avevale_intelligencer

Correction

In the previous post I said that the only thing that mattered about Jared Lee Loughner and Timothy McVeigh was that they wanted to kill.

I was wrong. I'm sure many people have moments when they want to kill, and then they move on. So the *other* thing that mattered about them, that maybe mattered *more*, was that they saw no (EDIT: sufficient) reason not to.

Christians, and Jews, and Muslims, and atheists, and agnostics, and Hindus, and Buddhists (especially Buddhists, perhaps) all see (EDIT: sufficient) reasons not to kill. ()EDIT: as do pagans, of course, and worshippers of the Spaghetti Monster and anyone else I hadn't thought of.) Some reasons are given in religious scriptures, some arise naturally from the consensus codes of morality by which we live, some are deeply personal. They're all good.

Let me be very, very precise about this: nothing justifies murder. No political ideology, no sacred precept, no failure of justice, no crime, no iniquity, nothing. Murder is never justified. Not even in those rare cases where it becomes necessary, when even I would admit that there was no other choice. Never.

To see no (EDIT: sufficient) reason not to kill is to see no reason. It is to be lost. It is to be pitiable and dangerous at the same time. And it is true of too many people.

EDIT YET AGAIN: and just in case anyone was wondering, I do not believe abortion or contraception are murder.

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Personally, I agree with you - but let me pose a question. If one genuinely believes in an afterlife, and sees killing as sending the victim on to that afterlife rather than as a final The End and oblivion, does that make a difference? I don't have any such belief myself, and find it hard to follow the thought-processes of those who do, but it would seem reasonable that sending someone to "heaven" without their consent would be thought of as a lesser offence than totally destroying them.

I don't believe that you have any evidence that "they had no reason not to kill". They may -- and probably did -- have lots of reasons why they shouldn't kill, but those reasons were overruled by the reason they had to kill. Just as a person driving at 120mph down a country lane knows lots of reasons why they shouldn't do it, but their reason for doing it (to avoid being late, or even "for the thrill") is more important to them. If someone is really both capable of murder and knows no reason at all why they should not do it (I'm not convinced that the state is even possible, that it it is possible to get to a state where you know how to use a gun and have never been told that killing someone might get you killed or locked up, but it may be) then that person is not responsible for their actions because they are insane, or they have been brought up as a "killing machine".

And sorry, your statement that "Murder is never justified. Not even in those rare cases where it becomes necessary" (and you admit that there are some cases where even you would find it necessary) just does not make sense at all. If it is necessary then it is justified. I will happily support and respect a person who says (as you did up to that point) that murder is wrong absolutely, and sticks to it absolutely, but to say that it is both necessary and that it can't be justified won't wash.

I don't agree. Necessity is insufficient justification. What looks like necessity at the time can be the result of a whole series of wrong decisions. It might seem necessary, at some point in some bizarre and hopefully improbable future, for me to try to kill someone, perhaps to protect the Countess (though I would probably fail completely) but I am not so pragmatic as ever to imagine being able to persuade myself afterwards that I had done "the right thing" when I could have avoided being in the situation to start with.

If murder is wrong absolutely, then it's wrong absolutely. If it's right when it's necessary, then anything can be justified on those grounds. It's necessary that I take this old lady's jewels to buy myself another shot of heroin. It's necessary that I get this old man out of his flat so that my company can bulldoze it and build a car park. It's necessary that I stop this man taking my wife away from me. It's necessary that I show this bastard that nobody pinches *my* parking space. There can be no room for anything on the other side of the line, because if it once moves away from that far end of the scale it can slide all the way across.

There's a reason Nyronds have the deathblock, and there's a reason I'm opposed to capital punishment. You may disagree, but my reasoning makes perfect sense to me.

If necessity is insufficient justification, then the murder isn't necessary. You could choose to die (or watch others die) instead of doing the murder -- I would honour and respect that, as I honour and respect those many who were objectors in wars and many of whom did die for that.

The thing I will not accept is "necessary and not justified", it makes no more sense than "1=0". If it was not justified then it was not necessary, there is always a choice to avoid it.

Note that killing is not the same as murder. The latter is generally premeditated (thus giving a chance to think and to do it deliberately knowing (at least some of) the reasons why it is a bad thing), is usually against a person who is no direct threat, and is often done with greed or other gain in mind. Killing in self-defence, or in defence of others, may be considered necessary (or may be consequent to attempting to stop them but not intended), but by definition the person killed was guilty of initiating force and so take part of the blame for their own death.

I'm going to think about this some more. You may be right, but I'm fighting a really strong gut reaction allied to my firm belief that "necessary" and "justified" are not synonyms and therefore one can be true without the other. However, since I can't think of any other examples, I'll let it percolate a bit.

They are certainly not synonyms: There many things that are justified but not necessary, and that's the whole basis of forgiveness and redemption: A punishment for some given harm done is justified, but is not carried out because repentance and/or forgiveness makes it unnecessary. See also "suspended sentence", where a justified punishment is witheld as unnecessary, *unless* the criminal goes on to demonstrate an unwillingness to mend their ways (by committing a further crime or breach of the conditions of their sentence).

