Were N. Korean civilians justified...

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

Hashi, it would be well to reflect that your definition makes self defense an a priori form of murder despite the subsequent assumption that it is somehow distinct. I suggest alternately that, as in legal theory, all forms of the intentional killing humans be labelled "homicide," and that "murder" be considered a subcategory that is distinguished by the moral & legal penalties attached to it. Otherwise an analysis really isn't going to go anywhere.

BTW, although my earlier post implies it, I am not fully Hobbesian although I think he was certainly onto something.

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

It's interesting that you cite Hobbes because I was about to counter-cite him. As Christine Korsgaard argues in "The Sources of Normativity" (the Tanner lecture version), pg. 32:

And he concludes that this is true of the authority of the political sovereign as well. But this gives rise to a problem. The sovereign’s authority now consists entirely in his ability to punish us. Although sanctions are not our motive for obedience, they are the source of the sovereign’s authority and so of our obligations. I am obligated to do what is right only because the sovereign can punish me if I do not. Well, suppose I commit a crime and I get away with it. Then the sovereign was not able to punish me. And if my obligation sprang from his ability to punish me, then I had no obligation. So a crime I get away with is no crime at all. If irresistible power is just power unsuccessfully resisted, then authority is nothing more than the successful exercise of power, and things always turn out right.

The point is that authority is not power. If someone is trying to kill me (and I'm not trying to kill him), and I tell him, "Stop," I have the authority to tell him, "Stop," due to the respect due to my humanity (or so I would tend to argue). Indeed, morality is then shown in my attacker if of his own accord, and not due to a threat of reprisal, he stops.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

Although I think Hobbes' thinking is dated and somewhat simplistic (though that simplicity is also a source of strength), I don't really view that quotation as a refutation of his theories. More it is an emotional appeal to consequences, not much different than most of your core arguments on this thread. Because X is horrible X must not be affirmed.

I think Hobbes' thinking can be undermined somewhat on other grounds, at least in his penchant for authoritarian regimes as the source of moral authority. Most particularly, there never was a time when single men (and, presumably, women) preyed on each other until they were subdued by superior forces and forced to cooperate (at least not in such simple terms... more on that later). So his thought experiment is somewhat misguided. What can be said with some certainty is that man has always lived within a society of one variety or other, and that society implies mutual moral obligations by its existence. So man is impelled to be moral by his inherent social relations, as modified by his culture and individual temperament.

I think there is a great deal of evidence, though, that these social groups competed with one another -- the elemental form of war -- particularly after the cultural consequences of agriculture began to be ferreted out. I don't need to recite the details here, but gradually societies began to modify and innovate their cultural practices, and perhaps more importantly to be selected for survival, based on military outcomes. To the extent that culture is transmissible and permeable, societies that were able to learn these lessons earliest and best stood quite an advantage over others. And the gradual emergence of larger and larger states and empires attests to this process, though I certainly wouldn't conclude that it is in any way teleological.

This will probably strike you as social Darwinism, and perhaps it is to an extent, but I think the truth is more refined. Cultures that incorporated the ability to innovate culturally and peacefully fuse with others with the most success have triumphed, at least in terms of economic production and military preponderance. This isn't always a good thing, but it certainly is a good thing from a number of angles. It has allowed the greater and more peaceful organization of society to occur, and offers some hope of the gradual onset of the highly refined moral aesthetics you are espousing becoming general law.

But still, for the present, we must observe that culture itself is a battleground of different traditions and ideologies, and it is far from clear that the West has won. Other traditions with less regard for the finer points of who ought to be killing whom are far from finished, and military and strategic necessity sometimes makes it necessary to kill these and associated people. Someday force itself may become less relevant, but until that Millenial Epoch has unfolded in all its glorious dualistic eschatology, I'm afraid that we are stuck with the same fundamental realities that have always existed up until now.

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

More it is an emotional appeal to consequences, not much different than most of your core arguments on this thread. Because X is horrible X must not be affirmed.

My argument is really that we cannot universalize the maxim underwriting our decision to kill civilians during air strikes. That maxim is, "I will kill these people to shorten a war," or, "I will kill these people to punish their government," or, "I will kill these people because they want to be free from my power." At least, those are the kinds of maxims I've seen cited in this case (I mean Japan-Korea-Indochina as a collective case, not just an individual strike like on Hiroshima). But how can, "I'm killing you to shorten a war," be a shared motive?

