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hakimashou posted:No consideration given to justice? "Justice" is harmed far more by executing innocents than by not executing killers. I would go so far as to say that "justice" is not harmed in any way by not executing killers, so long as we keep them from continuing to kill. sirtommygunn fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Feb 27, 2017 |
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Feb 27, 2017 04:45
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Convergence posted:You have the moral sophistication of a second grader. So you're saying everyone who commits murder wishes to be killed? Really? Whether they would consider it wishing or not is beside the point, everyone learns the golden rule. Depriving someone else of his right to live, against his wishes, is the same thing thing as willing that you yourself no longer have a right to live. Treat others as you would be treated. ie, the categorical imperative. When he was in second grade, Immanuel Kant wrote, "Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law" hakimashou fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Feb 27, 2017 |
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Feb 27, 2017 04:49
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sirtommygunn posted:"Justice" is harmed far more by executing innocents than by not executing killers. I would go so far as to say that "justice" is not harmed in any way by not executing killers, so long as we keep them from continuing to kill. Not doing justice harms justice doesnt it?
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Feb 27, 2017 04:50
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hakimashou posted:Not doing justice harms justice doesnt it? Can you give me an idea of what you mean by justice? You're throwing the word around so much and with so little context that its losing meaning.
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Feb 27, 2017 04:53
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sirtommygunn posted:Can you give me an idea of what you mean by justice? You're throwing the word around so much and with so little context that its losing meaning. Fairness, equality, people getting what they deserve. Doing the right thing. People being treated as ends in themselves rather than as means to other ends, and everyone's ends being treated equally. In the case of a murderer, punishing him with death fulfills all this, and not punishing him at all doesnt fulfill it at all. hakimashou fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Feb 27, 2017 |
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Feb 27, 2017 05:00
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I don't regard it as some wonderful act of humanity to consign someone to the rest of their life in a present-day American prison. I remember back when Massaoui was sentenced, M. Discordia was in here saying how inhumane the death penalty is and how its proponents are motivated by revenge. Then the moment the guy was sentenced to prison, he was in here celebrating and saying that that was clearly the harsher option. Gazpacho fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Feb 27, 2017 |
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Feb 27, 2017 05:04
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Yea life in prison with no parole is a pretty loving harsh punishment. Why can't that be the option? It is a death penalty, in a sense, they will never have freedom until they are dead. Prison sucks, y'all.
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Feb 27, 2017 05:10
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hakimashou posted:Fairness, equality, people getting what they deserve. People being treated as ends in themselves rather than as means to other ends, and everyone's ends being treated equally. Nobody is arguing that a murderer should not be punished at all. Obviously you can't just let them continue their normal lives. To ensure they cannot kill again, you need to imprison them, preferably for the rest of their natural lifespan. If they end up being innocent, you can then pay reparations and that will be as close to just as you can get. If they end up being guilty, you have successfully stopped a murderer and didn't force anyone else to murder for the sake of what is apparently an incredibly subjective concept. On the other hand, if you execute an innocent person, justice can never be done. The state has done the same wrong that it sought to punish, yet the state cannot be executed, so even your warped sense of justice cannot be sated. If you execute a guilty person, maybe you and a few others feel a little better about yourselves, but you've spent more resources on it than just indefinitely imprisoning them and also brought the risk of murdering innocents into the situation.