However, the question is whether anything can be necessary but not justified.

Also, I think from reading your pervious comment that there's some confusion between "apparently necessary at the time", and "actually necessary in the final (objective, omniscient) analysis (assuming there can ever be one)". [ETA:] Of all the things that might count as justification for an act, necessity is pretty much a clincher, PROVIDED you can prove the necessity is real, or at least that you had very good reasons for being convinced it was real.

Edited 2011-01-13 13:14 (UTC)

Yes, exactly, that's what I was trying to say. ^{But is this a suspended sentence?} It falleth from above _{like the TullimoreGentle Dew.}

I agree with you on the reasons to kill outweighing the reasons not to kill part.

I'm thinking about the other part.

I guess in my view, killing in self defense or in defense of another is justified, but I don't generally think of the term "murder" applying to that.

I did start to write something about the definition of murder (for instance, some people believe that killing a foetus is murder), but it got away from me and started rambling so I deleted it. In general, though, I agree with you, killing a person is not always murder and such killing is therefore out of the scope of Z's statement.

Having done a bit of thinking about that myself, I find the immediate trap of "if it's justified, it wasn't murder", and fail to get any further :(

Tangential semantics here: the Hebrew for the Biblical commandment which is often mis-translated as "Thou shalt not kill" is really "Thou shalt not murder". The difference being that murder is a planned act, usually with a motive of greed. For what it's worth.

There's more to the difference than that. For instance: by Biblical definition, it is not murder to kill an enemy soldier during a war, or to execute someone who has been condemned to death by a court -- both planned acts, and both often referred to as murder (or considered tantamount to murder) by some who consider said acts immoral.

Thanks - both of those are excellent points.

I was going to witter on about agreeing in general (weasel words there), but wishing to reserve the right to defend myself.

But then it occurred to me :: what is my moral stance if someone else says "In order to defend myself against you, Soren, I feel the need to make a pre-emptive strike."

If that person is entitled to their opinion, does that not, by my own argument, justify them (in their own eyes, which is all I'm going to have to go on when I'm dead) in killing me ?

I'm confused. But I'm still hanging on to my various items of self-defence, just in case.

I would say (my opinion) that a 'pre-emptive' strike is never valid. By definition, it is acting not on something which has actually been done but on a fear or assumption that it might happen. This is the basis on which I opposed the attack on Iraq, but supported that on the Falklands -- the latter was in response to an initiation of force by another country, whereas with Iraq there was merely a "feeling that they might do something".

The same applies on a personal level, as far as I'm concerned the person who initiates force is assumed to be in the wrong unless they can provide very good reasons (which will satisfy a jury or other collection of people representative of the society) why it was necessary. For instance, a mother using force to restrain a child which is about to (or likely to) run out into the road in front of a car is reasonable (and for that matter if I restrained you from doing the same it would be reasonable), but use of excessive force so that it caused damage might not.

This in general distinguishes a 'need' from a 'want'. I could say "I need a new guitar", but if I attacked someone to get the money to buy it I would rightly be condemned by almost all other people, because my actions were not proportionate to the level of need, and they would say (again correctly in my view) that no, I just wanted the guitar. If it were a loaf of bread to keep myself (or my family) from starving they might look on that as more justified (although probably not enough to save me from punishment).

If someone is pointing what looks like a gun at me, and expresses an intention to use it to kill me in the immediate future, I think I'm justified in going for a pre-emptive strike. If circumstances mean that the only pre-emptive strike I can make is by using the gun in my hand (reality intervention: I don't have one, and wouldn't know what to do with it if I had) to render them incapable of attacking me, then such is life, and if they didn't want it to happen, they shouldn't have made the threat.
I gather that the British police force agree with me. (Not that that means they're right, or I'm right, but it's a possibly useful standard of comparison.)

That's basically my position. Again with the caveat that I too don't have a gun, and am not likely to do so in any future which seems likely.

Thank you.

I *think* what I'm thinking of goes (something) like this

I am going to kill you because

* I believe that you are a threat to me

* because I believe that your actions ( as I interpret them ) or what I believe to be your beliefs or opinion give me a reasonable fear.

and

* because you (are obliged to) allow me the freedom of my beliefs

* I am therefore entitled to act on my beliefs in respect of my own life
* and (frankly (attribution acknowledged)) the lives of my wife, my maidservant, my maidservant, my ox, my ass, down to my house and the meagrest of my possessions (or deemed possessions)

And I'm *still* hanging on to my items of self-defence

How come you get two maidservants?

(I know, I know, one for the grapes and one for the soothing body rub...how is the sciatica these days?)

May I covet one of your maidservants? I won't do anything else with her, I just want to covet from a distance if you don't mind...

@both of them

The sciatica is bearing up, thank you.

Actually, if visual coveting is all you have in mind, I don't object; G*d (or evolution) made them beautiful, and a work of art isn't really valued unless it's ... well, appreciated.

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