(June 24, 2017 at 6:02 pm)Khemikal Wrote:(June 24, 2017 at 5:15 pm)wallym Wrote: If someone is trying to rape you, you can stab them in the face, and that would not be wrong in my opinion. Stabbing someone in the face certainly qualifies as causing harm. So you'd at a minimum have to sharpen up the idea of 'doing harm'.That would be an issue of competing moral imperatives. OFC it's not wrong to stab someone in the face for trying to rape you, if that;s what you have to do to stop someone from raping you. No one faults -some- terrible things a person might do in defense of themselves. An objective assessment of the harm caused, in that case, is actually -required- in order to reach a justifiable moral pronouncement on both the attacker...and the defender.
Stab them, wally. Stab the shit out of them. But...if that stops them from raping you....don't...then...cut them up into little pieces and serve them as a pie to their family. Objectively justifiable defense of one's self only goes so far.
Further..one could argue that you have an objective moral -duty- to stab them in the face.......since, if you can defend yourself, and choose not to, you have not only failed to satisfy what would be moral for yourself.....you have failed to do what might stop them from doing it to some other.
No doubt. I'm just saying 'do no harm' is not a clean cut objective end of the philosophical argument. Someone can go blow up an abortion clinic and say it's an objectively justifiable defense of unborn babies, for example. And that's wouldn't exactly be untrue.
