Correction: "Murder is ALWAYS wrong" is a false statement. I agree, Murder is 99.999 percent of the time not a good idea. But you get my point.

but that definition of murder says unlawful. In a situation in which a terrorist has said device and you kill him the law would protect you with some clause about self-defense. I mean that means every murder depends on what laws you are using as well. Are you using U.S laws. International Law, or religious law?

Good point, CB. Another reason simple statements like "Murder is always wrong" are incorrect, because it largely depends on how one defines "murder."

In the army we learn Rules of Engagement (pretty much when can I kill and not kill) There is "Hostile intent" and "Hostile Action"; if you can prove that the person you killed had either you can fire to kill. Anything else is against the UCMJ (Uniform code of military justice) an example of hostile intent is: Child has a suicide vest strapped to their chest and is running toward a crowd of people, the child hasn't done anything hostile yet but he has the intent to and in this situation preservation of multiple lives takes priority over the preservation of a single life.

Hostile action: A man pulls out a gun and starts firing on you, that is hostile action, you may fire back.

simply put in this situation I just validated killing based on laws and regulations. So it is technically not unlawful and thus technically not murder. I think it is a fact that Murder=Killing but killing does not equal murder.

Truth, Justice, and the American Way!

I can accept that many people believe "Murder is wrong" to be a truth. But that still doesn't make it a fact.

@lanium - I do think "Murder" is always wrong, unlawful killing is wrong.

But I think where people are confused is the examples of "okay" killing are all protected by some law, making them lawful. I think once you make that distinction this argument is over.

I challenge someone to give me an example of unlawful killing that can be found okay.

"Murder is unlawful" is a fact almost everywhere in the world.
That still doesn't make "Murder is wrong" a fact.

CB, be careful. If you start basing your definition of what is "right" and "wrong" on what is lawful and unlawful, then you will be a puppet for whatever regime you live under. I agree with Jeff Kutka. Morality is a good thing for us humans, but we should realize morality does not equate to unerring truth or fact.

CB, have you ever seen Star Wars? Which side are the "good guys?" Practically everything the rebels do is unlawful, but we're expected to morally align ourselves with them, making all the killing okay. Extend that to any lawful but perceived-as-unjust state, and you'll have the same moral justification to oppose the law for a "higher good" or the like.

What laws are superior to others? When are laws in conflict with each other? Is there a law that cannot be superseded? Is there an absolute law or only relative ones? An act can be both lawful and wrong, and unlawful and right at the same time, depending on the laws one believes are just.

No laws are superior to others, they can only truly be compared. But some laws can look better in a certain moral viewpoint

An unlawful killing that might arguably be "okay": killing a person whom you know for a fact to have committed a particularly heinous crime, but who was found not guilty and allowed to go free due to a legal loophole (e.g. police misconduct of some kind invalidating some collected evidence).

Alternatively: you're Mel Gibson and the English just lawfully executed your wife. It's illegal for you to pull nun-chuks out of your kilt and murder the fuck out of all the English soldiers garrisoned in your village, but you better believe it's okay for you to do so.

It is really kind of pathetic that so many of your wanna-be-smart folks here don't grasp the nuanced difference in meaning between a word like "murder" verus "kill" versus "execute" etc.

THAT is why it is IMPORTANT that we have a language that we all agree upon as a society. It is very much the same sort of argument as when some swinging-cock human decides he was mis-born, and should have been a girl, and therefore declares himself a fucking(able?) girl. NO, fuck-nutt...your cock makes you a BOY...

LIKEWISE....."murder" has a specific meaning to a society that is rational, and has an agreed upon language.

None of you will EVER agree on the morality or lack of morality of "murder" because far too many of you are language Libtards, and think the meaning of every word is based upon your person feelings, as opposed to the actual meaning.

@Jeff,

"I'll repeat: Just by adding "It's my opinion that.." or "I believe that..." does NOT turn a fact into an opinion. Rather, the inverse is true."

I'm not sure who claimed that adding words to something changed one thing into another. Certainly not the author or me. You may be tilting at a straw man here.

"If you can take away "It's my opinion that..." or "I believe that..." from a sentence, you eliminate unnecessary words and get to the point of the matter."

Of course. This is a point about good writing, though. It has precisely nothing to do with what is fact and what is opinion.

"What remains is a statement of fact. That statement may be true or false, but it is a statement nonetheless."

What remains is an *assertion* of fact, i.e., an opinion as to the factuality of the thing asserted.

"This is also what the CCSS is trying to demonstrate."

No. On your classification, the CCSS would have categorized everything as a "fact."

""Your "belief" that you have brown hair or "belief" that your car runs on gasoline has *absolutely* nothing to do with the truth of the matter."

Well, I agree, if I interpret you correctly, and in fact, the author said as much. If my hair is brown, it's not brown because I believe it. However, my belief may be based on good reason, in which case the fact does have something to do with my belief.

In either event, the fact is an objective feature of the world. What I express when I say "My hair is brown" is a belief as to that fact.

"Those facts can be objectively determined outside any human judgment."

Hardly. The judgment involved is based on extremely sure footing -- our senses, reading (with our senses) scientific instruments, etc. -- but nevertheless judgment is involved. If you'd said, "Those facts objectively exist without any human judgment," I would agree -- but the words "can be determined" kind of kill it.

