<p>“So, he obviously believes that he can kill people. The mob obviously believes that he can kill people. Since his aim is to make all criminals afraid, we can reasonably conclude that most of society believes that he can kill people.”</p>
<p>There are a lot of lies that most people believe. All that can be drawn from that is that it is believed by those mentioned in the hypothetical situation that he is killing. Situations have occurred where someone believed they killed someone else, and later found out that their death was caused by something else unrelated to themselves.</p>
<p>Now, if we’re looking at a theory of knowledge issue, where your claim is that if something is generally believed to be true, that is what we ought to define as truth, then I don’t know how to combat that. If I assumed that were true (which I don’t), and assumed that it really was “generally” considered in this hypothetical world that he was killing people, then I can see how it is reasonable to say you can know the man was killing people. However, if you were getting at something else, I don’t see it yet. And if that is what you were getting at, I just disagree.</p>
In this case, that seems terribly unlikely given that the test has been repeated many times with the same result.
That’s exactly what I’m saying. Let’s look at what we know:</p>
<ul>
<li>The man does not have the authority of the State.</li>
<li>Society believes that he is “killing” these people.</li>
<li>Society’s laws outlaw such “killing” by an individual.</li>
<li>A number of people believe that this “killing” is both occurring and wrong and wish to apprehend him.</li>
</ul>
<p>It doesn’t matter what “killing” is. If he is not part of the State, he does not have the right to do anything more than capture the criminals and turn them over to the justice system for trial. Same goes for the mob. If it is illegal to “kill”, society has a right to prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law.</p>
<p>You can go right back to post #3 by TCBH. Under a government accepted by society at large, the social contract is operational and he does not have the right to enforce his interpretation of the law or determine guilt himself.</p>
<p>I don’t want to argue about whether he should be arrested or killed or if he’s being moral or any of that. This whole argument is about what killing it, and whether the man is doing it. I will agree that the legal system of this hypothetical society should try him for some form of “killing” (murder for instance) but that doesn’t mean he is actually killing, just that they think he is.</p>
<p>If a government fails to uphold its part of the social contract, if it is so weak and spineless that it can no longer effectively guarantee the safety of its citizens, isn’t this man perfectly within his rights to withdraw from society and form his own law?</p>
<p>Legal rights or moral rights? And even then, one would have to establish that the law he is creating is in itself just for these even to be a valid line of thinking.</p>
<p>If you read the OP, the man lives in a normal society, so there is no such failure on the part of the government. And if he decides to form his own law, he wouldn’t have any right to enforce it on others.</p>
<p>If he legitimately writes “all the world’s mass murders”, and the book works, he’ll kill himself because he just committed mass murder himself. Fail Paradox is Fail.</p>
<p>Neither side is more morally ‘correct’ than the other, because morals aren’t absolute and we cannot pretend they are.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think that justice has to do entirely with ensuring that the rights of individuals are protected. Because this man is trying to pass a moral judgement on the world, rather than ensuring that people’s rights are being protected, he can’t be carrying out justice. Depending on the motivation, I would say that the people trying to kill him are at least as ‘just’.</p>
<p>But in any case, he isn’t really protecting individual liberties if he’s going around zapping (figuratively speaking) people…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It may be moral for him. It’s not necessarily moral for anyone else. The point is, however, that it’s unjust. He’s unnecessarily depriving people of the right to life, and only doing so because he decided that his morals are superior to the rest of the world (as opposed to being equally valid).</p>
<p>A small note: when I say individual rights, I mean the rights to life, freedom and all that schnazz.</p>
No, that isn’t the argument at all. There’s nothing wrong with arguing tangential points, but they do have to tie back into the OP’s questions at some point. If you restrict yourself solely to the OP, it is obvious that the question is whether such actions are moral. The killing is assumed.</p>
<p>More importantly, you really aren’t bringing anything to the floor with that line of argument. The only reason your logic functions even within the narrow, arbitrary bounds you set is because the OP describes a method of killing that is not logically consistent with our understanding of the world around us. Your argument really comes down to the fact that it is not possible in our world to directly cause death by writing in a book, which is entirely obvious and uninteresting to argue about. The same scenario would occur if you shot someone and then asked people who had never heard of guns whether you killed him - the only reason there is even debate is because of ignorance regarding the available technology.
Most social contract theorists return to majority rule at some point. In other words, individuals do not have the right to jump out of the contract whenever they please. If they could, criminals could never morally be prosecuted. The point is that society at large must reject the government before the social contract ceases to be operational.</p>
<p>actually, he needs a name and face. “all the world’s mass murders” wouldn’t kill a damn thing. </p>
<p>Really, he’s morally wrong no matter how you look at the issue because an agreeable moral is that “killing is wrong”, especially when killing in a god-complex. I don’t care if sacrificing life was morally right to the aztecs, it’s still a wrong. A society where killing blindly just won’t last long and most people can agree on that. </p>
<p>What I never understood about this guy and story is what his longterm plan was? I mean, okay, kill off the big sins like murderers and rapists by dramatic god-like mysterious heart attacks, then kill off smaller sins like liars and thieves with a sickness, leaving only good. But he’s just human, with a human life span, and he’d die eventually. What then? If people we’re only being good for fear of untimely death, once they see heart attacks stop, once someone gets a life time sentence and doesn’t die instantly, won’t they just go back to their old ways? Maybe even more so?</p>
<p>Also if he ends up killing all the good people who were against his plan, trying to stop him, wouldn’t that leave society with that many less good people? So you’re stuck with a society of once fearful criminals now free to do what they want and extremist religious fanatics (from those who ended up worshiping this guy) and no batman. Batman being the good people with integrity that stuck to their belief against the killer, rather than submit to this guys fear.</p>
<p>I say the question is irrelevant because as power increases the probability of it being abused approaches one. Thus it is almost certain that the man would misuse his power, and thus act immorally.</p>
<p>oh god, we actually had this whole thing brought up in tok class once and everyone at first was afraid to admit that they were such a nerd that they saw the series but soon people were really getting into it and citing the show</p>
<p>I lmao’ed when I saw this thread and cannot believe people would argue on a topic based on an anime. I guess the title of this thread is the reason why it causes some people to argue seriously.</p>
<p>After looking through the first two pages of this thread, wow! People actually took this thread seriously.</p>