehow everyone knows what they are and how actions interact with them.
A bit confusing.
No, it's not especially confusing. The rules of Alignment are like the rules of mathematics. They have a defined nature that can be examined, and are simply the way the universe operates.
Deities are powerful, but finite, and have no true ability to change rules of this nature.
See? Simple.
In the Forgotten Realms there are 20 deities that are lawful good. In Golarion there are 9. In Eberron there are 3. The idea that alignment is handed down from the gods requires some extreme justification to function at even a cursory level. It simply isn't an idea that is compatible with the game.Who else but the divine could be a source of morality in a game setting? Are you suggesting that all morality within the game world is inherently humanist in origin?
Good and Evil are universal forces, that aren't adjudicated by any beings or powers, rule over deities, aren't spread by the gods, and yet somehow everyone knows what they are and how actions interact with them.
A bit confusing.
Alignment morality is objective.
Good is good. Evil is evil.
It does not matter what the gods or men believe or say or decree, it does not change what is good or evil. People and gods do not get to choose what is good or evil.
Moral relativism based on personal beliefs, the gods choices, cultural context, or historical context does not determine whether something is good or evil in pathfinder.
In the Forgotten Realms there are 20 deities that are lawful good. In Golarion there are 9. In Eberron there are 3. The idea that alignment is handed down from the gods requires some extreme justification to function at even a cursory level. It simply isn't an idea that is compatible with the game.Who else but the divine could be a source of morality in a game setting? Are you suggesting that all morality within the game world is inherently humanist in origin?
Good and Evil are universal forces, that aren't adjudicated by any beings or powers, rule over deities, aren't spread by the gods, and yet somehow everyone knows what they are and how actions interact with them.
A bit confusing.
The player decides because that is the only answer that is coherent.
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Inside the game world, objective alignment is a fundamental principle of reality like gravity is in ours.
At the table (metagame), the GM decides with input from the players.
Evil which can be converted is not a great evil to begin with.If alignment is understood as a certainty within the game world, why would there be guilt over destroying evil?
Confusion about alignment in the metagame doesn't imply confusion about alignment within the game world.Because the greatest good is not the destruction of evil, but its conversion into good.
(Go and sin no more)
I would disagree there, and so would at least some of the folks at Paizo. There's at least one redeemed demon in the published material.
On the other hand, if an evil is truly too great to be redeemed, there's no guilt over destroying it.
Nor does the lack of guilt in this case involve in-game confusion over alignment, as the rules are very clear: if it can be redeemed, redeem it. If it can't be redeemed, destroy it.
The gods don't have to have free will to create mortals with free will. It could just be an emergent feature of the fact that mortals are not bound by cosmic portfolios and alignment.I find this unlikely. Has any programmer ever created a program that had unexpected capabilities beyond even the programmers own capability?
Yes. Evolutionary computation can solve problems that humans can't. And the results can be surprising.
{. . .}
Dieties do not have quite the free will that mortals do. Giving up that chunk of free will is part of the price of being a god. {. . .}
Not necessarily. Deities are normally not inclined to change their alignment (normally they like their alignment just the way it is), but although extremely rare, it is possible. For example, some time in very early Golarion recorded history, Shelyn went from Chaotic Good to Neutral Good. Doubral becoming Zon-Kuthon probably doesn't count, because this change was apparently imposed from outside. And:
Perhaps Tequila Sunrise, but if I recall my Golarion lore correctly good and evil didn't even exist until the gods created them to separate them from law and chaos.
Law and chaos I could see being called primordial fabric of the universe. Actually just chaos. The first being coming into existence naturally disturbed this and created order (law) and then later created good and evil as distinctions form these.
But a question of do gods determine alignment or does alignment determine gods...the answer is yes.
