The Problem with Libertarians...

[orange]

shades of minority report here

[tinyp3nis]

If One_Brow would have power to adjust laws by his logic, then serial killers would have a blast

[Berzerker]

Ted - [quote]Ted -

Caring may or may not have anything to do with it. Even the most cold rulers also understand practicality. "Slacking off?" So you understand and acknowledge one of the damages that occurs when a couple of million people get strung out. Excellent work, you're learning.

Excellent work, you aren't learning. We are talking about a slaveowner who didn't want his slaves using a drug to relax from the burden imposed by the slaveowner. If this slaveowner banned booze, tobacco, pot, or even bathroom breaks because they detracted from the amount of labor the slaveowner could extract from his slaves, I wouldn't place value on the slaveowner's claims about the horrors of booze, tobacco, pot, or bathroom breaks.

Or maybe they understand the dangers of using a destructive drug by witnessing its effects firsthand.That's pretty solid knowledge I'd say. I've seen firsthand so many people **** up their lives permanently from drug use.

Excuse me, but we are talking about opium, not general "drug use". I used opium and knew people who used, do you? Nope. And you don't know all the factors effecting these people. They may have been messed up before they ever used a drug. God knows many people who use drugs do so because of emotional problems stemming from other occurences in their lives (like slavery under Chinese emperors). Confusing symptoms of emotional trauma with the trauma isn't enlightenment.

Legalization would lead to the situation Doc mentioned, which is exactly what happened in China.

Then why didn't it happen with every country that had legalised opium throughout it's 5,000+ history?

I can't wait to see an entire drug market backed by corporations like McDonalds or Pepsi! (No doubt you have already mentioned the example of Coca-cola, which had cocaine removed from it).

So you have figured out there was no contradiction when I said Coca-Cola and Bayer sold cocaine and morphine/heroin?

So, every single government that has come through, even though several of them ideaologically are natural enemies, have, through an experienced judgement, come up with a conclusion that opium usage should be banned in China, and that doesn't mean anything to you?

When during the period you've cited in China's history did they cease having emperors? And now you are assuming western governments made altruistic decisions regarding drugs. That's BS. When the US banned opium, it was called "the Yellow Peril" and the cited fear was chinese men seducing/raping white women in opium dens. When cocaine became the target, it was black men raping white women. When marijuana became the target, it was those Mexicans. Notice a pattern? You don't know Sh!t about how prohibition came about, and even the people who weren't racists but worked toward prohibition didn't live to see how their "experiment" turned out. You seem to think that the enactment of a policy depends solely on the reason for the policy and that the results are irrelevant. People in 1900 didn't live to see the results of the path they chose, we are seeing the results. The people who enacted alcohol prohibition didn't know they were creating the gang warfare/Mafia and black market (they were shortsighted too) resulting from prohibition, but it didn't take long for the support they had to wither away after people began seeing the results.

most major nations on earth got together and decided that Opium usage was destructive, their judgement means nothing to you? Every last one of them are making these decisions why?

You're changing the debate again from China to other countries, does that mean you now understand that the motives of Chinese emperors are questionable? This same period has seen the rise of socialism. And in this country and others, socialists sought the centralization of power. What better way to destroy federalism and the Constitution than finding excuses to nationalise policy. As for those whose motives were pure (albeit immoral nonetheless), they saw what they considered to be a problem needing government intervention, but they were too ignorant to see what would happen down the road.

By the same token, I seem to recall the American people being subjected to propaganda from the tobacco and alchohol industry.

Does that mean you accept that my response was not a "dodge"? That propaganda from the tobacco industry has come back to haunt them since lawsuits are being filed on the basis that the tobacco industry lied about it's product. The alcohol industry doesn't have that liability.

Sure, the government runs anti-drug ads. And I support them. My anti-drug bias comes not from those ads but by witnessing people **** up their lives.

