Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I'm pretty sure that, in Soul Hunter at least, the Night Lords don't go looking for someone that can stand up to them. They try to escape from the Blood Angels, not try to confront them. Talos hunts inferior warriors as much as the next Night Lord. His sadism is the equal of any you could name.

In each of his first two appearances (again, haven't had the pleasure of sitting down to The Core just yet), he fights and defeats Callidus assassins. A D-B makes it exceptionally clear how incredibly dangerous they are on each occasion. In Throne of Lies, Talos is not described as taking anything but what the readership would consider justifiable pleasure in torture--which I would emphasize is a pretty august standard considering their otherwise vile reputation as notorious blackguards (the NL, I mean, not BL readers).

On the other hand there is no justifiable pleasure in torture...

Justifiable???

That's the problem, my good man, we're talking about CSM here.

So? Either the Chaos Space Marine in question takes pleasure in torture and is an evil sadist, or doesn't and isn't.

There is no justification for torture, and any that anyone attempts to make is just rationalization. I'm reminded of the final episode of the third season of Dexter where Dexter is captured by a serial killer that skins his victims. Dexter, being a serial killer himself, knows that it doesn't matter what he tells the guy because the interrogations that serial killer conducts are simply pretexts to indulge in torture.

Well. Fulgrim turned to chaos. His fault in my opinion. Seriously WHY DO YOU PICK UP A SWORD THAT IS GLOWING AND SPEAKING TO YOU!

Fulgrim = idiot.

Asherian Command wrote:Well. Fulgrim turned to chaos. His fault in my opinion. Seriously WHY DO YOU PICK UP A SWORD THAT IS GLOWING AND SPEAKING TO YOU!

Fulgrim = idiot.

Then you forget the psychic power of the Daemon inside.

IvanTih wrote:

Asherian Command wrote:Well. Fulgrim turned to chaos. His fault in my opinion. Seriously WHY DO YOU PICK UP A SWORD THAT IS GLOWING AND SPEAKING TO YOU!

Fulgrim = idiot.

Then you forget the psychic power of the Daemon inside.

Would you grab a sword that was beckoning your name? And saying I can give you all the pleasures...

Asherian Command wrote:

IvanTih wrote:

Asherian Command wrote:Well. Fulgrim turned to chaos. His fault in my opinion. Seriously WHY DO YOU PICK UP A SWORD THAT IS GLOWING AND SPEAKING TO YOU!

Fulgrim = idiot.

Then you forget the psychic power of the Daemon inside.

Would you grab a sword that was beckoning your name? And saying I can give you all the pleasures...

I wouldn't,but think in this way.It's a Daemon possesed sword + ignorance=Traitor.
I could name certain feat of Chaos Corruption if you like.

Nurglitch wrote:So? Either the Chaos Space Marine in question takes pleasure in torture and is an evil sadist, or doesn't and isn't.

No, that's a bit silly to say about a BL novel. We're not talking about Guantanamo Bay here, we're talking about the GrimDark. There is certainly a such thing as justifiable satisfaction in torture in the GrimDark and it isn't the same thing as sadism; rather, it's a form of religious righteousness. The GrimDark is the fascistic dream of modern zealots made real, where torturing your ideological enemies is a just and good pursuit that does not necessarily speak to the psychological depravity of the torturer. The sadists are still around, however. That would be the Night Lords, for one. But Talos is not presented as one of them.

Manchu wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:So? Either the Chaos Space Marine in question takes pleasure in torture and is an evil sadist, or doesn't and isn't.

No, that's a bit silly to say about a BL novel. We're not talking about Guantanamo Bay here, we're talking about the GrimDark. There is certainly a such thing as justifiable satisfaction in torture in the GrimDark and it isn't the same thing as sadism; rather, it's a form of religious righteousness.

You do realize that you essentially stated that religious zeal in the pain of the fallen cannot be sadistic in nature? Enjoyment in torturing those of different faith (Heretics hurr) is the very essence of sadism (Enjoyment in the pain of another). Remember, in Grimdark there are no good guys...only degrees of bad.

Unless you are wanting to roll the sadism definition back to de Sade's era where a person obtains sexual pleasure in pain of another....then I would say only Slaanesh qualifies. Maybe the new DE....

Fulgrim is my favorite HH book, actually.

It was the first book, in my opinion, that explored the more personal aspects of the betrayal of one Brother Primarch to another, and I liked the moment at the end when Horus starts to realize that this whole "Chaos" thing is getting uglier than he originally realized.

Loved it.

Monster Rain wrote:Fulgrim is my favorite HH book, actually.

It was the first book, in my opinion, that explored the more personal aspects of the betrayal of one Brother Primarch to another, and I liked the moment at the end when Horus starts to realize that this whole "Chaos" thing is getting uglier than he originally realized.

Loved it.

There are elements of it I liked, don't get me wrong. I especially liked the detailed description of how the remembrancers acted once corrupted; Slaanesh has always been the hardest Chaos god for me to wrap my head around in terms of what he's all about, and that was a great way of displaying it.

However, I was left with the conviction that, for a Primarch, Fulgrim wasn't a terribly bright guy.

Seaward wrote:

Monster Rain wrote:Fulgrim is my favorite HH book, actually.

