From this perspective, if the woman didn’t suffer, then no evil would have been committed.
First I would point out that murdering someone, or causing someone pain and suffering,
may be independent evils (though taking someone’s life can be construed as the ultimate evil, because it impairs – in a most obvious way – any future enjoyment they will take in living, even more radically than rendering someone a paraplegic would).
As I believe you’ve pointed out, murdering someone painlessly is
still murdering (one person takes away your ability to ever walk again; another takes away your ability to ever live again). However, inflicting pain and suffering
without murder is still an evil, by the standards of “suffering equals evil” (which exists alongside the standard “death equals evil”). Beating someone to a pulp but leaving him within a hair’s breadth of his life would not be a blameless act, just because it did not result in death.
As for removal of suffering, it would have to entail, in the example of the electrodes:
–that they drugged her or gave her anesthetic first
and
–that the anesthetic was permanent and would not wear off to her awakening in physical agony
and
–that there would be no psychological or emotional trauma involved (e.g., if someone lops off my arm in a way that is painless, I will still be traumatized by the loss of my arm, and am harmed in any number of ways-- anything from impaired functioning, to the emotional pain of disfigurement in my own eyes, as well as through the way I am perceived by others)
Removal of harm would have to entail not only that the woman was spared her life, but that there was no mental or emotional suffering – including after the fact – and that the quality of that life was not impaired. For example, has she been disfigured or handicapped? In that case, she will experience the pain of an impeded life (e.g., a paraplegic cannot feel anything–the pain response is null --yet suffers greatly, emotionally).
But if we could abstract all of their source of suffering and harm from the example you gave (but we cannot) then, indeed, I have doubts that we
would find it to be immoral. If humans were invulnerable, and incapable of not only physical – but emotional – pain, our moralities would look very differently. Running over someone with my car wouldn’t be illegal, for example, if it actually
tickled them and felt more pleasurable than if I left them alone. If anything, I would probably have people *running *into the path of my vehicle, constantly.
Believers claim these standards came from God, but I submit that – without the signal of physical and emotional pain, and the fear of death or the grief of the death of a loved one – that we as humans never would have
figured it out. Even if it is intrinsically wrong, our emerging awareness of morality relied on
what we find painful or pleasurable (both physically and emotionally; what we fear and what we desire).
Take the example of suicide – God forbids it. But for what percentage of human beings is it necessary to say “God forbids it?” A small minority. Most of us do not consciously stay alive out of obedience to God; we stay alive because we value our own lives. The prohibition against murder is similar. Most people don’t want to be murdered. “Thou shalt not kill” may come from God, but it was the pragmatic fulfillment of a human desire for self-preservation, within the context of life in society. This would have been the
mechanism for the discovery of – or the emerging awareness of – this objective moral evil.
under an atheistic/materialistic perspective, the “being” of the woman is found only in her physical integrity, since mind/emotion are mere epiphenomena reducible to biochemical processes. The evil would come to an end at her death
That’s not at all how our courts look at it. The “being” of the woman is a metaphysical question, albeit a not invalid one. However - pragmatically and experientially – the being of that woman is found in her physical integrity
and in her mental and emotional state. This is why lawsuits often sue for “mental anguish” and “pain and suffering,” with the understanding that the latter may contain both a physical and a mental/emotional component.
Also, the very loss of one’s life is considered a great evil. Saying, “now that she’s dead, it doesn’t matter” will not fly, in a court of law. To the contrary, the fact that you’ve destroyed her life – and that her body is no longer usable – is viewed as a great evil. It certainly is by the families of the victim (if the law itself did not prevent them, they may try to harm the perpetrator).
Under a Christian or theistic perspective, the “being” of the woman…could transcend and extend beyond her physical death.
That is the belief, yes, though – in the minds of a grieving Christian parent, for example – it doesn’t tend to replace the pain of saying “my child’s life has been destroyed.” It is a great hope and potential source of consolation, even though the grieving Christian will still likely shed tears, and even take many years to recover from the grief.
For example – I know of someone who lost a child and who was said to have “cried every day for years” (maybe first-thing in the morning, maybe last-thing at night – I don’t know). I honestly do not know whether that woman was a believing Christian, or not. In that sense, the experience of grief is universal.
What the believer certainly wouldn’t say - I hope – is that murdering someone is any less of a crime, just because it is only possible to kill the body, and not the soul.
This kind of thinking, truth be told, got out of hand during the era in which heretics were burned.
