(February 20, 2015 at 3:06 pm)Losty Wrote:(February 16, 2015 at 9:26 pm)Jenny A Wrote: But, in famine, and other emergency situations, I couldn't condemn anyone for practicing it; provided of course that they did kill not their dinner.
Just curious, how wrong would it be for a person starving to death to kill and eat another person?
How wrong it would be would depend on all of the circumstances, like whether or not there was something else that could be eaten, how "starving" the person is, what sort of person is killed, how the person is killed, etc.
If you look on wikipedia for "Custom of the Sea" and read about The Mignonette, you will see that in British Common Law necessity is not a defense against murder. I agree with that idea. I would condemn anyone who murdered someone in order to eat the person, no matter how hungry one was.
If a group of people is starving, and one dies of starvation, then eating that person does not involve murdering the person. Waiting until the person dies naturally is what I recommend that you do, if you are ever in such a situation. Otherwise, when you get back to civilization (if you get back), you should be prepared for being charged with murder, since you would, in fact, be a murderer.
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