It was the first book, in my opinion, that explored the more personal aspects of the betrayal of one Brother Primarch to another, and I liked the moment at the end when Horus starts to realize that this whole "Chaos" thing is getting uglier than he originally realized.

Loved it.

There are elements of it I liked, don't get me wrong. I especially liked the detailed description of how the remembrancers acted once corrupted; Slaanesh has always been the hardest Chaos god for me to wrap my head around in terms of what he's all about, and that was a great way of displaying it.

However, I was left with the conviction that, for a Primarch, Fulgrim wasn't a terribly bright guy.

I actually thought his character was pretty well developed.

In any epic, the main character will have a serious character flaw. In Fulgrim's case, much like Odysseus, the flaw was hubris. I don't think he was stupid, I just think that it occurred to him that anything could go wrong since he was so perfect.

Monster Rain wrote:

I actually thought his character was pretty well developed.

In any epic, the main character will have a serious character flaw. In Fulgrim's case, much like Odysseus, the flaw was hubris. I don't think he was stupid, I just think that it occurred to him that anything could go wrong since he was so perfect.

See, I actually thought Horus was well developed, whereas everyone else seems to think he was poorly written. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

It could just be that 'perfection' seems like sort of an oddball focus for a Primarch and a Legion to me.

Okay, my point is that even in the "grimdark" the ends do not justify the means. As the blog-link in my signature argues, even a fictional universe adheres to the rules governing universes in general, and there is no such thing as justifiable torture in any. Any attempt to justify said torture, whether it be religious righteousness or zealotry, is simply another manifestion of the Taint. In the Warhammer 40k ficton (a.k.a "fictional universe") any attempt to justify torture not only speaks to the psychological depravity of the torturer, it speaks to the spiritual deficiency of the torturer that is Slaanesh.

Warhammer 40k background materials harp on this theme with some success, A Thousand Sons and Legion being the most successful in my opinion. No matter the good intentions, rationalizations, and occasional willful ignorance sorcery is nothing but an irreversible sin. Just about any time anyone in the 40k ficton is going to fall to Chaos, the authors telegraph it by having the character try to justify what they're doing. I don't think it's a coincidence that those Imperial factions best known for torture (The Unforgiven, the Inquisition, etc) tend to be engaged in civil wars.

Soul Hunter is interesting because in part it's about justification and vindication. Talos feels justified in disobeying the Night Haunter, the Night Haunter feels he'll be vindicated by commiting a complicated suicide, the Exalted justifies the neglect of his warband by appealing to the chain of command when really the daemon possessing him just plain doesn't give a feth. It's that core of moral nihilism that characterizes the lost and the damned, when they stop trying to justify their actions and do them for their own sake. Conversely it seems that characters, Zho Sahaal from Lord of the Night comes to mind, can hold off the depredations of Chaos by maintaining some kind of ulterior justification for their actions.

Talos, more than the other Night Lords characters, has reasons to rationalize his use of fear as a weapon. He regards it as foremost amongst his Primarch's teachings, and regards the lack of opportunity to use it as a sin against the Night Haunter's memory. But that doesn't change the fact that he takes every practical opportunity to terrorize his enemies. I think you're confusing his practical disposition which is emphasized by his foil Uzas being the caricature of a nihilistic Chaos Space Marine idiot, with his behaviour as a sadist.

As mentioned the serial killer in the 3rd season of Dexter likewise feels a need to dress his sadism up as interrogration (a fact Dexter uses against him), much like Dexter uses his code as a pretext for indulging in his urges. The fact that he's loathe to "gak where he eats" neither justifies nor excuses the fact that he's just as sadistic as the next Night Lord.

AgeOfEgos wrote:You do realize that you essentially stated that religious zeal in the pain of the fallen cannot be sadistic in nature? Enjoyment in torturing those of different faith (Heretics hurr) is the very essence of sadism (Enjoyment in the pain of another). Remember, in Grimdark there are no good guys...only degrees of bad.

I'm well aware of modern pop psychology. And even if I wasn't before reading this thread, Nurglitch already posted a useful example from the show "Dexter." But just as we can't properly apply such analysis to the study of actual history, I think it's inappropriate to assume it applies to the GrimDark. I guess there could be three schools of thought about this: (1) morality in the Grimdark is exactly the same as in the actual 21st century (i.e., morality is an unchanging, universal absolute), (2) there is no such thing as a meaningful concept of morality in the GrimDark (i.e., everyone's bad and so the whole thing is a non-issue), or finally (3) the GrimDark's morality is proper to itself and requires its own analysis. I subscribe to the third.

Also, Nurglitch, I would have never pegged you for an advocate of natural law theories.

Well said and a Dexter reference as well...if there was a Like/+1 button I'd click it.

Nurglitch wrote:Okay, my point is that even in the "grimdark" the ends do not justify the means. As the blog-link in my signature argues, even a fictional universe adheres to the rules governing universes in general, and there is no such thing as justifiable torture in any. Any attempt to justify said torture, whether it be religious righteousness or zealotry, is simply another manifestion of the Taint. In the Warhammer 40k ficton (a.k.a "fictional universe") any attempt to justify torture not only speaks to the psychological depravity of the torturer, it speaks to the spiritual deficiency of the torturer that is Slaanesh.

