Death Penalty - Non-Religious Arguments

[zippy2006]

I'm not a religious person, and I oppose the death penalty for non-religious reasons.

To be more accurate: you oppose the death penalty in 21st century America for non-religious reasons.

Of course a related problem is that if you are not capable of thinking about the death penalty apart from contingent circumstances, then you also can't be said to be capable of thinking about the death penalty in the midst of contingent circumstances.

Well, that's just utter nonsense. All morality is situational, and whether we realize it or not, all of our moral decisions are made in light of contingent circumstances.

Of what use is a moral decision that is made without considering them? None at all.

No, it's quite true. If you don't understand your stance on the death penalty apart from contingent circumstances, then you will never understand your stance on the death penalty in the midst of them. You can't apply circumstances to something you don't understand.

I might ask someone whether guns ought to be legal. He might tell me, "Our steel reserves are too low for gun production. Legalization should be opposed because it will hurt the steel industry and the economy." That would be a great way of dodging my question entirely, and if that's all the further he ever thought about the legality of guns, then he's never considered the basic question at all.

Infinite human dignity was your idea, not mine.

In some ways this is all too true, which is precisely why you should stop proffering arguments which presuppose it.

Do you think such a society is impossible?

Yes.

So you think it is impossible for a society to be incapable of imprisoning criminals for life. This strikes me as a significant first-world blind spot.

But if it weren't impossible, then I would support the death penalty in such a society.

Okay, good. That makes sense.

Again, not all societies are capable of enforcing or funding life imprisonment.

That's unfortunate. Any society that could not do this would probably be deficient in providing for several other needs of its members -- I wouldn't want to live in such a failed state, would you?

Anyone who has even the slightest historical consciousness realizes that scarcity exists. Given the enormous cost of building and maintaining high security prisons that house inmates for their entire life, the scarcity of resources must be weighed against this cost. In the real world leaders have to make decisions such as whether to use the societal resources to feed and house dangerous criminals for their entire lives, or else to kill them and allocate the resources elsewhere. Not everyone lives in your first-world modern state, nor is this a historically common arrangement.

Beyond that, maybe such a "failed state" would end up feeding the starving, innocent children on its streets rather than providing those convicted of terrible crimes with food, shelter, internet, and television.

Do you think so? Then produce such an argument using entirely non-religious premises. I maintain that you cannot. Infinite human dignity or value arises from nowhere if not religion.

Again, you concocted the idea of "infinite human dignity" -- I was going to correct you, but you were having so much fun playing with it that it seemed rude to disturb you.

Well, no. I pointed out that you were relying on the religious premise of infinite (or very significant) human dignity. You balked and abstained from providing a rational response, failing to replace that premise with a non-religious premise. You claimed that, "[Human dignity] is a moral argument; not a religious one," appealing to the odd Western fallacy which says that everything which is moral must be non-religious and everything which is religious must be non-moral.

 

[zippy2006]

Yeah. I sort of derailed with what you call "practical" objections.

Yes, well the thread will inevitably be derailed on that basis eventually, I just hope to hold out for a little while.

As for in-principle objections, I dont think there are bedrock in-principle reasons for ANY moral statements. They are all contingent on natural facts of being human, and on visions we have of the sort of world we'd prefer.

Okay, but many would hold that, in principle, you should not harm the innocent, or renege on promises, etc.

 

[disciple Clint]

Rather than execution... life with NO chance of parole or pardon.

Of course, unless they are proven to be not guilty and never should have been convicted in the first place.

That would work except there have been people released who had life with no chance of parole or pardon, a judge can change that in a heart beat.

 

[klutedavid]

I have never studied the topic of capital punishment from a purely non-religious angle. After listening to Alasdair MacIntyre's recent controversial paper on human dignity I am curious to raise this topic on CF.

