quote:Originally posted by SoaPiNuReYe: Dude all you have to do is read the paper. 99% of the terrorists that come out of places like afganistan are brainwashed. What makes him different? Even Moussaoui himself brushed off the defenses arguement of insanity.
Please don't tell me you're saying you read the newspaper to determine if someone is sane or not.
Most of the terrorists probably think we're all brainwashed, too. And to a very real degree, I think we are.
Posts: 367 | Registered: Apr 2004
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If justice does not demand the man's death, then killing him does not SERVE justice's aims.
If that is the case, then whatever else we are talking about, it isn't justice. So, claiming that some motivations for his death relate to justice merely is a back-door way to justify something which doesn't, in the final analysis, truly relate. At least not in any direct correlative fashion.
It is, by definition, something other than justice that requires this man's death -- if people are asserting that his death is required.
That's all I've been saying since day one in this thread.
If we kill him, I just don't want to hear anyone saying "justice was served."
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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quote:That's all I've been saying since day one in this thread.
If we kill him, I just don't want to hear anyone saying "justice was served."
No, that's very different than what you said before.
First you said, "I want us all to realize before we kill this man, that there is no reason that we MUST kill him."
Now you're saying his death can't serve justice.
Two very different things that can only be identical with a whole lot of intermediate premises that many people won't accept.
There are people who do believe that killing him will serve justice. Many of them likely don't believe that justice demands his killing. You can close your ears to their reasons if you want. But don't pretend that the people who believe otherwise, who have deeply thought out philosophical beliefs about this with thousands of years of tradition behind them, are simply fooling themselves so that they can get their revenge.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Sorry, you're missing the one point I'm making...again.
If "justice" doesn't demand that he be killed, then how exactly is "justice" the reason for killing him?
I'm not trying to be dismissive, but something is obviously getting over-complicated here. I don't think it's me. I seem to be able to summarize my opinion in one sentence or less. I've done so consistently across days and posts.
I haven't changed it a bit.
It makes just as much sense as it did the first time I posted it.
And you keep saying I'm being dismissive but haven't yet come around to actually stating how exactly this simple statement is logically flawed in any way.
I draw conclusions based on the truth of that statement that may be uncomfortable and some may certainly not wish to agree with.
Fine...but I think redefining "justice" isn't going to get us anywhere. Either the statement is true, or you need to state in clear terms why it isn't true.
If you don't like my conclusions based on the statement, that's another thing entirely.
But please...either justice demands the guy's death or it doesn't. If it doesn't, then killing him is not derivable from an exercise in justice.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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quote:But please...either justice demands the guy's death or it doesn't. If it doesn't, then killing him is not derivable from an exercise in justice.
Please, indeed. "X does not demand Y" does not mean that "X is not served by Y." Unless, perchance, you happen to think that there's only one possible punishment that can serve justice in any situation.
You've got at least one missing premise in there, and if it's only one, it's a doozy.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Whatever the outcome decided by the jury...that's justice.
So, - if we kill him, that's justice - if we incarcerate him, that's justice - if we get him psychiatric help, that's justice - if we had let him go, that would've been justice too
Unless what you are saying is that the action of a court and jury "defines" justice, it seems to me that the word justice is irrelevant to the outcome, not the description of it.
If any and all of those outcomes can BE justice in this same case (well, okay, not the last one cuz they found him guilty...) then it's not justice that's defining the outcome.
Also, I think this type of justice needs a qualifier on it. Some adjective to show that it's not real justice, but justice based on a flawed, uncertain...dare I say "human" process.
In which case, I'm even more dead set (pardon the pun) against the death penalty, because I know how bad we are as a society and as a species at making the right decision. Given that, I'm even less happy about "final" decisions arising from this process-derived version of justice.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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Whatever the outcome decided by the jury...that's justice.
That's not even CLOSE to what I'm saying. Please, again. The acknowledgement that more than one punishment in a particular case could serve justice does not even come CLOSE to saying that any outcome in a particular case could serve justice.
