Subject:
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Re: Excellent news!
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 4 Mar 2005 21:36:09 GMT
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Viewed:
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1138 times
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At this point I should restate my standard disclaimer that I see no reason to
conclude that any moral absolutes can be known by humans with certainty. With
this in mind, any seemingly absolute statements I make along the lines of
“reality TV is absolutely evil” should be considered a paraphrase of “reality TV
is as completely objectionable to my aesthetic sense as I am able to ascertain.”
That is, I’m not addressing an actual, universal absolute.
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:
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Bruce has already mentioned the problem of certainty, which is a pretty
strong objection IMO. The current system has numerous examples of convicted
people who didn’t commit the murders of which they’re accused, so we’re
actually executing (or scheduled to execute) innocents.
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Certainly not knowingly. Nothing in life is certain, death and taxes
notwithstanding, so I fail to see why this issue should be held to an
impossible standard. Yeah, it’s irreversible, but work as hard as humanly
possbile to make the system work correctly, and let it be.
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For me the problem is simply that I’m not comfortable with the uncertainty.
With capital punishment in place, we seem to prefer erring in favor the
possibility of guilt, while to me it would be morally superior to err in favor
of the possibility of innocence. And if the convicted person is incarcerated,
the level of possible harm to society-at-large is about the same as if he’s been
executed.
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Where is the indignation when innocents are murdered by murderers who are
released from prison (or who get off through a system that would rather be
safe than sorry)?
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A fair objection. As an answer, I would offer that the murderer is a
murderer, after all, while I would hope to hold society to a higher standard of
conduct. Also, the issue in this particular hypothetical example is the
premature release of the murderer. I’d propose that murder carry a sentence of
life-without-parole rather than the current “life without parole for at least
the first few years.”
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How about frozen stasis? I know we don’t have the technology now, but what
if we did? Because I am hearing from this tangent that you think capital
punishment would be justified if 100% was possible. Or are you merely
requiring impossible criteria to essentially render the issue mute;-)
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I agree that if they’re frozen, then they’re probably mute!
But for clarity, I’ll state it explictly: in my view capital punishment is not
justified if the intended recipient of that punishment can otherwise be rendered
permanently unable to harm society-at-large.
I recognize the problems with this formulation. I would therefore add that
killing may be necessary in self-defense or when the killing would prevent other
deaths. For example, if my killing of five guys is the only way to stop them
from blowing up a bus full of people, then I’d have to conclude that it’s
necessary.
However, the purely mathematical component of this formulation gives me trouble.
If the murderer, for example, is driving an explosives-laden car with four
innocent people aboard, I don’t know specifically how I’d justify those four
deaths even if they’d save the whole busload.
Maybe we should leave in-the-moment self-defense aside until we’ve reached some
sort of conclusion re: capital punishment itself...
But if the murderer would be frozen in perpetuity, I don’t see that it’s
tangibly different from capital punishment, so my objection remains.
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In my mind, the murderer’s life is forfeit. He no longer possesses any
rights. He does owe the family a debt which can only be paid with his
life. This is the only way I can see that ultimately respects the sanctity of
life. The ultimate price must be paid or regard for life becomes debased.
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This formulation troubles me as well. How does the murderer’s death repay his
debt to the family? If the murderer kills a homeless man with no family, to
whom is the debt then owed? If the murderer kills himself immediately after the
murder, does that repay the debt?
I expect that in the last example the debt would not be satisfied, so I am
inclined to believe that the debt is not repaid by the murderer’s death but by
the process of execution itself. This is also morally objectionable to me
because it fosters a tit-for-tat sense of bloodthirst. Also (and again without
being flippant), it would seem to me that execution is not the ultimate
penalty under Christian thinking.
Oddly, this dredges up my ancient memory of
Antigone, in which the ruler
Creon forbade Antigone’s brother to be buried, thereby consigning him to walk
the earth as a spirit. In the play, this was considered the ultimate penalty
because the spirit was not allowed to rest.
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I think the most moral societies begin with the morality of their
individuals and their nuclear (W pronunciation;-) families.
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Umberto Eco has written in a very similar vein. The individual tends to justify
action against another person by either including or excluding that other person
from the individual’s “group.” Someone who is considered outside the group
(say, a clone-brand-fan) can be more palatably excluded from group-inclusive
benefits (and that’s just a facetious example, mind you).
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It’s kind of like the argument against torture. That is, we abominate
torture not just because of what it does to the torture victim but also
because of what it does to the torturer. The same, for me, applies to
capital punishment; the society that (in essence) votes to execute someone
who has been rendered harmless is a lessened society.
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I disagree. Do you really hold then that “life is most precious”? If
society values life above all, then society is lessened if it doesn’t force
those who don’t to pay the ultimate price.
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I think that the morally superior course is to value life rather than execute
people (even those who are grossly out of step with society). It strikes me as
logically inconsistent to value life by terminating life.
Dave!
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Excellent news!
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| (...) Why would you be so reticent to conclude that the taking of an innocent human life for no reason or purpose, but for, say amusement, isn't absolutely wrong and evil for everyone, not just you yourself? (...) Yes, but according to you, nothing (...) (19 years ago, 7-Mar-05, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Excellent news!
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| (...) Certainly not knowingly. Nothing in life is certain, death and taxes notwithstanding, so I fail to see why this issue should be held to an impossible standard. Yeah, it's irreversible, but work as hard as humanly possbile to make the system (...) (19 years ago, 4-Mar-05, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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