A mathematical interpretation of reality?

[tonyrey]

St Augustine’s definition of evil as privatio boni suggests that goodness is positive. I have always thought that “nothing” is negative but before anything existed perhaps “nothing”, i.e. a total void, was neutral. What is your opinion?

This may seem idle speculation but it may have important implications for the so-called Problem of Evil…

 

[KingCoil]

St Augustine’s definition of evil as privatio boni suggests that goodness is positive. I have always thought that “nothing” is negative but before anything existed perhaps “nothing”, i.e. a total void, was neutral. What is your opinion?

This may seem idle speculation but it may have important implications for the so-called Problem of Evil…

Please produce the excerpt from St. Augustine with 100 words preceding the phrase, "privatio boni, and 100 words following that phrase.

And also give the link(s) to the work(s) of St. Augustine.

KingCoil

 

[hazcompat]

1=0.99999999999999999999999999?

Peace

 

[tonyrey]

Please produce the excerpt from St. Augustine with 100 words preceding the phrase, "privatio boni, and 100 words following that phrase.

And also give the link(s) to the work(s) of St. Augustine.

Chapter 11.—What is Called Evil in the Universe is But the Absence of Good.
And in the universe, even that which is called evil, when it is regulated and put in its own place, only enhances our admiration of the good; for we enjoy and value the good more when we compare it with the evil. For the Almighty God, who, as even the heathen acknowledge, has supreme power over all things, being Himself supremely good, would never permit the existence of anything evil among His works, if He were not so omnipotent and good that He can bring good even out of evil. For what is that which we call evil but the absence of good? In the bodies of animals, disease and wounds mean nothing but the absence of health; for when a cure is effected, that does not mean that the evils which were present—namely, the diseases and wounds—go away from the body and dwell elsewhere: they altogether cease to exist; for the wound or disease is not a substance, but a defect in the fleshly substance,—the flesh itself being a substance, and therefore something good, of which those evils—that is, privations of the good which we call health—are accidents. Just in the same way, what are called vices in the soul are nothing but** privations of natural good**. And when they are cured, they are not transferred elsewhere: when they cease to exist in the healthy soul, they cannot exist anywhere else.

ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf103.iv.ii.xiii.html

 

[tonyrey]

1=0.99999999999999999999999999?

1=1! & 0=0!

 

[Paddy_Walker]

Someone said sin, and I suppose therefore evil, meant literally ‘missing the mark’. As if you were an archer missing the target with an arrow. Like everything is good but if it misses its purpose it is called evil…

 

[Bahman]

St Augustine’s definition of evil as privatio boni suggests that goodness is positive. I have always thought that “nothing” is negative but before anything existed perhaps “nothing”, i.e. a total void, was neutral. What is your opinion?

This may seem idle speculation but it may have important implications for the so-called Problem of Evil…

Evil is not always equal to wrong as good is not always equal to right. Example of first a chess match, example of second raising up an spoiled kid.

 

[Qoeleth]

St Augustine’s definition of evil as privatio boni suggests that goodness is positive. I have always thought that “nothing” is negative but before anything existed perhaps “nothing”, i.e. a total void, was neutral. What is your opinion?

This may seem idle speculation but it may have important implications for the so-called Problem of Evil…

It is quite a traditional analysis, that evil is always a deprivation (ultimately a deprivation of being). So that, disease is merely a deprivation of health, war is a deprivation of peace and justice, etc.

The problem with this is, though, it seems to go against experience- for example a person who has cancer does not view it as a deprivation of normal cell function. Similarly, a person who gets punched does not view it as a ‘deprivation of peaceful state’, but rather a something with a positive ontological status.

It comes down to using language. The best analogy of this is heat. Now, anything above absolute zero has some heat. You could say, that ‘cold’ does not exist, but rather there are only different degrees of ‘heat’. But if the temperature is zero degrees, people say, “Today is cold. There is no heat about today, but there is a lot of cold!”

So, cold, despite being simply a ‘insufficient degree of heat’ is viewed as a thing in itself.