You would support them. They are deceitful and hypocritical. But Hollywood was in on the act for a very long time, ala Reefer Madness et al. The commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics - Harry Anslinger - told Congress in 1937 that marijuana turned users into psychotic murderers, in 1952, he told Congress marijauna was a communist plot to turn users into pacifists. In 1937, the AMA opposed the prohibitive tax on marijauna saying prohibition just creates more problems. From 1937-39, 3,000 doctors were convicted by Anslinger's dept of illegally prescribing narcotics. In 1939, the AMA reversed it's position to support the ban on pot, and from 1939-1952, only 3 doctors were convicted by Anslinger of illegally prescribing narcotics. There's your altruistic government in action.

Doc has better experience than all of us, seeing people come in through the ER, but that's another story and I won't speak for him, just relaying what I remember him saying.

I've debated "Doc" before, does he treat all the people wounded by black market violence?

Link?

That's what you get for complaining about me asking Strangelove for a link and then telling me to look up links to support your arguments. Wallow in your hypocrisy.

I never complained about you asking Doc for anything by the way.

No, you just applauded a "parody" that made fun of me asking for a link and have continued the joke by repeatedly asking me for links. The fact you do this after telling me to look up links to support your arguments shows what a hypocrite you are. Btw, when I did offer a link, you attacked it as invalid because of the organization that published the article even though you didn't even try to refute anything in the article. So why should I provide you with any links when you're such a scumbag? Instead of asking me for links, take the advice you gave me when I asked you for a link, use google.

[DinoDoc]

I'm no friend of the US but this is a bit too much. What about WW2?

We brought that on ourselves by not selling war supplies to the Japanese and Nazis according to David.

[Ned]

Assume, David, that mom and dad are both drug addicts. Do they harm their kids in any way?

Do kids have any right to have sober parents?

[David Floyd]

Do you thus agree that five violations of the right to life is worse than one?

I agree that, in the abstract, five unjust deaths are worse than one unjust death. That doesn't mean, though, that I think causing one unjust death to prevent five is OK.

It may be a "worse result" for five people to die, but it is never my fault that they died, in our example. It would be my fault if I killed one person. You don't think my actions are relevant to the "state of evil" in the world - you seem to think that only hard numbers matter.

But I strongly disagree. Being a moral person and desiring peace and the moral behavior of others means that you yourself must behave in a moral fashion. If you do not, you are being inconsistent and hypocritical. It doesn't matter if, by an immoral act, you could convince someone not to commit an immoral act of their own. That person will either commit an immoral act or not, and you ultimately do not make that decision for them. You only make decisions affecting your own behavior.

It's hard to see how one could be certain in this particular case, but if the case is exactly as you described, I'd do it.

Then not only would you go to prison for murder, but you would be morally accountable and responsible for that murder - the guy who called you didn't force you to do anything. You made your own decisions, and he made his.

(1) Just because you won't be held legally accountable does not mean that you are not morally accountable. The law is not necessarily moral and vice versa.

I agree. The law isn't necessarily moral - and often isn't. Bu laws against murder are always moral, because murder is wrong. Surely you will at least admit this?

I am not responsible for the situation but I have the power to determine whether it turns out to be just bad or really horrible.

No you don't. You have the power to make your own decisions, and the random killer has the power to make his own decisions. If he kills five people, that's bad, and if you kill one person, that's also bad. They are two separate acts, both ultimately contingent upon one person's behavior.

After all you have the power to make the difference here?

No I don't. Again, the person with the gun can either pull the trigger or not. The power is entirely his. All I can do is behave morally, or not behave morally. Because I try to be a moral person, and wish to promote morality, I choose to behave morally.

you are to blame for not minimizing the harm done when you could have.

Again, you are just spreading the blame around. Let's leave blame resting where it belongs - that is, with the person committing murder.

This assumes that choosing the greater of two evils is the moral thing to do - and that just seems absurd since the greater evil is, by definition, the worse outcome.

This is getting repetitive. I am not choosing evil, I am choosing to do good, by not committing murder. The person who chooses to commit murder is choosing evil.

I know this and I've carefully avoided attributing it to them (I hope).