I'd like to take a quick look at Chaos and Law here... Because in my honest opinion they're exactly the same thing. Consider a stack of paper. Entropy is the process by which things in the universe become static, all things in perfect equal balance, there is no longer hot and cold, no longer up or down, just this blank grey evenly spaced haze. So a chaotic character smacks a stack of paper. This is entropy, Chaos Theory, things getting scattered... But now the total potential energy of the stack of papers is reduced, and the papers are more evenly distributed across the floor, rather than in one space. This more even distribution is better balanced, more conformed, more LAWFUL. A Lawful character picks up the stack and organizes it, imposes will on the papers, stacks them in one place, makes them more uniform in their location (at the cost of uniformity in distribution). This is Lawful, but, because it disrupts the natural order of the paper, removes them from a peaceful state of equal distribution and low potential energy, it is, in effect, CHAOTIC.
By examining this model, can anyone explain to me how you would rule the nature of a King or a Diety who demanded that all crops be planted haphazardly and without pattern? Is he chaotic? His actions seem to be, but he is enforcing a view of reality on the area with law. What makes his rules any less lawful than someone who orders crops be planted in orderly east-west rows?
Chaos and Law suddenly become far more...
Life is inherently lawful compared to the universe as it spends the vast majority of it's time collecting food and energy in itself to be used to collect more food and energy, and then tries to make copies of itself to do the same in the future. It creates concentrated of material to organize it, humans do this particularly well being able to forge materials, non humans make nests and other things.
the difference between law and chaos are if the end result lead to better organization and usefulness, haphazard is a more chaotic way to plant crops and is more akin to how nature would do it. east west rows can be harvested very efficiently and thus is a lawful way of planting crops. If an organization promotes concentration, it promotes law, if an organization makes it difficult to concentrate, then it promotes chaos.
Balance isn't lawful, lawful is making everything exactly what it needs to be for a use. if it's balanced, then it isn't being organized.
isn't evolutionary programming, just a program that evolves? if i remember correctly it still cannot evolve into something beyond it's starting limit. a program can't evolve intelligence if it was designed to crunch out a university time table.
in essence, evolutionary programming doesn't have unexpected capabilities. you just have it make copies of itself with slight variations and you cull the least efficient ones and copy the most efficient ones.
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isn't evolutionary programming, just a program that evolves? if i remember correctly it still cannot evolve into something beyond it's starting limit. a program can't evolve intelligence if it was designed to crunch out a university time table.
in essence, evolutionary programming doesn't have unexpected capabilities. you just have it make copies of itself with slight variations and you cull the least efficient ones and copy the most efficient ones.
I'm not talking about programs that themselves evolve, though some do believe that a properly intelligent program - one designed to really think rather than just perform one specialized task - would in fact surpass its initial limits, exceeding human intelligence and escaping our control. Ever heard of the singularity? It's fairly speculative at the moment but worthy of serious consideration, and got some recent media attention when Stephen Hawkings referenced the idea (see the BBC article).
For this argument, though, I meant programs that create solutions to problems using processes inspired by evolution - creating variations and copying the most efficient ones.
The programmers understand the concept of the evolutionary algorithm, but are incapable of themselves implementing it due to limits on human cognitive processing power - we cannot carry out trial and error fast enough to find a solution. However, we can create a computer that does not have the same limitation, and that computer can solve the problem that we can't. While the properties of the program are not unexpected, the solutions it produces - for example the antenna from the previous link - are unexpected.
Similarly, a deity may understand the concept of free will, but be incapable of themselves exercising it due to limits inherent to being metaphysically bound to a concept such as "justice." However, the deity could create a mortal that does not have the same limitation, and that mortal could exercise free will. While the properties of the mortal are not unexpected - the deity knows the mortal has free will - the actions they take as a result of that free will may indeed be unexpected by the deity.
I also don't believe that a deity lacking free will would be unable to conceive of free will. Philosophers aren't certain we have free will, and that uncertainty would be impossible if a creature without free will couldn't imagine the concept.
In the Forgotten Realms there are 20 deities that are lawful good. In Golarion there are 9. In Eberron there are 3. The idea that alignment is handed down from the gods requires some extreme justification to function at even a cursory level. It simply isn't an idea that is compatible with the game.Who else but the divine could be a source of morality in a game setting? Are you suggesting that all morality within the game world is inherently humanist in origin?
