Soldiers life threatened by his own side.

[Tempus]

---

There's situations where killing is necessary in order to prevent greater harm, as unpalatable as that may be. If you've got a country in central Europe annexing its neighbours left and right there's only so many options before you either concede to their rule or resist.

(...)

Consider a guy that goes on a rampage down town in Everycity. He's armed to the teeth and has made it clear there will be no negotiations. What do you do? Shoot his hands off? You often don't have time to mess about in such situations (or, in some cases, there's little chance of precision shots due to dense crowds, low visibility, etc) with civilians about, not to mention your fellow law enforcers lives in danger. This sort of thing can happen on an international or global scale. Yes, there are warning signs, and yes, if only this and that were done in the killer's or country's youth / history such tragedy could've been avoided. Unfortunately sometimes people inherit or are forced into a situation where diplomacy has failed.

Personally I'm strongly against war, foreign intervention, conscription and even voluntary enrolment in the army. That being said, each scenario needs to be assessed individually. An unwavering rule such as "we must never kill" is flawed in its general rationale as well as its specific dictate.

---

The solution is not to shoot a man's hands off, regardless of what the consequences are it is still wrong to shoot a man. The armed man himself is incredbily immoral in his attempts on the lives of people but it would be to an even greater degree that i would condemn this behaviour. The main problems that I encounter when trying to view something consequentially are thus:
-We have no foresight into the consequences or their consequences and it seems ignorant to make moral judgements on expectations and not actual understanding.

Oh, we have no foresight into what the person who in my example will do? Even after he told us, then followed through with his actions? I think in that particular example it's reasonable to assume he will continue to kill. Not all consequences, ours or others, can be foreseen. This doesn't mean that we can't reasonably say anything about the future actions of others. You don't have time to read someone's biography while they're killing people. You didn't actually address the problem either, you side stepped it. What is the correct course of action? To allow him to continue to kill as he has already done? Let me note that the rationale here isn't that he should be killed because he's killed others, but rather that he needs to be prevented from killing others. I don't think such choices are always clear, but in particular circumstances certain courses of action can justifiably be ruled out, such as standing by and doing nothing as a man randomly kills people in a highly populated area.

-To say that 'x is wrong, to stop x we must perform x' smacks of contradiction and the only way to truly remove this element is to completely abhor it in all it's forms, lest we merely perpetuate it.

Perhaps if you phrase it like that. What I think was implied quite heavily in my previous post is that an actions "rightness" is affected by the context it's performed in. I'll return to this point in a moment, but first I'm going to clarify what I mean by "right" to reduce any chance of confusion.

What I call "right" is short hand for "the correct action to perform to maximize happiness and minimize suffering for the most people possible". My definition of "right" is not to be confused with desirable circumstances. I might desire no one to be killed, for example. Nonetheless in order to achieve happiness for the most people it may sometimes be that taking down the person going on a rampage down town will be the move most conducive to maintaining a happy society. In this particular case, culpability also factors in. A person down town about to murder five people (let's say they've made it clear they will) is culpable for the deaths of those five people, whereas a healthy individual in a waiting room adjacent to a ward containing five patients in need of five different organ transplants is not. If you ignore culpability, then yes, you will end up with absurd conclusions like "killing a person willing to murder five people is equivalent to stealing the organs from a healthy person to save the lives of five patients". In the former case, the killer has a direct role in whether they live or die, whereas in the latter the patient is unrelated and not at fault for the patients' conditions. Notice too that culpability is derivative from the value of happiness. Societies in which there is no culpability will become less happy. I must also stress that it's not "oh, person X is responsible for murder, therefore it's ok to kill them" - it's not an eye for an eye mentality. Culpability is used to distinguish between the innocent and the guilty to help prevent situations like the killing of an innocent person for their organs from occurring.

*Inhales*

So, what's wrong with your summary of my opinion that, "x is wrong, to stop x we must perform x"? It's simplistic, much like your own conclusions I responded to. Notice that X can be replaced with "Imprisoning someone against their will (the action formerly known as 'X') is wrong, to stop people being imprisoned against their will we must imprison people against their will." Are you against the imprisonment of criminals who imprison others? I'm advocating a more nuanced "rule" (or maybe "guideline" is more accurate). I would phrase it more like this:

"X is wrong. Stopping X is desirable, but not always achievable without committing X. In circumstances where performing X will prevent greater X from occurring, X is permissible, providing it is also congruent with value Y."

Your rule was too simple. The one I've proposed above, while still perhaps flawed, is much more flexible and takes into account more factors. In our case X might represent the action of causing harm (more specifically the act of killing). Value Y would be happiness or "rightness" as defined further above.

-The Sorites paradox occurs in some sense in consequentialism, for if we say that one measure is morally correct then we may say that something of exact same moral incriment is correct and there is no real boundary for the moral/immoral. Furthermore, this pre-supposes degrees of 'rightness', an absurd concept).

I prefer relative judgements, such as "more right", rather than just "right"; i.e., it is more right to not kill than it is to kill a single person; it is more right to kill a single person than let a million people suffer radiation poisoning over a period of several months after which they die. You will encounter a sorites paradox if you say things are either X or not X. This is to my knowledge anyway. I only just gave myself a crash course in the sorites paradox ten minutes ago.