Your belief in and use of notions such as "net good" and "net evil", and things of that nature, seem to me to imply a common good argument.

After all it would amount to saying that all crimes have the same moral status (e.g. stealing a packet of crisps is no worse than stealing a million dollars).

Actually, you are the one confusing legality and morality this time. Legally, it is worse to steal a million dollars. Morally, stealing a packet of crisps is still stealing, so in that sense, both are just as wrong.

Now, I'm afraid I don't quite follow your math - hate the subject, always have. All you seem to be doing, though, is to assign a quantitative value to life, and attempt to make moral judgments and decisions using math. If you want to do that, fine, but to me, morality does NOT boil down to math, rather, it boils down to right and wrong.

A person who desires to be moral, and wants other people to behave morally, does not commit immoral acts. A moral person does not commit an immoral act even if he thinks that action will prevent another immoral act by someone else, because he realizes that people are responsible for their own actions only. I've said this time and time again, but I'll say it again - You do not control what other people do, and their ultimatums do not transfer one iota of responsibility from themselves onto you. If they pull the trigger and kill five people, they are 100% responsible. If you pull the trigger and kill one person, you are 100% responsible.

You show me where the "common good" in my thesis exists separately from individual rights?

It's possible I misunderstood you - if you're telling me you aren't making a common good argument, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, even though it sounds as if you are.

In what sense do you value liberty since your valuing of it is consistent with behaviour that produces less of it (again - no common good here - we are only talking about numbers of rights violations).

Wrong. My behavior is consistent with my belief, because my actions produce more liberty. Someone else's actions might produce less liberty, but my own actions produce more (if you want to think of it in terms of "morality production").

Most of your points, actually, can be answered with what I've been saying all along - I am not responsible for what someone else chooses, and they are not responsible for what I choose. If I don't specifically address one of your points, my answer is pretty much covered in that statement - I just grow tired of repeating myself.

I'm no friend of the US but this is a bit too much. What about WW2?

Well, let's look at WW2 as two wars for the sake of simplicity. One was the Pacific War and one was the European War.

The Pacific War was a result of US immorality because of our land grabs during the Spanish-American War and Mexican War, and our bullying of the native Hawaiians. If we weren't in the Philippines, Hawaii, Guam, Wake, or, for that matter, on the West Coast, then I think we can all agree that Japan would not have attacked.

Granted, they are responsible for their own actions, and I am not trying to deny that. Their actions were wrong, and US actions leading to Pearl Harbor were also wrong (to say nothing of embargos, which are always wrong). But the key is, if the US hadn't been in the wrong FIRST, Japan wouldn't have been in the wrong SECOND.

As to Germany, we made no attempt to negotiate with Germany to get out of the war. Further, we committed acts of war against Germany by escorting British convoys, radioing the position of Uboats to the British (making us morally responsible for murder, if not quite legally), and, ultimately, active naval participation against U-boats.

Further, if we had not behaved immorally in WW1, and fought against Germany even though they were not hostile towards us in any way, it is quite possible that Hitler would never have risen to power. Again, I'm not holding the US responsible for German actions in WW2, I am holding the US responsible for US actions prior to WW2. If we didn't first act immorally, we would not have fought the war.

True, but what if I am the victim of US aggression and I know that the US is developing WMD's - all that changes is that the boot is on the other foot - the example is still sound.

When the US was developing WMDs, no one had the capability to prevent that. Therefore, your specific example is not sound. I understand your general example, but for it to be valid you're going to have to apply it to a real-life situation - to the real world - and then I'll respond to it. Again, you can create any outlandish example you want to "prove" your argument, but unless it can be applied to the real world, it doesn't help you at all.

If murder is by definition "wrongful killing" then what I have described is either not murder (i.e it is manslaughter or something like that)

What you described IS murder, because it IS a wrongful killing. Remember, though, I didn't use the word "wrong", I used the word "injust". A subtle distinction, but I fail to see how you can claim a random killing can ever be just, and I fail to see how unjustice can ever be right.

