ruby sparks
Contributor
I strongly doubt there is anyone here who would say it is not wrong to kill purely (only) for fun (or pleasure, perhaps, which may be a better word)*.
The first, possibly obvious caveat would be that we are talking only about living things. A falling rock may kill someone or something but.....we assume rocks can't experience pleasure.
Now, there might be some who say that it is not morally wrong for at least some non-human species (to kill, for whatever reason), so that would be the second (possibly also obvious) caveat. It only applies to humans.
Third, there might be some who say it is not morally wrong for a human to kill a non-human purely for pleasure (some gun sports enthusiasts for example, or many people who squash a fly) so that would be the third caveat. It only applies to humans killing other humans.
With those caveats in place, the first thing we can say is that it is not, as far as we know, objectively or independently morally wrong, using the definition of either as meaning 'not dependent on the mind for existence; actual'.
(So morality is a mind-thing, as far as we know. I think I would prefer to call it a brain-thing, since this avoids the issue about what a mind is and whether it's separate from a brain. It might be even better to either call it a central nervous system thing or even a thing (feature, characteristic) of living things with central nervous systems. In other words, it is a psychological thing, a sense, an emotion, instinct, intuition, rationalisation, thought, belief, opinion, judgement or attitude, or possibly a mixture of all of those)**.
I think the second thing we can say is that it is not universally true (among humans) because there are (I believe) those who do not think (believe, intuit, emote, rationalise, etc) that it is morally wrong. Perhaps they are sadists or psychopaths or people with an unusual death-wish for themselves, or insane, or something along those lines. Some might call them evil, or flawed, or possibly they are in the strong grip of a certain ideology (involving supernatural beliefs or otherwise) which affects their thinking. We might say they lack key components, such as deliberate intent, or knowledge (of moral issues). They are exceptions to the norm, but they are part of the set of all humans, so the characteristic (thinking that a human killing another human purely for pleasure is morally wrong) is not universal (using the definition, 'relating to or done by all people or things in the world or in a particular group; applicable to all cases') to humans.
So what are we left with? We could say that nearly all humans think (with what I would call certainty) that a human killing another human purely for pleasure is, without question, morally wrong.
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I think after that we could introduce some situational modifiers, which might affect how wrong it is held to be (by those who hold it). Such modifiers might include....whether it's 'me' either doing the killing or being killed (self-interest bias is a well-known skew on moral judgements), or whether the killer or person being killed is in my ingroup or my outgroup (my friend or enemy) or whether or not they are my biological kin. Another modifier might be to do with the unpleasantness (suffering) involved and possibly also the degree to which it is immediate and 'hands on' (subjects in experiments seem to be able to consider killing someone more readily if it involves pushing a button remotely, etc. Personally I think this is where the capacity for empathy comes importantly into play). Another possible modifier might be the degree or perceived degree of the likelihood or otherwise of being observed or detected by other humans. It might matter if the killing was accidental, or done in the heat or spur of of the moment. It may matter if the person being killed was or was considered wholly innocent as opposed to guilty of something terrible.
But none of those modifiers seem to affect the basic, widespread judgement of wrongness, only the degree of wrongness attributed to it.
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I would like to add that is my opinion that all moral judgements reduce to non-moral facts. In other words, if we seek to explain why a moral sense exists, we will eventually get down to biological, chemical and physical causes which are themselves amoral, and which play out in living things during evolution by natural selection, which is an amoral process.
Thoughts, anyone?
Feel free to reply only to one part. It's a long-winded OP.
* Whether any human has ever killed purely for pleasure or not, is imo debatable. I would tend to strongly doubt it. It may, in the end, be a hypothetical scenario. Which is potentially quite a big problem. If no one has actually ever done it, does it render any discussion on it irrelevant or pointless, because we would not be discussing the real world?
** It strikes me to add that I would say that there are at least precursors to (what humans would call) moral behaviour (and possibly instincts, and possibly even emotions) in non-sapient species.
The first, possibly obvious caveat would be that we are talking only about living things. A falling rock may kill someone or something but.....we assume rocks can't experience pleasure.
Now, there might be some who say that it is not morally wrong for at least some non-human species (to kill, for whatever reason), so that would be the second (possibly also obvious) caveat. It only applies to humans.
Third, there might be some who say it is not morally wrong for a human to kill a non-human purely for pleasure (some gun sports enthusiasts for example, or many people who squash a fly) so that would be the third caveat. It only applies to humans killing other humans.
With those caveats in place, the first thing we can say is that it is not, as far as we know, objectively or independently morally wrong, using the definition of either as meaning 'not dependent on the mind for existence; actual'.
(So morality is a mind-thing, as far as we know. I think I would prefer to call it a brain-thing, since this avoids the issue about what a mind is and whether it's separate from a brain. It might be even better to either call it a central nervous system thing or even a thing (feature, characteristic) of living things with central nervous systems. In other words, it is a psychological thing, a sense, an emotion, instinct, intuition, rationalisation, thought, belief, opinion, judgement or attitude, or possibly a mixture of all of those)**.
I think the second thing we can say is that it is not universally true (among humans) because there are (I believe) those who do not think (believe, intuit, emote, rationalise, etc) that it is morally wrong. Perhaps they are sadists or psychopaths or people with an unusual death-wish for themselves, or insane, or something along those lines. Some might call them evil, or flawed, or possibly they are in the strong grip of a certain ideology (involving supernatural beliefs or otherwise) which affects their thinking. We might say they lack key components, such as deliberate intent, or knowledge (of moral issues). They are exceptions to the norm, but they are part of the set of all humans, so the characteristic (thinking that a human killing another human purely for pleasure is morally wrong) is not universal (using the definition, 'relating to or done by all people or things in the world or in a particular group; applicable to all cases') to humans.
So what are we left with? We could say that nearly all humans think (with what I would call certainty) that a human killing another human purely for pleasure is, without question, morally wrong.
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I think after that we could introduce some situational modifiers, which might affect how wrong it is held to be (by those who hold it). Such modifiers might include....whether it's 'me' either doing the killing or being killed (self-interest bias is a well-known skew on moral judgements), or whether the killer or person being killed is in my ingroup or my outgroup (my friend or enemy) or whether or not they are my biological kin. Another modifier might be to do with the unpleasantness (suffering) involved and possibly also the degree to which it is immediate and 'hands on' (subjects in experiments seem to be able to consider killing someone more readily if it involves pushing a button remotely, etc. Personally I think this is where the capacity for empathy comes importantly into play). Another possible modifier might be the degree or perceived degree of the likelihood or otherwise of being observed or detected by other humans. It might matter if the killing was accidental, or done in the heat or spur of of the moment. It may matter if the person being killed was or was considered wholly innocent as opposed to guilty of something terrible.
But none of those modifiers seem to affect the basic, widespread judgement of wrongness, only the degree of wrongness attributed to it.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I would like to add that is my opinion that all moral judgements reduce to non-moral facts. In other words, if we seek to explain why a moral sense exists, we will eventually get down to biological, chemical and physical causes which are themselves amoral, and which play out in living things during evolution by natural selection, which is an amoral process.
Thoughts, anyone?
Feel free to reply only to one part. It's a long-winded OP.
* Whether any human has ever killed purely for pleasure or not, is imo debatable. I would tend to strongly doubt it. It may, in the end, be a hypothetical scenario. Which is potentially quite a big problem. If no one has actually ever done it, does it render any discussion on it irrelevant or pointless, because we would not be discussing the real world?
** It strikes me to add that I would say that there are at least precursors to (what humans would call) moral behaviour (and possibly instincts, and possibly even emotions) in non-sapient species.
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