Just because someone else is going to kill me, doesn’t mean we don’t have an important societal norm against murder. You’re not allowed to kill old people just because they’ve only got a few years left, or kill people with terminal diseases.
I am not quite sure what an overheating gun refers to, I am guessing the idea is that it has some chance of going off without being fired.
Anyhow, if that’s accurate, it’s acceptable to decide to be the person holding an overheating gun, but it’s not acceptable to (for example) accept a contract to assassinate someone so that you get to have the overheating gun, or to promise to kill slightly fewer people with the gun than the next guy. Like, I understand consequentially fewer deaths happen, but our society has deontological lines against committing murder even given consequentialist arguments, which are good. You’re not allowed to commit murder even if you have a good reason.
Just because someone else is going to kill me, doesn’t mean we don’t have an important societal norm against murder. You’re not allowed to kill old people just because they’ve only got a few years left, or kill people with terminal diseases.
I don’t see how that at all addresses the analogy I made.
I am not quite sure what an overheating gun refers to, I am guessing the idea is that it has some chance of going off without being fired.
Anyhow, if that’s accurate, it’s acceptable to decide to be the person holding an overheating gun, but it’s not acceptable to (for example) accept a contract to assassinate someone so that you get to have the overheating gun, or to promise to kill slightly fewer people with the gun than the next guy. Like, I understand consequentially fewer deaths happen, but our society has deontological lines against committing murder even given consequentialist arguments, which are good. You’re not allowed to commit murder even if you have a good reason.