blatham wrote:
And if 'balance' is truly where you find morality (in this context) to reside, then we both know you have a few further problems; e.g., if a killer burns someone alive (and we know he intended it, and we know he did it), is it therefore immoral to NOT burn him alive as proper retribution? Or, as joefromchicago alluded to earlier, if a man murders multiple victims, how is balanced retribution to be achieved? We could, of course, seek it through a massacre of a precisely equal number of his family members.
The balance is that he who takes a life for immoral reasons, loses his. It is not only unnecessary to inflict upon the murderer the same pain he inflicted upon his victim, it would be immoral. It would also be immoral to extend retribution to innocents: i.e. the members of the murderers family.
I have not made the contention that an absolute accounting must be made. If someone steals your car and destroys it, the proper level of retribution is for him to replace your vehicle or give you the money needed to do so. It would not be to allow you to take his car and destroy it. Since a murderer cannot restore his victim's life, there is only one fitting form of retribution: he should lose his. Call it a rough balance if you will, but it is what I have advocated in the theoretical.
blatham wrote:
That is, we'll assume by 'right' here you mean, can we make a compelling case in the advancing of either of these two claims:
1) holding that the taking of another life is somehow intrinsically immoral, or that
2) not abolishing capital punishment worldwide is, consequentially, immoral
First of all, the burden of argumentation falls initially to you. You are (apparently) making a foundational claim to the morality inherent in 'balanced retribution'. A cold-blooded murder happens. Then, you Finn d'abuzz as an individual or as a contributing member in establishment of community policy, are faced with the intellectual and moral decision on how to respond. Even if we both hold (and I'm sure we do) that the murder was an immoral act, the response to it by you/community will be the initial point of fully conscious and rational decision making. (If you haven't suspected it already, I think you are trying to avoid this moral decision point, with all its complexity, by pretending that a 'knee-jerk' vengeance equals rationality).
Yes, the decision to end the life of the murderer must be made rationally and with full appreciation of its consequence. I don't believe this is problematic in and of itself. The fact that the community must think hard upon a decision doesn't make that decision (one way or the other) moral or immoral. A "knee jerk" decision would be irrational, and immoral only to the extent that you find morality and rationality synonomous.
Problems arise when there is not full certainty that the convicted party is truly guilty. This is a moral issue only in the instance that one tries to make the case that imperfection in the service of society is morally acceptible, irrespective of the impact on the indivdual. I've not tried to make this case. My contention is that in the case of absolute certainty, capital punishment is just and morally acceptible, but our system can not count on the State to restrict itself to only cases of absolute certainty.
The moral issue of this debate centers on retribution, not the State's employment of same. If one accepts that death is a morally acceptible form of retribution for the murderer, how the State employs it is at least a practical, and at most a politcal issue... not moral issue.
If you do not believe that retribution is morally acceptible, it is unlikely that there is anything I can say that will convince you oherwise. If there was a perfectly simple equation that ran "if q than moral, and if p than immoral" we wouldn't be having any of these debates.
blatham wrote:But I have to make my claim too.
As to 1), I do hold that taking another life is foundationally immoral. Foundationally, but not absolutely. The examples you and others give, particularly, self-defence, speak to how the value can't be considered absolute. I hold it to be foundational because I hold that no other value trumps conscious existence.
And what is the impact of something being "foundationally" immoral? If it means that we are going to assume taking a life is immoral until proven otherwise, then this is a non-starter since the context of this discussion is the judicial process, wherein this very question will be answered to the best of human abilities.
blatham wrote:As to 2), for the very reasons you advance regarding the improbability or impossibility of establishing intent, of establishing a full and complete picture of consequences of the act or the punishment, and of establishing consistency or equity in the human administration of a justice system, and because other punishment options and community protection (even f not perfect) are open to us, then capital punishment ought to be banned worldwide...and that is a moral argument rather than merely an instrumental argument because of 1) above.
Again, it is only a moral argument in the face of a contention that a flawed process which advances the interests of society to the possible detriment of the interests of the individual is ultimately moral (and this is a tangential moral argument). That you would prefer to cloak your opinion with the mantle of morality is fine and good, but of not real import.
As for other options being open to us, I can only repeat my previous argument: What options? Rehabilitation is an option only in the minds of the naive. Life sentences without parole are few and far between and there are as many, if not more, examples of paroled murders repeating their crimes that examples of actually innocent people being sentenced to death.
The argument that Capital Punishment is moral only if your foundation is that ALL killing is immoral. It would appear clear that you do not believe this, and so try as you might, you can't manufacture a moral basis for a political decision. Why try?
