You are strongly arguing elsewhere that letting someone die isn’t a particularly significant moral choice… at least, it is so much less a moral choice than killing them that even comparing the two is an obnoxious fallacy.
I have said something similar. Substitute “it is so much less a moral choice” with “it is an entirely different moral choice and equivocation is unacceptable”. I wouldn’t rule out a (contrived) scenario where the former was a more significant moral act. They just aren’t the same thing.
But you are also arguing that letting someone live who will later kill people is evil.
In the particular circumstances under consideration, yes. So assume all the work done to capture or thwart the supervillian without killing them exceeds the work that would have to be done to just shoot them. The actors in play must also be supervillians and superheroes respectively—complete with makeup and flamboyant malicious schemes. Further assume that ‘evil’ means ‘sub par moral act’ - it is a sign bit not a measure of degree of ‘badness’.
The above should be taken to indicate that I have not expressed a fully general claim about “letting someone live who will later kill people is evil”. I’ve made a claim about the preferred moral behavior of superheroes with respect to supervillians.
I am bewildered by how these could both be true. If it’s evil to let the Joker live, why isn’t it just as evil to not evacuate a city in the path of an oncoming flood? It seems in both cases, it’s a choice not to intervene in order to prevent future deaths that I don’t cause.
I am, all else being equal, in favor of evacuations. I would need to know more details about the circumstances and what abilities and responsibilities the individual you are judging has before I contributed any moralizing myself. (If it was the mayor of the city, for example, and he kept it all hushed up when he could have evactuated easily then he’s probably more evil than the psychopath that created the flood.)
I have said something similar. Substitute “it is so much less a moral choice” with “it is an entirely different moral choice and equivocation is unacceptable”. I wouldn’t rule out a (contrived) scenario where the former was a more significant moral act. They just aren’t the same thing.
In the particular circumstances under consideration, yes. So assume all the work done to capture or thwart the supervillian without killing them exceeds the work that would have to be done to just shoot them. The actors in play must also be supervillians and superheroes respectively—complete with makeup and flamboyant malicious schemes. Further assume that ‘evil’ means ‘sub par moral act’ - it is a sign bit not a measure of degree of ‘badness’.
The above should be taken to indicate that I have not expressed a fully general claim about “letting someone live who will later kill people is evil”. I’ve made a claim about the preferred moral behavior of superheroes with respect to supervillians.
I am, all else being equal, in favor of evacuations. I would need to know more details about the circumstances and what abilities and responsibilities the individual you are judging has before I contributed any moralizing myself. (If it was the mayor of the city, for example, and he kept it all hushed up when he could have evactuated easily then he’s probably more evil than the psychopath that created the flood.)
OK, thanks for clarifying.