The Dresden Files > DF Books
Question about the first law
Quantus:
It's worth keeping in mind that Jim has very specifically and intentionally left the Morality of the Laws vague and ill-defined. It's something that's often misunderstood even to the characters that live in the world. All this to say that this is a particular theme that I expect to see explored more as the series goes on before we get anything like a settled answer or a clear understanding of the metaphysics of it all.
Here are a pair of rather long WOJ's on the nature of Black magic and the ambiguity of the Laws, I think it's highly relevant to what we're talking about:
(click to show/hide)
--- Quote from: jimbutcher on July 16, 2006, 06:50:26 PM ---
--- Quote from: GraevD on July 09, 2006, 10:40:44 PM --- Likewise, you are attracted by a smell of pie, that's normal. But, someone manipulates the timestream to guarantee that pie isn't the nice fresh cherry pie it was supposed to be, that's just wrong! ;D Heh, pies aside, my focus is on the controlling of the free will of another person, not on just changes in the environment using magic.
--- End quote ---
Man. The existential morality of using PIE to shape the course of reality. GOOD or EVIL? That's . . . one of those discussions I never really thought I'd listen in on. :)
--- Quote ---"Actually, Molly's intentions when she broke that particular law twisted her." Here's where I think you hit the nail on the head Lightsabre. It's the intentions of the caster that matter. Time Travel, Nercomancy, and Mind Control are all tools that can be used to do *bad* things. I'm fairly sure what we see in the laws of magic is a sort of wizard gun control, trying to limit the existence of these problematic classes of spells.
--- End quote ---
But if the substance of the consequences of the act itself does not have its own inherent quality of good or evil, then how can the /intentions/ behind it determine a similar quality? "Really, I was only trying to provide a better quality of life for my family and my employees. It wasn't my intention to destroy that particular species of flower in the rain forest that cures cancer." "I was just trying to give those Injuns some blankets. It wasn't my intention to expose them to smallpox and wipe out hundreds of thousands of innocent people." "I just wanted to get that book finished while working two jobs and finishing a brutal semester of grad school. It wasn't my intention to screw up the name of Bianca's personal assistant whose death had motivated her to go all power hungry to get revenge on Harry."
There's some old chestnut about good itentions serving as base level gradiant on an expressway that goes somewhere, but I can't remember the specifics right now. :) While I agree that the /intentions/ of the person taking action are not without significance, they carry far less weight than the /consequences/ of that action.
"I meant to shoot him in the leg and wound him, not hit the femoral artery and kill him, so I should not be considered guilty of murder," is not something that stands up in a court of law /or/ in any serious moral or ethical evaluation. You had the weapon. You knew it was potentially lethal, even if you did attempt to use it in a less than fully lethal fashion. (Or if you DIDN'T know that, you were a freaking idiot playing with people's lives, something really no less excusable.) But you chose to employ the weapon anyway. The consequences of those actions are /yours/, your doing, regardless of how innocent your intentions may have been.
Similarly, if you meant to drill that ^@#%er through the eyes, if you had every intention of murdering him outright, but you shot him in the hand and he survived with minor injuries, again the consequences overshadow your intentions. You might have made a stupid or morally queestionable choice, but it isn't like anyone *died* or anything. He's fine (at least in the long term), you're fine, and there are fewer repercussions--regardless of your hideous intentions.
The exercise of power and the necessity to consider the fallout from your actions isn't something limited to wizards and gods. Fictional people like Harry and Molly just provide more colorful examples.
As for violating the laws of magic themselves turning you good or evil, well. :) There's something to be said on either side of the argument, in the strictest sense, though one side of the argument is definitely less incorrect than the other. But it's going to take me several more books to lay it out, so there's no sense in ruining the fun. :)
Jim
(PS--Murphy can't be Kumori, obviously. Kumori is a powerful and dangerous necromancer with the personal will to hold a knife to a wizard's throat. And more to the point, she was TALL ENOUGH to do it. If she was 5' 0" Murphy, she'd have had to be wearing freaking STILTS to hold a knife at 6' 7" Harry's throat from behind. To say nothing of the fact that Harry has touched Murphy's skin on multiple occasions and never picked up a ripple of /any/ of the aura of a practitioner, much less the utterly obvious one of a fellow heavyweight. I try to follow my own rules, guys. :) )
--- End quote ---
(click to show/hide)
--- Quote from: jimbutcher on February 16, 2007, 07:39:01 PM ---
--- Quote from: Lightsabre on February 12, 2007, 12:20:42 AM ---Look at it this way.