I haven't ventured an opinion as to whether the death penalty would be justice in this case. I have simply taken exception to your enormous leap between "X does not demand Y" and "X is not served by Y."
I'm almost at a loss as to why you can't see the difference between those statements.
Traffic safety can be served by everyone driving 55 MPH on a road. Traffic safety might also be served by everyone driving 65 MPH on a road.
That doesn't mean that traffic safety would be served by everyone driving 180 on that road.
Do I need to give any of the other thousand or so examples I could come up with here?
Saying a given end does not demand a particular end tells us nothing about how many different means will serve that end. It doesn't even say that the particular means in question will not serve that end. It only says that there is at least one means not the same as the particular means that will serve that end.
A given end can be served by more than one means. That does not mean that the given end can be served by ANY means.
So please stop stating that I said any outcome is justice.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
All I'm trying to do is get you to acknowledge that the mere fact that X does not demand Y does not mean that X is not served by Y.
Do you really not see that? THe idea that there is more than one way to accomplish a particular goal is a concept everyone has to use just to get through their life.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:Many of them likely don't believe that justice demands his killing. You can close your ears to their reasons if you want. But don't pretend that the people who believe otherwise, who have deeply thought out philosophical beliefs about this with thousands of years of tradition behind them, are simply fooling themselves so that they can get their revenge.
It should be noted that, despite the millennia-long tradition, almost no modern ethicists believe that retribution is just.
Posts: 4600 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
What prominent contemporary ethicist would agree with you?
Not John Rawls. Not Philip Pettit. Not Peter Singer. Not Bernard Williams. Not TM Scanlon. My impression is that Ronald Dworkin is not a retributivist, though I could be wrong about that.
There are going to be dissenting voices to any orthodoxy, but the orthodoxy in ethics during the last half of the 20th century has been extremely anti-retributivist.
Not that appeal to authority should convince you. I was merely trying to undermine your own appeal to authority in the form of the historical tradition. Hobbes would have agreed with you, but then he also believed that the nerves carry sensation first to the heart and then to the brain by vibrating.
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posted
Although morality for Hobbes is sort of a construct, rather than a fundamental truth, so maybe he wouldn't really have agreed with the substance of your view...
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quote:What prominent contemporary ethicist would agree with you?
Would agree with me on what?
As for modern-day advocates of retribution, either as the only true justification for punishment or as a necessary part of a just systemt:
Paul H. Robinson Michael S. Moore Stephen J. Morse Ernest van den Haag Joshua Dressler
And that's just (edit: easy identifications) from the first 20 of 844 articles on my lexis search.
quote:I was merely trying to undermine your own appeal to authority in the form of the historical tradition.
I wasn't making an appeal to authority. I was pointing out that there's a lot more to retribuitive theory than merely a balm for desires for revenge.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
These are all law professors. I was talking about ethicists -- scholars who actually investigate the foundations of morality rather than its implementation in the justice system.
Obviously these law people are very smart, but they study a different (and, in my only-slightly-informed opinion, less rigorous) body of literature.
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admits the "possibility" of arguing from a utilitarian standpoint that killing terrorists prevents the deaths of greater numbers of civilians. I am avoiding the entire arguement of the inconcistancy of killing civilians in the effort to kill terrorists and the killing of embryos.
I am merely responding to the assertion that no modern ethicist agrees with capital punishment. I think Singer would agree with certain forms of capital punishment and yes I am saying that military strikes on terrorists is a form of capital punishment.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Sorry for double posting but Singer as far as I can tell has not directly addressed the question of Capital Punishment. Therefore its VERY difficult to say either in the affirmative or the negative what Singer would say about capital punishment.
But from my research of Singer the above article is the only thing he has said that is remotely related to capital punishment and seeing as Singer is a self proclaimed Utilitarian, I think there the hintings of arguements for capital punishment in the article.
