Moral Powers

[VIVIT]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Perhaps something might be done with the opposition of Law and Justice: following the rules as they have been agreed upon, or setting the rules aside to do what's right.

This feels a bit loaded, IMO, because one of these two principles seems to have the concept of doing what's right while the other doesn't. If you play up the idea of a pure and altruistic Justice in defiance of a corrupt and self-serving Law, that could work, but at that point it's just (Chaotic) Good vs. (Lawful) Evil again. If you don't want that, you'll want to flesh out some reason why the followers of the Law believe that they're in the right, and even to what extent they (or at least some of them) may actually be right. Presumably, those who favor Law value consistency and impartiality, and see the subjectivity of Justice as prone to error, bias, and favoritism (that is, injustice), and those who care both about the Law and about what is right would seek to remedy unjust laws by changing them.

Civil law vs. common law, court justice vs. vigilante justice, even justice itself vs. mercy—any of these pairs could make interesting foils because none of them invoke a contrast between something that's tautologically good with something that isn't. This leaves room for dilemma, which stimulates roleplay.

[TGLS]

Well, maybe Law v. Justice ought to be looked at as Deontological ethics v. Teleological ethics. In other words, do the means justify the ends or do the ends justify the means?

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by VIVIT

This feels a bit loaded, IMO, because one of these two principles seems to have the concept of doing what's right while the other doesn't. If you play up the idea of a pure and altruistic Justice in defiance of a corrupt and self-serving Law, that could work, but at that point it's just (Chaotic) Good vs. (Lawful) Evil again. If you don't want that, you'll want to flesh out some reason why the followers of the Law believe that they're in the right, and even to what extent they (or at least some of them) may actually be right. Presumably, those who favor Law value consistency and impartiality, and see the subjectivity of Justice as prone to error, bias, and favoritism (that is, injustice), and those who care both about the Law and about what is right would seek to remedy unjust laws by changing them.

An interesting contrast. When a bad person who has not committed a crime is punished more harshly than a good person who has committed a crime, it's clearly not law, but is that justice?

My answer to that question: I don't want anyone who would approve of that outcome making the laws for any society I live in. I want the people who will say "at most maybe we should change the law, if the good person really didn't do anything wrong; but if they did do something wrong despite generally being a good person then it's perfectly appropriate to punish them more than the innocent-but-awful person."

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Have you considered any axes other than Good vs. Evil and Order vs. Chaos?

I once asked a similar question, and got an answer that amounted to logos vs. ethos vs. pathos.

Now that I think about it, maybe five (or six) moral foundations: care/harm-reduction/mercy, justice/fairness/proportionality, loyalty/friendship, purity/cleanliness/avoidance-of-corruption, authority/humility/obedience/structure, and optionally (sixth) freedom. They seem like a bunch that can be at odds with each other easily.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I once asked a similar question, and got an answer that amounted to logos vs. ethos vs. pathos.

Now that I think about it, maybe five (or six) moral foundations: care/harm-reduction/mercy, justice/fairness/proportionality, loyalty/friendship, purity/cleanliness/avoidance-of-corruption, authority/humility/obedience/structure, and optionally (sixth) freedom. They seem like a bunch that can be at odds with each other easily.

Though at least most of those are ambiguous. For Fairness, for example, there are people who think that what you are paid in the market is fair as long as you aren't being coerced, but also people who think that everyone should make the same and unequal market rates should be corrected through regulation or redistribution. For Purity, Haidt suggests that conservatives care a lot about it and progressives mostly don't, but that's because Haidt defines Purity largely in terms of sex and drugs (no mention of rock and roll!); it seems to me that progressives are intensely concerned with environmental issues, and that the strong aversion to pollution is driven by Purity (in the terms of <i>Inside Out</i>, the emotion responsible for green concerns seems to be largely disgust). Then there are libertarians whose idea of freedom involves private ownership of everything, but there are libertarians in an older sense whose idea of freedom involves the abolition of property and common access to everything. I suspect that every one of Haidt's moral foundations can be interpreted not merely in varied ways but in ways that could be taken as moral opposites and used as the basis for a moral duality!

[VIVIT]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Though at least most of those are ambiguous … I suspect that every one of Haidt's moral foundations can be interpreted not merely in varied ways but in ways that could be taken as moral opposites and used as the basis for a moral duality!

One interesting thing is how much of the difference depends entirely on the definition of terms.

For Fairness, for example, there are people who think that what you are paid in the market is fair as long as you aren't being coerced, but also people who think that everyone should make the same and unequal market rates should be corrected through regulation or redistribution.

Here the key term is coercion. To the former of the stances you describe, coercion has a pretty restrictive definition—in its extreme form, this amounts to, "If I am threatening you with direct physical violence, I am coercing you; otherwise I am not." Meanwhile, the fundamental basis for the latter of these two stances is a highly inclusive definition of coercion based on the power differential between Those Who Have and Those Who Work.

For Purity, Haidt suggests that conservatives care a lot about it and progressives mostly don't, but that's because Haidt defines Purity largely in terms of sex and drugs (no mention of rock and roll!); it seems to me that progressives are intensely concerned with environmental issues, and that the strong aversion to pollution is driven by Purity (in the terms of <i>Inside Out</i>, the emotion responsible for green concerns seems to be largely disgust).

