Letting someone die is just as bad as killing them.

My opponent has given simple justification for why he condemns person X's actions in his 2nd scenario (which I shall refer to as scenario B): THE CONSEQUENCES ARE EQUAL, THUS THE MORALITY OF THE ACTIONS ARE THE SAME. let me give a even more stark example of why this is false: Scenario A: You shoot an sick African kid in the head Scenario B: The sick African kid dies of TB, because you didn't donate any money for the simple medicine he needed to live. The fact is, these two actions are not MORALLY THE SAME! The African kid may have died anyways, the key difference is YOUR role in the person's death. In scenario A, YOU ACTIVELY assisted in the person's death, while in scenario B, you DID NOTHING! The key difference is YOUR ROLE in the actual death. In his scenarios, my opponent has a key difference between the two scenarios. In his first scenario, person X is actively PARTICIPATING in the killing, while in the second scenario person X is inactive. My position is that the actual participation warrants more moral blame than inactivity. My opponent is not taking into account YOUR ROLE!!!! He merely cites the consequences of your actions. BUT IT IS LOGICALLY CLEAR MORALITY IS NOT WHOLLY ABOUT CONSEQUENCES!!!! Contention 1: Action =/= inaction. Here, I tried to show the moral impact of the two actions are not the same, and I provided example of you seeing your friend cheating and the two choices you could have made 1) Help him cheat or 2) Stay silent. Here, I postulated that the two actions are not morally equivalent, and he offered some very confusing arguments as to why my example and his are different. ---"This is slightly different, because in the second situation, you are furthering his cheating, and in the first, you just let it be" And are the two scenarios you're describing not the same thing? The first situation, you're participating in the murder (I.e furthering his cheating), and the second, you're just "letting it be". ---"It would be the difference between say, letting 10 people die, and killing 11 people. Scenario produces a worse consequence." This is not the point, the point is the whether the moral consequences between the two actions are equal, which in this case, they're not. Furthermore, I do not see how this statement deals with my helping friend cheat and not helping your friend cheat…I am not advocating killing anyone.. In my example, there is a stark difference between the two actions. --- "Even if we assume the outcomes do end up the same, then they would still be different, as acting to stop your friend from cheating could damage your friendship, and cause more harm." The outcome does not matter in my example. It is the MORALITY of the person's actions that matters. Furthermore, telling on your friend is not an option that was given in my scenario. The consequences do not matter because the morality of helping your friend cheat is considerably worse than not telling on him. If you somehow disagree with the actual moral difference between the two actions, please give some reasons. His arguments have no direct link towards my example. The simple fact is, in my analogy, the MORALITY OF THE TWO ACTIONS ARE DIFFERENT. Contention 2: Consequentalist interpretation needs an action: " The action was passive approval of the child's death, failure to act in favor of the child. It is an action, so I can give judgment." WHAT WAS THE ACTION? The failure to do an action is not an action, it's called an INACTION! INACTION IS NOT ACTION. As said by my opponent, it was "passive approval". If it was "active approval", we could judge the morality of it, but it was passive, connotating that NOTHING WAS DONE. Thus, we cannot pass moral judgment on it. The simple fact is, the conscious decision not to help the child IS NOT AN ACTION. An action is according to www.m-w.com is "a thing done". In this case, he has done NOTHING, thus, any moral calculus cannot be done on something that has never been done! Contention 3: ---Kant's example My opponent did not refute my deontological defense, but he refuted deontological ethics in general. He gave the classical example of: "A deontological stance will lead to bad ends happening, and being justified." i) A consequentalist interpretation of moral will lead to even worse things happening. For example, someone could justify killing 90% of the world's population because of the possible future harms (i.e global warming, starvation, nuclear war, overpopulation) that could result due to exponential population growth. What shall it be? 1 person dying to a immoral murderer? Or 5.4 billion people dying due to consequentalist morals? ii) The "murderer at the door example" is not in line with deontological ethics. It would take far too long to explain why it does not fit in the paradigm of deontological ethics, thus I shall refer to http://peasoup.typepad.com... to explain why the opposite choice (i.e to lie to the murderer) is infact in line with Kantian ethics. iii) A consequentalist interpretation does not tell us what is essentially moral and immoral. There is no bright line to separate what is moral and immoral, thus, deontological ethics is in this manner superior to consequentalist interpretations (i.e having a definite set of "moral" and "immoral" actions) Contention 4: moral correctness does not justify action Singer's article shows that something that is morally correct should be done, and he provides numerous justification for his thesis. However, it is readily clear that his thesis has not been adopted (i.e not everyone is donating 25% of their income to UNICEF) by the world. This could be due to various reasons such as greed, laziness, or just plain human nature. Whatever the case, the simple fact is, Singer's thesis (which states moral correctness = action) has been clearly rejected by average society (unless my opponent shows that American society donates 25% of its income to starving African kids). Along this line of logic, if society itself does not conform to the concept of "moral correctness = action", why should person X do so? He has no compelling reason to obey this moral concept that my opponent has forced upon him. My opponent has basically forced the concept that "moral correctness" somehow justifies an action onto person X in his 2nd scenario. This concept is unfounded and unjustified. If society itself does not conform to this ideal, why should person X? Human nature does not support altruism, thus, we should reject the notion "moral correctness = action" Contention 5: I don't think I articulated my point really well here, and I feel that my examples don't necessarily apply. In response to my grenade example, he said: "In this, you are allowed to run away, because your life is morally comparable to their's. Although it would be better if you killed yourself to save them, it is an unnecessary burden to force one to kill themselves." i)So in this case, it is morally justified to let 10 people die due to inaction, whereas in your scenarios, it is not morally justified to let 1 person die due to inaction? ii) Since when was one life morally comparable to 10 lives? It just isn't, the better moral action would be to jump on top of the grenade and save the 10 other soldiers. According to my opponent's consequentalist view and his premise that "moral correctness = action", it would be morally wrong to NOT jump on top of the grenade. Also, according to my opponent's premises, to run away (i.e not do the morally correct action of jumping on top of the grenade), the person would be committing a moral wrong PARAMOUNT to the killing of the 10 people. Yet somehow, in this case, my opponent says it's right to RUN away in this case, whereas, in his scenario, he says inaction = murder! How can you reconcile these two contradictions