The entire council banded together to kill Kemmler.
--- End quote ---
All the Wardens did, and the Senior Council, and several of the more responsible/combat-capable wizards who weren't either of the former (like Ebenezar, Klaus the Toymaker, and the Germans). But it wasn't literally the entire Council. Plenty of the wizards there have got precious little gift when it comes to actual combat magic--like Ancient Mai. Their strengths simply lie in other areas. Others . . . just aren't suited to it, mentally, and could probably prove to be more of a liability than an asset. Some of them are just plain chicken.
But it was a more sizeable chunk of the Council than had, at that point, ever been all together in one place to take on /one/ guy.
--- Quote ---They murdered, with magic.
They broke the laws. Are they all tainted?
--- End quote ---
Technically, they didn't actually kill him with magic. They rendered him helpless with magic and then found other ways to execute him. (Swords are the usual. For Kemmler, they also used guns, axes, shovels, ropes, a flamethrower, and a number of other extremes.) It's a semantic difference, in some ways, but an important technical distinction in others.
--- Quote ---Note also the killing law only applies to Humans.
You can kill as many faeries as you want with magic.
--- End quote ---
Bingo. It hardly seems fair, does it?
The Laws of Magic don't necessarily match up to the actual universal guidelines to how the universal power known as "magic" behaves.
The consequences for breaking the Laws of Magic don't all come from people wearing grey cloaks.
And none of it necessarily has anything to do with what is Right or Wrong.
Which exist. It's finding where they start or stop existing that's the hard part.
Jim
PS--"sinister" as in "bend sinister" or "bar sinister" is a general term originally meaning "left," and not "evil." However, there's some overlap in traditional magical terms, with references to the "left hand path" or black magic, and so on. Left handed people were often viewed with suspicion during the middle ages. In Islamic belief, the left hand is considered to be unclean. For that matter, the entire concept of "right" is tied in with the negative connotations to "left."
And I agree. Harry has some sinister leanings. :)
--- End quote ---
ITheHellAmFan:
Good point Quantus. I suppose I should rephrase my previous post to state that is my interpretation of how the morality of it works based on the info I have available, but since that information is incomplete at this point in the series it is not necessarily correct.
I will say the part about the White Council's Laws of Magic, as divorced from the underlying metaphysical laws that informed them, being more about controlling power than Good or evil still stands though.
Shift8:
--- Quote from: ITheHellAmFan on June 30, 2017, 01:10:05 PM ---Two Counters to this. First, at least as I see it, one of the themes of TDF is that actions have consequences, and those consequences are often entirely unrelated to the intent behind the action. Put another way, ethics and morality in the Dresdenverse seem to be closer to Deontological systems than Utilitarian ones. So, while the act of killing may at times be a necessary bad act, within the context of of this universe it is still an inherently bad act, and so it adversely effects the user. And it isn't a bad thing becasue it adversely affects the person who does it, it adversely affects the user becasue it is a bad thing. As for why this doesn't affect apply to non-magical killing, well, that's becasue magic. It takes an effect that already results from killing (look at the kind of PTSD suffered by soldiers/police/etc., even those involved in ultimately justifiable or at least necessary violence) and cranks it up to 11 becasue the supernatural nature of the event gives that trauma a direct line to your soul. Same general type, just massively increased scale.
Secondly, and I'll point you to what Luccio said in Turn Coat. Basically, the White Council and it's Laws aren't actually about right/wrong, good/evil, or morality. So, even if your argument did apply (which I don't think it does, at least not in context of the Dresdenverse), it doesn't change the fact that killing with magic is way, way easier than killing without it. sure, when you look at things like Nukes or chemical weapons there are mundane ways of killing on a similar scale, but the are not generally the sort of thing an individual would have access to. On the other hand, think about the amount of death someone like The Merlin, Ebeneener, Morgan, or even Harry could do if they went off the deep end and just started killing people. So, the White Council takes a hardline at restraining that particular use of power, above and beyond the morality of the situation. This also means that mundane killing, completely apart from morality, is simply not their department.
--- End quote ---
I have to disagree.
Ethics is not a magical force that acts independent of logic and reality. The Dresdenverse can have as many commonly accepted ethical standards as it wants, but that doesnt make them make any sense. It doesnt matter how much the book or its characters believe in them, it doesnt suddenly make them have efficacy. The idea that events have some kind of intrinsic negative quality is absurd, especially from the standpoint of magic in the DV. The trauma that a person receives, or does not receive, from a "bad" event is entirely subjective.