Warhammer 40k background materials harp on this theme with some success, A Thousand Sons and Legion being the most successful in my opinion. No matter the good intentions, rationalizations, and occasional willful ignorance sorcery is nothing but an irreversible sin. Just about any time anyone in the 40k ficton is going to fall to Chaos, the authors telegraph it by having the character try to justify what they're doing. I don't think it's a coincidence that those Imperial factions best known for torture (The Unforgiven, the Inquisition, etc) tend to be engaged in civil wars.

Soul Hunter is interesting because in part it's about justification and vindication. Talos feels justified in disobeying the Night Haunter, the Night Haunter feels he'll be vindicated by commiting a complicated suicide, the Exalted justifies the neglect of his warband by appealing to the chain of command when really the daemon possessing him just plain doesn't give a feth. It's that core of moral nihilism that characterizes the lost and the damned, when they stop trying to justify their actions and do them for their own sake. Conversely it seems that characters, Zho Sahaal from Lord of the Night comes to mind, can hold off the depredations of Chaos by maintaining some kind of ulterior justification for their actions.

Talos, more than the other Night Lords characters, has reasons to rationalize his use of fear as a weapon. He regards it as foremost amongst his Primarch's teachings, and regards the lack of opportunity to use it as a sin against the Night Haunter's memory. But that doesn't change the fact that he takes every practical opportunity to terrorize his enemies. I think you're confusing his practical disposition which is emphasized by his foil Uzas being the caricature of a nihilistic Chaos Space Marine idiot, with his behaviour as a sadist.

As mentioned the serial killer in the 3rd season of Dexter likewise feels a need to dress his sadism up as interrogration (a fact Dexter uses against him), much like Dexter uses his code as a pretext for indulging in his urges. The fact that he's loathe to "gak where he eats" neither justifies nor excuses the fact that he's just as sadistic as the next Night Lord.

Manchu:

The moral imperative that torture is always wrong does not necessarily imply that morality is unchanging or absolute. Likewise one would imagine that "grimdark" is only grim, and dark, if stuff like torture is wrong.

Incidentally, consider that if you've never pegged my as an advocate for natural law theories, it could be that I'm not...

The statement that something is "always wrong" (already assuming that the thing in question is itself a universal absolute) indicates a belief in the universal and absolute nature of morality. (I was just as surprised to see you posting in OT the other day that science and technology are not culturally determined but psychology and other humanities topics are.)

The GrimDark is both grim and dark not because torture is wrong but rather because it is not necessarily wrong. The "shift" in alignment to a more "evil" tone when compared to the real world of the 21st century is what makes it grim and dark.

Manchu:

I need to disabuse you of two notions: the first being that I posted the opinion that the Humanities are culturally determined, but Science & Technology are not, and the second being that "always wrong" indicates a belief in the universal and absolute nature of morality.

Likewise I disagree with the notion that 40k is grim and dark because stuff like torture is not necessarily wrong. If torture is not necessarily wrong, either because its moral value is held to be relative to the beholder, or subject to the viewer, then either it's okay for them ('them' being those relative to the beholder) and there's nothing more grim and dark about it than eating a sandwich, or it seems okay to you ('you' being the subjectivity of the beholder) and then I don't get why you would find it grim and dark.

Maybe you could explain what "a 'shift' in alignment to a more 'evil' tone" is supposed to mean.

Sure thing. What I mean is that the "grim darkness" of this fictional future is relative to the actual present. As you have suggested, the Inquisitor finds torturing the heretic neither grim nor dark. The Space Marine does not find the destruction of a planetary population wrong at any level, provided he and his allies have prosecuted it in the name of the Emperor (there are a few exceptions here--and, notably, the Ultramarines are not among them). As I said before, the horrors we humans have dreamt up to inflict on our fellows become justifiable in a world where "the enemy" of twentieth-century nationalist propaganda--or indeed, the Great Enemy of the medieval Christian imagination--truly exists.

As to the other matter:

Nurglitch wrote:Science and engineering aren't based on Western schools of thought: a wheel is a wheel regardless of your underlying philosophy. The Humanities, on the other hand, are based on Western cultural norms.

But perhaps I overstated your argument? Also, I would be glad to know what you mean by "always wrong."

Manchu:

Actually you mistated my argument. But, I see the problem:

You're taking morality to be subjective to the agent, so as long as the agent doesn't think they're doing anything wrong then it's not actually wrong. Unfortunately this is the meta-ethical equivalent to solipsism, which isn't so much a position in meta-ethics as a refusal to even play the game. That explains why you're taking a rejection of subjectivism to be an endorsement of absolutism, as subjectivism does not represent the difference between acts and intentions like an actual meta-ethical philosophy has to represent.

The solution, incidentally is pretty easy, and it's at the root of all much good philosophy: the first step is the intersection of independent ideas. Here's an example: I mentioned that subjectivism is the meta-ethical equivalent of solipsism, the notion that we have no compelling reason to believe in the existence of other minds. But the existence of minds is logically independent of belief in their existence, so given no compelling reason to believe in the existence of other minds, we likewise have no reason to believe in the existence of our own mind.

In other words, either they exist and we can know them, they don't exist and we can know them, or they exist and we can't know them, or they don't exist and we can't know them. The intersection of two values with two variables means four possible permutations (I think that's the right word...).