I would say, again, that they are responsible for killing the five people and you are for letting them. Is there a real difference between this case and one in which he tells you he's going to do it and you don't tell the police (are you not responsible in part in this case?). The only difference is that, in the case we are discussing, the means of preventing the five murders are a lot worse than a phone call to the pigs.

Remember my canned response to this sort of argument? Good. That's my response to that point.

But you will actually fulfil your desire few fewer murders by committing one in this case. So either you don't really desire fewer murders or you really don't desire that you do them, whatever the consequences.

See above.

But people could do this now.

It'd be much easier in your system, because it would not be considered wrong or illegal for someone to randomly pop one person if a would-be killer told them to.

So you have the obligation to promote the worse over the better, knowing it is better.

Acting morally is never worse than acting immorally. Murder is by definition always wrong/immoral, therefore murdering someone cannot ever be better than not murdering someone.

So you are saying that you can never have good reason to be sure of what someone is going to do, are you? My case is about what you do, if you are sure he's going to. Saying that we are never sure is just lies - I'm sure my wife won't try to kill me today. I have no reason to believe that she will. I am sure that George W Bush won't streak across the White House lawn. These are beliefs that would stand up as reasonable in a court.

That's nice, but it's a whole lot more difficult to prove that someone you know nothing about is going to commit a heinous crime just on his say so.

I find this bizarre. Why would it happen again? You need to be sure in order to make this claim. If we were sure then you would be right. But it is very unlikely that this would be the case in every single case of us having to violate rights to ensure a lesser amount of evil. It's like saying all men who read pornography will become rapists.

I once read about a serial killer who got some perverse pleasure out of forcing other people to kill. As far as I know this hasn't become the norm.

And why do you think that is? I would think that the illegality of killing random people has something to do with it.

Because you have power over the outcome.

No I don't. Only the trigger man does. He can choose to kill or not to kill - he can't choose to transfer responsibility for his actions to someone else.

I'm not bragging but let's say I've done a lot more than that.

OK. Care to specify?

I'm surprised you didn't come up against thought experiments in that course - it is a standard tool taught in first year.

I did come across them.

[David Floyd]

Assume, David, that mom and dad are both drug addicts. Do they harm their kids in any way?

I don't know. It's your example - you tell me.

The act of using drugs doesn't hurt their kids, though, and going by the only information you have given me, the parents do NOT hurt their kids.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Berzerker
Ned -

The alternative in that hypothetical was David having to murder an innocent to prevent the murders of 5 people who are innocent. David didn't say it was moral to sit by and allow a murder to occur. So much for this "flaw"...

Berzerker, David said,

My position is more of something like this: I value liberty, and as such I will not knowingly violate the liberty of any individual, even if it means someone else violates the liberty of other individuals. I cannot control the actions of others, only my own, and I have an obligation to behave morally.

Granting your positon for the sake of argument, then I take it that the libertarian can violate the liberty of individuals if only to restrain those very same individuals from violation of the liberty of others.

In other words, Libertarians endorse drug laws, for example. People who do drugs become addicts who then harm their families and perhaps others as well. Because there is a casual connection between drugs and harm, their regulation is moral.

Libertarians would also, I believe, support laws against individuals exploding nuclear weapons in cities. An absurd example, true. But extendable to a ban on possession of firearms in cities.

But I believe Libertarians actually believe that drug laws violate liberty even though the use of drugs causes harm. Therefor, I think my original interpretation of David's statement is accurate.

[Ned]

Originally posted by David Floyd


I don't know. It's your example - you tell me.

The act of using drugs doesn't hurt their kids, though, and going by the only information you have given me, the parents do NOT hurt their kids.

David, I was a juror in a trial where both the mom and dad were heroin addicts. You had better believe that their kids were harmed. This is no joke.

The only way a person should be allowed to be a drug addict is if they are isolated from society. Otherwise, watch out.

[David Floyd]

David, I was a juror in a trial where both the mom and dad were heroin addicts. You had better believe that their kids were harmed. This is no joke.

