(March 19, 2018 at 9:50 am)Kookaburra Wrote: So this is something I’ve been turning over in my mind for a while, and I’d love to get you guys’ thoughts on it.
What, if anything, makes an action completely free of suffering, wrong?
Say a person exists with no connections. Nobody knows they exist, so nobody would miss them. Say you walked up behind this person and shot them in the head, killing them instantly. They never knew what hit them. Did the person who killed them do something wrong?
I have three answers to this I can think of, but both seem unsatisfactory. The first is that this would be wrong because others could find out about it, and fear for their own lives. If we thought there were murderers running around, just waiting for a chance to pick us off the second we have no connections, we’d be terrified. It would create a terrible society to live in.
The second is that it would negatively affect the murderer, either giving them crippling guilt or enabling them to be a psychopath. They’d probably end up killing more indiscriminately in the future.
The third is that it would cut off a person’s life prematurely, and deny them any experiences they might have in the future. But I have trouble seeing why this is a “wrong action”, apart from any actual tangible suffering experienced.
Thinking theoretically, imagine we could take away the first two issues. Assume one would ever find out, and assume the person involved would also not be harmed. Basically, what I’m trying to get at, is what makes the action of killing wrong, apart from causing pain and suffering?
What do you all make of this?
It is bullshit to say nobody would miss them. Everyone knows someone. Even the homeless hang out with other homeless and go to shelters where people know them.
Humans have always fought each other and killed each other, crime or war. Death reminds us of our mortality combined with our evolutionary drive to continue. So for most of our species we see it as wrong because we don't want it affecting us.
We also evolved to cooperate and that creates empathy for others in our species. We are a social species so that grouping would foster that empathy too. V
This is a very disturbing hypothetical you have put forth. There is no such thing as a perfect murder anyway. If anything at a minimum your own self preservation and not wanting to go to prison should keep you from murdering someone. I would hope you'd refrain from doing it out of empathy for others too.