My hunch is that MacIntyre is right, and as a corollary, when confined to non-religious arguments capital punishment must remain de facto permissible, as there is no compelling secular reason for its prohibition. Granted, practical arguments might be given in favor of its prohibition. For example, maybe the risk of false convictions is too great or life in prison is preferable. Nevertheless, in principle capital punishment would be permissible, just as it would be in societies where practical circumstances do not hinder it.

In this thread and in the poll I am interested in the principled case for or against capital punishment. You might ask yourself the question, "Is there any circumstance in which capital punishment would be permissible?"

What say you? State your position and provide arguments. Only non-religious arguments are allowed.

View attachment 310819

Definitely capital punishment for those that kill children.

Serial killers should also be executed.

Obviously, the person must be found guilty beyond any doubt.

 

[TLK Valentine]

AND I am certain you have evidence to support that baseless accusation.

What accusation? I haven't accused anyone of anything.

I'm simply describing what could happen. What makes you so certain it couldn't?

 

[klutedavid]

I have never studied the topic of capital punishment from a purely non-religious angle. After listening to Alasdair MacIntyre's recent controversial paper on human dignity I am curious to raise this topic on CF.

My hunch is that MacIntyre is right, and as a corollary, when confined to non-religious arguments capital punishment must remain de facto permissible, as there is no compelling secular reason for its prohibition. Granted, practical arguments might be given in favor of its prohibition. For example, maybe the risk of false convictions is too great or life in prison is preferable. Nevertheless, in principle capital punishment would be permissible, just as it would be in societies where practical circumstances do not hinder it.

In this thread and in the poll I am interested in the principled case for or against capital punishment. You might ask yourself the question, "Is there any circumstance in which capital punishment would be permissible?"

What say you? State your position and provide arguments. Only non-religious arguments are allowed.

View attachment 310819

There is another question closely related to this OP.

After a convicted pedophile is released from prison.

Where do they live?

In your suburb near your children?

I do not have a solution for this issue.

 

[Clizby WampusCat]

So you would say that the death penalty is never permissible, just as torture is never permissible.

I would say it is never permissible.

Why? What non-religious reasons do we have to believe that the death penalty is never permissible? Or that torture is never permissible? Or that the death penalty is like torture?

I gave two other reasons but on a strictly moral grounds I don't think it maximizes the well being of the murderer, executioner or victims. Does it maximize well being for the murderer? It would be better to rehabilitate and restore in a way that the murderer can become a good part of society. I have found studies that the executioners well being is not made better by the act and the victims well being will not change if we torture the murderer.

 

[durangodawood]

I would not use that term to describe criminal executions. <Here> is the definition. "Cold blooded" belongs in the species of murder and is contrasted with a crime of passion, the latter of which is considered to mitigate guilt and culpability because the crime is committed in a state where one lacks some control of their actions.

An execution has nothing to do with this species, as it is not murder at all. The executioner who is "cold blooded" is not worse than the executioner who acts in a fit of passion. You are confusing categories here.

Cold-blooded feels just right to describe the passionless & deliberated commission of the deed in an environment where the threat has been neutralized. Its perfectly opposed killing in a heat of passion or in self defense. It has accumulated pejorative connotations because we find the capacity to take lives in such circumstances to indicate a disturbing lack of humanity.

I would say that Henry Ford is more culpable, for he "murders" for the sake of money, whereas the fellow who constructed the criminal justice system "murders" for the sake of the safety of society.

Of course it is absurd to call such a thing murder. Since there is widespread confusion on this issue I would suggest you provide an actual argument for your position. Maybe begin with a definition of murder and then explain why the case in question counts as murder, along with who it is that has done the murdering.

What Henry Ford lacks is a plan to kill people. He could get manslaughter if indeed he was that negligent.

If, when concocting a plan to kill people who are removed from being a threat (behind bars), you know some of them will be innocent, well, that should be "murder". You dont have to know which will be which in advance. All the ingredients are there:
a plan to commit homicide, obviously
malice
pre knowledge that some victims will be innocent.