Well, if the kids were harmed by their parents, that is obviously wrong. But let's not kid ourselves. A crackpipe isn't hurting anybody. Smoking crack only hurts yourself. The problem only comes in when you yourself hurt others.

That's fine that you were on a jury, but I'm sorry if you weren't able to separate an act from a crime.

[Ned]

Originally posted by David Floyd


Well, if the kids were harmed by their parents, that is obviously wrong. But let's not kid ourselves. A crackpipe isn't hurting anybody. Smoking crack only hurts yourself. The problem only comes in when you yourself hurt others.

That's fine that you were on a jury, but I'm sorry if you weren't able to separate an act from a crime.

David, you assume individuals have no obligations to others. They do, for example, when they are parents, spouses, employee, drivers, doctors, lawyers, judges, etc. Drug addiction prevents or diminishes one's capacity to perform one's obligations.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by One_Brow

All of these arguments are based on a horribly evil premise: that human life has a finite value. This would mean that if you add up 2, or 12, or 50 thousand, or 50 billion violations of free speech, you eventrually get up to the moral equivalent of murder.

However, if human life is considered to be of infinite value N, and the removal of it of value -N, than 5* -N is still -N, when N is infinite. IOWs, a five-fold infinity is no larger than the original infinity. Further, by killing an inocent yourself, your tarnish your own self to that degree, while removing none of the stain from the man who creates the threat.

While I might be wrong, I have the feeling David Floyd also sees human life as having infinite value, and has gotten to the right conclusion without the mathematical training.

There is no such premise. All that is being compared are rights violations.

If you can't see that the Holocaust was worse than Joe Bloggs killing his wife then I'm afraid there is no help for you.

[David Floyd]

If you can't see that the Holocaust was worse than Joe Bloggs killing his wife then I'm afraid there is no help for you.

See, the difference is, some people reduce morality to numbers. Other people think of morality in terms of right and wrong and personal responsibility and their own actions and how they all relate. You seem to be the first person. I'm the second person. And I think that's the problem.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by David Floyd


I agree that, in the abstract, five unjust deaths are worse than one unjust death. That doesn't mean, though, that I think causing one unjust death to prevent five is OK.

Bizarre. You are saying that your moral theory prefers the worse to the better. That to me signals contradiction and incoherence.

It may be a "worse result" for five people to die, but it is never my fault that they died, in our example. It would be my fault if I killed one person. You don't think my actions are relevant to the "state of evil" in the world - you seem to think that only hard numbers matter.

If you are given the power to decide whether five people die or one dies YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE no matter what you decide. You may not like it, and it may not be fair, but you have the power; it's your call.

But I strongly disagree. Being a moral person and desiring peace and the moral behavior of others means that you yourself must behave in a moral fashion. If you do not, you are being inconsistent and hypocritical.

That's exactly how Libertarians behave. They say it is worse to let five die, yet they commit themselves to allowing it.

Then not only would you go to prison for murder, but you would be morally accountable and responsible for that murder - the guy who called you didn't force you to do anything. You made your own decisions, and he made his.

He did force you to make a decision. Once he says, "it's your call, you decide", you cannot avoid choosing. You know that doing nothing ensures the death of five, so you have been forced to make a decision. The courageous thing to do is make it instead of trying to weasel out of it.

I agree. The law isn't necessarily moral - and often isn't. Bu laws against murder are always moral, because murder is wrong. Surely you will at least admit this?

Nope. If the traitors had managed to kill Hitler I would have given them a medal.

No you don't. You have the power to make your own decisions, and the random killer has the power to make his own decisions. If he kills five people, that's bad, and if you kill one person, that's also bad. They are two separate acts, both ultimately contingent upon one person's behavior.

Don't be silly. If he puts you in the position of having to decide, then you have to decide, you cannot escape the decision. The two are related since his putting you on the spot is what causes you to have to make a decision. It is no different than the fact of someone offering you a drink means that you either accept, refuse or ignore them. There are only 2 consequences, you get the drink or you don't.