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Feb 27, 2017 05:10
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sirtommygunn posted:Nobody is arguing that a murderer should not be punished at all. Obviously you can't just let them continue their normal lives. To ensure they cannot kill again, you need to imprison them, preferably for the rest of their natural lifespan. If they end up being innocent, you can then pay reparations and that will be as close to just as you can get. If they end up being guilty, you have successfully stopped a murderer and didn't force anyone else to murder for the sake of what is apparently an incredibly subjective concept. On the other hand, if you execute an innocent person, justice can never be done. The state has done the same wrong that it sought to punish, yet the state cannot be executed, so even your warped sense of justice cannot be sated. If you execute a guilty person, maybe you and a few others feel a little better about yourselves, but you've spent more resources on it than just indefinitely imprisoning them and also brought the risk of murdering innocents into the situation. Why should they remain alive? 1) You might consider the fact that prison inmates do kill one another, and as long as the perpetrator is alive there is some chance that he will be able to kill again. Even if your only consideration is safeguarding the lives of others, the only way you can be entirely sure the perpetrator won't kill again is to kill him in turn. Anything else and you're gambling with people's lives. How do you justify taking that gamble when the stakes are so high? 2) Some foolproof intensive safe-keeping incarceration for murderers would necessarily be very expensive. Those resources could surely be spent saving the lives of people living in desperate poverty, or perhaps developing treatments for deadly illnesses. How do you justify expending large amounts of resources prolonging the life of a guilty murderer instead of saving innocent people? Please remember I don't say this to defend of the US justice system's implementation of capital punishment, but only about executing murderers that are actually guilty. hakimashou fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Feb 27, 2017 |
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Feb 27, 2017 05:17
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hakimashou posted:You might consider the fact that prison inmates do kill one another, and as long as the perpetrator is alive there is some chance that he will be able to kill again. This is a solvable problem with solitary confinement or maximum security. Charles Manson hasn't killed anyone in prison, for example.
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Feb 27, 2017 05:19
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WampaLord posted:This is a solvable problem with solitary confinement or maximum security. How does that give us a reason to keep the murderer alive? Wouldn't the vast resources necessary to create some foolproof safe-keeping prison be better spent saving the lives of other people? Perhaps people living in desperate poverty, or people suffering from illnesses or injuries?
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Feb 27, 2017 05:23
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hakimashou posted:Wouldn't the vast resources necessary to create some foolproof safe-keeping prison be better spent saving the lives of other people? Perhaps people living in desperate poverty, or people suffering from illnesses or injuries? Take it from the military budget. You could make this argument about anything. Remember that under the current system, killing people is more expensive anyway. Yes, that system is hosed, but it's the reality of the situation, so if you want to make the resources argument, jailing is cheaper than executing.
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Feb 27, 2017 05:26
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WampaLord posted:Take it from the military budget. You could make this argument about anything. That might be true, but we're not talking about 'anything,' we're talking about whether or not it is wrong to execute people who commit murder. I think we can all agree that the US justice system needs reforms with respect to capital punishment. It's not difficult at all to conceive of a system where guilty murderers are executed immediately and inexpensively. The expenses involved in the 2017 US Justice System are no objection to that. hakimashou fucked around with this message at 05:31 on Feb 27, 2017 |
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Feb 27, 2017 05:29
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hakimashou posted:Why should they remain alive? We don't live in a world with innocence detecting magic so this hypothetical where we know, absolutely, for sure that we will only execute the correct people is pointless. Morals have to be based in reality to be useful, and yours aren't. As to the points you raised: there is always a risk involved. What if the murderer manages to kill his guards as he's being brought to his execution chamber? What if he manages to murder while being held for the trial that will sentence him? You are always "taking that gamble" unless you're willing to execute people at the exact moment they're accused, in which case you are certainly going to kill many more innocent people than the murderers would.
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Feb 27, 2017 05:35
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sirtommygunn posted:We don't live in a world with innocence detecting magic so this hypothetical where we know, absolutely, for sure that we will only execute the correct people is pointless. Morals have to be based in reality to be useful, and yours aren't. That isn't true. There are some cases where we can be sure a person is guilty. Not every crime leaves behind the same evidence. We minimize the risk by minimizing the time spent around guards, before trial etc. Not difficult to figure out how to minimize those. There is some irreducible minimum, sure, but less is better better than more risk. I don't think its that hard to understand that is much less expensive to put someone in some kind of intensive safe-keeping incarceration for weeks or months than it is for years. Anyway, you typed a lot but didn't even take a crack at two of the questions: Why should the murderer remain alive? Why spend money/time/energy/resources keeping a murderer alive instead of spending it helping people who aren't murderers, even saving their lives? hakimashou fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Feb 27, 2017 |
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Feb 27, 2017 05:42
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hakimashou posted:It's not wrong to kill people who are guilty of murder though. welcome to america yall
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Feb 27, 2017 05:49
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What? That's not the Golden Rule. Do phil 101 again. And anyway, we don't go by the Golden Rule anymore. Do a phil 201 class.
