There's no reason why animals kill one another. Sure, we can point to the potential evolutionary advantages to explain why they do but those reasons are hardly present as motivators in their minds. I'm not saying human behavior is wholly like that but it's not entirely unlike that either. So the notion that every human action requires an intelligible reason in the mind of the actor isn't a starting point for me.

However, I do agree "there is no such thing as gratuitous killing" in the sense that I'm not aware of instances of them. But that's hardly an argument against the possibility of their occurrences. As I said earlier itt, we derive our types from the token instances and I'd argue that the reason we (or other cultures that have anything resembling a governing moral code) don't have an internal moral prohibition against gratuitous killing isn't because we wouldn't consider them wrong or think they're impossible but rather because they just don't occur. Then again, considering divine rights and other "right for me; wrong for thee" sort of privileges that have existed, I'll have to walk back my "universally wrong" claim.

The default position is (typically) "do not kill your friends."

Some, mostly modern folk who have lived excessively easy lives, believe that friendship is the default.

I'd say even in Rome killing was a bit of a special case. Think about the millions going on with their lives, never ending up in the history books.

It was common.

The human, in its "normal" state of mind, usually doesn't do anything without a reason that can be understood. It can be subconscious desires or fears from evolution, or "higher" conscious actions that were built on top of those from life experience. There doesn't have to be a reason in the sense you used it in the quote above, that the person could defend, but there would be a reason that the person would give. For instance, "i got pissed off" could be a real reason why a person did something. Even "i felt like doing it" could be a legitimate reason. As in "he pissed me off and I felt like punching him so I punched him." What you would not hear is "I punched him for no reason at all -- I didn't want to punch him, I had no reason to, he had just promoted me and said I was a great guy -- I just watched my body as it made a fist and swung it at him."

If you did hear this you would know that something was not right with the person saying it, that they (assuming they are telling the truth) are not a "normal human in a usual state of mind" and rather that something is very wrong. The human condition means having a reason for your actions -- not a reason that you can explain to someone else and they will agree with, but a reason to yourself, for yourself, by yourself.

I'm not trying to argue that in a philosophical context, i.e. trying to show that it is impossible, im just stating it as something that is possibly true, in a casual context. However I do currently believe that determinism is true and that a reasonless anything is unlikely if not impossible.

I thought I gave enough argument above to make "universally wrong" unfounded.

Just on the topic of babies, there was a long period of time in rome when babies would be brought before the paterfamilias, or head of the household (not just his babies, but his babies and babies born by his offspring, and even those of his offspring's offspring, even the babies of his slaves) and the paterfamilias would decide, then and there, if the baby would live or die.

If this practice was found to be going on today in a cult in France, the paterfamilias would likely be sentenced to life in prison. It would be so morally abhorrent that not a soul could be found to defend the mans actions, yet this was the normal and even expected behavior for longer than France has existed*.

Again, this is killing just on the topic of households, and in those, just on the topic of babies. I'm not trying to argue that killing is good, or that killing babies should be allowed, or any other positive argument other than that if we are trying to figure out what is the norm for humans, the norm has been killing. If someone thinks that killing is not the norm, I would argue that the reason they think that is because they are living in a time of relatively little killing and extrapolating that incorrectly to apply to all of humanitys history.

* im just guessing.

edit: that being said, the point is moot anyway and there is no reason to be going down this path in the first place. nothing is gained from knowing what has been or will be the norm for human action. Insights into ethics cant be gained from appeal to the masses because the masses are as fallible as the individuals that make it up.

We need to see proportions. It hurts to ask this, but what was the proportions? I'd say life 90%, death 10%. The word "decimate" comes from the roman military. Think our culture does a great job saving those heartbreaking last 10%.

Unless you believe that there are immutable universal laws of ethics, there isn't anywhere else to get them.

Perhaps these laws are hidden under a rock somewhere waiting to be discovered, but I don't think you believe that.

Not hidden; self-evident. Happy Independence Day.

Self-evident that all men are created equal, for example. Should everyone's happiness be weighted equally in utilitarian calculations? Equality seems to me a deontological principle.

yin/yang. Equal/unequal. If I was born yang and wanted yin, your standards would not apply.
By product of seeing the world through yang coloured glasses.

Or perhaps equality (this universal yin) is there for all to see?

There's a big difference between someone providing a reason for their action and that reason being the actual cause of their action. I don't know how extensive or contested the literature is on the subject but I've run across studies arguing that people rationalize their actions after the fact.

It's actually a very small difference in a neural net.

^ I don't know what that means. And to be clear, I didn't mean to imply that we always rationalize our actions after the fact, just that we can and do on occasion.

It means it doesn't make much difference if we do the thinking/learning bit before or after the action*. That's because its a very long feedback loop of acting and thinking. In either case what we do at any time is a function of all the previous actions (A) and thinking/Learning (T). It's

TATATATATATATATATA... you get the idea .... TATATATATATATATATA
or
ATATATATATATATATAT... you get the idea .... ATATATATATATATATAT

and at each cycle the brain model, which determines future actions, is modified a bit and determines what we do at each stage in the cycle.

*the action can be to decide to think which is probably the only reason we sometimes appear to think before we act.

So take lying. Whether we lie at any point in time is a function of all the previous times we lied/told the truth and all our previous learning about lying/truth telling (among much other stuff). It's not some random act which we then justify, it's a pre- justified position which may get modified a bit after the current event when we 'rationalise' it.

Rationalising has a bad name but in this context it really just means learning.

You missed Juneteenth Day, which is more in line with your thought.

It is self-evident if you find it self-evident. I don't, but I do find it preferable. Not much of a difference as far as what matters, I think.

This has been clear since 1776.

Don't know. I didn't write the Declaration of Independence.

Utilitarians do have a problem with equality. Popular people might get preferential treatment because their happiness makes others happy.

Meh. It was the French and their damn enlightenment.



And you might suffer the same (or more) than I do if I starve and you merely miss out on a second helping of foie gras.

Neither deontology or consequentialism appear to derive the ought from the is. For the utilitarian, is what is morally good by definition that which maximizes pleasure?

You dont need science for this, it can be solved by philosophy. Look up Hume's thought experiment about a purple mountain. Or maybe it was a gold mountain. It's been > 10 years since I read it, but I can tell you that when you read it, you will be convinced. The human mind is very cause-and-effect, if not perfectly, and nothing about it is spontaneous or unexplainable.

This is partially true, but there is also chemistry involved which can add to the mix and muddy the waters. For example, we can imagine you not lying if you were in a "normal" state of mind, but because you were talking to the police, and the police frighten you and make you nervous, this caused your person to release different chemicals into your brain in different amounts (leading to elevated heart rate, sweaty palms, different way of thinking, etc) and you made the decision to lie when you otherwise would have told the truth.

Maximizes happiness more so than pleasure, but only in the largest sense of the word, which 99.9999% of people fail to understand.

Taking everything every billionaire in the USA has and distributing it to the poor would maximize happiness in the near future as far as what to do with their money is concerned. However setting the precedent that "even if you are incredibly successful in this country (the best-case outcome for all your hard work and risks and sacrifices) the gov will take all you have and give it to the poor" could easily, in the long term, lead to a net negative pleasure change in the country due to the fact that investors, inventors, etc would be highly incentivized to move to a different country where when you "make it" in business, you don't lose everything you have.

For some reason, when 99.9999% of humans think about utilitarianism, they think of it in a way similar to the short-term case described above.

That which minimizes suffering and maximizes pleasure, from what I understand. You can probably put them on the same axis, so I guess maximizing pleasure would be the same thing.