It’s quite true that there’s a continuum of personality modifications between “talking to someone” and “using magic to eradicate emotions and base personality features replacing them with more convenient ones”. But even without drawing the line specifically, it’s clear that these two examples are on different sides of that line.
Well, cryonics aside, it’s actually relatively easy for most people to draw a clear line between “killed” and “not-killed”, and both of those examples seem to fall quite squarely on the “not-killed” side, as they don’t result in death.
You clearly draw your line somewhere very different to most people. You should probably at least attempt to explain what you mean by “kill” if you’re going to use it in such a non-standard way.
Of course, if that process is considered a form of killing, one should stop and re-elaborate their opinion of “killing” in light of this expanded definition before passing judgment.
Sure. I never said it wasn’t a justified killing. This Bellatrix “needs killing”, and if we can come close enough to restoring a previous mentality that doesn’t, that’s a great bonus.
Assuming, of course, that all of this is as Quirrel said.
Sure. But NihilCredo’s point is actually broader than that.
When I adopt an importantly different new referent for a term, it’s really not a good idea for me to carry forward old ideas associated with that term without re-evaluating them. It’s a special case of the common problem of confusing the label for the referent.
In some cases, the confusion is obvious and easy to avoid. For example, a couple of years ago the U.S. adopted a new referent for the term “current President of the United States” that made previously true statements (e.g., “the current President of the United States is a member of the Republican party”) suddenly false. This doesn’t really confuse anyone; we understand that the referent for that label changes over time.
But “killing” isn’t like that for most people. If I adopt an understanding of “killing” congruent with your comment above I ought to stop and ask myself things like “Is killing a bad thing? Why? Is there any reason I shouldn’t go around killing everyone I can? What reason? Is there any reason I shouldn’t kill myself every opportunity I get?” and so forth. But there’s a strong chance I won’t.
At some point it becomes less confusing to just adopt a new word.
In other words, the issue here is not whether magical therapy on Bellatrix is a justified killing or an unjustified killing, but whether it’s useful or consistent to refer to it as any kind of killing at all.
Completely tangential to this: I have a lot of difficulty reconciling the idea that reliable psychiatric intervention to “heal” people of criminal tendencies exists in the HPverse with the idea that Azkaban exists there. It’s as if a fictional world contained the ability to cure any disease, but wealthy and important people in that world were forced to die of diseases without being cured. I don’t claim it’s impossible—human societies are perfectly capable of contradictions this absurd—but it would be awfully difficult to defend.
Azkaban already seems difficult to defend, versus just killing people in the ordinary sense. Sure, killing people is inhumane, but much less inhumane, and much more secure, than imprisoning people for life in a place that destroys all happiness and goodness.
but whether it’s useful or consistent to refer to it as any kind of killing at all.
I was raised with fantasy and sci-fi. For me “death” has always meant “death-of-personality”. Short of that, who cares? And if that’s gone, who cares if the body is still there?
If I adopt an understanding of “killing” congruent with your comment above I ought to stop and ask myself things like “Is killing a bad thing?
Yeah, you should. And you should say “generally, yes”. For exactly the same reasons that your current understanding of killing is that it’s generally bad—it’s the destruction of a person.
But that just swaps one label out for another, rather than answering the question.
That is, Sam asks “Why is killing a bad thing?” and Pat answers “Because it’s the destruction of a person” and Sam replies “Well, OK, but why is destroying a person a bad thing?” and they haven’t actually gotten anywhere.
Just to be clear, my issue here has nothing to do with bodies vs. personalities. I agree with you about that.
It has to do with what’s worth preserving within a personality.
I grant you that this hinges on the presumption that Bella’s personality change was the result of trauma, as described, rather than an intentional modification. If Bella’s current state is instead something she made an informed choice to enter, then I’d agree that coercing her to revert to her former state is ethically problematic. (And calling it “healing” doesn’t automatically make it OK.)
