Juice,
I have read your posts but I still have not figured out what the benefit(s) is to you or anyone from murdering someone as retribution, punishment, revenge or whatever you call it. You seem to have said that you would not do it just to appease the anger-inspired sadistic desire of the victim or other onlookers who would get pleasure from the revenge.
Are you just pointing out that some people may feel that there is some religious/moral reason to murder people (e.g. 'it's what god wants') and causing pain to a violent criminal provides these people with some kind of sadistic joy or sense of satisfaction? Is that it?
Allowing and sponsoring murder to please sadistic desires (as opposed to some other practical goal such as making society safer) seems to me like a fairly dangerous and inconsistent principle on which to allow offensive violence.
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Juice, you've argued that this 'eye for an eye' principle is historically and commonly present in law. Of course it is. But that does not address the issue of whether or not it benefits the people.
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Itmattersnot,
Itmattersnot wrote:to safeguard our justice system we must at least be able to punish a person to the extend that there is no more the community could ask for retribution.
Why? How does punishing a person in itself safeguard a justice system? Why can't we only use defensive force against attackers to stop their attack just to protect people, which includes protecting people by incarcerating the attacker. Why do we need to use what's called
excessive force, i.e. causing pain to the attacker because we enjoy his suffer in itself when it provides no extra defense?
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Alun,
Alun wrote:Scott, just to reiterate, I don't think you're being consistent in your explanation of punishment as being distinct from a case of defensive homicide. Admittedly, this may be because I insist on using the word "punish" instead of maybe "imposed penitence" or something else. But again, how do you say, "You can kill someone who is about to kill you," without justifying it with, "because they deserve it"? That is not to say that their desert makes it ok to just kill them later, when there's nothing else to gain from it, but that still means that what they deserve has value. It is obviously important enough for us to decide to kill a man, rather than let him aggressively kill someone else.
Like all moral terms, I don't see the meaning of saying a man
deserves unless context gives us some clear set of rules by which to judge. (e.g. The person who runs the fastest in a road race
deserves the running trophy, but the basketball team that runs fastest may not
deserve the basketball trophy if they made less baskets).
I support what I support because I believe it will lead to the least human suffering. I want people to not be offensively hurt or murdered not because I think they are "undeserving" but because I think it is harmful to them. I want defensive force used against an offensive attacker to stop the offensive attacker because (1) I get less displeasure from the attacker getting hurt than the one he is attacking and because (2) I think it will lead to much less attacks happening when potential attackers realize their attacks will most likely be reversed on them and when they are physically disabled from hurting themselves and others by being incarcerated and rehabilitated--and the common presences of defensive force wouldn't have the violence-encouraging brutalization effect that state-sponsored sadism has because it would be based on philanthropic desire to protect victims rather than just on a sadistic desire to cause suffering to violent offenders. Of course, I would much, much prefer for violence not to occur at all, which is why I oppose the initiation of violence.
While I oppose the initiation of violence, I think allowing offensive violence to occur through pacifism would lead to much more violence (especially of the offensive variety) than using organized defensive force to disallow attackers from attacking.
If someone could make an argument that engaging in offensive violence would have some benefit of society worth the pain it causes (e.g. "The death penalty significantly deters violent crime which would deter more deaths than it causes."), that would be compelling. That's the type of argument I would make to support defensive uses of force.
Most of all,
Alun, I think the disagreement is from your use of the term
deserve when I think in amoral terms. When I say I directly get less displeasure from the attacker being hurt than I directly get from the one he is attacking being hurt, perhaps you describe the presence of less sympathy for the attacker as me thinking he deserves it. I just wouldn't use that moral term. Even if you do want to moralize my personal feelings of sympathy, I think it would be more accurate to say I think the attacker is less undeserving of being hurt than the one he is attacking. In other words, he doesn't deserve to be hurt;
nobody deserves to be hurt; but his potential victim deserves it even less. Even those sentences, though, I feel do not represent my views very well because this quality of 'desert' or the lack thereof seems to suggest in which something I do not believe.
Just because I sympathize more with one person than another, I feel like something else--perhaps religious--is being said by the confusing, moral term
deserve. For example, if I had to choose to save the life of a sick 5-year-old girl and a healthy 50-year-old man, I would choose the girl. I would prefer to her to live. I sympathize with her more. You may want to moralize that by saying that I think the man is less undeserving of death, but I feel like that misrepresents my views by implying something more.
November 8th, 2009, 5:45 am