For this reason, while the meontic explanation of evil does hold up philosophically (if you adopt a Platonist view of absolute being as absolute good), in normal discourse it can be insensitive to people’s experience of ‘evil’ as a real force.

 

[hazcompat]

1=1! & 0=0!

Are those exclamation points or “factorial”?

Peace

 

[wcknight]

Interesting premise but how then does evil and the wicked come about. Something or someone had to turn them negative.

There are some folks with no morals or almost none, some folks who care only about themselves, or some who start off decent but get corrupted by greed or circumstances. Assuming that all folks start off positive or at least at zero, and if everything created is positive, how then does one turn bad.

We know that evil, and wickedness exists, all you need is to look all around. you. The headlines and news is full of it everyday. IF everything is positive how does this come about ??

 

[tonyrey]

Are those exclamation points or “factorial”?

Peace

Grammatical - and positive.

 

[tonyrey]

Evil is not always equal to wrong as good is not always equal to right. Example of first a chess match, example of second raising up an spoiled kid.

I agree but both are negative!

 

[tonyrey]

Someone said sin, and I suppose therefore evil, meant literally ‘missing the mark’. As if you were an archer missing the target with an arrow. Like everything is good but if it misses its purpose it is called evil…

I believe it was St Thomas Aquinas with his usual perspicacity.

Missing the mark is negative, of course.

 

[tonyrey]

It is quite a traditional analysis, that evil is always a deprivation (ultimately a deprivation of being). So that, disease is merely a deprivation of health, war is a deprivation of peace and justice, etc.

The problem with this is, though, it seems to go against experience- for example a person who has cancer does not view it as a deprivation of normal cell function. Similarly, a person who gets punched does not view it as a ‘deprivation of peaceful state’, but rather a something with a positive ontological status.

Both cancer and violence are positive events but they have negative consequences: injury, disability, unhappiness and death.

It comes down to using language. The best analogy of this is heat. Now, anything above absolute zero has some heat. You could say, that ‘cold’ does not exist, but rather there are only different degrees of ‘heat’. But if the temperature is zero degrees, people say, “Today is cold. There is no heat about today, but there is a lot of cold!”

So, cold, despite being simply a ‘insufficient degree of heat’ is viewed as a thing in itself.

The analogy is flawed because temperature is unrelated to purpose.

For this reason, while the meontic explanation of evil does hold up philosophically (if you adopt a Platonist view of absolute being as absolute good), in normal discourse it can be insensitive to people’s experience of ‘evil’ as a real force.

Nothing is intrinsically evil. Moral evil is due to the misuse of free will and natural evil is due to interference and the interplay of the laws of nature - as St Thomas explained:

The ontological goodness of things is their rational desirability. Therefore, an evil is “a missing good’, a privation ( I, 48,1), the absence of good that ‘ought’, either naturally or morally, to be there,. It is privation, like blindness in a person, not mere absence like blindness in a stone. Natural evils, like animal blindness, suffering and death, lethal earthquakes, tornadoes, and the like, are only incidentally evil, that is, locally and relatively undesirable by affected creatures, (if they are not caused, like some plane crashes, say, by immoral acts).
Nothing, in so far as it has being, is or can be evil. It is not possible for God to make something that is less than it ‘ought’ to be. For in so far as it is made, the thingis rationally desirable. “Nothing can be essentially bad”(I, 49, 3). Further, there is nothing that absolutely ought not to be, not even the worst evil actions of free rational creatures. Still (I, 49,2), God can be the cause of what ought not to be, by causing a penalty fitting to justice (I, 49,1), for creaturely wrongs, but never can, as angels can (I, 63,1), and humans can, cause evil by fault (I, 48,5).“Every evil in voluntary things is to be looked on as pain or fault”(I, 48,5).