In other words, and perhaps to cut the argument short, I'm reasoning within a Kantian-vs.-utilitarian kind of frame of reference. If you don't accept the premises involved, then my conclusion is not likely to follow from reality in your eyes.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

More it is an emotional appeal to consequences, not much different than most of your core arguments on this thread. Because X is horrible X must not be affirmed.

My argument is really that we cannot universalize the maxim underwriting our decision to kill civilians during air strikes. That maxim is, "I will kill these people to shorten a war," or, "I will kill these people to punish their government," or, "I will kill these people because they want to be free from my power." At least, those are the kinds of maxims I've seen cited in this case (I mean Japan-Korea-Indochina as a collective case, not just an individual strike like on Hiroshima). But how can, "I'm killing you to shorten a war," be a shared motive?

In other words, and perhaps to cut the argument short, I'm reasoning within a Kantian-vs.-utilitarian kind of frame of reference. If you don't accept the premises involved, then my conclusion is not likely to follow from reality in your eyes.

Some might consider that evidence that you are begging the question.

You are presuming that acts undertaken in war necessarily have a moral dimension based on universal principles. But it is only imagination that gives war a moral dimension, and imagination is neither necessary nor precedent to war. Indeed there is cause to believe that war sired imagination rather than vice versa. And by "war" I mean the phenomenon in itself, not the way humans imagine it.

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

Some might consider that evidence that you are begging the question.

You are presuming that acts undertaken in war necessarily have a moral dimension based on universal principles. But it is only imagination that gives war a moral dimension, and imagination is neither necessary nor precedent to war. Indeed there is cause to believe that war sired imagination rather than vice versa. And by "war" I mean the phenomenon in itself, not the way humans imagine it.

I am presuming that it is the category "actions" that ethics deals with, wherefore unless the things people do during "war" are not actions, they are covered by ethics. Now as for war siring the imagination, I know not what that is supposed to mean. The module in our brains that allows us to visualize or propositionally entertain ourselves did not result from battles but evolution. But I would guess that you mean something else then by "imagination."

Does war even exist? Or is there just the arbitrarily nominalized aggregate of a bunch of individual people doing a bunch of individual violent things?

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

Some might consider that evidence that you are begging the question.

You are presuming that acts undertaken in war necessarily have a moral dimension based on universal principles. But it is only imagination that gives war a moral dimension, and imagination is neither necessary nor precedent to war. Indeed there is cause to believe that war sired imagination rather than vice versa. And by "war" I mean the phenomenon in itself, not the way humans imagine it.

I am presuming that it is the category "actions" that ethics deals with, wherefore unless the things people do during "war" are not actions, they are covered by ethics. Now as for war siring the imagination, I know not what that is supposed to mean. The module in our brains that allows us to visualize or propositionally entertain ourselves did not result from battles but evolution. But I would guess that you mean something else then by "imagination."

Does war even exist? Or is there just the arbitrarily nominalized aggregate of a bunch of individual people doing a bunch of individual violent things?

When men speak of war, I think there is a noumenal referent, a quality of the universe that plays a role in evolution so far as it is a mortal contest. For whatever unknowable reason, the universe is set up so that the strong prey on the weak and thereby prosper; within this competition all human things emerge including imagination, though perhaps these things are merely amplified rather than created. In any case, the human brain seems to have grown larger mostly in the context of winning battles of the plains with large, well defended herbivores. And it is these larger brains that permit us to have elaborate social instincts and, later, speculations about them, which are called "ethics."

[Avatar]

Does war even exist? Or is there just the arbitrarily nominalized aggregate of a bunch of individual people doing a bunch of individual violent things?

War exists. But not universal principles, morals or ethics. Those are imaginary, laudable as they may be.

--A

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

Does war even exist? Or is there just the arbitrarily nominalized aggregate of a bunch of individual people doing a bunch of individual violent things?

War exists. But not universal principles, morals or ethics. Those are imaginary, laudable as they may be.

--A

Imaginary doesn't mean useless. Indeed, it is utility that throws empirical shadows on the cave wall, along with our intuitions which, properly understood, are the residue of past experience, or perhaps archetypal hints at a hidden metaphysic in themselves. We should remember sometime that we are part of the universe too, and have a destiny as well. Who can say what that might be?

[Avatar]

I can. Live, breed and die. Luckily there are enough of us now that breeding is an option. Life's purpose is to live, however, wherever, it can. I don't think there is much, if anything, more to it than that.

Everything else is whatever we want it to be.

(And no, of course not useless.)

