The Value of Human Life (a poll for BigSooner)

[sexypanda]

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I can not justify taking someone else's life even if it means letting someone I love die.

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I can justify taking someone else's life... even if no loved one's are involved: self-defense, euthanasia.

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Fair enough: I think good arguments can be made for killing someone in the two examples listed. Can you give a justification for killing someone who (1) hasn't infringed on your rights at all and (2) hasn't consented to your taking their life?

I don't think you have offered an example which refutes the previous poster's claim: that it is not moral to kill someone based solely on utilitarian calculations of what is best for society.

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Yes, defense of a friend is a perfectly justifiable defense for killing someone. That person would have neither infringed on your rights, nor consented to you taking their life. This can be said to be utilitarian because infringment on anyones rights is a harm to society and tears at the foundation of social laws. When someone infringes on anyone elses rights, they are a threat to the fabric of society, and thefore it is justifiable to stop them from doing so (appropriately according to the situation) for the good of society. If that person is trying to kill another, you are then justified in killing them.

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This is a very good example. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Unfortunately, this principle does not provide a justification for killing the African children in the scenario of the OP. (Not that this is a criticism of what you wrote, but that is what I was trying to get at with my conditions. But I obviously left out the possibility you mention here.)

I should replace (1) with
(1') hasn't infringed on anyone else's rights to the point of requiring homocide to defend the victim's rights

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Haha you happen to be in luck. I'm a first year law student who happens to be studying for his crim final and is exactly on the "justification" section.

The law allows 2 types of general defenses for criminal conduct: justifications (ex. self defense) and excuses (ex. insanity). A justification defense is a claim that the person did the crime (ex. murder) but due to special circumstances, society doesn't deem it wrong. An excuse defense is a claim that the person did the crime but conditions show that the person was not responsible for his act so he should not be punished. Society still says that the act was wrong, but the actor was in a state where he should not be held responsible for the act.

An example of a justification for murder where noone's rights were infringed is if you killed someone you reasonably believed was going to kill you, but you ended up being wrong. Even though noone's rights were infringed, and you were never in any threat, you're act of killing is still considered justifiable. An example of this is if a police officer shoots someone aiming a watergun at him, under the impression that his life was in danger.

[sweetjazz]

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I can not justify taking someone else's life even if it means letting someone I love die.

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I can justify taking someone else's life... even if no loved one's are involved: self-defense, euthanasia.

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Fair enough: I think good arguments can be made for killing someone in the two examples listed. Can you give a justification for killing someone who (1) hasn't infringed on your rights at all and (2) hasn't consented to your taking their life?

I don't think you have offered an example which refutes the previous poster's claim: that it is not moral to kill someone based solely on utilitarian calculations of what is best for society.

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Yes, defense of a friend is a perfectly justifiable defense for killing someone. That person would have neither infringed on your rights, nor consented to you taking their life. This can be said to be utilitarian because infringment on anyones rights is a harm to society and tears at the foundation of social laws. When someone infringes on anyone elses rights, they are a threat to the fabric of society, and thefore it is justifiable to stop them from doing so (appropriately according to the situation) for the good of society. If that person is trying to kill another, you are then justified in killing them.

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This is a very good example. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Unfortunately, this principle does not provide a justification for killing the African children in the scenario of the OP. (Not that this is a criticism of what you wrote, but that is what I was trying to get at with my conditions. But I obviously left out the possibility you mention here.)

I should replace (1) with
(1') hasn't infringed on anyone else's rights to the point of requiring homocide to defend the victim's rights

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Haha you happen to be in luck. I'm a first year law student who happens to be studying for his crim final and is exactly on the "justification" section.

The law allows 2 types of general defenses for criminal conduct: justifications (ex. self defense) and excuses (ex. insanity). A justification defense is a claim that the person did the crime (ex. murder) but due to special circumstances, society doesn't deem it wrong. An excuse defense is a claim that the person did the crime but conditions show that the person was not responsible for his act so he should not be punished. Society still says that the act was wrong, but the actor was in a state where he should not be held responsible for the act.

An example of a justification for murder where noone's rights were infringed is if you killed someone you reasonably believed was going to kill you, but you ended up being wrong. Even though noone's rights were infringed, and you were never in any threat, you're act of killing is still considered justifiable. An example of this is if a police officer shoots someone aiming a watergun at him, under the impression that his life was in danger.

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Really really good stuff. So it looks like (1') is still not good enough, so I am going to try:
(1'') hasn't infringed on anyone else's rights to the point of believing that the steps leading to homocide were necessary to defend the victim's rights

Good luck on your exam. [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

[sexypanda]

Given the new number 1, I don't think anyone can bring up a justifiable defense, but given your caveat of "belief" you are bring in a subjective standard. You then have to put yourself in the person's shoes to see if the belief was reasonable. You have to understand the peron's background and indivudual circumstances. But what if the person was racist and percieved every black person as a threat to him. He then is subjectively justified in killing any black person, but then we have to bring in some sort of objective reasonablness in ("social norm"). I don't think morality is truly only subjective or objective, but I think it can be defined as a counterplay between both standards. If you strictly believe in just an objective standard though, you'll end up coming up with the "wrong" decision in some circumstances.

[sweetjazz]

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Given the new number 1, I don't think anyone can bring up a justifiable defense, but given your caveat of "belief" you are bring in a subjective standard. You then have to put yourself in the person's shoes to see if the belief was reasonable. You have to understand the peron's background and indivudual circumstances. But what if the person was racist and percieved every black person as a threat to him. He then is subjectively justified in killing any black person, but then we have to bring in some sort of objective reasonablness in ("social norm"). I don't think morality is truly only subjective or objective, but I think it can be defined as a counterplay between both standards. If you strictly believe in just an objective standard though, you'll end up coming up with the "wrong" decision in some circumstances.

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Fair enough. We definitely need some sort of social norm, or else we can just all go around making excuses whenever we did something wrong as to why we believed we "had" to do it. There is no doubt that we will sometimes be forced to rely on the subjective beliefs of certain people to decide how to handle a moral issue in society (e.g. a jury deciding whether the police officer could have reasonably believed he was in danger from the watergun).

I tend to think we can generally outline objective principles regarding morality. But applying them to complicated situations in reality requires us to make a certain amount of subjective judgments as to how to weight the various principles at play. So I think I agree with you that there is a counterplay between objective and subjective.