In any event, here is the distinction: the brownness of my hair is an objective fact about the world. It is there irrespective of any beliefs about it. But the mental state, in my head, wherein I believe (or know) my hair to be brown is a belief -- a very highly rationally supported one, in this case.

"Think of how the CCSS would be used in a mock trial. Facts are indisputable bits of evidence. Opinions are beliefs about what happened outside the facts. Reasoned judgment is the intersection of the two where the facts and evidence provide the ability to infer outcomes or behavior."

"It really is that straightforward."

And it's a straightforward misuse of terminology.

Facts are not "indisputable bits of evidence." Facts are the truths that the jury is trying to discover, and evidence, both indisputable and otherwise, constitutes some of the grounding by which they attempt to come to correct beliefs about those facts. And yes, I've participated in mock trials. Conflating evidence and facts is an absolutely elementary error.

Nice job shoehorning in a pretty unrelated issue, Krellin

@krellin,

"The color of your hair is in no way a "belief". Color is actually a pretty specific thing -- you shine a spectrum of energy onto your head, some of that energy is absorbed, some of it reflects and can be observed. The energy that is reflected an observed in the visible spectrum is the color of your hair. It is measurable. it is pure fact."

The color of hair is a pure fact. My mental state with respect to it is a belief (based on those experiments, for example). It would qualify as knowledge, in this case -- "justified true belief."

"That childish, wanna-be-intellectuals play fast and loose with actual physical facts, and then pretend that other non-physical, non-measurable, etc things are the actual facts is a large part of what is wrong with this world, today's youth, etc. "

You couldn't have it more wrong, krellin. The belief that physical facts are the only real facts is not only a self-defeating position, it's one of the worst philosophical errors plaguing the world.

As for the "murder is wrong" debate -- it is, of course. But apart from that, your disagreement about whether it is or is not a fact that murder is wrong is basically a philosophical disagreement about the meaning of ethics. One side is correct; if the moral objectivists are right, then "murder is wrong" is a fact, and "murder is wrong" is therefore a true opinion. If the relativists are right, then "murder is wrong" is not a fact, and so "murder is wrong" is a false opinion.

@semck83:

"An example may help clarify.

Suppose you say, "It's my opinion that semck has brown hair." That is an opinion."

There is no straw man. You brought it up. Your example did nothing to clarify. It only made matters worse.

You are in essence saying that adding the words "In my opinion..." or "I believe that..." to the start of any factual statement changes the factual statement into an opinion. It also seems like that is the *only* way you will accept that anything is an opinion.

"Murder is wrong" is not a fact. "Same sex marriage is right" is not a fact. "Ice cream tastes good" is not a fact.

"There is no straw man. You brought it up. Your example did nothing to clarify. It only made matters worse."

I didn't bring it up. You had already raised it in a prior post. I was responding, but now that I start to feel that it is central to your point, I think it was always a straw man.

"You are in essence saying that adding the words "In my opinion..." or "I believe that..." to the start of any factual statement changes the factual statement into an opinion."

No. I'm not saying anything even vaguely resembling that. See? Here's the problem. I haven't made it clear what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is that the assertion of fact is always an opinion, whether or not it has "It's my opinion that" in front of it.

"What I'm saying is that the assertion of fact is always an opinion, whether or not it has 'it's my opinion that' in front of it."

Including this statement itself, right? Nihilism's fun.

@Krellin-

"LIKEWISE....."murder" has a specific meaning to a society that is rational, and has an agreed upon language. "

Please enlighten us, oh wise one. What is this definition that all can agree upon? Please try to keep it under 5 pages, but be sure to account for every scenario, making sure to specify when a killing is a murder and when it is something else.

Thanks!

"Including this statement itself, right? Nihilism's fun."

Yes, including that statement, but this isn't vaguely nihilistic, because I'm not saying opinions can't be rationally supported or known. They can, in fact. You're interpreting "opinion" as meaning "unsupported, arbitrary," which is precisely what I'm arguing against.

Krellin's not so good when you try to get him to think about specifics. He likes hand waving and generalizations, though.

"Murder is wrong" is a fact in the sense that the word "murder" defines the act of ending the life of another being in a manner that is morally judged to be "wrong" or unjustified. The very definition of the word murder as distinct from other words in our language assigns a moral judgment.

murder is not necessarily wrong. It is unlawful (because that is an essential part of the definition of murder). Otherwise, I suggest everyone who claims to know what a fact is to retake epistemology 101 or provide a valid and usable definition of "fact."

Also, why does semck have brown hair? Is he hispanic? Or worse?

Yet lawful acts are often called murder when one assigns a negative moral judgment on them. Things such as "state-sanctioned-murder" in the case of soldiers, or the hypothetical license to kill. Even when the act is "legal" it is considered murder. That seems to me to make the moral judgment more of an essential part of the definition than the legal one.

"You're interpreting "opinion" as meaning "unsupported, arbitrary," which is precisely what I'm arguing against."

In the context of the CCSS, opinions are unsupported and arbitrary. That's why they have the "reasoned judgment" category which you are studiously avoiding.