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Decius comments on By Which It May Be Judged - Less Wrong
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"Murder" is roughly shorthand for "intentional nonconsensual interaction which results in the intended outcome of the death of a sentient."
If the secret police break down my door, nothing done to them is nonconsensual.
Any half-way competent secret police wouldn't need to.
You seem to have a very non-standard definition of "nonconsensual".
I meant in the non-transitive sense.
Being a combatant constitutes consent to be involved in the war. How is that non-standard?
Being involved in the war isn't equivalent to being killed. I find it quite conceivable that I might want to involve myself in the war against, say, the babyeaters, without consenting to being killed by the babyeaters. I mean, ideally the war would go like this: we attack, babyeaters roll over and die, end.
I'm not really sure what is the use of a definition of "consent" whereby involving myself in war causes me to automatically "consent" to being shot at. The whole point of fighting is that you think you ought to win.
Well, I think consent sort of breaks down as a concept when you start considering all the situations where societies decide to get violent (or for that matter to involve themselves in sexuality; I'd rather not cite examples for fear of inciting color politics). So I'm not sure I can endorse the general form of this argument.
In the specific case of warfare, though, the formalization of war that most modern governments have decided to bind themselves by does include consent on the part of combatants, in the form of the oath of enlistment (or of office, for officers). Here's the current version used by the US Army:
Doesn't get much more explicit than that, and it certainly doesn't include an expectation of winning. Of course, a lot of governments still conscript their soldiers, and consent under that kind of duress is, to say the least, questionable; you can still justify it, but the most obvious ways of doing so require some social contract theory that I don't think I endorse.
Indeed. Where the 'question' takes the form "Is this consent?" and the answer is "No, just no."
Duress is a problematic issue- conscription without the social contract theory supporting it is immoral. So are most government policies, and I don't grok the social contract theory well enough to justify government in general.
At the same time it should be obvious that there is something---pick the most appropriate word---that you have done by trying to kill something that changes the moral implications of the intended victim deciding to kill you first. This is the thing that we can clearly see that Decius is referring to.
The 'consent' implied by your action here (and considered important to Decius) is obviously not directly consent to be shot at but rather consent to involvement in violent interactions with a relevant individual or group. For some reason of his own Decius has decided to grant you power such that a specific kind of consent is required from you before he kills you. The kind of consent required is up to Decius and his morals and the fact that you would not grant a different kind of consent ('consent to be killed') is not relevant to him.
"violence" perhaps or "aggression" or "acts of hostility".
Not "consent". :-)
Did all of the participants in the violent conflict voluntarily enter it? If so, then they have consented to the outcome.
Generally not, actually.
Those who engage in an action in which not all participants enter of their own will is immoral. Yes, war is generally immoral in the modern era.
A theory of morality that looks nice on paper but is completely wrong. In a war between Good and Evil, Good should win. It doesn't matter if Evil consented.
You're following narrative logic there. Also, using the definitions given, anyone who unilaterally starts a war is Evil, and anyone who starts a war consents to it. It is logically impossible for Good to defeat Evil in a contest that Evil did not willingly choose to engage in.
What if Evil is actively engaged in say torturing others?
Right, just like it's logically impossible for Good to declare war against Evil to prevent or stop Evil from doing bad things that aren't war.
Er, that kind-of includes asking a stranger for the time.
Now we enter the realm of the social contract and implied consent.