Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Monday, 22 December 2014, meekerdb <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 12/21/2014 5:09 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Monday, December 22, 2014, Bruce Kellett
Following that reasoning, do you believe there is nothing
wrong with murder?
How on earth did you get that from what I said?
If there's nothing wrong with oblivion, and murder leads to
oblivion, then there's nothing wrong with murder.
There's nothing wrong with having a lot of money, and bank robbery
leads to having a lot of money, then there's nothing wrong with bank
robbery.
Yes, but I did qualify it in a subsequent email with "unless you can
think of a worse effect [than oblivion] of murder".
You could have a go at thinking of a worse effect:
Murder is bad because it breaks God's commandment - but then it would
not be bad if if you didn't believe in God.
Murder is bad because it causes suffering in the person being murdered -
but then it would not be bad if you could murder someone without causing
suffering, for example by killing them quickly in their sleep.
Murder is bad because of the loss felt by the family and friends of the
victim - but then it wouldn't be bad if you murdered a homeless person
whom nobody would miss.
I think you miss the logical point Brent and I have tried to make. Your
original argument is invalid because you implicitly make the syllogism:
All oblivion is good. Murder leads to oblivion. Therefore murder is good.
The fault is in universalizing the first statement. It really reads:
there is nothing wrong with oblivion, but some routes to oblivion might
be wrong. In other words, some oblivion is good, not all oblivion. Once
you take account of the routes to the oblivion of death, your argument
collapses.
This is exactly what Brent's example shows. There is nothing wrong with
having a lot of money, but some ways of obtaining a lot of money are
definitely wrong. There is no contradiction in holding these ideas
simultaneously.
So it is not the consequences of murder that are at issue, it is that
this is an illegitimate route to oblivion. (Although we could open up a
debate on the morality of euthanasia in appropriate circumstances.)
Bruce
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