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It's not wrong to execute people who commit murder.
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Feb 26, 2017 23:26
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Peachfart posted:Yes, it is. No it's not. If they didn't want to get executed they shouldn't have murdered somone.
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Feb 26, 2017 23:55
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Randler posted:That does not mean that it is necessary to execute people who commit murder. It also does not adress the practical issues with executing people and in particular it still has the issue of the American justice system having extremely high false-positives when it comes to finding people guilty. Yeah I'm not saying we do a good job of it or should continue how we do it, but if a person really is guilty of murder, its not wrong if he is killed as punishment for it.
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Feb 27, 2017 00:13
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Peachfart posted:Yes. Killing is wrong. It's not wrong to kill people who are guilty of murder though. It's the golden rule.
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Feb 27, 2017 04:16
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Peachfart posted:If killing isn't wrong, why are we killing the killers? Since they did nothing wrong. When you commit murder you will yourself to be killed in turn, since by depriving someone else of his right to live you give up your own. "Treat others as you would wish to be treated." Executing a criminal however is different, you're doing justice, as you'd want justice to be done to you, or for you, if you were yourself the victim of a murder. You aren't depriving the condemned murderer of his right to life, since he has already voluntarily relinquished it, and indeed solemnly willed his own death, by the act of murdering someone. Since we want other people to treat us the way we treat them, ie, if we behave justly, we want to to be treated justly in return, we have an obligation to treat others the way they want to be treated as well. And the only way to definitively know how someone wishes to be treated is to see how he treats others.
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Feb 27, 2017 04:27
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sirtommygunn posted:You kill killers because you believe they will continue to kill, not because revenge will suddenly make things better. If you can stop the killing without killing the guy, there is no reason to kill the guy. No consideration given to justice?
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Feb 27, 2017 04:34
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Dog Fat Man Chaser posted: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. Kant was hugely in favor of the death penalty for murderers though... To Kant, executing them was a duty we had to them. The categorical imperative doesnt absolutely forbid killing, it obliges us to kill people who commit murder. According to the categorical imperative, we act wrongly if we don't execute murderers, because we are obliged to treat them as ends in themselves, and so if they choose to live by the maxim of killing, we have to respect their choice and execute them in turn. If we didn't do that, we'd be doing something worse, we'd be treating them as animals or children, less than fully people, refusing to accept that they were rational moral actors capable of making decisions with consequences. One of the most difficult Kantian positions is that capital punishment isnt an obligation to the victim of the crime, but to the criminal.
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Feb 28, 2017 00:23
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bitterandtwisted posted:I don't see why when "Justice" is just your subjective opinion on what is fair. You want punishments to reflect the emotive reaction you have to a crime. Not bad guys, people guilty of murder.
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Feb 28, 2017 00:27
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Flowers For Algeria posted:Why Kant believed that if we didn't execute them we'd be treating them as less than human, without human dignity or the right to autonomy. I agree with him.
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Feb 28, 2017 00:28
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Bip Roberts posted:Who gives a poo poo about Kant 2k17? He didnt get less right over time.
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Feb 28, 2017 00:29
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What about if you were rightfully convicted of murder?
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Feb 28, 2017 03:59
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T8R posted:The death penalty is now legal in society. You are rightfully convicted of murder. You are on death row. Yes
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Feb 28, 2017 04:18
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T8R posted:Excellent, now answer the first question. If I was wrongfully convicted of murder I would probably oppose the justice system's implementation of the death penalty, which I pretty much already do. But, I wouldn't believe it was morally wrong to execute people guilty of murder. Two different issues in my opinion.
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Feb 28, 2017 04:23
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T8R posted:It is morally wrong to have a society that executes innocent people for the crimes of others. You cannot have a perfect society that convicts people with absolute certainty. It is then always morally wrong to execute people guilty of murder, as you cannot assert with absolute certainty that they are guilty. As such, you cannot treat the issues separately. You can't be absolutely certain in every case that perpetrator is guilty, but you can in some cases. In those cases surely the guilty should be executed.
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Feb 28, 2017 05:03
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thechosenone posted:I just feel that execution just lionizes the use of murder to obtain justice, placing the idea in peoples minds that those whom are evil should be slain. This leads to murders by people who mistakenly believe themselves judge, jury, and executioner. We basically support the idea of murder as just when we murder people who are helpless to stop us from killing them if we decide to. It isn't the same as war, since war is either a matter of self-defense, and so is just, or is not, and so is likely not just (unless there is a persuasive reason maybe? I might tighten this up). If you agree with Kant, this is no objection at all. If people have to be treated as ends in themselves, not as means to another end - like comforting a grieving family, or bringing back the dead, or any other "use" at all - then we shouldn't even consider any of these things.
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Feb 28, 2017 13:24
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bitterandtwisted posted:
I disagree. It's easy to think of examples where evidence would demonstrate guilt. We already base the severity of sentencing in some cases on how sure we are the perpetrator is guilty. If we know somone killed someone else but can't be sure of their mental state, for example whether the crime was premeditated, we sometimes convict them of murder in a less harshly punished degree. There are also cases where somone possesses some proscribed items, but their punishment hinges on how sure we can be that they intended to distribute them. Another example is hate crimes. It also seems to me that if we accept the idea we can never truly prove anyone guilty of any crime, then we ought never to impose harsh punishments for anything.