Of course, that’s just killing her and replacing her with someone similar.
So did you just kill me and replace me with a version of me that had read that post? Where do we draw the line?
It’s often hard to draw a clear line.
It’s quite true that there’s a continuum of personality modifications between “talking to someone” and “using magic to eradicate emotions and base personality features replacing them with more convenient ones”. But even without drawing the line specifically, it’s clear that these two examples are on different sides of that line.
Well, cryonics aside, it’s actually relatively easy for most people to draw a clear line between “killed” and “not-killed”, and both of those examples seem to fall quite squarely on the “not-killed” side, as they don’t result in death.
You clearly draw your line somewhere very different to most people. You should probably at least attempt to explain what you mean by “kill” if you’re going to use it in such a non-standard way.
Of course, if that process is considered a form of killing, one should stop and re-elaborate their opinion of “killing” in light of this expanded definition before passing judgment.
Sure. I never said it wasn’t a justified killing. This Bellatrix “needs killing”, and if we can come close enough to restoring a previous mentality that doesn’t, that’s a great bonus.
Assuming, of course, that all of this is as Quirrel said.
Sure. But NihilCredo’s point is actually broader than that.
When I adopt an importantly different new referent for a term, it’s really not a good idea for me to carry forward old ideas associated with that term without re-evaluating them. It’s a special case of the common problem of confusing the label for the referent.
In some cases, the confusion is obvious and easy to avoid. For example, a couple of years ago the U.S. adopted a new referent for the term “current President of the United States” that made previously true statements (e.g., “the current President of the United States is a member of the Republican party”) suddenly false. This doesn’t really confuse anyone; we understand that the referent for that label changes over time.
But “killing” isn’t like that for most people. If I adopt an understanding of “killing” congruent with your comment above I ought to stop and ask myself things like “Is killing a bad thing? Why? Is there any reason I shouldn’t go around killing everyone I can? What reason? Is there any reason I shouldn’t kill myself every opportunity I get?” and so forth. But there’s a strong chance I won’t.
At some point it becomes less confusing to just adopt a new word.
In other words, the issue here is not whether magical therapy on Bellatrix is a justified killing or an unjustified killing, but whether it’s useful or consistent to refer to it as any kind of killing at all.
Completely tangential to this: I have a lot of difficulty reconciling the idea that reliable psychiatric intervention to “heal” people of criminal tendencies exists in the HPverse with the idea that Azkaban exists there. It’s as if a fictional world contained the ability to cure any disease, but wealthy and important people in that world were forced to die of diseases without being cured. I don’t claim it’s impossible—human societies are perfectly capable of contradictions this absurd—but it would be awfully difficult to defend.
Azkaban already seems difficult to defend, versus just killing people in the ordinary sense. Sure, killing people is inhumane, but much less inhumane, and much more secure, than imprisoning people for life in a place that destroys all happiness and goodness.
I was raised with fantasy and sci-fi. For me “death” has always meant “death-of-personality”. Short of that, who cares? And if that’s gone, who cares if the body is still there?
Yeah, you should. And you should say “generally, yes”. For exactly the same reasons that your current understanding of killing is that it’s generally bad—it’s the destruction of a person.
But that just swaps one label out for another, rather than answering the question.
That is, Sam asks “Why is killing a bad thing?” and Pat answers “Because it’s the destruction of a person” and Sam replies “Well, OK, but why is destroying a person a bad thing?” and they haven’t actually gotten anywhere.
Just to be clear, my issue here has nothing to do with bodies vs. personalities. I agree with you about that.
It has to do with what’s worth preserving within a personality.
I grant you that this hinges on the presumption that Bella’s personality change was the result of trauma, as described, rather than an intentional modification. If Bella’s current state is instead something she made an informed choice to enter, then I’d agree that coercing her to revert to her former state is ethically problematic. (And calling it “healing” doesn’t automatically make it OK.)