Comments on: Libertarianism without inequality (4)

By: john mcgeady

john mcgeady — Wed, 12 Nov 2003 18:13:48 +0000

Otsuka’s exception for warfare is a non-sensical cop-out that renders his deontology a self-contradictory mess. Let’s review: there’s a person and, according to Otsuka, he may not morally kill an innocent agressor. But let’s say there are 2 people, and they call themselves a “nation,” and they call their impending encounter with innocent aggressors “warfare,” then Otsuka says they MAY morally kill innocent aggressors, because the “price” would be too high otherwise. So all you have to do to override the “deontological constraints” Otsuka painstakingly presents (i.e. his whole damn moral philosophy), and to start using situational (and of course completely subjective) cost-benefit analysis to determine whether you can morally kill someone, is to move from an “I” to a “we.” What kind of moral standing does a collective have anyway? It’s an abstraction, as are its interests. It’s moral agency derives from the aggregate or deliberated moral will of the persons in the collective. Yet Otsuka treats its moral interests as more fundamental and worthy of exceptional cost-benefit analysis than the very real moral interests of a very real person. Otsuka, rethink.

By: Michael Otsuka

Michael Otsuka — Tue, 11 Nov 2003 23:24:39 +0000

Here’s what I say about soldiers: ‘Warfare creates an atmosphere of emergency and catastrophe in which ordinary deontological constraints begin to lose their grip. If we allowed ourselves to be defenceless in the face of a malevolent enemy leadership that operates through the agency of [Innocent] Aggressors or protects itself and manipulates its opponent through the use of innocent shields and hostages, then the constraint against the killing of [Innocent] Aggressors would be observed at too high a price.’ (LWI, p. 82, n. 29) The last sentence is relevant to Chris’s case of a child trained from birth as an assassin. Just as it might be too costly to adopt a general policy of refraining from killing innocent human shields, it might be too costly to adopt a policy of refraining from killing innocent trained child assassins. If, however, we assume that the adoption of such a policy has no such bad consequences, I think it far from crazy to maintain that the child assassin’s target may not kill this child in self-defence. (Note that we must assume that this child has not permanently lost his capacity for moral agency. He can, in other words, be rehabilitated into a morally decent human being.) What’s the morally significant difference between this case and a case in which the only way to prevent a morally responsible adult assassin from shooting someone is to kill his innocent child? I defy the reader to provide a convincing answer to this question.

By: Antoni Jaume

Antoni Jaume — Tue, 11 Nov 2003 23:13:44 +0000

As I see it, it is always bad to kill someone. Now maybe there is some cases in which one has no other choice to avoid that one or another individual is killed. Then what we should seek is if one has taken apropriate mesures to avoid such situation. DSW

By: Dick Thompson

Dick Thompson — Tue, 11 Nov 2003 19:28:52 +0000

Is he able to discuss the case of soldiers in combat? Are the opposition soldiers (who may have recieved strong training and even upbringing to reduce their full scope of moral agency) fair game?