There's the meta-step, where one raises a value to its own exponent (so 2^2, 4^4, etc), like in epistemology where some smartass like Socrates can claim that all he knows is that he knows nothing. Which is a step up from not knowing that he knows nothing, one down from not knowing that you know, and two from knowing that you know. Think of the number of values as the resolution or focus

Subjectivism confuses knowledge of the truth of moral rules, with the truth of moral rules, taking a denial of knowledge to be a denial of the object of that knowledge (not to imply Platonism either). The former is a matter of epistemology, while the latter is a matter for ethics. One is about normative statements regarding knowledge, and the other is about normative statements regarding moral rules. Therefore meta-ethical statements deal with the intersection of morals and other domains such as knowledge, metaphysics, and especially morals. Subjectivism is kind of like answering "2+2=tiger" on an arithmetic exam.

Similarly I take the scope of moral statements to be independent of the statement. "Torture is always wrong" is just one option from "Torture is sometimes wrong", "Not-torture is sometimes wrong", and "Not-torture is never wrong". By indicating that "Torture is always wrong" I've also implying the others, such as "It is possible that torture is always wrong" and "It is possible that torture is sometimes wrong" so that that morale value, action, scope, modality, quantity, and the right identity/existence/predicate relation exists for "is" are represented independently, with more than two moral values...

Now let's apply this scheme of intersecting statements (so xy, xx, ~x, ~xx, ~x~x) to the statement(s) that torture is always wrong, or that there may be torture, that may be is wrong, and that it may be that torture is wrong, or that it it may be that torture is not wrong, etc.

In terms of the particular fictional universe of Warhammer 40,000, torture is especially bad because, as mentioned, Slaanesh is totally gay for torture. And Slaanesh may be an amoral Chaos Gods, but Slaanesh's area of interest is specifically in wrongness, deception, secrets, and good intentions turned to bad ends. Being wrongness incarnate isn't actually wrong, since It is a personified wrongness rather than a predication of wrongness. It's good to keep your terms straight if you're multiplying out all the predicates that an object might have.

But doing wrong when you either don't care or have some ulterior motive seems extremely grim and dark to me, as I'm not afraid of people that do not know what they're doing is wrong and do it anyways, I'm afraid of people that don't know what they're doing is wrong, and that it is that value that is the condition for doing that action or avoiding it, rather than some potential value in the future. Having to make sacrifices for the survival of the race, Master Race or otherwise, is not materially different (in the 40k universe where spiritual matters are also material matters) from making sacrifices for the Thirst of the Gods. The grimness is in the hypocrisy, and the tragedy that these measures won't save humanity in the end.

Even the Great Crusade has the shadow of Chaos hanging over it. Two Legions didn't make it to the Heresy, Magnus the Red struck his deal with Tzeentch not long after the start of the Crusade, and the interex at least first mistook Horus' expeditionary fleet for that of a Chaos warfleet.

Nurglitch wrote:You're taking morality to be subjective to the agent, so as long as the agent doesn't think they're doing anything wrong then it's not actually wrong.

I think I just expressed myself in an imprecise way. But I'll try to do better at laying out my own assumptions. I suppose unlike you, I do accept the concept of natural law. Or, at any rate, here is what I mean by that: In my view, morality is a reality of the created universe, known to us in interior dialog with the Creator (the conscience). The statement that something is "always wrong" does not imply acceptance of some positive value among others but rather reflects an experience universal to all consciences (and is therefore a very difficult statement to make or, for that matter, to believe). The 40k fictional universe may not be based on this kind of idea but I don't think we have any evidence to suggest that it is not. In any case, I think we can agree in the rejection of "argumentum ad fireballum" that the same concept could be applied to the GrimDark. The content of the natural law in the GrimDark, I think, is very different from that of the actual world so that the GrimDark conscience does not recognize torture as wrong because in the nature of the GrimDark universe torture simply is not wrong in and of itself in the first place. As I said, the morality of the GrimDark is proper to itself rather than to that of the real world. The horror (grimness & darkness) is not experienced by the inhabitants of the GrimDark but rather by us, the readership, because it contrasts so sharply with our own experience of natural morality. It's worth noting that this still allows for the kind of horror you mentioned ('I'm afraid of the guy who does what is wrong knowing it is wrong') because there is still morality, although it differs from that of the real world. So, to use your example, it's not really torture that Slaanesh is interested in but rather a certain motivation for and satisfaction derived from torture. (And this is why not just anyone can be an Inquisitor!)

No, you expressed yourself fairly exactly and you're repeating yourself by confusing a natural law concept of morality with that of a relativist concept of morality. However, in claiming that morality is a reality of the created universe, you're saying that morality is relative to a particular universe. However you then go ahead and make the subjectivist mistake that conflates the subject's knowledge of morality, and their feelings about morality, and confuses them for normative statements that hold the value "True".

In claiming a relativist position and instead making a subjectivist error in your analysis, you're showing that you have a confused view of morality as well as meta-ethical terms. I think you need to think about how to distinguish between moral agents and moral subjects, consider the difference between the cognitive (understanding statements) and non-cognitive (feelings) aspects of morality, as well as the moral significance of 40k tropes.