I also disagree with your second point, and what Luccio said. If anything, it just reveals how utterly preposterous the 1st law is, and probably some others. All the first law does is limit direct killing with magic. When you compare this to every way magic makes any task easier, killing included, the 1st law is at best arbitrary nonsense. Considering ONLY Dresden, his killing ability is massively enhanced by all the indirect utility he gets from it. The degree of inconvenience that not being able to using is precisely pales in comparison to all the utility it would still have. Not to mention that guns in DV are many times better than magic at killing. Dresden gives quite a few reasons for why he carries a gun, but one of them was specifically that it is often easier and faster than magic. So using this logic, the first law does far more harm that it does good, for no good reason.
To me this just reveals how stupid the WC is when it comes to the 1st law. It has no ethical or practical use. Even if the DV is "supposed" to work this way, I would still criticize that on the grounds of it being silly. It about as crazy that the law in HP that prevented people from using the killing curse from some silly reason. Kill all the death eaters you want, just dont use that dreaded evil killing curse. Oh no, that would be too awful....
Shift8:
--- Quote from: Quantus on June 30, 2017, 01:55:01 PM ---It's worth keeping in mind that Jim has very specifically and intentionally left the Morality of the Laws vague and ill-defined. It's something that's often misunderstood even to the characters that live in the world. All this to say that this is a particular theme that I expect to see explored more as the series goes on before we get anything like a settled answer or a clear understanding of the metaphysics of it all.
Here are a pair of rather long WOJ's on the nature of Black magic and the ambiguity of the Laws, I think it's highly relevant to what we're talking about:
(click to show/hide)Man. The existential morality of using PIE to shape the course of reality. GOOD or EVIL? That's . . . one of those discussions I never really thought I'd listen in on. :)
But if the substance of the consequences of the act itself does not have its own inherent quality of good or evil, then how can the /intentions/ behind it determine a similar quality? "Really, I was only trying to provide a better quality of life for my family and my employees. It wasn't my intention to destroy that particular species of flower in the rain forest that cures cancer." "I was just trying to give those Injuns some blankets. It wasn't my intention to expose them to smallpox and wipe out hundreds of thousands of innocent people." "I just wanted to get that book finished while working two jobs and finishing a brutal semester of grad school. It wasn't my intention to screw up the name of Bianca's personal assistant whose death had motivated her to go all power hungry to get revenge on Harry."
There's some old chestnut about good itentions serving as base level gradiant on an expressway that goes somewhere, but I can't remember the specifics right now. :) While I agree that the /intentions/ of the person taking action are not without significance, they carry far less weight than the /consequences/ of that action.
"I meant to shoot him in the leg and wound him, not hit the femoral artery and kill him, so I should not be considered guilty of murder," is not something that stands up in a court of law /or/ in any serious moral or ethical evaluation. You had the weapon. You knew it was potentially lethal, even if you did attempt to use it in a less than fully lethal fashion. (Or if you DIDN'T know that, you were a freaking idiot playing with people's lives, something really no less excusable.) But you chose to employ the weapon anyway. The consequences of those actions are /yours/, your doing, regardless of how innocent your intentions may have been.
Similarly, if you meant to drill that ^@#%er through the eyes, if you had every intention of murdering him outright, but you shot him in the hand and he survived with minor injuries, again the consequences overshadow your intentions. You might have made a stupid or morally queestionable choice, but it isn't like anyone *died* or anything. He's fine (at least in the long term), you're fine, and there are fewer repercussions--regardless of your hideous intentions.
The exercise of power and the necessity to consider the fallout from your actions isn't something limited to wizards and gods. Fictional people like Harry and Molly just provide more colorful examples.
As for violating the laws of magic themselves turning you good or evil, well. :) There's something to be said on either side of the argument, in the strictest sense, though one side of the argument is definitely less incorrect than the other. But it's going to take me several more books to lay it out, so there's no sense in ruining the fun. :)
Jim
(PS--Murphy can't be Kumori, obviously. Kumori is a powerful and dangerous necromancer with the personal will to hold a knife to a wizard's throat. And more to the point, she was TALL ENOUGH to do it. If she was 5' 0" Murphy, she'd have had to be wearing freaking STILTS to hold a knife at 6' 7" Harry's throat from behind. To say nothing of the fact that Harry has touched Murphy's skin on multiple occasions and never picked up a ripple of /any/ of the aura of a practitioner, much less the utterly obvious one of a fellow heavyweight. I try to follow my own rules, guys. :) )
(click to show/hide)All the Wardens did, and the Senior Council, and several of the more responsible/combat-capable wizards who weren't either of the former (like Ebenezar, Klaus the Toymaker, and the Germans). But it wasn't literally the entire Council. Plenty of the wizards there have got precious little gift when it comes to actual combat magic--like Ancient Mai. Their strengths simply lie in other areas. Others . . . just aren't suited to it, mentally, and could probably prove to be more of a liability than an asset. Some of them are just plain chicken.