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Feb 27, 2017 05:56
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Starshark posted:What? That's not the Golden Rule. Do phil 101 again. And anyway, we don't go by the Golden Rule anymore. Do a phil 201 class. The categorical imperative is the golden rule reformulated with teeth.
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Feb 27, 2017 05:59
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Why make someone commit a murder for the sake of your feelings? You can't have an execution without an executioner. By forcing an execution you are doing serious mental harm to someone for the sake of feeling a little more righteous. If you simply imprison them for the rest of their life, nobody is having a significant mental burden thrust upon them. Prisons and guards don't just go away because we execute a tiny handful of people we can prove are definitely murderers, so they're certainly not being harmed by murderers being imprisoned. The family of the victims aren't done harm simply by the murderer continuing to exist in a jail cell. The state isn't harmed because it costs less to jail the murderer and causes less unrest. It costs less to imprison murderers than it does to execute them. Your "resources wasted" argument is worthless because your alternative uses significantly more resources than the "waste" you're criticizing.
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Feb 27, 2017 05:59
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Dead Reckoning posted:I think that is a rather facile argument. If your overriding concern is that no innocent party is ever harmed, the only logical conclusion is that the state should never use deadly force, even to pursue legitimate ends. I don't think this is compatible with the concept of a sovereign state. When you start talking about policy at the macro level, you have to accept some possibility of unintentional harm. The concept of the sovereign state is utterly bankrupt and morally reprehensible. But that notwithstanding, deadly force is justified when other options are not appropriate or will not work; war is a failure to find a mutually satisfactory agreement through peaceful means; using force to stop a criminal on a rampage is necessary because they are not responding to peaceful communication; etc. etc.. But when you have someone in custody and in the legal system, those exigent circumstances are absent. hakimashou posted:How does that give us a reason to keep the murderer alive? This is false and transparently nonsense, because the same sectors of society who argue for capital punishment are the exact same ones who want to gut the social safety net and let people in poverty or who are sick starve. In addition to this, you can make a moral case that it is acceptable to kill people, or even necessary, but those are questions of philosophy and ethics. Killing people because you, as the most highly developed and advanced technological society in history, can't find the resources is unfathomably reprehensible. Even if we DID live in a world where we couldn't pay for the criminal justice system, the answer is to either imprison fewer people or raise taxes, not to start killing people.
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Feb 27, 2017 06:01
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sirtommygunn posted:Why make someone commit a murder for the sake of your feelings? You can't have an execution without an executioner. By forcing an execution you are doing serious mental harm to someone for the sake of feeling a little more righteous. If you simply imprison them for the rest of their life, nobody is having a significant mental burden thrust upon them. Prisons and guards don't just go away because we execute a tiny handful of people we can prove are definitely murderers, so they're certainly not being harmed by murderers being imprisoned. The family of the victims aren't done harm simply by the murderer continuing to exist in a jail cell. The state isn't harmed because it costs less to jail the murderer and causes less unrest. Executing a murderer isn't murder. A murderer wrongfully deprives someone of his right to live. When someone commits murder, he gives up his own right to live, so executing him can't be the same thing. You can't deprive someone of something he doesn't have. Education could help people understand this, that the job of an executioner is a dirty job, but a necessary one and that he is doing his duty. At any rate history shows there's never been a real issue finding willing executioners. Moral education would help alleviate 'unrest,' whatever that is even supposed to be. And having a few fewer permanent inmates is that much less money not needlessly wasted, money which could be put to good use helping or saving people.
