A question on death and suffering.

[Kookaburra]

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.

I’m very aware that it’s disturbing.  It was originally posed by my dad, and I found that I didn’t have a good answer, so I went looking for one.  I almost didn’t post the question because I was afraid of looking like a serial killer.  Just to make it clear, *I would never kill someone, and I don’t believe that in this world we live in there is a “good” way to murder someone*.

My question is way more hypothetical, I guess.  *If* there was a way to kill someone without causing *any* suffering, would you still consider it a wrong?  And if so why?

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I mean - yeah, objectively, nothing.  But I tend to approach it from a golden rule type base - if it would hurt me, I don’t do it to someone else.  But if someone snuck up behind *me* and shot me in the head - I mean, sure, I wouldn’t want it to happen if I anticipated it, but if it was instant and unexpected, I’d be dead.  I wouldn’t be around to be annoyed, or upset, or anything about it, so it seems like my usual system doesn’t hold up.

Your usual system (whatever it may be) isn't meant to hold up unconditionally because, ultimately, I don't think there is that perfect or ultimate solution for everything to do with morality and ethics. I also think that we subconsciously hold to more than one "moral system" when it comes to judging whether this or that act is right or wrong, so it's a combination of systems that we use in a flexible manner (as opposed to fixed systems), some of which we employ in some cases and others we employ in other cases.

Note: One could argue that the act of killing causes harm regardless (even if you died instantly and unexpectedly), but you mean "harm" in the subjective manner, so I'll put that aside and just focus on the main question.

This is a good point.  I guess I shouldn’t expect any system to solve every question I could possibly have.

In your opinion, if I may ask: is it naive or illogical to hold that killing is wrong simply because I am strongly emotionally opposed to it, and I wouldn’t want to be killed?  This seems to lack a logical base, but it might just be my upbringing showing.