No I don't. Again, the person with the gun can either pull the trigger or not. The power is entirely his. All I can do is behave morally, or not behave morally. Because I try to be a moral person, and wish to promote morality, I choose to behave morally.

Of course he can, but in this case you have good reason to believe he is sincered. Don't even try to say that we can never be sure what another can do - if you really believed that, life would be impossible.

In any case you still haven't told me how it is possible to behave morally while intentionally settling for something your own moral theory tells you is worse.

Again, you are just spreading the blame around. Let's leave blame resting where it belongs - that is, with the person committing murder.

Again you have the power to make a difference. You cannot escape it.

This is getting repetitive. I am not choosing evil, I am choosing to do good, by not committing murder. The person who chooses to commit murder is choosing evil.

It is getting repetitive because you say you are not choosing evil, yet you accept that killing one person is the lesser of two evils.

You are contradicting yourself in the most flagrant manner possible.

Your belief in and use of notions such as "net good" and "net evil", and things of that nature, seem to me to imply a common good argument.

No - you show me where I have assumed anything more than individual rights added together.

Actually, you are the one confusing legality and morality this time. Legally, it is worse to steal a million dollars. Morally, stealing a packet of crisps is still stealing, so in that sense, both are just as wrong.

And so here we have it - what you are saying is that every violation of a moral rule is simply bad, there is no distinguishing between murder and mass murder or even between stealing crisps and mass murder. Read what you have written; it is absolutely and utterly absurd.

Now, I'm afraid I don't quite follow your math - hate the subject, always have. All you seem to be doing, though, is to assign a quantitative value to life, and attempt to make moral judgments and decisions using math. If you want to do that, fine, but to me, morality does NOT boil down to math, rather, it boils down to right and wrong.

I'm numbering rights violations - I didn't assign a fixed numerical value to a life, all I said was that five violations are worse than one, which you seem to agree with.

[/QUOTE]You do not control what other people do, and their ultimatums do not transfer one iota of responsibility from themselves onto you. [/QUOTE]

I'm sorry but they do. There can be no argument about this, it is a matter of brute fact. If the killer says to you "I will kill five people unless you kill one" and you know he means it (i.e. he's going to do it if you don't), then whether five people die or just one depends on one thing and one thing only, your decision. He isn't transfering responsibility to you - he keeps his. What he does is give you additional responsbility.

Are you telling me that your decision has no effect in this situation? You have the call.

It's possible I misunderstood you - if you're telling me you aren't making a common good argument, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, even though it sounds as if you are.

The common goods libertarians often object to are ones that treat "society" as something over and above its members.

Wrong. My behavior is consistent with my belief, because my actions produce more liberty. Someone else's actions might produce less liberty, but my own actions produce more (if you want to think of it in terms of "morality production").

How is this possible. Five deaths is less liberty than one.

Most of your points, actually, can be answered with what I've been saying all along - I am not responsible for what someone else chooses, and they are not responsible for what I choose.

But in life, my excellent friend, the choices that others make often put us into uncomfortable situations. We might not like it, but that is what life is like. Others can force us into having to make heartbreaking decisions - you can complain all you like, but we still have to make them, and if we are courageous people we try for the best outcome.

Well, let's look at WW2 as two wars for the sake of simplicity. One was the Pacific War and one was the European War.

The Pacific War was a result of US immorality because of our land grabs during the Spanish-American War and Mexican War, and our bullying of the native Hawaiians. If we weren't in the Philippines, Hawaii, Guam, Wake, or, for that matter, on the West Coast, then I think we can all agree that Japan would not have attacked.

I think it would have come later rather than sooner in that case, but come it would have.

Granted, they are responsible for their own actions, and I am not trying to deny that. Their actions were wrong, and US actions leading to Pearl Harbor were also wrong (to say nothing of embargos, which are always wrong). But the key is, if the US hadn't been in the wrong FIRST, Japan wouldn't have been in the wrong SECOND.

