A question on death and suffering.

[The Grand Nudger]

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?

You're asking what the murderer did 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.

Roughly, the social contract.

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.

Self interest (rational or otherwise).  Notice, btw, that now they're a murderer..whereas before they were a killer.

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.

Slapping a sucker out of your mouth and slapping your mouth so hard you can never put a sucker in it are remarkably similar, at least in regards to your ability to enjoy a sucker..except that one is a more complete and permanent theft of joy than the other.  Of the three..this is the only one that begins to approach -why- something may be wrong.  The other two were comments on why a person might adhere to a moral proclamation.  

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?

Is it really the killing, itself, that's taken to be wrong?  Probably not.  If one soldier sneaks up on another and ends his life in silence and no one knows..we call that a job very well done.  Probably get a coin out of it, at least, if not a ribbon or medal.  Same with the people who work the slaughterhouse floor. It;s kindof amusing..but we broadly seem to think that..if you'e going to do some killing..there's a right and a wrong way to go about it in any given circumstance.

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?

IDK, if you want an answer that conforms to moral realism, for example..you'd have to be a hell of alot more specific in the details of the killing...as there may be killings that do cause suffering and yet still aren't taken to be wrong, or are considered to be the best course of action in a field of exclusively sub-optimal options.

If you're willing to accept less, though..."because I said so" and "because I like it that way" does the trick handily - regardless of whether the response is that it's wrong or not wrong.