American History

This paper tackles the arguments against the claim that murder is a minor offense under the four-dimensional view of a person. The definition and conditions for determining the gravity of murder are also discussed vis--vis the indirect claims of those who adhere to the four-dimensional view that murder is not a major offense and that it is determined by the nature of the victim.

Introduction
The four-dimensional view of a man, or four-dimensionalism, is a general metaphysical claim that people and other persisting things are made up of temporal parts (Olson, 2008).

According to Jack in the conversation, Murder is a minor offence under the four-dimensional view of a person and that murder is either a harming of one person stage of the many stages of a person or a bringing to conclusion of a whole person. In other words, murder is either the harming of a very small proportion of a person or no harming of the whole person at all. This view, I believe, is entirely illogical.

Definition of Murder
Since it is the crime of murder that is the focus here, it would be best to define murder first in its legal context.

Murder has several prerequisites. First, it must be unlawful, which means to say that it does not include acts of self-defense and similar cases where the killing is lawful. Second, the killing must be of a living human being, and third, the killing of an enemy in the course of was will not be murder. (Homicide  Murder, 2010)

Moreover, murder is a crime of specific intent, which means that it includes cases where the defendant desired the death or where the death is foreseen by the defendant as virtually certain, although not desired for its own sake. (Homicide  Murder, 2010)

Degrees of Murder
Since Jacks claims indirectly make a distinction between minor and major offenses, it would be best to define the degrees of murder, which are also the bases of the corresponding punishment, and hence the bases of whether an act of murder is classified as either major or minor.

Murder is often classified as first degree or second degreeand that first-degree murder is premeditated and second-degree murder is not premeditated (Types of Serious Crime, 2007).

Arguments against the Proposition that Murder under the Four-Dimensional View of a Person is a Minor Offense

There are a number of arguments that can be advanced against Jacks claim that murder is only a minor offense under the four-dimensional view of a person. On the question of whether murder is a minor or major offense, and for the purpose of convenience, we have designated the term gravity.

First, the gravity of murder, that is its being a major offense and not a minor offense, does not depend on the victims temporal quality such as age but rather on whether it is a first or second degree murder as decreed by law, and ultimately on the mere fact that it is decreed by law. According to Jack, murder is a minor offense since it is just the harming of one person stage and not the harming of the whole person. However, the basis for the fact that murder is a major offense is that such a criminal act is decreed by law to be one, and not on whether what you murdered is a whole person or a mere person stage. This simply means that based on the legal definition of murder, ones commission of it in the first or second degree is classified as a major crime regardless whether one murders a whole person or a person stage.

Second, the gravity of murder does not depend on the victim itself. The argument of Jack indirectly presupposes that the gravity of murder depends on the victim, more specifically on whether he is a mere person stage or a whole person. However, based on the aforementioned classification of murder into the first and second degrees, the nature of murder as a criminal act depends on whether it was premeditated or not, and does not depend on whom the act was directed against. The victim is a mere object of murder and does not by itself determine whether a criminal offense should be major or minor. For example, whether you steal money from a 67-year-old woman or an 8-year-old kid, you will still be charged with theft. Exceptions to the rule are special laws directed towards the protection of specifically and legally defined groups of individuals like women, children, police officers, and public officials. However, laws on this vary from one juridical area to another. Moreover, the mere fact that certain groups of individuals such as above are specially protected by law does not presuppose entirely or at all the possibility that certain person stages are also protected by the law.

Third, the person stages are not legally defined. When it comes to law and legalities as well as crimes and punishment, everything is legally defined including the everyday terms women and children. Person stages are not defined and there is no clear way of defining it based on age or time for it is not clear when exactly one starts or ends. Hence murdering a person stage is logically neither a major nor a minor offense because it is even actually impossible to determine what a person stage exactly is. It is like saying that one murdered a ghost, an alien or a zombie  clearly legally undefined terms.

Fourth, even if the person stages were in fact metaphysically true and well-defined, there is still nothing in their nature that presupposes their death through murder to be a minor offense and not a major offense. Lets suppose there really are person stages and they really do exist, and lets suppose a person stage was murdered. Does it then mean that the act of murder is a minor offense and not a major offense If such an act is considered a minor offense and not a major one, then it is tantamount to discriminating against person stages in favor of whole persons. Consequently, the bereaved relatives of these murdered person stages may not be able to avail of certain privileges of justice such as the heavy punishment meted out on criminals of murdered whole persons.

Lastly, on the subject of the act of murder being considered a minor offense for the reason that it merely brings a whole person to conclusion, no one can exactly determine whether a whole person is supposed to be concluded at that point. If the whole person is really to be concluded at that specific point, or that its death is certain, one might think that murder is excusable hence merely a minor offense. However, the preceding statement is wrong because of the fact that the law still considers a criminal and major offender someone who kills another even where the death is foreseen by the defendant as virtually certain (Homicide  Murder, 2010).

Conclusion
Jacks argument that murder is a minor offense under the four-dimensional view of a person is illogical. The reasons include the fact that murder does not depend on someones temporality. It also does not depend on the nature of the victim, which is something the four-dimensional view presupposes. Another reason is that the term person stages is not legally defined and even if it were and it truly existed, there would still be nothing in its nature that would consider its murder only a minor offense and not a major one. Lastly, the bringing to a conclusion of a whole person does not necessarily mean that the act of murder is only a minor offense for murder remains punishable as a major offense even if the conclusion or death of the victim is certain.