Its the last part people get hung up on. You seem to think that randomizing the innocent among the guilty allows us some moral distance.

 

[durangodawood]

....Okay, but many would hold that, in principle, you should not harm the innocent, or renege on promises, etc.

I could see framing those as virtues: benevolence, honesty.

Perhaps our governance should be virtuous. Could that be the principle Im looking for?

 

[TLK Valentine]

To be more accurate: you oppose the death penalty in 21st century America for non-religious reasons.

And if I were a 9th century French peasant, I would have an opinion on the death penalty there and then for other reasons.

As it is, I consider the United States to be among the most egalitarian and morally progressive nations ever to exist -- and I still would not trust its government with the authority to put its citizens to death.

That being said, it stands to reason that the runners-up shouldn't have that authority either.

No, it's quite true.

If you have a more cogent rebuttal than "nuh-uh!", now would have been the place to expound on it.

I might ask someone whether guns ought to be legal. He might tell me, "Our steel reserves are too low for gun production. Legalization should be opposed because it will hurt the steel industry and the economy." That would be a great way of dodging my question entirely, and if that's all the further he ever thought about the legality of guns, then he's never considered the basic question at all.

And I would tell you that your question is too broad and too vague to be of any value whatsoever.

Would you prefer I tell you that now?

In some ways this is all too true, which is precisely why you should stop proffering arguments which presuppose it.

Hmmm.... Nope, never presupposed it -- it was entirely your idea.

So you think it is impossible for a society to be incapable of imprisoning criminals for life. This strikes me as a significant first-world blind spot.

There you go assuming a false dichotomy -- imprisonment or execution.
Besides, your mistaking "incapable" with "unwilling."

Okay, good. That makes sense.

Indeed -- capital punishment could be argued as moral and effective if administered with 100% efficiency and infallibility.

Anyone who has even the slightest historical consciousness realizes that scarcity exists. Given the enormous cost of building and maintaining high security prisons that house inmates for their entire life, the scarcity of resources must be weighed against this cost. In the real world leaders have to make decisions such as whether to use the societal resources to feed and house dangerous criminals for their entire lives, or else to kill them and allocate the resources elsewhere. Not everyone lives in your first-world modern state, nor is this a historically common arrangement.

True -- and anyone who has even the slightest historical consciousness knows that the scarcity of such societies extends far beyond incarceration, and will extend to its justice system itself. If they lack the resources to incarcerate criminals, they're going to be similarly lacking in the resources to pursue investigate criminals.

The end result: corners get cut, and injustices occur. The guilty go free and the innocent get executed. This is unacceptable not because human life is of infinite worth (it's not, not that asked), but because no society will tolerate such a skewed system for long -- they will seek revolution, either peacefully or through bloodshed... and then genuinely innocent people will meet their deaths by the truckload. One need not be religious to see that as a situation which is best avoided.

Beyond that, maybe such a "failed state" would end up feeding the starving, innocent children on its streets rather than providing those convicted of terrible crimes with food, shelter, internet, and television.

Doubtful. No matter how failed the state may be, rest assured someone at the top is succeeding -- they didn't get to where they are by feeding starving innocent children on its streets... nor will they stay at the top by doing so.

Well, no. I pointed out that you were relying on the religious premise of infinite (or very significant) human dignity. You balked and abstained from providing a rational response, failing to replace that premise with a non-religious premise. You claimed that, "[Human dignity] is a moral argument; not a religious one," appealing to the odd Western fallacy which says that everything which is moral must be non-religious and everything which is religious must be non-moral.

And now you know that I say human dignity is not infinite, thereby sinking the false premise on which you based your entire rebuttal.

 

[disciple Clint]

What accusation? I haven't accused anyone of anything.

I'm simply describing what could happen. What makes you so certain it couldn't?

And the police can get you strapped to a table and pumped full of potassium chloride by conning a judge.

And they're a lot better at it than a criminal is.

