Philosophy Discussion Forums

Philosch wrote:My two cents is that non-defensive killing as posed by the OP is always wrong for the simple reason that if you make an exception for utilitarian or consequentialist reasons then the flood gates open and the slippery slope becomes an avalanche of exceptions. The trolly car problem is the classic example of this case. Pull the lever and interfere with the path of the train to save five people by killing one. Once you decide this is okay then it should be okay for a doctor to harvest the organs of one healthy person to save the lives of 5 sick people in need of those organs. The logic is the same but the implications for society are appalling. So by choosing to interfere in outcomes, you must do so carefully. Non-defensive killing is fundamentally wrong and there is no exception to be tolerated unless we are willing to give up on the fundamental right to self-determination and life of the individual. If you want to give up on those, then all bets are off.

Medicine solve the trolley problem back in antiquity: "primum non nocere". First do no harm. Let the trolley car go: you don't kill the one guy, the universe (or the maintenance man) killed the five passengers, not you.

LuckyR wrote:

Philosch wrote:My two cents is that non-defensive killing as posed by the OP is always wrong for the simple reason that if you make an exception for utilitarian or consequentialist reasons then the flood gates open and the slippery slope becomes an avalanche of exceptions. The trolly car problem is the classic example of this case. Pull the lever and interfere with the path of the train to save five people by killing one. Once you decide this is okay then it should be okay for a doctor to harvest the organs of one healthy person to save the lives of 5 sick people in need of those organs. The logic is the same but the implications for society are appalling. So by choosing to interfere in outcomes, you must do so carefully. Non-defensive killing is fundamentally wrong and there is no exception to be tolerated unless we are willing to give up on the fundamental right to self-determination and life of the individual. If you want to give up on those, then all bets are off.

Medicine solve the trolley problem back in antiquity: "primum non nocere". First do no harm. Let the trolley car go: you don't kill the one guy, the universe (or the maintenance man) killed the five passengers, not you.

Absolutely agree, that is my opinion also. Just get's a little tricky if it's one of your children that's a member of the group of 5 that's going to be killed. Unfortunately to be true to the principal, you cannot kill another "innocent" to save your own child. You can defend your child from someone trying to do them harm but that's not the same thing.

I don’t understand why this is such a re occurring issue. Life is precious, but some people take it upon themselves to not care about that and slay thousands, tens of thousands, or more. I feel no need at all to expend resources preserving that life which has taken a thousand or even one if I am honest. I don’t see any reason to feed and house a person who took it upon themselves to work horrors on multiple others. I would need certainty of guilt to condemn any man to death, but if completely certain (or as near as we can get as nothing is totally certain) then I do not wish to pay for him any longer. He did more harm than his one life is worth when he took 10 or thousands. We do not need to pay to guard or restrain him, we need only pay for the grave digger to file him away.

Next comes villains like ISIS. They cannot be reasoned with and cannot oft be jailed without fighting which means killing more often than not. Who will honestly say we just need to talk it out with them? I have dealt with Al Qaeda members who lived and we did not kill them because they had been captured by us. I don’t desire to kill the captives but of course the combative armed ones I slay with no regret. These are men who impose their will in the worst way against other men and kill other men regularly. I lament every kill I have not because I did it but because of how terrible it is that it was the only way to stop him. I absolutely hated it, but it was that or let them do as they wish, raping, plundering, and killing. So I was able to kill them and I did a few times, and it wasn’t self-defense it was combat. Some would argue that’s the same thing but it is not, I came to where they were, and I confronted them, that isn’t self-defense.

Let’s just stop the rubbish and be straight here. If the villains life has value then so does mine does it not? There are many times where we do not know who the villain is, or if the suspect is for certain guilty and in those cases no killing should not be on the table. But if you know with certainty that an individual has done so much greater harm than taking one life and will take more it would be immoral not to take his. It would be immoral to not fight against the Nazi regime for example. And I would further say though it will bother some it is immoral to force the families of victims to feed and house the fellow who raped and killed 9 of their children. Or to force all of us to pay to feed and house him. You can remove the death penalty if you want and just let him starve in a concrete box but that seems even more cruel to me.

Philosch wrote:

LuckyR wrote: (Nested quote removed.)


Medicine solve the trolley problem back in antiquity: "primum non nocere". First do no harm. Let the trolley car go: you don't kill the one guy, the universe (or the maintenance man) killed the five passengers, not you.

Absolutely agree, that is my opinion also. Just get's a little tricky if it's one of your children that's a member of the group of 5 that's going to be killed. Unfortunately to be true to the principal, you cannot kill another "innocent" to save your own child. You can defend your child from someone trying to do them harm but that's not the same thing.

The "what if it your child on the trolley?" argument is the last ditch effort of those on the losing side of the logic wars. There is a reason doctors aren't supposed to treat their family members (or themselves), namely that adding a personal connection skews the opinion away from logic to emotion, thus answers derived from this smokescreen are inherently illogical.