40,000 is about bad stuff happening to people, it's a morality play, and that morality isn't the same as the theory of morality deployed by a Dark Angel Interrogator Chaplain, a Word Bearer Dark Apostle, a Thorian Inquisitor, or an Eldar Pirate, to pick a few creeds that have popped up in the fluff. So you can consider the question of morals in 40k to be the moral systems of the characters, or of that universe, as the moral systems of the real world may adequately represent that universe.

You see, in a lot of the Horus Heresy books there's a strong sense of moral coding behaviour with characters destined to damnation acting out their flaws in outrageous pantomime (and occasional drag...). It's like the authors have a macro so that they can type "good" and "bad" in any pattern they want and their word processor spits out the requisite prose. It's the creation-myth of the 40,000 universe, so of course the Horus Heresy is going to be a complete cluster-feth.

But that's the problem with 40k, because writing self-deception is hard. Dan Abnett did it well in Ravenor when Slyte ligates Ravenor's attention in the same way that Ravenor hypnotized the rich guy. The hard part is this: If you make something apparent to the reader, it then become harder for the reader to believe that something could not be apparent to the characters. They have to 'show' the first-person experiences instead of simply telling the reader about didactically.

I think that's why nobody finds the corruption of the Primarchs too convincing, because the hyperbole surrounding the Primarchs is at dissonance with the notion of being weak and failing.

But then the span of time is pretty recent, and the Primarchs are pretty young by the standards of the 41st millennium. Dante's 1,000 year reign over the Blood Angels is 5x the length of that of Sanguinius (since the Great Crusade was about two hungred years long). I mean after Loken's experience with Jubaal being possessed at the Whisperheads Horus virtually mindwipes him after explaining that Horus is more aware of the true nature of daemons than the official Imperial line about them just being another kind of alien.

The horror of 40k is both that some inhabitants of 40k recognize the horror, and others are duped by it, and still others actively collude with what they believe it to be. My point is that the moral architecture for this 40,000 universe has to be the same as ours else we would not recognize the 40k universe.

The 40k universe is distinctly Cartesian with two "substances", except that one substance is curiously insubstantial and that of mind, and the other is substantial and that of the body. The material substance is mysteriously joined to the immaterial substance or the mind or soul. This mind-body dualism is also characteristic of Platonic thought, and as Gilbert Ryle pointed out long ago with his analysis of the category mistake, crazy-talk. However, modern material monism (or the doctrine of there being an ontology of one substance) still makes the dualist distinction of there being a soul inside and a body outside, raising problems such as the problem of intentionality, and the problem of consciousness. In other words, we don't actually have a working alternative to metaphysical dualism if we want to explain the relation of body to mind. Dualism is consistent with the metaphysics of the Warp and the Material Universe in 40k. From a metaphysical point of view, the 40k universe is extremely similar to our own. They have people and everything.

Not to say that Warhammer 40,000 doesn't have novel cases. But this universality of personhood, or 'hands', or 'face' and a million other descriptive items is so similar as to be identical to our own world. For novel cases we can generalize by improving existing symmetry, and so make sense out of trying to have-wave away Slaanesh's relationship with torture. In one sense I could say that Slaanesh is the Platonic Ideal of Torture and establish an identity claim. Torture then feeds Slaanesh as a shadow feeds the darkness. In another sense I could say that Slaanesh is one of four underlying moral values in the 40k universe, and that the weirdness of the 40k universe is that retroactive changes from the Chaos Gods being born into time. Interestingly the Chaos Gods seem to be counting back from nine for some reason, but the implication is that the universe is changing from a tripod of nihilism, entropy, and change to the current configuration suggests that all else is being left equal to established usage.

Could you please unpack the following terms for me please: "Proper to itself", "certain motivation, "so sharply", and "conscience"?

Well, I typed up a comprehensive response that seemed to vanish off of my screen so here's the condensed version: There is no "particular universe" to be selected among others but only the universe and, within the universe as a product of human imagination (creativity and its limitations), incomplete hypotheticals that do not constitute alternatives to the universe. Considering these fictional "universes" as proper to themselves (i.e., not strictly comparable to what is actual) as well as relative to the actual (i.e., the activity of literary critique) does not entail a subjectivist position. Similarly, considering morality in history does not preclude natural morality: the good is eternally the good but the circumstances in which it is known change. I am reminded of the crusaders who burnt Béziers and the moderns who have variously demeaned their Christianity, imagined them to be proto-capitalists, or dismissed their entire historico-cultural context as psychotic--or, indeed, as "dark." The alternative is too horrific to square with modern sensibilities or too complicated to fit into modern agendas. Imaginary worlds allow us to go further, albeit more safely, by altering the very nature of reality (like ghost stories, for example).

As for the unpacking, I'll let it rest for now and maybe you'll give me a clearer picture of what you'd like to know.

Oh and I think you'll really enjoy The First Heretic, given some of the comments you just made concerning the HH series.

Asherian Command wrote:Well. Fulgrim turned to chaos. His fault in my opinion. Seriously WHY DO YOU PICK UP A SWORD THAT IS GLOWING AND SPEAKING TO YOU!

Fulgrim = idiot.

Worked out for Link.