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Feb 28, 2017 13:32
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T8R posted:It is morally wrong to have a society that executes innocent people for the crimes of others. You cannot have a perfect society that convicts people with absolute certainty. It is then always morally wrong to execute people guilty of murder, as you cannot assert with absolute certainty that they are guilty. As such, you cannot treat the issues separately. It's bad to have a society that punishes innocent people in any way for the crimes of others. I think we might be better off abolishing the death penalty in the US because I'm not convinced it is fairly and humanely applied. However, I don't believe it is morally wrong to execute people who are guilty of murder.
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Feb 28, 2017 13:35
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Nevvy Z posted:You seem to think it's the only acceptable punishment. Do we look any more closely than the charge and verdict? It's the punishment that best fits the crime. It fits it perfectly. "Guilty" is a pregnant term though. It's entirely possible that one person can cause another person to die and not be guilty of murder or fully morally culpable. Which is one objection to capital punishment as applied in the US. But not an objection to the morality of executing a truly guilty murderer.
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Feb 28, 2017 13:38
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bitterandtwisted posted:You convict someone with a shitload of drugs because it's beyond reasonable doubt that it's for more than personal use. They don't have more evidence of the crime of drug possession, they have sufficient evidence of a different crime -intent to supply. But what if they just really really like getting high and wanted to buy in bulk? You can't read someone's mind, and can't trust what they say. There are provisions in the law where guilt is presumed based on some threshold of evidence, like X amount of drugs, but a jury can still refuse to convict if they aren't sufficiently convinced. Different degrees of murder are better examples anyway. John hits George with his car and kills him. Does John get life without parole? The death penalty? 25 years? 10? Is he not punished at all? Does he just have to give George's family money? It all depends on how sure we are of his guilt, even if we know for sure that it happened.
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Feb 28, 2017 14:07
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Starshark posted:No, I think he's one of those people who thinks that words mean exactly what he wants them to mean and we should all just get on his wavelength. I'm trying really hard to avoid using the word 'schizophrenia' here. I really am. I think we can agree that for the question of whether or not it is moral to execute people who are guilty of murder, we can use "guilty" to mean something along the lines of "fully culpable, responsible, and deserving of punishment." There are plenty of examples you can think of that fit the bill. A criminal kills a witness so he cannot testify. Somone kills someone else to gain payment of life insurance. Someone's family member is killed to force them to divulge a secret. A victim of a kidnapping is killed when no ransom is paid. A person is killed to terrorize other people of the same skin color, religion, or sexual orientation. In these examples, the perpetrator is surely fully responsible and morally culpable for the crime. hakimashou fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Feb 28, 2017 |
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Feb 28, 2017 16:01
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T8R posted:Do you recognize the impossibility of having a society that can execute people morally? No not at all. It might be difficult, but there's no reason to believe it's impossible if we put our minds to it.
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Mar 1, 2017 01:09
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Ytlaya posted:The problem is the justice system isn't, and never will be, perfect. You can't reliably just look at criminals and go "oh it's just obvious he/she committed the crime" or "oh, they're obviously a terrible crazy person!" As long as you allow the death penalty, innocent people will be put to death. There is no avoiding this, and talking about some hypothetical situation where everyone put to death was actually guilty is pointless. Sometimes prison sentences are also death sentences. There is some irreducible minimum of innocent people who will be punished through error or contrivance. It's the inescapable cost of doing business if you're going to punish people for their crimes. Which said, there are plenty of easy to imagine cases where evidence would clearly and unequivocally demonstrate guilt. It might be difficult to devise a justice system where the death penalty was only imposed in these cases, but there's no reason to believe it would be impossible. None of it matters to the question of whether or not executing people who are guilty of murder is immoral though. "We should abolish the death penalty because of the risk we might execute someone innocent" is a perfectly valid position to hold, but I don't think "we should abolish the death penalty because it is morally wrong to execute a murderer" is.
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Mar 1, 2017 01:20
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T8R posted:You must have completely missed half the things I've posted then. I don't agree with them.
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Mar 1, 2017 01:33
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T8R posted:Well then, maybe you should share your disagreements? There are plenty of easy to imagine cases where evidence would clearly and unequivocally demonstrate guilt. It might be difficult to devise a justice system where the death penalty was only imposed in these cases, but there's no reason to believe it would be impossible. twodot posted:This is really not persuasive to me. I don't think we should have a death penalty, but it can't be because capital-t Truth doesn't exist. Innocent people die in prison (for reasons unrelated to capital punishment), we can't ever be sure any sort of penalty won't effectively be a death sentence, and we can't be sure anyone receiving a penalty is guilty of the crime they've been convicted of. If the standard you're pushing requires absolute certainty then I don't see how society can function.
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Mar 1, 2017 01:49
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Consider: Closed circuit television recordings show John enter George's office building. They show him get into an elevator and go up to the floor where George's office is. Recordings which show his face show him walk into George's office and confront him, then shoot him to death. George is seen to say "John! No! Please don't kill me! I have a family!" Recordings show John leave and get into his car, traffic cameras show his car drive to an alley, and surveillance footage shows him put a bundle into a dumpster. The bundle is later found to contain clothing with George's blood on it, and the gun used to shoot George, which records indicate John purchased a couple days before. His fingerprints are on the gun and on the rounds and shell casings inside. There is no evidence that the surveillance footage from any of the unconnected sources has been tampered with. John's wife tells investigators that she had an affair with George and that John swore he would hunt George down and kill him in retribution. When confronted with the evidence, John admits shooting George. Are we sure enough that John is guilty of murder that we can punish him for his crime? hakimashou fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Mar 1, 2017 |
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Mar 1, 2017 02:03
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