Japan and the US were expansionist empires. The problem is that you only need one of these to start a war -so if the US had been nice they would have been attacked eventually.

As to Germany, we made no attempt to negotiate with Germany to get out of the war. Further, we committed acts of war against Germany by escorting British convoys, radioing the position of Uboats to the British (making us morally responsible for murder, if not quite legally), and, ultimately, active naval participation against U-boats.

Further, if we had not behaved immorally in WW1, and fought against Germany even though they were not hostile towards us in any way, it is quite possible that Hitler would never have risen to power. Again, I'm not holding the US responsible for German actions in WW2, I am holding the US responsible for US actions prior to WW2. If we didn't first act immorally, we would not have fought the war.

Who could have foreseen Hitler? Remember that Germany was the aggressor in WW1 and in WW2.

When the US was developing WMDs, no one had the capability to prevent that. Therefore, your specific example is not sound. I understand your general example, but for it to be valid you're going to have to apply it to a real-life situation - to the real world - and then I'll respond to it. Again, you can create any outlandish example you want to "prove" your argument, but unless it can be applied to the real world, it doesn't help you at all.

Why do I bother. Look it doesn't matter that it never happened. The test of a good moral theory is that it is not supposed to contain contradictions. The way to test this is to imagine various scenarios in which contradictions might occur. It doesn't matter if the example is not real - it is only an example. In fact all these examples illustrate a general point which is this: sometimes the actions of others, whether we like it or not, force us to decide between the lesser of two evils. Are you going to say that these things never happen? If not then get on with the argument - the examples are only illustrations of this problem.

What you described IS murder, because it IS a wrongful killing. Remember, though, I didn't use the word "wrong", I used the word "injust". A subtle distinction, but I fail to see how you can claim a random killing can ever be just, and I fail to see how unjustice can ever be right.

This is just swapping words. I don't see how this changes the problem at all - if i kill one person, that is unjust, if I kill five that is also unjust. So, again, do you think that five acts of injustice are worse than one?

Remember my canned response to this sort of argument? Good. That's my response to that point.

It's not a response. You are still contradicting yourself. If people keep effectively answering both "yes" and "no" to a question (which is roughly what contradicting yourself entails) one would expect that the question would be repeated.

It'd be much easier in your system, because it would not be considered wrong or illegal for someone to randomly pop one person if a would-be killer told them to.

I've news for you mate - IT IS NOW!

If a case like the one I described came to court the defendant would be judged to have been under duress and would have been let off. Go and read about various forms of diminished responsibility.

Acting morally is never worse than acting immorally. Murder is by definition always wrong/immoral, therefore murdering someone cannot ever be better than not murdering someone.

This is just hand waving. You've already admitted it can be worse so you are contradicting yourself again. You said that you agree "in the abstract" that five murders are worse than one - why don't you just come out and admit that they really are.

That's nice, but it's a whole lot more difficult to prove that someone you know nothing about is going to commit a heinous crime just on his say so.

In courts everywhere people do this sort of thing, so I see no difficulty.

No I don't. Only the trigger man does. He can choose to kill or not to kill - he can't choose to transfer responsibility for his actions to someone else.

Again, he does not transfer responsibility - he creates an additional one by putting you on the spot.

OK. Care to specify?

Nope - I'll keep my secrets for now.

I did come across them.

Then you don't appear to have understand them.

[orange]

Originally posted by David Floyd
See, the difference is, some people reduce morality to numbers. Other people think of morality in terms of right and wrong and personal responsibility and their own actions and how they all relate. You seem to be the first person. I'm the second person. And I think that's the problem.

Same question to you then. A hypothetical, so don't make it harder than it is...

You must make one choice or the other. Push a button, and two people die, or push the other and one person dies.

The rational person chooses the button that kills one person. If you would honestly choose randomly, then I don't understand you. Yes both would be tragic, yes you may say both would be equally tragic...but I can't believe that you would choose randomly if you knew that it was one death vs. two.