Killing

Kidchameleon

Hi All,

Is it morally wrong to kill a person? Is it morally wrong to kill an animal? Is it morally wrong to kill an insect?

Ok so for me the first two are definite no no's but I find myself confused with the third...

Regards.

dny123456

It depends.

Would it have being wrong to kill Hilter, Mussolini, Stalin, Leo Szilard? Is it wrong to kill a rabbit if your child is starving. Is it wrong to clear a swamp killing all the insects living within, if the insects carry malaria which threaten the survival of humans? is not clearing the swamp wrong?

Maybe it depends...

nyarlothothep

Ant colonies actually go to war sometimes and employ interesting tactics which mirror what humans get up to. This is fascinating in itself. Do insects feel pain, do they have sentience albeit at a very very simplified level? What about the question of gradation? The life of a rabbit isn't as valuable as that of a human's according to our own moral fixture. So killing a rabbit to avoid a million human deaths would be the ethically better choice. Perhaps killing a million insects to save a human life would fall into this category. To complicate this I don't think anyone would agree that killing a person based on their level sentience is moral. For example I doubt many would agree with killing a retarded person or a 2 year old to save a physicists life. In this case you wandering into a messy and dangerous path close to the field of eugenics. Maybe its at a species/tribal level. In the case of the latter if you take some random situation, a community might say yes, its ok to kill a person belonging to x vilified tribe to save the life of someone within their own tribe. So common sense dependent on context would fail here. meh, I'll rely on the moral philosophers to figure it out.

Joycey

Kidchameleon wrote: »

Is it morally wrong to kill an animal?

Well chances are you create the conditions whereby animals are killed a couple of times every day through your consumption of meat. I dont see how you are any less responsible for the animals death if you create the demand which brings about their being "processed" and turned into food, than if you had done the deed with your own hands.

This is all presupposing you are not a vegetarian, but even then, unless you are really strict about not using animal products you probably have a leather belt/shoes, or have bought something at some time which called for the death of some animal or another.

I found an interesting article recently and posted it in another thread about animals and morality, I think its in the very last post in the thread and its not more then a page or two back in the forum...

Kidchameleon

Hi All,

Some very interesting reply's, thanks a mill!

Regards.

TheManWho

I think it depends on the scenario, you can't have an overall theory of morality in repect to killing. Human's are naturally onivorous, if we lived in the wild we would be hunting and killing, over time it is just the tools and scale that have changed. Killing for recreation is a different matter, although there are parallels in nature, I have often seen cats catching field mice and doing nothing but kicking them around, killing them and walking away. In that sense we could have a natural tendancy and lust for blood, it could be called dexterism, that sort of mental disposition can not fall under morals because it is involuntary.