Morality from the ground up

[Astonished]

You didn't -give- an example of killing without suffering.  You gave an example where a racist nationalist society found it moral to euthanize browns...and we've seen how that ends.  Spoiler alert: a whole lot of suffering.

No, I gave an example in which a person might remove someone for whom he holds little esteem, on the basis that he's not causing suffering.  If he DOES cause suffering, then he's violating that axiom, so that case isn't taken into consideration.

That's some seriously low rent shit Benny, and I think you can do better.

I think you guys are special pleading.  It's okay to kill animals but not people, because people's capacity for suffering is so much greater.  However, given ANY scenario in which one might kill a person without causing them undue suffering, it's still wrong-- but that first argument is invalid in that case.  So we need to move onto a modification, i.e. an additional metric.  In fact, I've already suggested the next metric: that a lifetime of experience and memory in humans is considered important, not only their hedonic state during life or at the time of death.

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Indeed benny is denying empirical evidence of what such a society leads to.

The specific killing of an immigrant had a point, which has been missed by you guys.  The point is that if (1) you don't see intrinsic value in someone's life, and (2) you do not cause them suffering, it's okay to kill them giving the axioms so far presented.  So we need new axioms, or a bridge from the hedonic state idea to an actual moral code.

Nobody here thinks that killing an unknown immigrant is okay.  My contention is that there's no reason not to kill people except that the idea of it makes us feel bad.  The idea of murdering some dude in an alley way for no reason is very unpleasant. . . to us.  But on what basis do we take feelings and make them moral axioms?

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Let's see if it sticks.  What if you killed a cow in such a way as it didn't suffer, Benny?  Then it's okay and moral, yes?  I mean..if you think that it;s okay and rationally moral in the case of a human being, gonna be the same for Bessie, surely?  

Now, let's ask ourselves a question.....is a society in which a cow can be killed humanely and ethically likely to lead to nazis?

If it's okay to kill an animal without causing suffering, then I'd say that Bessie, immigrants, and my Mom would all fall under that umbrella.  If there is something special about people which makes killing them extra wrong, then Bessie might be killed, but immigrants and my Mom should not be.  I don't think the capacity for suffering matters, though, because it's possible to bypass that capacity in humans (like foreknowledge of their impending death or whatever) simply by drugging them.

For fuck's sake, dude, you're making gargantuan leaps here without taking a second to realize there is a tremendous fundamental difference between us and lower animals. Let's say an animal kills a human-is the animal aware of the nature of their action? Is it capable of participating in a moral discussion in which it can evaluate these things to the level which we can? Is it logical to hold a criminal trial, assess the animal's culpability, maybe find it not guilty by reason of insanity or mental incapability? You are fucking insane if you are putting them on the same level as us. Or should every veterinarian who's ever put someone's pet to sleep be charged with murder, what with all the Dr. Kevorkian controversy?

I get you're trying to make a point but you're using completely incompatible factors to draw a line somewhere, it's really not working.