I’d say murder has to be inherently wrong, because otherwise the only determinant is the law, which would then have no underlying moral or ethical basis. Proceeding along these lines, we’d be forced to conclude that arbitrary, nonsensical laws associated with outrageous and cruel punishments were perfectly acceptable simply because they are the law.
I didn’t see this post.
I’m selfish because…I care about others’ happiness?
Yes, that’s what I’ve been getting at. You seem to have a problem with that.
And please, don’t use the pronoun ‘you’. I would not kill somebody. Even if I did, it would fill me with angst and whatnot, making me unhappy. 
The thing is, rarely will you actually have a situation where there is absolutely no effect. In the OP’s situation, the mother would probably feel some regret and be charged for infanticide. Those are bad. Practically speaking, there would be no situation in which killing someone would have no effect.
And it would be a lot easier to argue my point if you told me what problem you have with my system. And should I start a new thread, or shall we continue this in here?
You don’t care about others’ happiness. You’ve defined human life as worthless unless other humans care about the life. Which doesn’t really make sense - if a human life has no inherent worth, why does it matter if the life is cared about?
Uh, I actually do have a problem with it.
It was a general you. Sorry about that.
Ah. So in effect, you would be wronging yourself by killing another person because it would make you unhappy, but you would not be wronging the person you killed by making them dead. Are you seriously telling me that’s not selfish?
I think I’ve been pretty clear about it.
Sure, I do.
Because a person’s worth is determined by the people that care about him. Just because it’s not inherent doesn’t mean that it can’t exist. The same thing applies to the OP’s question. “Is murdering people inherently ‘wrong’?” No, but in any real, practical, non-hypothetical situation it is wrong, just not inherently so. Basically what SentientMeat said.
Are you selfish because you don’t give all of your money to charity? You care about yourself. That doesn’t make you selfish unless you care about only yourself.
So let’s see here on a scale from -10 to 10
The victim: 0 because s/he’s dead. No happiness nor unhappiness.
Everyone else: 0 because they don’t care about the victim.
Myself: A negative number, not sure exactly how low because I would not like to kill someone.
0 + 0 + (-somesuch) = -somesuch
less than zero, so it’s bad.
Now let’s suppose a different scenario. I’m sadistic and take pleasure in killing, but the victim has family and friends. Same scale
The victim: 0 because s/he’s dead. No happiness nor unhappiness.
Everyone else: -50 because they loved the victim and are now sad. It’s less than -10 because s/he had more than one friend and family member.
Myself: 5 because I’m sadistic and derive pleasure from killing
0 + (-50) + 5 = -45
less then zero, so it’s bad.
Because you think I’m selfish?
Because you think murdering is inherently wrong?
I hope that I’ve been able to convince you that the former is false.
As for the latter, I don’t think I could convince you nor you me.
Yeah, but according to this logic, a psychopath who murders homeless friendless bums is increasing net happiness, and so should be encouraged.
Bum: 0, he’s dead
Everyone else: 0, since no one cares about the bum
Pyscho: +5
I have no idea how this applies to my question. You’ve created a scenario in which you could kill someone and it would only be bad because it makes you feel bad. To you, the human life you would be taking has less value than your own happiness.
You haven’t. I wonder if selfish isn’t exactly the right word, but you haven’t convinced me of anything.
Only happiness has value. A person can have ‘worth’ if they make others happy. If someone doesn’t make others happy, they have no ‘worth’. So a guy is killed. If no one cares about him then it is morally neutral. If no one cares about him but the killer can’t believe he actually just killed someone and feels bad the act is morally wrong.
Unless selfish means “caring about other people as well as yourself.”
OK, here’s the way to change the argument, even given Strinka’s axiom.
Why do you assign the dead guy a value of 0? Sure, he’s dead, so now he has a value of 0 happiness. But BEFORE he was dead, he probably had a positive happiness value. So he went from +5 to 0. That’s a net decrease in happiness.
Why does happiness have value? Why does it matter if people are happy? You’ve said their lives have no inherent value, so why are their feelings relevant?
