Violence is Wrong

IntroductionI thank sdavio for his presentation and for flattering me with so many references to my prior arguments, lol. =)As it is, I will be presenting my own case before proffering a formal rebuttal. My case will be substantially different from my prior iterations. I reserve the right to properly rebut sdavio's case in future rounds. ArgumentsFirst, I will provide my own moral framework.Second, I will elaborate on the "nature" of violence.Third, I will demonstrate how violence fits (or rather does not fit) into this moral framework, and how it actually lies outside this framework.Moral FrameworkFor morality I will be using a utilitarian framework with a foundation of rational self-interest. This frames morality as a subjective quality that varies with each individual, with the key determinant of morality being the weighing of the desirability of one particular decision over another.Although rational self-interest may seem to preclude teamwork and other social elements, the opposite is actually true. It may be very rational and fully within one's self-interest to work in a group to accomplish tasks that one cannot accomplish alone. All members of this group thus benefit from the project's completion - this is commonly known as "win/win" scenarios and are prevalent in business environments. I will be using this teamwork element of my moral framework liberally, albeit in the negative, destructive rubric of violence.The "Nature" of ViolenceThe definition of violence that sdavio proffered can be broken down into two main constituents:A) Destructive acts irrelevant to human causality found in the environment (#3, 4 in his list), andB) Actions taken by humans to injure other humans (#1, 2). I will note that #B is very relevant to morality, whereas #A is not.I want to make this distinction clear because it is very easy to conflate the two. In fact, I did exactly this in my pacifism debate, because that debate did not deal with morality at all, which left me free to frame violence as either/or A/B, hence my conclusion in that debate that "life is violence" - after all, our own digestive systems are "destructive acts found in the environment", and so our very being is "violent" by such a broad definition unconstrained by morality.In this debate, I will be dealing with strictly #B. After all, morality deals with human action and not causality found in nature...and this debate is strictly about the morality of violence.Violence is Irrelevant to MoralityWith this framework for violence and morality, I will now illustrate cases where the violent acts that we perpetrate against each other are both moral and immoral...this will demonstrate that violence is not strictly immoral, and that violence as a category falls outside the realm of moral judgment. First, the immorality of violence is easy to comprehend. Just think of any sadist that derives continual pleasure in killing other people...each life taken weighs as much on a moral basis as the sadist's own life, meaning that the moment s/he takes more than one life, the utilitarian calculus would necessarily deem this sadist to be immoral. Such violence is clearly wrong.The morality of violence is much harder to initially comprehend...but is actually also quite intuitive. The perennial utilitarian "trolley dilemma" is one distinct case where a violent act is a moral act:"You are walking near a trolley-car track when you notice five people tied to it in a row. The next instant, you see a trolley hurtling toward them, out of control. A signal lever is within your reach; if you pull it, you can divert the runaway trolley down a side track, saving the five — but killing another person, who is tied to that spur. What do you do? Most people say they would pull the lever: Better that one person should die instead of five."(http://www.nytimes.com...)Pulling the lever is a violent act...you are deliberately killing the man by redirecting the trolley towards his direction instead of the other five people. This violent act is moral act, whereas inaction, which results in the other 5 people dying, is immoral.This trolley dilemma can easily be extended to various real life scenarios:1) 10 researchers are in an underground facility when their air supply and access to the surface is cut. They have exactly 100 man-hours of oxygen left, enough to sustain the 10 researchers for 10 hours...or 5 researchers for 20 hours. Their radio works, and they are told it will take at least 15 hours for the rescue crews to get to them. What do you do? If no one commits any violent acts, all 10 researchers will die. If they instead kill a few of themselves off, the rest may be able to survive long enough to get rescued...this is where my prior note on "teamwork" comes into play, although this is anything BUT win/win.2) 5 survivors from a shipwreck find themselves on a lifeboat with limited supplies. Some of the survivors are hurt. The cook gets the idea that these cripples may constitute a new source of sustenance, noting that killing them will also extend the lifespan of their supplies as well...What drives people to such violent acts? As we can see, in a utilitarian calculus, it's for the greater good. You necessarily kill off some people in order to save the greater whole. Similarly, you amputate a limb infected with gangrene in order to save the patient. Both are unquestionably violent acts, yet people do not recognize the inherently violent act of amputation to save a patient's life as being immoral in any sense. Such violence is moral. Such violence is right.ConclusionI have demonstrated cases where violence is right. Such cases negate the resolution.It may not be the case that every violent act is right. Indeed, most are not. However, by demonstrating cases where violence is right, we must conclude that violence is not necessarily wrong.