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That's an interesting response. I wonder if you getting caught up on the word "murder"? A nucleur missle is about to fire off and kill everybody in your count
by staticman2 5y ago
That's an interesting response. I wonder if you getting caught up on the word "murder"?
A nucleur missle is about to fire off and kill everybody in your country. You can only shoot it before it launches, missle defense can't catch it after launch.
You can preemtively destroy the missle, but an innocent child playing near the missle silo is going to be killed.
Do you stop the missle? The child's death will be called collateral damage. Nobody was "murdered".
- danbruc 5y agoThe nuclear missile is a worse example because there is already this element of hostility and self-defense in the scenario. You might be able to justify killing five million people in another country in order to prevent them from launching a missile onto your country that would kill a million of your people. [1] I have no idea what utilitarians have to say here, will they be okay with getting a million of their people killed because that is a smaller lose of utility than the prevention of the attack which costs five million lifes in the hostile country? [1] For simplicity ignoring all the complications of who wants to attack, probably the government or the military, and who would be victim of the prevention, probably military and civilians, and that you therefore might have to kill people that do not support or even oppose the attack.