Do you see the word "could" in your statement anywhere, you made a declarative statement not a hypothetical statement. try again.

 

[TLK Valentine]

Do you see the word "could" in your statement anywhere, you made a declarative statement not a hypothetical statement. try again.

You see the word "can"? Look again.

 

[Sketcher]

1. Innocent people can be killed and no restitution is adequate to compensate for the injustice. Our justice system cannot guarantee all people are actually guilty of the crime they were convicted for.

Fair.

2. As a conservative I do not think giving the government the power to take a citizens life is a good idea. We know that governments can be corrupted and use this power to its own ends as in other dictatorial countries. We should limit the governments power to kill others.

OK, but we give this power to soldiers and police. Given the ways around the death penalty that have been used both in this country and worldwide to kill people (i.e. the officer "felt threatened" or the perp is locked up for 20 years in a rough block where he won't survive 10 years), a truly corrupt government still has its options for killing people it wants dead. I therefore do not know how much good not having a death penalty does on this front in practice.

3. I think a moral case can be made against the death penalty. We should not be asking if murders deserve the death penalty but if humans have a right to kill murderers? We have laws that prohibit torture as punishment because we find it morally bad so with that same line of reasoning the death penalty is just as bad, if not more, morally bad.

Possible, but any moral case can be argued when God is taken out of the picture. People could make the Communist argument for retaining and using the death penalty too, for instance.

 

[disciple Clint]

You see the word "can"? Look again.

do you see

And they're a lot better at it than a criminal is.

Can you explain how that statement is hypothetical?

 

[zippy2006]

If, when concocting a plan to kill people who are removed from being a threat (behind bars), you know some of them will be innocent, well, that should be "murder". You dont have to know which will be which in advance.

It has nothing to do with those who are removed from being a threat, so that variable should be omitted. For example, see post #19 or consider the many societies which do not have the means for indefinite imprisonment.

So what we are really considering, objectively speaking, is someone who devises a criminal justice system which includes the death penalty and who knows--as everyone should--that the working out of his plan may have unintended consequences.

All the ingredients are there:
a plan to commit homicide, obviously

Well, let's be clear: a plan to kill grievous offenders for the sake of the safety and justice of society; not a plan to commit the crime of homicide.

malice

Not granted. Not even close to granted.

pre knowledge that some victims will be innocent.

Did you mean to say, "Pre-knowledge that there will be some victims?" See, your bias is showing, for you are here assuming that everyone who is subjected to capital punishment is a victim, and some of those victims will be innocent.

Its the last part people get hung up on. You seem to think that randomizing the innocent among the guilty allows us some moral distance.

It is worth noting that there is no court in the world that would convict such a person of murder.

So you gave three ingredients. The first is not criminal or immoral. The second is not present. The third is not indicting.

What of the third? It is the only relevant variable in my opinion. It is, "Knowledge of the non-zero probability that the enactment of his plan will result in the death of innocent people." The other crucial factor is that he is wielding lethal instruments. But this is no different from Henry Ford, or the Wright Brothers, or the fellow who made the Titanic, etc.

If a court actually took up such a case they would consider manslaughter, not murder, and it would be on the basis of negligence, not intent. Presumably they would find someone like Henry Ford (or any of the others we are considering) innocent unless he showed significant neglect in attempting to create the safest product possible, or lied to the consumers about the safety of his product, or something else to that effect.

 

[Clizby WampusCat]

OK, but we give this power to soldiers and police. Given the ways around the death penalty that have been used both in this country and worldwide to kill people (i.e. the officer "felt threatened" or the perp is locked up for 20 years in a rough block where he won't survive 10 years), a truly corrupt government still has its options for killing people it wants dead. I therefore do not know how much good not having a death penalty does on this front in practice.

True, but those organizations were not created to kill its own citizens. But any having the death penalty sure would make it easier to kill someone they wanted out of the way. But point taken.

Possible, but any moral case can be argued when God is taken out of the picture. People could make the Communist argument for retaining and using the death penalty too, for instance.