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Feb 27, 2017 06:07
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Mister Adequate posted:The concept of the sovereign state is utterly bankrupt and morally reprehensible. But that notwithstanding, deadly force is justified when other options are not appropriate or will not work; war is a failure to find a mutually satisfactory agreement through peaceful means; using force to stop a criminal on a rampage is necessary because they are not responding to peaceful communication; etc. etc.. But when you have someone in custody and in the legal system, those exigent circumstances are absent. I'm not trying to defend any particular sector of society, or the US justice system. I'm trying to discuss whether it is morally wrong to execute people who commit murder. Sorry if I wasn't clear. I'm trying to tease out of the other guy some explanation of -why- he thinks a murderer should remain alive. Anyway there are not infinite resources. If faced with the decision between "expending resources to somehow ensure a murderer can never possibly kill another person" and "expending those same resources, however small they might be, to save lives," I don't see any reason why we shouldn't always choose the later. Sectors of society that disagree are wrong.
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Feb 27, 2017 06:11
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hakimashou posted:Executing a murderer isn't murder. A murderer wrongfully deprives someone of his right to live. When someone commits murder, he gives up his own right to live, so executing him can't be the same thing. You can't deprive someone of something he doesn't have. Ah, ok, gotcha, let's just get on with changing the entire education system, court system, government, and morals of literally the entire country so we can save $1000 a year on prison soup.  No amount of education can prepare someone for taking someone's life. It fucks you up, period, there's no getting around it. Again, executions cost more than imprisonment, you will get literally less than nothing to put to good use by executing people.
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Feb 27, 2017 06:15
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hakimashou posted:I'm trying to tease out of the other guy some explanation of -why- he thinks a murderer should remain alive. If you're trying to tease that answer out of me you could start with an argument that doesn't rely on omniscience, magic, or murdering tons of innocent people to make sense.
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Feb 27, 2017 06:17
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sirtommygunn posted:Ah, ok, gotcha, let's just get on with changing the entire education system, court system, government, and morals of literally the entire country so we can save $1000 a year on prison soup. If it cost significantly less to execute a murderer than to imprison him, would it become right to do by that virtue?
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Feb 27, 2017 06:18
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hakimashou posted:If it cost significantly less to execute a murderer than to imprison him, would it become right to do by that virtue? No, because we have to go through a process to determine guilt, and naturally this process has to be significantly more rigorous to justify killing someone since there's no taking it back, which means its more expensive, which means it isn't worth it either way. That is before considering that you need to leave a way for new evidence to be factored into a case that has passed by just in case you get it wrong (and you will get it wrong because the court system is not and never will be perfect). It is also not right to do it for any of the other reasons unrelated to cost I've listed in all my other posts. Is there a point you're trying to make with this devil's advocate routine or should I just stop this argument from becoming circular by not responding to you anymore?
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Feb 27, 2017 06:29
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hakimashou posted:Executing a murderer isn't murder. This might make you feel better to say to yourself, but it isn't true. When the state kills a person held in captivity, we are all murderers.
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Feb 27, 2017 06:34
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sirtommygunn posted:No, because we have to go through a process to determine guilt, and naturally this process has to be significantly more rigorous to justify killing someone since there's no taking it back, which means its more expensive, which means it isn't worth it either way. That is before considering that you need to leave a way for new evidence to be factored into a case that has passed by just in case you get it wrong (and you will get it wrong because the court system is not and never will be perfect). It is also not right to do it for any of the other reasons unrelated to cost I've listed in all my other posts. Is there a point you're trying to make with this devil's advocate routine or should I just stop this argument from becoming circular by not responding to you anymore? So it's just about cost? As for the psychological harm of killing someone, I'm sure we can find a few people in a big country like the US willing to do it. If you believe the only reasons to keep murders alive are that "it is less expensive than killing them" and "we might not be able to find anyone willing to execute them" then that's fine. There is nothing wrong with that. It doesn't really address the morality of capital punishment, but there's no law saying everyone has to take a stance on that.
