[Aramike]

I looked up "murder" and it means an unlawful killing, as opposed to "killing" which of course means any killing lawful or otherwise. So you're right in saying that I used the wrong word. However, since since the killing in question would, as you know, be legal in your country and in mine, it is self-evident that "killing" is what I meant, so pointing it out is petty. Besides, you've already stated that the law has nothing to do with ethics and so the distinction is moot anyway.

I already pointed out (in the post you quoted) that I'm happy to change my statement to use the word "killing" instead of "murder". I assume you did read all of my post before hitting the quote button, yes? In which case, after taking the nonsense out of your reply, we are left with:

Actually, I completely understood what you were saying in that post. However, I felt it entertaining to point out the "petty semantics" comment, as you seem to be constantly whining about inflammatory comments.

This gave me pause for thought, and made me realise that the point I made about duty has three possibilities rather than two, those being: the duty to try to prevent harm by any means, the duty to try to prevent harm by non-harmful means only, and the lack of any such duty.

But I digress.

We're not talking about a circumstance where the murder can be prevented through non-harmful action, so I don't think the point is valid.

"Your intent was to allow a murder to occur"

No... unless the murderer was asking for my permission? In which case it's safe to say that I would deny it.

I disagree. Intent is not always premeditated by the person who's intent is in question. For instance, if someone were to throw a ball at you and you duck to miss it, you intended to duck to make the ball miss. More to the point, if you saw that person threw the ball at you and stood there while fully capable of dodging the ball, you intended upon allowing the ball to hit you.

Likewise, if you're in a situation where you're faced with a murderer threatening innocent lives, and you only possess a harmful solution to the problem but do not use it, you intended upon allowing the murder to occur.

But this next part is very interesting:

"a choice defines a form of proactivity"

This is a head-bender for me, so I'll let you do the hard work for me:

Huh? We can be cordial now? Cool.

Heh, thanks.
Tis strange that you wouldn't discuss any of these things in PM, though.

I wouldn't mind discussing these things in PM, but that wasn't at all what we were discussing. We were just nitpicking at one another over trivialities (something I can be very good at but tire of quickly).

By the way, do you realise that you just agreed with Letum? He wasn't saying he should go and spend his life trying to do as much good as possible. He was saying that SB's post implied that he should and was therefore nonsense.

Indeed, I know what he was saying. But, I don't think that is what Skybird meant, and I know it isn't what I meant as the situation Letum posed is illogical to the argument.

The problem here is that the discussion is not focused. Before one can discuss whether or not being a soldier is moral, we must agree on what defines morality. For me, morality is defined through a subjective form of deontological ethics combined with logical causality. To apply that to my example, the murderer who's actively threatening another life forfeits his moral prerogatives by doing so. While ethics will dictate to others that the solution causing the least harm is PREFERRABLE, morality will ALSO dictate that resolving the situation is imperative. Therefore whatever the solution is, its morality is dictated by whether or not the MOST PREFERRABLE solution POSSIBLE is used.

Remember when you challenged my use of the term, "certainly" (which I still stand by)? The irony is that the argument that any harm caused is immoral is a statement of a certainty as well. I disagree with that because I find that ALLOWING harm by ommission of action is immoral, and therefore such a certainty would fall into that unresolvable feedback loop yet again, and render the argument pointless.

So, the point of contention becomes this: why do you believe that, in ALL cases, causing harm in order to prevent harm is immoral?