Chainsawkitten

The consequence of death is equal, yes. However, I do not only regard the final outcome as all consequences of one action. As I am an utilitarianist I believe that an action is good if it leads to more happiness/pleasure than unhappiness/pain. This means the total pleasure and/or pain that the action causes throughout time.

Would the suffering of the animal be equal in both the cases I would say that the moral implications of both scenarios would be equal. In fact, I would argue that, given the conditions that in both cases the corpse of the animal is treated likewise, the best, most moral scenario would be the one with the sadist as he/she recieves pleasure from the action.

This is under the condition that it is a lone, isolated event and that the pleasure that the sadist recieves does not mean that he/she has had positive experiences on animal cruelty making him/her more likely to perform it again. (This, I would say, is likely the case.)


I argue that the notion that immoral actions should always be punished, for punishment's sake alone, is based on feelings rather than logic. That is of course assuming that a moral/immoral action is defined in the way I define it (as described above).

When saying that, I am making the assumption (a justified one, if you ask me, but that's just me) that:
A1: Crime causes an increase in unhappiness/pain and a decrease in happiness/pleasure. (This would of course depend on the specific crime, I would argue that some legal actions are still immoral and some illegal ones are moral.)
Hence:
A2: Less crime means less increase in unhappiness/pain and less decrease in happiness/pain. Per my system of morality: positive consequences.

B: Punishment works in a preventive matter by eg. scaring people into not commiting crimes or stating an example. (Of course punishment isn't enough, we also need eg. theraphy.) Due to A2, these are positive consequences.