Having hung out around a lot of progressives, I can confirm that they care very, very much about moral purity, and that the difference lies chiefly in what sources of taint you're looking at. Sex and drugs are impure to conservatives in an a priori sort of way, and—at least stereotypically—rock-and-roll is impure to them by contagious association with the a priori impurities of sex and drugs. For another example, see how effeminate men are seen as somehow tainted with The Gay even if they aren't actually gay. Progressives very much display this same sort of aversion, but instead to things contagiously associated with a different set of moral contaminants—generally more a posteriori ones like hate or bigotry. Consider how much difficulty a lot of people have unlearning the association between swastikas and Nazism, even when the swastika shows up in completely different and unrelated cultural contexts. The symbol, and anything it touches, is morally tainted.

Then there are libertarians whose idea of freedom involves private ownership of everything, but there are libertarians in an older sense whose idea of freedom involves the abolition of property and common access to everything.

This is a case of a very classic dilemma, and that's that you can't have Rights or Freedom in the abstract—you can only have the right to something or the freedom of something. You can even speak of the freedom to own slaves, even though that implicitly denies freedom to the slaves!

All this relates to the concept of moral powers in that reified moral concepts—Good and Evil, Law and Chaos, Purity and Taint, Justice and Injustice—do not, themselves, contain moral values. You still have to define what is Good, what is Lawful, what is Pure, and what is Just. If you don't do that, what you end up with is not a conflict between, say, Good and Evil, but a conflict between different definitions of Good. Planescape managed to have this cake and eat it too by writing intra-alignment conflict directly into the setting in the form of factions, but that was in D&D and was built upon the nine-color foundation that everyone was already used to. It would be tough to come up with something novel, introduce it to your players, and riff on it to that same extent all at the same time.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

An interesting contrast. When a bad person who has not committed a crime is punished more harshly than a good person who has committed a crime, it's clearly not law, but is that justice?

My answer to that question: I don't want anyone who would approve of that outcome making the laws for any society I live in. I want the people who will say "at most maybe we should change the law, if the good person really didn't do anything wrong; but if they did do something wrong despite generally being a good person then it's perfectly appropriate to punish them more than the innocent-but-awful person."

Of course, the concern there is how you are defining "bad" vs "good." The benefit of Law over Justice is that the former (ideally) gives a fair and codified means of determining guilt, while the latter may simply be based on personal feelings and/or the current zeitgeist. When one person slays another, Justice may call for the slayer to face punishment - but Law will examine the situation to determine if the slayer did indeed commit a crime, or if the slaying were legally justified (an agreed-upon duel in places where such are legal, an act of self-defense, a freak accident, etc). But, on the other hand, sometimes under Law a guilty man (or woman) goes free, which makes many think Justice would be a better option.

Of note - and not getting too in-depth, given the subject matter - there are some (on both sides) who consider having a political opinion in opposition to their own as marking a person as bad, evil, even monstrous. In a system following such Justice, simply voting for the wrong candidate would be punished! Yet, back on the other hand, you can have people exploit and modify Law for their personal benefit at the expense of others. So there can certainly be debate over which is better... which could indeed make them interesting as Moral Powers in opposition to each other.

[Donny Brook]

I have used Moral as a Power Modifier, but to do so I dispensed with some of the unnecessary/unwarranted prescriptive verbiage in the rule text. After all, all the Moral modifier consists of is adding a Countermeasures and a Pact Limitation which are both completely doable outside of the concept of Power Modifiers.

So, I simply ignore or substitute these quoted parts of the rules:

"Your power comes from some cosmic
moral principle – Chaos, Evil,
Good, Order, etc. – that transcends the
mortal and even the divine."

Instead I say:

"Your power comes from your focused dedication to particular moral principles."

... it has an
opposing anti-power (-5%) ...
that they can use
against you.

Instead I say:
"It has opposing or countervailing principles that can disrupt your powers."

If you falter, even for a moment, you
lose your power instantly (+0%).
To get it back requires an extreme
demonstration of commitment

Instead I use the language from B113: "Should you ever stray from the path, your ability immediately ceases to function until you repent."

This modifier only exists in settings
with absolute morality, where moral
forces battle openly in the world and
are both tangible and detectable.

Instead I say:
"This modifier is available for any substantial set of principles which the GM agrees might be the basis as a source of power in her campaign."

I have built two characters using this Power Modifier, one based on a fanatical dedication to Reason (not unlike Vulcan philosophy), and another based on fanatical dedication to aggressive commercialism (not unlike the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition). I will post them if I can find my notes.

[VIVIT]

Originally Posted by Varyon

But, on the other hand, sometimes under Law a guilty man (or woman) goes free, which makes many think Justice would be a better option.

And sometimes the innocent are unfairly punished. This may be because the laws in place are flawed or because the system of courts and law enforcement is flawed. It depends on the place and on the time. Really, justice-via-application-of-the-Law vs. the-setting-aside-of-the-law-in-pursuit-of-Justice seems like a difference of pragmatic principle rather than of moral principle. As I suggested before, either of these two stances can be framed as caring about what's right.

No individual's personal judgement is infallible, and neither is any legal institution, yet either can have a foundation in moral principles. A moral principle must provide some way of telling right from wrong, and unless it's an intrinsically anarchistic principle, it should be equally as possible to write a law that embodies that principle as it is to go out and actuate that principle directly, independently from the law. Equally possible, not necessarily equally effective—but when it's a question of effectiveness, I don't think it's really a moral one anymore.

[dataweaver]

I wouldn't treat Law and Justice as a pair; but I could see treating them as independent axes: Lawful vs. Lawless, and Justice vs. Injustice.

Also, Donny Brook makes some good points.