TOC Round 2: Murder is, in general, just.

Thank you for your wonderful argument. "VALUE: Relief of suffering; suffering is generally accepted as an awful phenomenon. The individual is hurt in some way, unjustly, and simple morality holds that relieving pain is a good, moral, just thing to do." Well, then my VALUE: Deprivation of pleasure; pleasure is generally accepted as an awesome phenomenon. The individual is gratified in some way, and simple morality holds that allowing people to live their lives in pleasure is a good, moral, just thing to do. A. Counter-Arguments "AI. To live is to suffer." My opponent's first argument is that to live is to suffer. True, life sometimes includes suffering; however, life also includes pleasure, which cannot be ignored. My opponent's first source says, "Faith, art, love, friendship and mental attitudes are among the ways of minimizing and overcoming the cruelty of the world." Death is not listed. Suffering can be overcome by the above things, and many people have done so already. To deprive someone of their life that is no longer filled with suffering, but instead filled with pleasure, would be unjust. "In life, there is nothing we can truly accomplish..." However, this does not actually add anything to my opponent's argument. Just because life makes no real impact on anything, doesn't mean that death is preferable. One has even less influence in death, and death is eternal, while life is finite. Life is the only chance to actually enjoy anything. To deprive somebody of this one opportunity to impact the lives of others would be unjust. "In life, there is no real pleasure..." In the same light, there is no real suffering. We are simply manipulated by chemical hormones to perceive suffering. "Pain and pleasure, in the broad sense of these words, are respectively the negative and positive affects, or hedonic tones, or valences that psychologists often identify as basic in our emotional lives. The evolutionary role of physical and mental suffering, through natural selection, is primordial: it warns of threats, motivates coping (fight or flight, escapism), and reinforces negatively certain behaviors (see punishment, aversives). Despite its initial disrupting nature, suffering contributes to the organization of meaning in an individual's world and psyche. In turn, meaning determines how individuals or societies experience and deal with suffering." [1] This suffering comes from danger to subsistence. The nervous system simply sends pulses of pain to the brain to warn it of threats to the body, such as an attacking dog or a flame on the shoe. And so, both pleasure and pain are simply caused by hormones, so to dismiss one as meaningless is to dismiss the other, as well. However, because we feel both pleasure and pain as very real, they still allow us to experience, and hope to experience more pleasure than pain. "So, life is not good." My opponent only draws this conclusion from a completely pessimistic way, overlooking pleasure and calling it hormones, while aggrandizing suffering. "Philosophers, religious and secular, have further noted that life is but perennial, inevitable suffering..." The satisfaction comes from those hormones my opponent previously mentioned. As does the suffering. Sometimes, life is bad. Sometimes, life is good. The goal of life is to make life good more often than bad. If you want evidence, listen to Video 1 http://www.youtube.com... (3:15), although you really should listen to the whole thing). "But if it doesn't work out, there'll never be any doubt that the pleasure was worth all the pain." - Jimmy Buffett I ask you, my opponent, if somebody just declared that all of the pain in the rest of their life would be worth the pleasure of what he was about to do, would murdering that man be just? "AII. Ending suffering is morally upright..." Again, I can turn this around so that it negates itself when it comes to life: Ending pleasure is morally wrong. The ending of pleasure is inherently wrong. While pleasure may distract from other duties, pleasure is a gift to be enjoyed. General morality holds that pleasure and enjoyment should be maximized. Elimination of pleasure is a horrible step in moral wrongness. "AIII. To murder is to relieve life, and therefore to relieve suffering..." I wave my magic wand, and: To murder is to end life, and therefore to end pleasure. To relieve pleasure is generally a horrible, despicable, terrible, unjust thing to do. Therefore, the resolution is negated. It should be fairly obvious by now that pleasure and suffering are two sides of the coin of life, and one generally cannot be completely eliminated without eliminating the other, although most consider the pleasure to be worth the pain. (See Jimmy Buffett.) As for my opponent's syllogism, the only problem is that it assumes that life is suffering, while life is actually a combination of both suffering and pleasure. To end pleasure is morally wrong, so by continuing the syllogism for pleasure rather than suffering, one would conclude that murder is both just and unjust, which is logically impossible. Therefore, it depends on whether or not the relief of pleasure was worth the relief of suffering. In most cases, it is not. "There is no such thing as an afterlife..." The case against an afterlife is a bold one, although it is backed by no evidence. There is no evidence against a supernatural soul living on beyond the death of the natural nervous system, and as an afterlife would generally be supernatural, we are unable to draw any definite conclusions. "In all cases, the individual benefits from this nirvana." Nirvana is the lack of pleasure and lack of suffering, although my opponent finally chooses this time to be the optimist. Now, consider this situation: you are told that you will enter a room and play a game in which you either receive pleasure or pain for one week, then step out and spend the rest of your life doing and thinking about absolutely nothing. However, you can step out of this room at any time. Will you end this one chance to actually experience something, or would you rather just go right on into nothing, and had you the ability to think, you'd regret not using your one chance in a better way? "Further, no objection can deny my syllogism." I had one objection, that the premise was incomplete in its assumption, therefore invalidating the entire syllogism. Now, allow me to introduce one more thing before I had over the debate to my opponent. B1. Murder Causes Suffering in Others [2] This suffering is also known as mourning. When somebody that you were close to dies, you feel pain and suffering, missing their presence. Therefore, in addition to the near-neutrality of the murder in question, there is also the additional suffering that it causes to others. C. Syllogism 1. To cause suffering is morally bad. (Inverse of AII, also note that my negation only applied to life, and not suffering caused by murder) 2. Murder almost always causes suffering. (NI) 3. Murder is almost always morally bad. (Substitution, lines 1 and 2) 4. Murder is almost never morally good. (Inverse of 4) 5. Something is just if and only if it is morally good. [3] 6. Murder is almost never just. (Substitution, lines 4 and 5) This syllogism is even more solid than my opponent's, as it does not have the flip-side of pleasure. The resolution is negated. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org... 2. http://en.wikipedia.org... 3. http://www.merriam-webster.com...