How to measure Good and Evil (moral, choice, moral)

[Pah]

There are two ways that I can see.

One is where each is measured separately.

And the other is combined

If a thing or person is evil 25% of the time and good 75% of the time is it fair to say the thing or person is 50% good? Or how about measuring presidential approval ratings? If the president has an approval rating of 45% and a disproval rating of 30% does he really have a 45% approval rating?

I'm trying to make that case that bipolar scales are not the way to go.

And what if you have to pick between "strongly dissaprove", "disapprove", "neutral", "approve" and "strongly approve"? How does one make a choice between "diapprove" and "neutral"? Can you rightfully combine "neutral", "approve", and "strongly approve"?

What is a good way to judge or measure such things?

[Ozzie]

Originally Posted by Pah

There are two ways that I can see.

One is where each is measured separately.

And the other is combined

If a thing or person is evil 25% of the time and good 75% of the time is it fair to say the thing or person is 50% good? Or how about measuring presidential approval ratings? If the president has an approval rating of 45% and a disproval rating of 30% does he really have a 45% approval rating?

I'm trying to make that case that bipolar scales are not the way to go.

And what if you have to pick between "strongly dissaprove", "disapprove", "neutral", "approve" and "strongly approve"? How does one make a choice between "diapprove" and "neutral"? Can you rightfully combine "neutral", "approve", and "strongly approve"?

What is a good way to judge or measure such things?

It depends how good your criterion is as measure of subjective qualities. And then measures should include the degree of confidence with which you make the rating of the subjective quality.

[Mestemia]

The biggest problem I can foresee with any type of meausrement of good and evil is the subjectivity of the two.

For example:
Would you say that cats are evil?
Most people will say no.
However, i have a hunch that Mice woul dsay otherwise.

[robtex]

I think in measuring what good and evil is two factors are important. Perspective and context. Perspective being which person is viewing it. For example in post # 3 a mice's perspective is different than say from a loving owners. In humans, we as a species compete for resources both tangible and intangible. The perspective for all those involved in attempting to aquire the resources should be noted and evaluated. This alone makes a bi-polar scale the wrong tool for the job in assessing good and evil.

The context of a situation is the other factor. For instance things like intent, preconceptions that lead to the action, numbers involved, motives, and meathod of execution are all contextual factors that lead us to look at the whole picture.

The bi-polarization of morality does it two injustices.

1) It makes a subjective evaluation absolute by compartions by polarizing the issue
2) It by its nature of percents creates the paradigm where a few major issues or one issue overshadows the other to such a degree that the subservent issues no longer exist or do exist but no longer matter.

For example take the US lead invasion of Iraq. If we view this from a bipolar scale it is either good or bad, good or evil but not able to as effectivly hold aspects of both. Both might meaning the outing of a tyrant as good but the slaughter of civilians by bombs from insurgents and invaders as not good.

Further without viewing perspective, which is affectly eliminated in a bi-polar evaluation cannot find the motives and intents for various nations, including Iraq and the USA but rather dimish or simplify the picture to something "managable" as insurgents and coalition objectives.

In regards to the approve-dissaprove scale it is good as a summary of ideas but the why and the methodolgy in determining how which section of the scale is picked far eclispes in importance, the end pick of strong approve to strongly dissapprove.

I think, espcially in politics, the bipolar scale is used not as an academic tool to evaluate issues but more of a marketing tool to pitch or sell an idea to people who have varying levels of interests with the goal being to bring out the strengths of the pitch and conceal the weakness of the pitch and to reduce the number of factors to a managable level to push an idea of urgency in reaching a conclusion.