True. But any moral case can be argued with God in the picture as well. Just look at the Christian only areas on this site.

 

[zippy2006]

Perhaps our governance should be virtuous. Could that be the principle Im looking for?

You asked for bedrock moral principles, so I gave you some.

If you don't think the governance and laws need to be moral or virtuous, presumably you would at least have them conduce to the welfare of society. That's not contingent on any particular state of societal affairs.

From that principle we can draw others, such as the idea that a society has the power to protect itself from harm (this is a principle of self-defense). At this point we already have a prima facie case for lethal force used for self defense, which is precisely the basis for capital punishment. Now someone may claim that in such-and-such a circumstance this form of defense will cause more harm to the society than other, alternative forms of defense would cause. Surely in that circumstance we ought to prefer the alternative form of defense, but this consideration in itself does not allow us to draw the conclusion that the first form of defense was (or is) impermissible. It remains permissible but becomes inexpedient. ...And so on and so forth.

 

[Bradskii]

That's the first part of my objection -- our justice system is fallible on its best days, and skewed on its worst. Should the wrong person be put to death, there is no way to undo or compensate for the injustice.

My main reason, however, is pragmatic, so allow me to paste my response from another thread:


The Death Penalty does not accomplish any goal that life imprisonment cannot.

I remember hearing an interview with someone (I'm blanking on the name atm) who talked about how murderers aren't deterred by capital punishment because there are three types of murderers:

1. The professionals -- gang members, mobsters, cartel hitmen, etc... they're not afraid of the death penalty because A. they don't expect to get caught and B. their bosses will do a lot worse to them if they don't kill.

2. Crimes of passion -- you come home earlier than usual one day and catch your wife in bed with another man. You flip out, grab the nearest blunt object, and bash both their heads in. You're not afraid of the death penalty because you're not thinking about the consequences of your actions at that moment... you flipped out, remember?

3. The psychopaths -- the maniacs, mass shooters, and serial killers -- they're not afraid of the death penalty because... they're nuts.

So the real problem with the death penalty is that it doesn't accomplish its goal.

I agree with all three. But there are surely more. The man whose business is folding and decides to kill his parents or his wife to get the insurance money. Or the paedophile who kills to prevent himself being identified.

The second example is certainly an argument for the death penalty because the perpetrator thinks that he's going to be locked up for a considerable time if his crime is discovered and his odds of being discovered would be a lot less if he killed the victim.

I struggle with this because I find myself holding hypocritical views. No, you shouldn't put people to death. But if someone killed my granddaughter, then retribution would be the first thing on my mind. I'd literally wait until he was released to exact that retribution. So can I tell another grandparent or parent or husband that they are not allowed to expect the same?

 

[TLK Valentine]

do you see
Can you explain how that statement is hypothetical?

Why of course -- if the police wanted to frame you for a crime, they have access to resources training, and knowledge far beyond that of the average person... true or false?

Forensic reports can be forged, witnesses can be manipulated, evidence can be planted or hidden as needed, and if course, you can always be taken into a windowless back room and "interrogated" until you confess.

A criminal seeking release has no resources except a well-rehearsed sob story to tell to a parole board that listens to such sob stories all day long... and not every criminal gets parole.

Really, I assumed this was all self-evident... you sounded so knowledgeable a little while ago.

 

[zippy2006]

I gave two other reasons but on a strictly moral grounds I don't think it maximizes the well being of the murderer, executioner or victims. Does it maximize well being for the murderer? It would be better to rehabilitate and restore in a way that the murderer can become a good part of society. I have found studies that the executioners well being is not made better by the act and the victims well being will not change if we torture the murderer.

That is a fair argument. I will just say that other considerations must be taken into account as well, such as the well being of future victims, the well being of the prison guards who will be forced to tend to such criminals, the well being of the society which will be forced to pay for the long term imprisonment of such criminals, etc.