Intentionally taking a life is morally equivalent to allowing a life to be lost.

"Here is the fallacy of this idea: Any voluntary/intentional killing is a decision which must be made. If you intentionally kill someone then you have a goal/intention. You DO care because you are attempting to take control over the flow of events. If you truly did not care, you would not take any action, because there would be no motive. You may not care about the ethical implications, but you still have some degree of intention over what happens, since you are acting on a set goal. An inaction, however, implies no goal, and therefore is truly free from morals." Letting die is a decision as well. But you don't care, because although you are aware that your actions, shooting off Uzis in malls will kill, you don't care. You are focused on the shooting part, not the killing part. Your goal is not to kill, you just know that you will kill by fulfilling your benign goal. "If he is completely unconcerned with the issue of whether his bullets will kill, then it is not voluntary. The man in your hypothetical is not voluntarily killing people, because that is not his goal, his goal is only to have fun randomly shooting his gun, and he is completely unconcerned with the matter of the people dying. He is not trying to kill people, but he is also not trying to not kill people, making it involuntary." The resolution says " He is intentionally doing an action that he knows will take a life. So effectively he is "intentionally taking a life" "Someone is given a simple remote with a big red button. When pressed they will receive one hundred dollars. There is a chance (we do not know how big a chance) that a random person somewhere MIGHT be killed as a result of the button being pressed. The person does not care whether or not someone dies, this is completely irrelevant to him. He presses the button a few times, but not out of any goal involved in homicide; nay, only the simple goal of getting money. The possible murder is therefore involuntary because he did not have the goal to kill someone. This is a simpler version of your mall scenario." Not really. He is still choosing to do an action that will almost certainly kill. Under your logic, if I shoot someone with a pistol simply because they might not get killed, I am not morally culpable for their death. And again they are intentionally taking a life. "First of all, you have now changed your scenario from it's original form. You originally stated "The bullets that fly out kill tons of people, but he doesn't care." That doesn't seem like a "conscious choice" to me, it sounds more like a side effect of another action he was taking. In your original scenario he did not make the purposeful decision, he merely killed people without thinking about it or caring, which means that you don't have a goal. However, a "conscious choice" does imply a goal very much." If he knew that his actions would take a life, it is intentionally taking a life if he carries out those actions. As he does not care about life, he being apathetic. "'1. having or showing little or no emotion: apathetic behavior. 2. not interested or concerned; indifferent or unresponsive: an apathetic audience.' Now here's the definition of 'intentional': '1. done with intention or on purpose; intended: an intentional insult. 2. of or pertaining to intention or purpose.'" That is not a contradiction. For example, I swerve my car into my next door neighbor on purpose, so that action was intentional. I was not concerned that she was killed. I was indifferent to her death. "I repeat that the scope of this debate is only concerned with intentional killings, and a killing done without goal or purpose, involuntarily, or as a trivial side effect of something else, is not within that range." I am choosing to kill. That is intentional. Even if my goal does not involve killing, it is my intention to kill in order to reach that goal. It is my intention not to save a life in order to reach my goal. It's the same construction. "The scenario of the car above actually fits better with the "letting a life be lost" category, since it was not an action but an inaction that killed. It was your lack of action/ your negligence to swerve." No, I chose to run them over, I intentionally allowed myself to take their life. "And even if this were a murder, than it certainly wouldn't be "intentional", it would be simply a mere side effect of you're not swerving." Murder is defined as intentional killing. "If it were intentional, you would think: 'I think I'd fancy killing this lad, I suppose I'll run him down with my lorry. Pip pip.' If it were apathetic, you would think: 'I don't really feel like swerving, so I wont'" If it were apathetic I would think "Damn, that stupid Richardson boy is playing chess in the middle of I-95 again, I don't really feel like swerving, so I guess I'll have to kill him, oh well." I intentional took a course of action that killed the Richardson boy. I took it simply because I didn't care if he died, and it was much easier for me to do.