[wizzwizz4]

Neither rape nor murder are inherently, definitionally wrong. There are situations in extremis where murder and rape are considered justifiable: in war, murder is often praised; and in an "everyone else is dead, humanity will go extinct" situation (e.g. the subjective belief of Lot's daughters, according to some traditions, in Genesis 19:31–36), rape might¹ be considered permissible. And both words are used to refer to things which aren't necessarily wrong (e.g. "I'm going to murder this sandwich", or the "forcefully taking" -> "winning in a competition" senses of 'rape' described on Wiktionary and Urban Dictionary).

Rather, central members of the categories of 'rape' and 'murder' are wrong for reasons, and while those reasons may differ depending on your ethical framework, pretty much all ethical systems agree on this point.

"That's immoral by definition" isn't really how words work. Some philosophers would call that a category error, others would call it meaningless, and yet others would call it equivocation.

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¹: For the record: I think the "don't rape" deontological principle is extremely reliable, and if anyone alive finds themselves in a situation where they think they should break it, they're almost certainly wrong about the facts. The dilemma faced by Lot's daughters was a false dilemma: many other options were available, including "talk about the dilemma and thereby acquire either consent, or a good counterargument", or "double-check with the supernatural being who created the otherwise-unlikely circumstance where you have good reason to believe everyone else died in fire and/or conversion to salt, to confirm whether you are in fact the last remnants of humanity". I can't think of a situation where rape is actually justified. Trolley problems don't occur in real life.

[jhanschoo]

You are mistaken.

> in war, murder is often praised;

The killing of an enemy combatant, for example, is usually lawful, praised and not considered murder. Generally speaking, the killing of a civilian is sometimes a war crime and considered a murder.

You also have a lot to say on the nuanced ethics of killing and on sexual violence, but these deal with the underlying concepts themselves and the words don't matter; in fact philosophers frequently give common terms a specialized, ad-hoc definition when they want to discuss these concepts themselves.

[wizzwizz4]

I have nothing to say on the "nuanced ethics": as far as I'm concerned, rape is bad and murder is bad. Sufficiently-advanced pedantry always circles back to that. There's no nuance to be had.

If you asked any (non-bloodthirsty) soldier, officer or general whether they'd press a button to magically achieve their military objectives without bloodshed, they'd certainly take that option. Killing enemy combatants is praised as good because it is (considered) a necessary evil, but "necessary evil" is awful for morale. If you take people outside that situation, they tend to hold the view that "killing is wrong", or "killing non-wrongdoers is wrong" at worst.

You've (re)defined the word "murder" to exclude "lawful killings of enemy combatants", but whether we use your or my definition, that doesn't change the morality of the actions. You also observed that philosophers do that kind of (re)definition all the time. That's the point I was trying to make.

[jhanschoo]

If the legal system calls certain morally bad killings in peacetime manslaughter that does not rise to the severity of murder, then I think that murder as is commonly used is a specific kind of killing that does not include your example of a wartime killing. Even outside of the courtroom itself, many are also very careful when using the word "murder" when discussing actual killings, because of its severity, and responsible people will defer to what suspects/convicts are charged/convicted with. Rather, it is you that have chosen a redefinition of the word.

I am not responding to your discussion on the morality of killings, because your argument was primarily about the definition of the word "murder", and I wanted to point that you were not accurate either.

[wizzwizz4]

Murder is when you kill someone on purpose, when you had the option of not. Voluntary manslaughter is when you do a violence on purpose, and the target dies, but your intent was not to kill. Constructive involuntary manslaughter is when you take an action that's against the rules, and someone dies as a result, but you didn't realise you were doing violence. Negligence involuntary manslaughter is when you take an action that's not against the rules, and someone dies as a result, but you could've averted it.

Wartime killing of the enemy could be any of these (except probably not the last one), but it's probably going to meet the requirements for murder. The main reason it's not considered murder is that in war, we use a different classification system for violent acts, because the social context of violence in wartime is very different to the social context of violence in peacetime.

If you're taking the perspective that the social context is bundled up in the definition of the word (Later Wittgenstein's "use" theory of language), then killing an enemy soldier in war is not murder. If you're taking the perspective that a word refers to a meaningful proposition, i.e. a family of states of affairs (Early Wittgenstein's "picture" theory of language), then killing an enemy soldier in war is a non-central member of the 'murder' category, and just nobody calls it that. Personally, I'm a "use" theory proponent, so, uh… hm. Guess I was inaccurate.

[jhanschoo]

> Murder is when you kill someone on purpose, when you had the option of not.

Indeed, I think that your original reply would have been more useful and less apparently combative if you had

1. replied with this definition, 2. showed why this commonsense definition that does not definitionally involve morality is useful, and gave examples of it, 3. finally showed marginal cases where murder is not a moral bad according to certain ethical frameworks, 4. acknowledge that it's OK to redefine the word so that it is definitionally morally bad, but since it differs from a commonsense notion, it needs to be signposted,

but I think you had a bit to figure out yourself.

[wizzwizz4]

I'll have to study my original comment to see why it appears combative: thanks for pointing that out.

RE 2: I just looked through a few country's English-language laws and cribbed (what I saw as) the consensus definition of "murder". I'm not sure the other definitions I gave actually correspond to any real-world legal system, but many of them have something similar.

RE 4: Defining the word as "definitionally morally bad" means you have to make a moral assessment before using the word – but that takes most people way longer than the language processing of two syllables, so it leaves you open to equivocating rhetoric. Appeals to "common sense" (which, in my experience, is far from common) aren't why I object to that definition (except as signposted technical jargon, narrowly-scoped to a particular context).

The post I originally replied to was equivocating in this way (probably unintentionally), hence the strong objection. Though in my experience, explanations are better than intensifiers: that's something I should look out for in my editing passes in future.

[antonvs]

> Neither rape nor murder are inherently, definitionally wrong.

This is easily refuted: look up “murder” in any English dictionary and you’ll find a definition like this: “the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another.” The inclusion of “unlawful” makes it definitionally wrong. You might want to quibble about legality vs. morality but in this case at least, the one entails the other. Perhaps you’re thinking of words like “killing”.

[Thiez]

The difference between legality and morality is extremely relevant and it's absurd to just gloss over it. Many things we now consider immoral were perfectly legal, like slavery or the holocaust. Law should be based on morality, morality does not and should not defer to the law.