He reasons that it is within the perfection of a divine agent to make a created order in which the natural and imperfect causes produce effects that people deem evils, like plagues, pestilences, bugs and beasts that harm us; for, of course, finite causes will be imperfect agents. Therefore, the “order of nature requires that some things can, and sometimes do, fail” (I, 49,2). At I, 22, 2, ad 2, he says, “hence, corruption and defects in natural things are said to be contrary to some particular nature; yet they are in keeping with the plan of universal nature”; and he reasons that “a lion would cease to live if there were no slaying of animals”, thus acknowledging that biotic life requires death, that it is not a defect for God to create carnivorous and vicious animals, and poisonous snakes. Human suffering and death is another matter because it is the result of Adam’s sin which incurred the loss of an extra-natural divine protection in which human persons were first created (I, 97,1).

sas.upenn.edu/~jross/summatheologie.htm

 

[Bahman]

I agree but both are negative!

What do you mean with negative? A chess match that two opponents train their brain is not negative.

 

[inocente]

St Augustine’s definition of evil as privatio boni suggests that goodness is positive. I have always thought that “nothing” is negative but before anything existed perhaps “nothing”, i.e. a total void, was neutral. What is your opinion?

I think Augustine is trying to have his cake and eat it, he wants God to create everything while yet only create good. But his solution is a bit too clever, for instance can’t his logic be used to prove the exact opposite of his intent - that good is the absence of evil? (Instead of vices being privations of natural good, virtues of the soul are absences of natural evil, etc.).

Imho the basic issue is that for good and evil to be mathematical they would have to be quantifiable, there would need to be an absolute scale on which the good and evil in Stalin sums to -846,923.608 or whatever.

 

[tonyrey]

What do you mean with negative? A chess match that two opponents train their brain is not negative.

I specified negative consequences - with regard to life not games.

 

[tonyrey]

I think Augustine is trying to have his cake and eat it, he wants God to create everything while yet only create good. But his solution is a bit too clever, for instance can’t his logic be used to prove the exact opposite of his intent - that good is the absence of evil? (Instead of vices being privations of natural good, virtues of the soul are absences of natural evil, etc.).

I think your objection is a bit too clever because it simply reveals your negativity! The best test of any philosophy is how you behave. Do you act as if vices are your starting point? If so we have been warned!

Imho the basic issue is that for good and evil to be mathematical they would have to be quantifiable, there would need to be an absolute scale on which the good and evil in Stalin sums to -846,923.608 or whatever.

What is more important in your scale of values: to be generous or miserly, patient or impatient, kind or callous, courteous or discourteous, optimistic or pessimistic, idealistic or cynical, realistic or unrealistic?

 

[Qoeleth]

I think your objection is a bit too clever because it simply reveals your negativity! The best test of any philosophy is how you behave. Do you act as if vices are your starting point? If so we have been warned!

What is more important in your scale of values: to be generous or miserly, patient or impatient, kind or callous, courteous or discourteous, optimistic or pessimistic, idealistic or cynical, realistic or unrealistic?

I suggest it might not always be right to link being generous or miserly and patient or impatient, with being optimistic or pessimistic, or even idealistic or cynical.

There a plenty of committed pessimists who are compassionate and patient. Believing everyone is having a more or less hard time in this world, it is then natural to treat other kindly, as sharers in this common pain which we call ‘life’. Expecting nothing but the worst and esteeming all as mere passing shadows and vanities, they have no reason to be impatient, disappointed, or offended, and hence are incapable of anger or ambition, hope or fear (at least of for anything earthly). Expecting nothing from corrupt and fragile human nature, poor banished children of Eve, they condemn no one, but sympathize with all, as fellow passengers on a sinking ship.

 

[inocente]

I think your objection is a bit too clever because it simply reveals your negativity! The best test of any philosophy is how you behave. Do you act as if vices are your starting point? If so we have been warned!

Your objection to my objection is a bit too clever. As a Baptist I don’t believe we are born separated from God, while the CCC says:

1250 Born with a fallen human nature and tainted by original sin, children also have need of the new birth in Baptism to be freed from the power of darkness and brought into the realm of the freedom of the children of God, to which all men are called.

What is more important in your scale of values: to be generous or miserly, patient or impatient, kind or callous, courteous or discourteous, optimistic or pessimistic, idealistic or cynical, realistic or unrealistic?

These are value judgments, and value judgments are always relative, they cannot be quantified absolutely.

So are you a moral relativist then?