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posted
I wasn't saying no modern ethicist agrees with capital punishment. I was saying that very few modern ethicists believe that any punishment can be justified for retributive reasons.
Posts: 4600 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:These are all law professors. I was talking about ethicists -- scholars who actually investigate the foundations of morality rather than its implementation in the justice system.
These are the people who spend their time studying and writing about what the moral basis for punishment is.
If you want to persist with your restricted qualifications of authority on the matter, however, I'll simply amend my original remark from "That's simply not true" to "That's simply not relevant."
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
I found a more direct quote from Singer about Capital Punishment:
In the name of what we are allowed to punish someone bad and evil, if we agree that the world is evil? Maybe we should let everyone to be evil as the world is evil? I know that it sounds terribly, but what are the arguments against such perspective? Peter Singer: The argument against such a perspective is that then more people [and perhaps other sentient beings, like animals] will suffer than if we punish those who do bad things. I do not view punishment as retribution for evil, but as preventing people committing further crimes, and as deterring others who might be contemplating commiting crimes.
I cannot tell what else besides the "Retributive" element of capital punishment might deter others from commiting capital crimes, but you may take Singers comments as you wish.
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quote:If you want to persist with your restricted qualifications of authority on the matter, however, I'll simply amend my original remark from "That's simply not true" to "That's simply not relevant."
You don't think that studying the foundations of a concept can grant insights that the study of its application typically obscures?
If not, should we conclude (for instance) that physicists and engineers know more about math than mathematicians?
You mentioned in the other thread that Anglo-American law grew out of a retributivist tradition. I agree with that, and I think it's poisoned law scholars' ability to discover certain truths about ethics. They get inculcated with retributivist thought before they're exposed to evidence that tells against it -- if they ever are.
Posts: 4600 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:I cannot tell what else besides the "Retributive" element of capital punishment might deter others from commiting capital crimes, but you may take Singers comments as you wish.
"Retributive" has a very specific meaning as we're using the term in this thread. It refers to the idea that punishment is deserved by those who are guilty of moral wrongdoing, and specifically not to the idea that punishment can be justified because it serves a useful function. Retributivists will tell you that punishment itself can be just, setting aside the question of its effects.
Posts: 4600 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:You don't think that studying the foundations of a concept can grant insights that the study of its application typically obscures?
Of course I do. However, I think you're highly inaccurate in saying the law professors aren't studying the foundations.
Edit: I also didn't say that ethicists were irrelevant. Again, see what my point was: not that retribution is correct because of authority, but that there are serious arguments that support retribution as a means to justice that aren't merely balms for the vengeful desires.
quote:I think it's poisoned law scholars' ability to discover certain truths about ethics. They get inculcated with retributivist thought before they're exposed to evidence that tells against it -- if they ever are.
The leading anti-retributivists were legal scholars. One of the most influential group of legal thinkers - the ALI - created an entire system of criminal law based only on the three utilitarian justifications. There is a rousing divide and ongoing debate in legal scholarship over utilitarian v. deontological schemes of punishment. Given that many, many, many legal scholars oppose retributivism, it's hard to see how you could make a case that legal scholarship itself somehow prevents discovering these ethical "truths."
If your characterization of those you refer to as "ethicists" is accurate, then your criticism applies more to ethicists than legal scholars. A far more credible charge of field-wide bias against a particular idea can be levied at a field with no disagreement on the issue than one with an ongoing debate in the contemporary scholarship.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Interesting... I wasn't aware that there was much support for non-retributive justification in law scholarship. Mea culpa on that point.
Anyway, I don't think that philosophical ethics is biased against retributivism. It's just very hard to defend a secular, retributivist ethic. It seems like whatever you value, whether it's freedom, happiness or personal virtue, punishment by itself doesn't intrinsically further any of these goods.