I’m very glad our justice system doesn’t function like you do.
If the killer feels remorse, the killing was wrong, but if he is happy, the killing is morally positive. You already made this clear. You’re repeating yourself, not explaining things. What is the justification for all this?
You don’t care about other people, you care if they make other people happy. This is morally equivalent to “everybody else is doing it, so I will too.”
Although nobody’s ever made a supreme court claus out of it, all U.S. citizens are entitled to the rights of “life, liberty, and the persuit of happyness” so murder goes against the Constitution.
However, abortion is yet to be decided in my mind, because tiny tots aren’t U.S. citizens until they are born. I’d hate to draw a parallel cause I’d like the embryos to have the chance to grow up, but would the Constitution protect an immigrant that was murdered in his country if he was going to apply for a U.S. citizenship in 9 months.
I guess it depends on how moral and philosophical our leaders are.
People like being happy. People dislike being unhappy. How else would you value something less arbitrarily?
Happiness is good, unhappiness is bad. I expect that you won’t like that justification but that is as simple as I can say it.
Now, I think I see where you’re coming for this one. If I value happiness how can killing someone and destoying their ability to feel happiness ever again be neutral? Because, I don’t know that they will be happy again and I am also destroying their ability to feel unhappiness. For all I know their life would have been utterly horrible otherwise.
This is a very good point. I thought of this independently, just today. I just haven’t seen you post before now nor been able to post.
I agree. Killing someone who is happy is evil. Of course, that means killing someone uhappy is good. (I’m sure Marley23 will just love that.) But why do you say he probably had a positive happiness? I would say it would be roughly equivalent.
You’re just assuming that. In a sense I can’t blame you, because you have to assume that to make that system work. But it’s still pretty weak.
The reason being that people would rather be unhappy than dead.
If someone was so unhappy that they would be better off dead, they are perfectly able to achieve that state without your help.
Assuming what? That they won’t be able to feel unhappiness when dead? Yes, I’m assuming that but it seems reasonable. And if you assume they can feel unhappiness when dead, surely they can feel happiness too? If you were refering to the other sentence that you quoted - “For all I know their life would have been utterly horrible otherwise.” That is not an assumption; notice the first four words.
That’s a good point. Let me think about it.
No, I’m talking about the “for all I know” bit. It remains an assumption despite those words. It’s a kind of argument from ignorance - ‘I don’t know if they would be happy or miserable, so on the balance the odds are equally good and killing them is a neutral act.’ Anyway someone living a miserable life may still experience happy moments. Are you the one weighing the pluses and minuses here? If not, who is?
OK, I have thought about it and come to a conclusion. Now, I can’t speak for other people, because I don’t understand other people, but I can speak for myself. I would rather be uhappy than dead out of consideration of others. I believe that once I die I will never feel happy or unhappy again, which is better than unhappiness. However, if I die, those close to me will be unhappy. So, if my death wouldn’t affect anyone else I might think it better to die than be unhappy.
Why does someone have to weigh them? Quantum and relativistic physics aside, if I measure something, someone else measures it or no one measures it at all, it is still going to be the same every time. In the same manner there will still be a net good or bad caused by an action even if no one figures out what it is. Also, to clarify, an action’s morality is not determined by the difference between the happiness after the action and the happiness if the action hadn’t been taken, but rather between the happiness after the action and before the action. This is because we don’t know what would have happened. If what I said before seemed to indicate otherwise, that is because I, myself, was a bit confused about that point before. But no longer.
Now given that, it is possible to imagine a hypothetical situation in which killing is not wrong, however, in any practical, realistic scenario, that will not be the case.
I’m not trying to turn this into a quantum physics thing. I’m just asking- are you determining the happiness of the people in question, or are they?
Right, that’s what I said about arguing from ignorance.
It shouldn’t matter. If I were to determine their happiness, I would do that by asking them, yielding the same results
Yes, if one were comparing how they would feel after the action was done and if the action hadn’t been performed at all, but one is not. One is comparing how they feel before the action and after the action. No ignorance.
Do you know what the term means?