Nurglitch wrote:Manchu:

Actually you mistated my argument. But, I see the problem:

You're taking morality to be subjective to the agent, so as long as the agent doesn't think they're doing anything wrong then it's not actually wrong. Unfortunately this is the meta-ethical equivalent to solipsism, which isn't so much a position in meta-ethics as a refusal to even play the game. That explains why you're taking a rejection of subjectivism to be an endorsement of absolutism, as subjectivism does not represent the difference between acts and intentions like an actual meta-ethical philosophy has to represent.

The solution, incidentally is pretty easy, and it's at the root of all much good philosophy: the first step is the intersection of independent ideas. Here's an example: I mentioned that subjectivism is the meta-ethical equivalent of solipsism, the notion that we have no compelling reason to believe in the existence of other minds. But the existence of minds is logically independent of belief in their existence, so given no compelling reason to believe in the existence of other minds, we likewise have no reason to believe in the existence of our own mind.

In other words, either they exist and we can know them, they don't exist and we can know them, or they exist and we can't know them, or they don't exist and we can't know them. The intersection of two values with two variables means four possible permutations (I think that's the right word...).

There's the meta-step, where one raises a value to its own exponent (so 2^2, 4^4, etc), like in epistemology where some smartass like Socrates can claim that all he knows is that he knows nothing. Which is a step up from not knowing that he knows nothing, one down from not knowing that you know, and two from knowing that you know. Think of the number of values as the resolution or focus

Subjectivism confuses knowledge of the truth of moral rules, with the truth of moral rules, taking a denial of knowledge to be a denial of the object of that knowledge (not to imply Platonism either). The former is a matter of epistemology, while the latter is a matter for ethics. One is about normative statements regarding knowledge, and the other is about normative statements regarding moral rules. Therefore meta-ethical statements deal with the intersection of morals and other domains such as knowledge, metaphysics, and especially morals. Subjectivism is kind of like answering "2+2=tiger" on an arithmetic exam.

Similarly I take the scope of moral statements to be independent of the statement. "Torture is always wrong" is just one option from "Torture is sometimes wrong", "Not-torture is sometimes wrong", and "Not-torture is never wrong". By indicating that "Torture is always wrong" I've also implying the others, such as "It is possible that torture is always wrong" and "It is possible that torture is sometimes wrong" so that that morale value, action, scope, modality, quantity, and the right identity/existence/predicate relation exists for "is" are represented independently, with more than two moral values...

Now let's apply this scheme of intersecting statements (so xy, xx, ~x, ~xx, ~x~x) to the statement(s) that torture is always wrong, or that there may be torture, that may be is wrong, and that it may be that torture is wrong, or that it it may be that torture is not wrong, etc.

In terms of the particular fictional universe of Warhammer 40,000, torture is especially bad because, as mentioned, Slaanesh is totally gay for torture. And Slaanesh may be an amoral Chaos Gods, but Slaanesh's area of interest is specifically in wrongness, deception, secrets, and good intentions turned to bad ends. Being wrongness incarnate isn't actually wrong, since It is a personified wrongness rather than a predication of wrongness. It's good to keep your terms straight if you're multiplying out all the predicates that an object might have.

But doing wrong when you either don't care or have some ulterior motive seems extremely grim and dark to me, as I'm not afraid of people that do not know what they're doing is wrong and do it anyways, I'm afraid of people that don't know what they're doing is wrong, and that it is that value that is the condition for doing that action or avoiding it, rather than some potential value in the future. Having to make sacrifices for the survival of the race, Master Race or otherwise, is not materially different (in the 40k universe where spiritual matters are also material matters) from making sacrifices for the Thirst of the Gods. The grimness is in the hypocrisy, and the tragedy that these measures won't save humanity in the end.

Even the Great Crusade has the shadow of Chaos hanging over it. Two Legions didn't make it to the Heresy, Magnus the Red struck his deal with Tzeentch not long after the start of the Crusade, and the interex at least first mistook Horus' expeditionary fleet for that of a Chaos warfleet.

That was awesome because it was like a philosophy/logic proffesor lecture and then "Slaanesh is totally gay for torture" comes out of nowhere. good stuff.

Nurglitch wrote:No, you expressed yourself fairly exactly and you're repeating yourself by confusing a natural law concept of morality with that of a relativist concept of morality. However, in claiming that morality is a reality of the created universe, you're saying that morality is relative to a particular universe. However you then go ahead and make the subjectivist mistake that conflates the subject's knowledge of morality, and their feelings about morality, and confuses them for normative statements that hold the value "True".

In claiming a relativist position and instead making a subjectivist error in your analysis, you're showing that you have a confused view of morality as well as meta-ethical terms. I think you need to think about how to distinguish between moral agents and moral subjects, consider the difference between the cognitive (understanding statements) and non-cognitive (feelings) aspects of morality, as well as the moral significance of 40k tropes.

40,000 is about bad stuff happening to people, it's a morality play, and that morality isn't the same as the theory of morality deployed by a Dark Angel Interrogator Chaplain, a Word Bearer Dark Apostle, a Thorian Inquisitor, or an Eldar Pirate, to pick a few creeds that have popped up in the fluff. So you can consider the question of morals in 40k to be the moral systems of the characters, or of that universe, as the moral systems of the real world may adequately represent that universe.