And if one believes in the sanctity of certain rights, the situation is even worse: punishment is flately incompatible with respecting the rights of the person to be punished. So then one has to cobble together some story about how rights are suspended when you act immorally, but only to some limited degree depending on the severity of the offense (what does that mean, anyway, when the issue in the first place was inviolable rights?), and it all begins to seem very ad hoc.
Of course, things are different if you believe that moral rightness has its origin in God's commands. But (and maybe this is where the bias you suggested comes in) many philosophical ethicists have set aside this view as sort of uninteresting. Since God has free will and could command anything, this view leaves us no way of determining right or wrong except through revealed scripture. Doesn't leave much for the ethicist to do!
quote:There is a rousing divide and ongoing debate in legal scholarship over utilitarian v. deontological schemes of punishment.
Terminological point: one could easily be a deontologist without being a retributivist. Rawls and the other contractualists would be an example.
Posts: 4600 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:All I'm trying to do is get you to acknowledge that the mere fact that X does not demand Y does not mean that X is not served by Y.
I think your are misrepresenting Bob's point.
If Y is served by W, X and Z, then it is not sufficient to claim that you chose X in order to serve Y.
If justice is served by more than one option, then justice cannot be used to differentiate between the options.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
To be fair to Dag, justice might be served to different degrees by the different options. So it might be more just that he die, rather than be imprisoned, although imprisonment would still be somewhat just.
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posted
There is a lot of cross over between disciplines so the question is not whether the proponents of retributive justice are legal scholars or ethical scholars.
The question is whether they have adequately explored the question of retribution from the standpoint of ethics. If no one in the field of ethics is a proponent of retribution but many in the field of law are, I would tend to suspect that the legal scholars are not addressing the subject from an ethical basis.
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quote:If Y is served by W, X and Z, then it is not sufficient to claim that you chose X in order to serve Y.
That's not strictly true. First, as Destineer pointed out, there could be differing degrees of justice provided by the different options. Second, and more importantly, it is still true to say that the reason one is taking action X is to serve Y, even if option W and Z would also serve Y. It might not be sufficient to explain why W and Z weren't selected, but it doesn't mean that Y wasn't served.
quote:If justice is served by more than one option, then justice cannot be used to differentiate between the options.
If I thought that's what he was saying I wouldn't have a problem with it. I have no problem with Bob defending his belief that "Justice does not demand his death."
It's when he goes from there to "If justice does not demand the man's death, then killing him does not SERVE justice's aims" as if the former proved the latter that I take exception. Especially when language such as the "balm" statement strongly implies that Bob considers the language of justice to be a mere smokescreen for vengeful thoughts.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:The question is whether they have adequately explored the question of retribution from the standpoint of ethics. If no one in the field of ethics is a proponent of retribution but many in the field of law are, I would tend to suspect that the legal scholars are not addressing the subject from an ethical basis.
I'm still not convinced that there are no proponents of retribution in the field of ethics. I don't happen to have an easy way to search ethicists literature right now, but there are plenty of cites to ethics scholarship in the law articles on the subject. (Edit: that are used by those who believe in retribution.)
Second, it only takes a few minute's reading to see that the legal articles do treat the subject from an ethical basis.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:It's when he goes from there to "If justice does not demand the man's death, then killing him does not SERVE justice's aims" as if the former proved the latter that I take exception. Especially when language such as the "balm" statement strongly implies that Bob considers the language of justice to be a mere smokescreen for vengeful thoughts.
Well...how about if I moderate that to say simply that invoking "justice" provides a way for people to mask other emotions that may be at play in these situations. I personally would feel better if people could provide some other motivation because I believe (personally, again) that justice provides insufficient motivation (since justice could be "satisfied" through actions short of the death of the person. If that is the case, then I don't see how the concept of justice can be viewed as necessary or sufficient justification for the death penalty. I could be convinced that people's innate sense of justice plays a role, and still demand that there be something in addition to "justice" to justify taking a life.