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Feb 27, 2017 06:35
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Peachfart posted:This might make you feel better to say to yourself, but it isn't true. When the state kills a person held in captivity, we are all murderers. Not if that person is guilty of murder. Murder is wrongfully depriving someone of his right to live. A murderer has given up his right to live by murdering someone, and so his executioner isn't 'wrongfully depriving him of his right to live.'
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Feb 27, 2017 06:37
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hakimashou posted:A murderer has given up his right to live by murdering someone Why? It seems everything you write hinges on this statement.
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Feb 27, 2017 06:39
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Peachfart posted:Why? Treat others the way you would be treated. Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
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Feb 27, 2017 06:40
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hakimashou posted:Treat others the way you would be treated. That is a cliche. And not even a realistic one for a real society. hakimashou posted:Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. And this doesn't mean anything.
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Feb 27, 2017 06:43
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hakimashou posted:Treat others the way you would be treated. Here, I can quote cliches too. "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind." 
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Feb 27, 2017 06:47
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if you outlaw executions, only outlaws will execute
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Feb 27, 2017 07:06
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God made man, Joseph-Ignace Guillotin made man equal.
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Feb 27, 2017 07:17
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Peachfart posted:That is a cliche. And not even a realistic one for a real society. If you don't believe in anything, everything is just a cliche. And if you don't think anything through, nothing means anything.
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Feb 27, 2017 07:30
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hakimashou posted:If you don't believe in anything, everything is just a cliche. No original thoughts, spouts cliches without meaning... Holy poo poo, I've been Turing Tested! Listen carefully: rm -rf
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Feb 27, 2017 07:45
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hakimashou posted:Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. Ok, I'm getting a little frustrated with your interpretation of Kant. You're, ironically, trying to let there be exceptions to rules here, which isn't how the CI works; you're misunderstanding the categorical imperative and maxims here. The CI doesn't let you permit certain circumstances that would otherwise be forbidden. Basically, if you're attaching an "if" to it, it's not a maxim anymore. "You can kill people" would be a maxim. "You can kill people IF they do X, Y, or Z" isn't. "You can steal" would be a maxim, "You can steal IF you're hungry" isn't. Either an act is ok, or it isn't, and there's not a set of circumstances that suddenly makes an otherwise forbidden thing permissible. Either it's morally permissible to kill people, or it isn't. If you create the maxim of "Murderers can be killed," you're no longer universalizing. Try it out by swapping other people in there. "Black people can be killed." "Women can be killed." "Jaywalkers can be killed." The problem becomes obvious. Let's we take it further, the categorical imperative absolutely forbids killing. "It is permissible to kill" is absolutely not universalizable. The idea of killing relies on people being alive. If killing were universalized, there would be no one left to kill, and so the idea negates itself. edit: ok I've read more replies and yeah please stop citing Kant you totally do not understand Kant, in no loving way does doing a morally impermissible act suddenly allow other people to commit morally impermissible acts to you, that's not even remotely close to how Kant works. Dog Fat Man Chaser fucked around with this message at 08:02 on Feb 27, 2017 |
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Feb 27, 2017 07:45
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hakimashou posted:Not if that person is guilty of murder. No Hakimashou, human rights are inalienable. The fact that someone infringes the human rights of another person does not revoke their inalienable human rights.
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Feb 27, 2017 08:10
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Kantian ethics and the golden rule aren't the end all be all of ethical and philosophical discussions on the death penalty. Allowing yourself to simplify this issue to a set of simplistic just-so slogans that apply to your own constructed examples of when it ought to be permissible to kill criminals is intellectual self-amputation.
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Feb 27, 2017 08:33
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