^^conclusion jumper

Tom you sure do like to type a lot. For the sake of keeping it simple you wrote

Morality tends to be based on intuition and common sense ideas

And anyone that has ever been under emotional duress knows that intuition and common sense are compromised in those moments. How compromised depends on the person. Woods was in a state of clear mind. Its apples and oranges no matter how much beguiling jargon you put out there.

Tomverve is arguing that perhaps Qyntel was not in a clear state of mind - that there may be mitigating psychological factors that are not quite as easy to empathize with as anger. Unlike the Kidd incident, however, the continued aspect of the abuse suggests that whatever psychological instability he may have suffered from is not transient - that is a greater concern. Perhaps the hardships in Qyntel's life caused a general de-sensitization to suffering that he carries with him in his dealings with his 4 legged friends. More likely, his mental make-up is by and large normal and his system of ideals just figures it ok to abuse dogs. For example, he could simply be a utilitarian that thinks his pleasure outweighed the pain received by the dogs.

The other issue is that just because Qyntel abused dogs at one point does not make him generically immoral - there are many things he may do correctly. If we were looking at a case of some non-specific neurological instability - then, yes, that "defect" so to speak may manifest itself in other moral paradigms. But, in my opinion, Qyntel probably just didn't care for the suffering of animals and didn't think it was a big deal - thats quite immoral in my opinion but it also remains an isolated incident - i.e. he isn't necessarily capable of other immoral actions. If Qyntel's line of reasoning for abusing dogs is broad enough - suppose he thinks abuse in general is cool - then he is much more of a threat and his basal morality is defective. If he just thinks animals aren't that important (more likely), thats a much more specific problem - less dangerous and more easily fixable. Without further evidence, I don't think precedent is a valid argument here and branding him "evil" is not justified.