I'm not sure what that something else could be, though...so maybe this isn't such a neat resolution to my issue after all.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
Hey, I never said there are no retributivist ethicists! That's definitely not true. But the view is out of style, and has been for some time.
Posts: 4600 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:Well...how about if I moderate that to say simply that invoking "justice" provides a way for people to mask other emotions that may be at play in these situations.
Absolutely. I will say that both deterrence and incapacitation rationales can* be used to maks other emotions in the same way and to justify punishments every bit as harsh.
In fact, the modern retributivist movement stems in large part from trying to tame the excesses of "prevention" justifications.
* Emphasize "can" not "must" - see Rabbit's posts in the insanity thread for these rationales not being used as a mask.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:Originally posted by andi330: Killing is wrong.
Always.
As a word of wisdom, from somebody with little to give, try not to have such absolutist views. They are usually impossible to defend.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
I think that one can be defended, actually -- for example, if killing is sometimes the least wrong of a set of alternatives, it may still be the preferred course of action (e.g. self-defence). That doesn't necessarily mean that it's right, merely that it's the least of a set of evils in such a circumstance.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote:There is a lot of cross over between disciplines so the question is not whether the proponents of retributive justice are legal scholars or ethical scholars.
The question is whether they have adequately explored the question of retribution from the standpoint of ethics. If no one in the field of ethics is a proponent of retribution but many in the field of law are, I would tend to suspect that the legal scholars are not addressing the subject from an ethical basis.
Dr. Rabbit,
I think that there may be a disconnect from ethicists and legal scholars, at least as evidenced from my experience from this thread. I've read everyone of the scholars Destineer mentioned and not a wit of the retributivists Dagonee lists.
If those legal scholars are, as Dagonee suggests, exploring the moral foundations of punishment in addition to the foundations of morality, and not merely practical strategies and ways to implement laws, then ethics has quite a bit to learn from legal scholars.
I don't know enough about Robinson, Moore, Morse, or Van Der Haag to make an informed comment on the quality of their scholarship.
Posts: 5600 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:Originally posted by andi330: Killing is wrong.
Always.
*scratches head, killing thousands of skin cells*
Think of the poor carrots.
*wipes tear*
BTW, andi330, what did you have for dinner last night?
Perhaps andi330 is a Jain and only eats the parts of plants which do not require the killing of the plant.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong: [QUOTE]There is a lot of cross over between disciplines so I think that there may be a disconnect from ethicists and legal scholars, at least as evidenced from my experience from this thread. I've read everyone of the scholars Destineer mentioned and not a wit of the retributivists Dagonee lists.
Not necessarily, based on what I know of cross-disciplinary scholarship, what these legal scholars are writing could easily be a reinvention of a wheel that ethicists explored and discarded long ago.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:I was talking about ethicists -- scholars who actually investigate the foundations of morality rather than its implementation in the justice system.
Obviously these law people are very smart, but they study a different (and, in my only-slightly-informed opinion, less rigorous) body of literature.
You are switching from one definition of "ethicist" to another here. First you say ethicists are "scholars who actually investigate the foundations of morality" but then you go on to imply that ethicists are scholars who study one particular body of literature. Unless you believe the only way to investigate the foundations of morality is to study that one particular body of literature, these definitions are inconsistent. I'd argue that it's easily possible to investigate the foundations of morality without ever reading any literature, whatsoever.
The issue of retribution here IS a question of the foundations of morality. Therefore, if these legal scholars are putting forth research and arguments towards their conclusion in support of retribution, they are investigating the foundations of morality. And hence, they are ethicists by your original definition.
Of course, investigating something doesn't mean your conclusions from that investigation are correct. Being an ethicist doesn't mean you are an expert on what is right or wrong. So, as you already pointed out, this appeal to authority should be largely irrelevant.
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Hobbes would have agreed with you, but then he also believed that the nerves carry sensation first to the heart and then to the brain by vibrating.
