Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Monday, 22 December 2014, Bruce Kellett <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: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.)As I said, I qualified my statement by saying "unless you can think of a worse effect [than oblivion] of murder". Robbing a bank is wrong not because having lots of money is wrong, but for other reasons. If you believe there is nothing wrong with oblivion, what other reasons are there for murder being wrong?
It is against the law? It is not the consequences of murder for the individual that are the issue. Most societies make laws against murder because society could not really function cohesively if there were no sanction against indiscriminate murder. It is a matter of social ethics, part of the contract that we make with each other in order to be able to live together in relative harmony. It is not that there are worse effects than oblivion for the murdered person, but that society could not function without prohibition of murder. Just as for bank robbery.
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