"Intentional non-defensive killing - Do you always oppose it?"

You'd better believe it!! I so totally oppose intentional non-defensive killing that I'm committed to willingly shoot anyone, even a defenseless person, who intentionally kills someone in a non-defensive situation.

-- Updated 2017 July 30th, 10:24 pm to add the following --

-1- wrote:"Intentional non-defensive killing - Do you always oppose it?"

You'd better believe it!! I so totally oppose intentional non-defensive killing that I'm committed to willingly shoot anyone, even a defenseless person, who intentionally kills someone in a non-defensive situation.

Do you see, Scott, how both a positive Xor a negative reply to the opening question potentially can lead to the annihilation of the entire human race? (Except for the last person standing.)

I've written an answer to this question, but it took me 8,000 words to say it properly. I put it on my blog on Yofiel.com but I am not allowed to share the link as it is considered advertising, so I am not quite sure how to respond. But first I would say it's not quite the right question, because unintentional killing is self defense can't be separated out. I think the right question really is, "exactly who is the good buy with a gun, and who exactly is the bad guy with a gun?"

Caring about anything is emotional luckyR.

Eduk wrote: ↑May 18th, 2018, 7:21 am Caring about anything is emotional luckyR.

True dat. I was a little cavalier in my wording. What I meant was: "adding a personal connection skews the opinion away from a logic dominated balance with emotion to one dominated by emotion".

I voted No as I belive this to be a grayzone problem. It made me think about Anders Breivik, the infamous norwegiean who killed 69 people with a gun, 8 with a bomb. When finished, He called the police and surrendered to them when they came.

Had there been a police nearby and had that person killed him even if the police wasn’t threatened or defended someone that he was chasing, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.
Had he been killed in any kind of circumstance that you mention, I wouldn’t object.

Had he been killed by an upset policeman even if had surrendered, I would consider it to be unlawful but also largely excusable.

I have to get a little bit offended when a philosopher will call some moral issue fundamentally wrong. Morals aren't rooted in logic. It just be that way.

On my own take, I am not actually fully certain if I have posted in this earlier, frankly don't care: In my own view of an optimal state of society, full freedom is always afforded, which includes the freedom of death.

Intellectual_Savnot wrote: ↑March 5th, 2019, 2:01 pm On my own take, I am not actually fully certain if I have posted in this earlier, frankly don't care: In my own view of an optimal state of society, full freedom is always afforded, which includes the freedom of death.

Sorry, I don't understand you. Is "the freedom of death", the freedom to commit suicide or to commit murder?

Human ethics values the life of an incorrigible brutal, raping human psychopath over innocent animals. I do not subscribe to those values. To respect the life of an inmate with a history of rape and assault/murder, both in and out of prison, is to effectively sacrifice the health and possibly lives of the public and prison inmates - to an inflexible principle.

Each inmate who is raped becomes a greater danger to the community, especially men who sometimes try to reclaim their lost sense of maleness by becoming rapists on the outside. Each inmate who is bashed becomes a greater risk of being more violent and dangerous on release. One could argue for improving the prison system but there is no political will behind the idea.

In effect, what we are doing now is inadvertently placing higher value on predators than on their prey. The concerns I have about the death penalty (for those who have proved themselves beyond rehabilitation and are actively and incorrigibly harming other inmates) are

1. Corruption within the prison system, and in the political and legal systems

2. Brutalizing social effects on society through effectively being party to killings.

Then we have a question of resource allocation. There are seven billion people on the planet, rapidly degrading ecosystems and a level of wealth inequality arguably not seen since the pharaohs. In such an environment, every health and welfare budget is effectively a death sentence for a number of people, not to mention every change to foreign aid.

Every time we ourselves spend on pleasure and entertainment, we "waste" resources that could be spent saving lives. I argue that we value some things more than human lives - like freedom and opportunity, quality of life. However, when it comes to the death penalty, many baulk because the killing becomes more personal, visceral.

It is a similar situation with vegetarianism - which also kills animals. Consumption of any food or consumer good involves destroying habitats, and directly killing numerous insects and rodents in production. Yet killing and eating the flesh of animals makes it, again, more personal and visceral.

We cannot help but to kill in this life however, I figure we might as well target our killing wisely to reduce the tacit suffering and indiscriminate killing that we perpetrate.

LuckyR either way

Scott took argument: a or b, where a must make b not the choice and vice versa. He took any situation where b was the choice and said "that is excused and does not count" thus confirming a. He took all the value out of the argument by making the definition of a non-applied to the question: a or b? By committing this logical fallacy, he makes the question posed different than the one answered. He should have asked: Is murder with intention to kill, no good reason to kill, upon a person that is definitely conscious, with no emotional influence involved, in a non defensive situation, always opposed? Which is VERY different than: is murder always opposed? He defined the variable not by definition but rather by means to make the argument more favorable. He has effectively found a situation which by literal definition does not exist and has never existed. What say you?