You see, in a lot of the Horus Heresy books there's a strong sense of moral coding behaviour with characters destined to damnation acting out their flaws in outrageous pantomime (and occasional drag...). It's like the authors have a macro so that they can type "good" and "bad" in any pattern they want and their word processor spits out the requisite prose. It's the creation-myth of the 40,000 universe, so of course the Horus Heresy is going to be a complete cluster-feth.

But that's the problem with 40k, because writing self-deception is hard. Dan Abnett did it well in Ravenor when Slyte ligates Ravenor's attention in the same way that Ravenor hypnotized the rich guy. The hard part is this: If you make something apparent to the reader, it then become harder for the reader to believe that something could not be apparent to the characters. They have to 'show' the first-person experiences instead of simply telling the reader about didactically.

I think that's why nobody finds the corruption of the Primarchs too convincing, because the hyperbole surrounding the Primarchs is at dissonance with the notion of being weak and failing.

But then the span of time is pretty recent, and the Primarchs are pretty young by the standards of the 41st millennium. Dante's 1,000 year reign over the Blood Angels is 5x the length of that of Sanguinius (since the Great Crusade was about two hungred years long). I mean after Loken's experience with Jubaal being possessed at the Whisperheads Horus virtually mindwipes him after explaining that Horus is more aware of the true nature of daemons than the official Imperial line about them just being another kind of alien.

The horror of 40k is both that some inhabitants of 40k recognize the horror, and others are duped by it, and still others actively collude with what they believe it to be. My point is that the moral architecture for this 40,000 universe has to be the same as ours else we would not recognize the 40k universe.

The 40k universe is distinctly Cartesian with two "substances", except that one substance is curiously insubstantial and that of mind, and the other is substantial and that of the body. The material substance is mysteriously joined to the immaterial substance or the mind or soul. This mind-body dualism is also characteristic of Platonic thought, and as Gilbert Ryle pointed out long ago with his analysis of the category mistake, crazy-talk. However, modern material monism (or the doctrine of there being an ontology of one substance) still makes the dualist distinction of there being a soul inside and a body outside, raising problems such as the problem of intentionality, and the problem of consciousness. In other words, we don't actually have a working alternative to metaphysical dualism if we want to explain the relation of body to mind. Dualism is consistent with the metaphysics of the Warp and the Material Universe in 40k. From a metaphysical point of view, the 40k universe is extremely similar to our own. They have people and everything.

Not to say that Warhammer 40,000 doesn't have novel cases. But this universality of personhood, or 'hands', or 'face' and a million other descriptive items is so similar as to be identical to our own world. For novel cases we can generalize by improving existing symmetry, and so make sense out of trying to have-wave away Slaanesh's relationship with torture. In one sense I could say that Slaanesh is the Platonic Ideal of Torture and establish an identity claim. Torture then feeds Slaanesh as a shadow feeds the darkness. In another sense I could say that Slaanesh is one of four underlying moral values in the 40k universe, and that the weirdness of the 40k universe is that retroactive changes from the Chaos Gods being born into time. Interestingly the Chaos Gods seem to be counting back from nine for some reason, but the implication is that the universe is changing from a tripod of nihilism, entropy, and change to the current configuration suggests that all else is being left equal to established usage.

Could you please unpack the following terms for me please: "Proper to itself", "certain motivation, "so sharply", and "conscience"?

My lord it would take me an entire week to type such a thing. I actually think you and Manchu are agreeing with each other and not knowing it.
Anyways I call 40K "Dystopian Sci-Fi" but I'm sure there are other names for it. It's not exclusive to 40k by any means but basically Dystopian fiction is IMO meant to act as a "cautionary tale" to us in the real world. I think you statement "My point is that the moral architecture for this 40,000 universe has to be the same as ours else we would not recognize the 40k universe." means you agree with me somewhat Nurglitch.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Manchu wrote:

@skrulnik: Exception-to-the-rules characters (written by pulp novelists that you might say have "Drizzt syndrome") seem more like the rule than the exception. You bring up Gaunt and I'll throw Cain out there, too. Where is the hardass Commissar? Well, A D-B kills one off in Cadian Blood, specifically for being a true-to-the-fluff hardass, while rewarding his more "original" characters--who are uniformly boring--with survival and possible futures in a series.

And then there's the Heresy books: instead of reading about Abbadon, Eidolon, or Typhus I end up reading about Torgaddon, Tarvitz, and Garro. Again, uniformly boring characters--nearly indistinguishable one from the other--that are "mould breakers" You know what? The mould is interesting. One of the triumphs of Soul Hunter is the scene with Abaddon. You know why? Dembski-Bowden wrote the character as Abaddon rather than something "novel" (read: silly). No wonder the HH books have been so heavily criticized for not establishing properly compelling motivations for the traitors . . .

By the way, the Night Lords are not really disillusioned with war. They are disillusioned by the myth of honorable combat. They actively seek out weaker opponents, who they delight in terrifying. This is not expressed in the character of any CSM in A D-B's novel or audiobook, except perhaps Vandred--and even then, Vandred's opponents are his equals in sheer strength and only inferior to him in tactical acumen (and that because he is a genius naval commander).