--A

[SerScot]

Mighara,

... in trying to survive US air raids during the Korean War? Because in North Korea, the US Far East Air Force (or w/e it was called) applied again the firebombing tactics used against Japan at the close of WWII. So really, this argumentative question generalizes: are enemy civilians justified in trying to survive air raids?

Think of it this way. Imagine you're a ten-year-old in Hiroshima during the atom bombing. Are you, during the raid, justified in preventing your sister (suppose you had one) from getting killed, if there's some way for you to do this? But if it's right for you to be fired upon intentionally by the US military, burned alive in a flash of light even (to try to terrorize Japan into surrendering), don't you have an obligation to let yourself and your sister die? What if, in the limit, all the civilians in Hiroshima had found a way to survive the raid: by nullifying the demonstrative terror of the weapon's power, would those civilians have been doing something wrong (since this would've led, in theory, to a prolonged war)? What do you do when you're a civilian faced with dilemmas like these? What kind of honor is there in you sacrificing yourself and your love and your children and your friends to excruciation and destruction like this?

No one has an obligation to die. Were South Korean civilians justified in attempting to survive the North Korean invasion of South Korea? Of course they were.

Your question doesn't really make sense.

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

The point is, if I am justified in trying to do something, other people are not justified in trying to stop me from doing that. So if I am justified in trying to survive an air raid, then the pilots trying to kill me are not justified in killing me (which would conflict with what I am right to do). At least, not according to the concept of interpersonal justification that I accept.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

The point is, if I am justified in trying to do something, other people are not justified in trying to stop me from doing that. So if I am justified in trying to survive an air raid, then the pilots trying to kill me are not justified in killing me (which would conflict with what I am right to do). At least, not according to the concept of interpersonal justification that I accept.

False dichotomy.

Suppose two men at cards with nothing to wager save their lives. Who has not heard such a tale? A turn of the card. The whole universe for such a player has labored clanking to his moment which will tell if he is to die at that man’s hand or that man at his. What more certain validation of a man’s worth could there be? This enhancement of the game to its ultimate state admits no argument concerning the notion of fate. The selection of one man over another is a preference absolute and irrevocable and it is a dull man indeed who could reckon so profound a decision without agency or significance either one. In such games as have for their stake the annihilation of the defeated the decisions are quite clear. This man holding this particular arrangement of cards in his hand is thereby removed from existence. This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god.

[SerScot]

Mognilio is absolutely correct you are positing a false dichotomy. People have the right to self defense regardless of who is attacking or why. Because someone has the to self defense it does not, necessarily, mean the person doing the attacking is without cause or rational justification.

In your false dichotomy there is absolute right and absolute wrong where the AW party loses the right to defend themselves and any and all tactics used by the AR party is justified. No war has ever had such clear and unambiguous moral divisions. Even in WWII the Allies firebombed Dresden and Tokyo and the US destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. War is an endless grey morass of compeating utilitarian concerns.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

The point is, if I am justified in trying to do something, other people are not justified in trying to stop me from doing that. So if I am justified in trying to survive an air raid, then the pilots trying to kill me are not justified in killing me (which would conflict with what I am right to do). At least, not according to the concept of interpersonal justification that I accept.

What happens if you are both equally justified in your actions?

Who determines which justification is, well, more justified?

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

The victors write the histories, and the histories assign the blame. It doesn't happen in reverse.

[Avatar]

^ That.

...it does not, necessarily, mean the person doing the attacking is without cause or rational justification.

Or vice versa...

--A

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

"... war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god."

This conception of war's relationship to human individuality doesn't accord with the value I think that I perceive in autonomy. I would never accept that my will is or somehow ought to be subsumed under some greater will that expresses itself in the form of war.

Because someone has the to self defense it does not, necessarily, mean the person doing the attacking is without cause or rational justification... War is an endless grey morass of competing utilitarian concerns.

Well, I'm no utilitarian, for starters. I think utilitarianism is radically mistaken in enough ways that I would never think to base my decisions on its calculus. You might dismiss Rawls and Arendt's moral theories on the ground that, per their Kantian inspiration, they are absurd or incomprehensible or whatever, but I don't think they're ridiculous and I at least hope and pray that I understand them. And from them I would infer that I am not justified in interfering with the justified actions of others.

What happens if you are both equally justified in your actions?

Who determines which justification is, well, more justified?

If my standard of right and wrong led me to such opposition towards another person, well, as Covenant says somewhere (I think), I'd try to find another answer.