Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainYooh
"Life" by itself has no universally-determined or universally-agreed value. The deviation of this value would be extremely broad, because it exists only empirically; thus, subjective and impossible to prove objectively. You and GGG argue that ANY life has the same value, which supersedes the value of ANY property. I argue that this position is nonsensical, unsupportable and self-aggrandizing. Value of bomber's life plummets to zero at the moment he points that grenade at someone's house. (I could bring the argument of your little sister playing in the backyard, like you did, but we are trying to keep it civil, right?). What the bomber might do after he is released from prison for good behaviour is irrelevant. It could be disenchanted teenager, an anarchist, a religious fanatic, a cheated husband, a mentally deranged drug addict or a serial killer - also irrelevant. At that moment, property owner's decision to react is made in milli-seconds and is acceptable/understandable, whatever it is. Ethics has no time to enter the decision-making process. Nor it should.
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Ethics and morality are the undercurrent of our decision making, saying they have no place in the decision making process is (as you said), nonsensical and unsupportable. That doesn’t mean every decision someone makes (especially at the heat of the moment) is ethical, people make unethical decisions with no ill-intent all the time. This entire thread is talking about the ethics of the decision, keep up! lol
And your idea that as soon as a bomber throws a bomb, the value of their life goes to zero, is also nonsensical and unsupportable by any argument, otherwise I assume you would have already presented an argument that shows that is universally true. The value of our life is not determined by individual actions. I guess you could argue that the value is determined by the cumulative good va the cumulative bad, but then someone could just as easily say that the bomber built ten houses for free before he bombed the one house, and you’d have to accept the good outweighed the bad (and thus, he still held a valuable life).
I think you’re failing at approaching this position because you’re too caught up in details and you’re confusing ethics and morality with decisions you might make. What if my little sister was playing in the backyard? Well, assumably she would be killed, so that’s an entirely different situation than life vs property, that’s life vs life and property, so ethically it’s at least neutral I’d think. The purpose of changing the bombers identity isn’t a lack of civility, it’s to change your perception of the bomber to allow you to make a better logical judgement. Saying “bomber evil! life has no value!” is pretty poor reasoning and pretty mindless, it’s fairly easy to justify all of your actions by pretending you acted against your own subjective view of evil and things without value.
I don’t know why you’re taking this personal and talking about self-aggrandising or having to keep things civil. It’s a philosophical discussion, there are no real stakes. Nobody is sending a bomber for you to make a decision on, relax. Working through these things just helps people understand the ramifications and the moral weight of decisions when there are real stakes.