> If you're asking if acts can be moral or immoral even if they have no consequences, then the answer is yes, they can.
If you are going to make a rule -- i.e. that restricts people in the real world -- yet it has no purpose in real-world effect, why on earth should anyone be interested in agreeing to it?
"We are not allowed to go out in the sun on wednesdays. Why? Because it has been unimpeachably objectively derived from the 'axioms of morality'!" Anyone with any sense will just go elsewhere.
Ultimately, one has to be sensible with philosophy.
> It's not because it violates the right to life of those people
And why is it wrong to violate right to life? Because it has a real harmful effect. This is the point: all these rules come down to actual effects. If it were possible to remove the harmful part (maybe like killing someone in Quake Live), such rules would lose their meaning or worth. What really counts in moral evaluation is the real-world effect.
If you are going to make a rule -- i.e. that restricts people in the real world -- yet it has no purpose in real-world effect, why on earth should anyone be interested in agreeing to it?
"We are not allowed to go out in the sun on wednesdays. Why? Because it has been unimpeachably objectively derived from the 'axioms of morality'!" Anyone with any sense will just go elsewhere.
Ultimately, one has to be sensible with philosophy.
> It's not because it violates the right to life of those people
And why is it wrong to violate right to life? Because it has a real harmful effect. This is the point: all these rules come down to actual effects. If it were possible to remove the harmful part (maybe like killing someone in Quake Live), such rules would lose their meaning or worth. What really counts in moral evaluation is the real-world effect.