Good and Evil are universal forces, that aren't adjudicated by any beings or powers, rule over deities, aren't spread by the gods, and yet somehow everyone knows what they are and how actions interact with them.
A bit confusing.No, it's not especially confusing. The rules of Alignment are like the rules of mathematics. They have a defined nature that can be examined, and are simply the way the universe operates.
Deities are powerful, but finite, and have no true ability to change rules of this nature.
See? Simple.
If alignments are like maths, why do people have such a great resistance to quantifying them? If their nature is defined, why is there so much debate about what sort of act a given thing is?
Judging by the frequent disagreements, if alignment is like maths, it's like calculus being attempted by kindergarteners.
Additionally, your simple explanation didn't disclose how universal understanding of alignments could be assumed in game, especially absent divine source.
Well written, thejeff!
Judging by the frequent disagreements, if alignment is like maths, it's like calculus being attempted by kindergarteners.
Morality and ethics are subjective in the real world, hence all the debates. But within any particular DM's game world, that DM defines alignment. Thus, alignment can indeed be an objective and universal fact within a particular campaign.
Granted, alignment may get subjective and messy in organized play due to different DMs having different takes on alignment. But I'm guessing that there aren't terribly many gray areas written into official organized play adventures.
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If alignments are like maths, why do people have such a great resistance to quantifying them? If their nature is defined, why is there so much debate about what sort of act a given thing is?
You're confusing real-world discussions about a fantasy world with how the fantasy world works. In the real world, these things are subjective, and thus subject to extensive debate, but as Tequila Sunrise notes, in an actual game, the GM takes on the role of those universal laws and arbitrates what is, say, Evil. And is objectively right in the context of their own universe.
Judging by the frequent disagreements, if alignment is like maths, it's like calculus being attempted by kindergarteners.
Alignment discussions aren't really about what's Evil or Good in a specific Pathfinder world, that's up to the GM. They're about what should be Evil or Good, based on how we, in the real world, want the game world to work and think is appropriate for it to work based on our own morality.
Additionally, your simple explanation didn't disclose how universal understanding of alignments could be assumed in game, especially absent divine source.
Science, basically. A Phylactery of Faithfulness is a cheap magic item that unfailingly determines whether an action will adversely effect your alignment. Given that...it seems really silly to assume that deity-level magic can't figure out the same, only on a more global (rather than personal) scale.
Or did you mean among humans? Because they shouldn't have universal understanding of Alignment any more than they do particle physics. Such an understanding is possible, but most people don't have it because they either don't care or lack the tools and knowledge to figure it out. That doesn't mean it's subjective, it means most people lack objective understanding of it.
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I would think that in a Planescape-style setting, a fair fraction of characters (not necessarily the majority) would have at least a working understanding of alignment, including the associated terminology.
Of course, things could get problematic if biased Phylacteries of Faithfulness are distributed . . . .
See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthyphro_dilemma
Given that the moral structure of the outer planes outlasts individual deities, I strongly suggest that deities are subject to an independent moral reality the rules of which bind them as strongly as anyone.
In my old Pathfinder canon, alignment is some average opinion of all the gods, which could change as gods die, develop, and are created.
Since then, I got rid of alignment, did my table a world of good.
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The phylacteries are a little more complicated than they seem at first glance, since they warn not merely of actions that could affect alignment, but also ones that could affect standing with your deity. It's not clear that they distinguish. So while you might be warned about a certain action, it could be unclear whether you're changing alignment or going against your deity - especially since you don't have to be the same alignment as your deity.
Well, if looking for a scientific definition, you just give them to atheists and perform some experimentation. :)
The phylacteries are a little more complicated than they seem at first glance, since they warn not merely of actions that could affect alignment, but also ones that could affect standing with your deity. It's not clear that they distinguish. So while you might be warned about a certain action, it could be unclear whether you're changing alignment or going against your deity - especially since you don't have to be the same alignment as your deity.Well, if looking for a scientific definition, you just give them to atheists and perform some experimentation. :)
Would they function for an atheist?