I know what you mean. When I lend out my Gaunts Ghost's books my buddy remarked "Guant is like the nicest Commissar ever". Which is basically true. I haven't read Cain but I believe he is even nicer. Where are the take-no-prisnors characters we keep reading about in the Codexes and Rulebooks?
"It is better to let one million innocent souls perish than let one heretic live and spread his lies". This reasoning is supposed to be the starting requirement for an Inquisitor. That's the Inquisitor I want to read about! Eisenhorn and Ravenor were ok but they ain't that guy. Henry Zhou has an Inquisitor who be all acounts is the biggest pansey in the universe. How does someone like that become part of the fearsome Inquisition?

I know the reasoning is these humane characters are supposed to be more relatable but I think Warhammer fans can handle a harder edge to their characters. Most of us are fans because we were drawn to the fiction's darker grimness.

Nurglitch, if you don't mind me asking, what is your profession? I ask as you are extremely well read or you major in this...as I consider myself semi-educated in philosophy and realize the depth of my ignorance after reading your posts!

Nurglitch wrote:No, you expressed yourself fairly exactly and you're repeating yourself by confusing a natural law concept of morality with that of a relativist concept of morality. However, in claiming that morality is a reality of the created universe, you're saying that morality is relative to a particular universe. However you then go ahead and make the subjectivist mistake that conflates the subject's knowledge of morality, and their feelings about morality, and confuses them for normative statements that hold the value "True".

In claiming a relativist position and instead making a subjectivist error in your analysis, you're showing that you have a confused view of morality as well as meta-ethical terms. I think you need to think about how to distinguish between moral agents and moral subjects, consider the difference between the cognitive (understanding statements) and non-cognitive (feelings) aspects of morality, as well as the moral significance of 40k tropes.

40,000 is about bad stuff happening to people, it's a morality play, and that morality isn't the same as the theory of morality deployed by a Dark Angel Interrogator Chaplain, a Word Bearer Dark Apostle, a Thorian Inquisitor, or an Eldar Pirate, to pick a few creeds that have popped up in the fluff. So you can consider the question of morals in 40k to be the moral systems of the characters, or of that universe, as the moral systems of the real world may adequately represent that universe.

You see, in a lot of the Horus Heresy books there's a strong sense of moral coding behaviour with characters destined to damnation acting out their flaws in outrageous pantomime (and occasional drag...). It's like the authors have a macro so that they can type "good" and "bad" in any pattern they want and their word processor spits out the requisite prose. It's the creation-myth of the 40,000 universe, so of course the Horus Heresy is going to be a complete cluster-feth.

But that's the problem with 40k, because writing self-deception is hard. Dan Abnett did it well in Ravenor when Slyte ligates Ravenor's attention in the same way that Ravenor hypnotized the rich guy. The hard part is this: If you make something apparent to the reader, it then become harder for the reader to believe that something could not be apparent to the characters. They have to 'show' the first-person experiences instead of simply telling the reader about didactically.

I think that's why nobody finds the corruption of the Primarchs too convincing, because the hyperbole surrounding the Primarchs is at dissonance with the notion of being weak and failing.

But then the span of time is pretty recent, and the Primarchs are pretty young by the standards of the 41st millennium. Dante's 1,000 year reign over the Blood Angels is 5x the length of that of Sanguinius (since the Great Crusade was about two hungred years long). I mean after Loken's experience with Jubaal being possessed at the Whisperheads Horus virtually mindwipes him after explaining that Horus is more aware of the true nature of daemons than the official Imperial line about them just being another kind of alien.

The horror of 40k is both that some inhabitants of 40k recognize the horror, and others are duped by it, and still others actively collude with what they believe it to be. My point is that the moral architecture for this 40,000 universe has to be the same as ours else we would not recognize the 40k universe.

The 40k universe is distinctly Cartesian with two "substances", except that one substance is curiously insubstantial and that of mind, and the other is substantial and that of the body. The material substance is mysteriously joined to the immaterial substance or the mind or soul. This mind-body dualism is also characteristic of Platonic thought, and as Gilbert Ryle pointed out long ago with his analysis of the category mistake, crazy-talk. However, modern material monism (or the doctrine of there being an ontology of one substance) still makes the dualist distinction of there being a soul inside and a body outside, raising problems such as the problem of intentionality, and the problem of consciousness. In other words, we don't actually have a working alternative to metaphysical dualism if we want to explain the relation of body to mind. Dualism is consistent with the metaphysics of the Warp and the Material Universe in 40k. From a metaphysical point of view, the 40k universe is extremely similar to our own. They have people and everything.

Not to say that Warhammer 40,000 doesn't have novel cases. But this universality of personhood, or 'hands', or 'face' and a million other descriptive items is so similar as to be identical to our own world. For novel cases we can generalize by improving existing symmetry, and so make sense out of trying to have-wave away Slaanesh's relationship with torture. In one sense I could say that Slaanesh is the Platonic Ideal of Torture and establish an identity claim. Torture then feeds Slaanesh as a shadow feeds the darkness. In another sense I could say that Slaanesh is one of four underlying moral values in the 40k universe, and that the weirdness of the 40k universe is that retroactive changes from the Chaos Gods being born into time. Interestingly the Chaos Gods seem to be counting back from nine for some reason, but the implication is that the universe is changing from a tripod of nihilism, entropy, and change to the current configuration suggests that all else is being left equal to established usage.

Could you please unpack the following terms for me please: "Proper to itself", "certain motivation, "so sharply", and "conscience"?