But it was a more sizeable chunk of the Council than had, at that point, ever been all together in one place to take on /one/ guy.
Technically, they didn't actually kill him with magic. They rendered him helpless with magic and then found other ways to execute him. (Swords are the usual. For Kemmler, they also used guns, axes, shovels, ropes, a flamethrower, and a number of other extremes.) It's a semantic difference, in some ways, but an important technical distinction in others.
Bingo. It hardly seems fair, does it?
The Laws of Magic don't necessarily match up to the actual universal guidelines to how the universal power known as "magic" behaves.
The consequences for breaking the Laws of Magic don't all come from people wearing grey cloaks.
And none of it necessarily has anything to do with what is Right or Wrong.
Which exist. It's finding where they start or stop existing that's the hard part.
Jim
PS--"sinister" as in "bend sinister" or "bar sinister" is a general term originally meaning "left," and not "evil." However, there's some overlap in traditional magical terms, with references to the "left hand path" or black magic, and so on. Left handed people were often viewed with suspicion during the middle ages. In Islamic belief, the left hand is considered to be unclean. For that matter, the entire concept of "right" is tied in with the negative connotations to "left."
And I agree. Harry has some sinister leanings. :)
--- End quote ---
Ive read those before, and they are interesting. Jim's second link makes much more sense than his first though. His first bit about intentions having little to nothing to do with culpability or evil is in my estimation absolutely absurd. His examples in the first paragraph are not comparable at all to his later example of gun shot wounds etc. His examples range from everything from bad actions that could not have been predicted, to negligence, to lethal force ethics. A person cannot be culpable or liable for actions that they could not have prevented, could not have predicted, or were the result of choosing the least bad action. Creating a moral standard which held people responsible for "bad consequences" independent of intent, nature of the act, or predictability/probability of the consequences would be utterly evil and completely untenable. By the logic Jim appears to use in that example, I would be morally accountable if stepping on a fly actually happened to be Listens to the Wind.
Rasins:
--- Quote from: Shift8 on July 01, 2017, 06:46:40 AM --- I have to disagree.
Ethics is not a magical force that acts independent of logic and reality. The Dresdenverse can have as many commonly accepted ethical standards as it wants, but that doesnt make them make any sense. It doesnt matter how much the book or its characters believe in them, it doesnt suddenly make them have efficacy. The idea that events have some kind of intrinsic negative quality is absurd, especially from the standpoint of magic in the DV. The trauma that a person receives, or does not receive, from a "bad" event is entirely subjective.
I also disagree with your second point, and what Luccio said. If anything, it just reveals how utterly preposterous the 1st law is, and probably some others. All the first law does is limit direct killing with magic. When you compare this to every way magic makes any task easier, killing included, the 1st law is at best arbitrary nonsense. Considering ONLY Dresden, his killing ability is massively enhanced by all the indirect utility he gets from it. The degree of inconvenience that not being able to using is precisely pales in comparison to all the utility it would still have. Not to mention that guns in DV are many times better than magic at killing. Dresden gives quite a few reasons for why he carries a gun, but one of them was specifically that it is often easier and faster than magic. So using this logic, the first law does far more harm that it does good, for no good reason.
To me this just reveals how stupid the WC is when it comes to the 1st law. It has no ethical or practical use. Even if the DV is "supposed" to work this way, I would still criticize that on the grounds of it being silly. It about as crazy that the law in HP that prevented people from using the killing curse from some silly reason. Kill all the death eaters you want, just dont use that dreaded evil killing curse. Oh no, that would be too awful....
--- End quote ---
Shift8,
If magic is a power source that has an "intelligence", if not conscience, then it is entirely possible that using that power contrary to said source's purposes would have negative consequences.
For instance, and I'm NOT espousing this particular scenario but it fits.
If all magic comes from TWG, and TWG says it's for creation and building, but someone uses it for nefarious purposes, it's entirely possible that TWG ordained that anyone who uses it for purposes other than Building and Creation would suffer.
Thus anyone who uses magic would have nasty consequences for breaking the law, while using mundane means would not have said consequences.
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