bd-from-kg

Bill Snedden:

Sorry that this is so long, but we seem to disagree on so many points that it seems unavoidable. Since it’s so long I omitted some quotes from the previous post(s) that might have made it easier to follow.

We’ve been over and over this ground. Obviously there’s no such simple relationship. The correct statement is "I don't want to die, therefore other things being equal I won't do anything that has a reasonable probability of getting myself killed." In fact, one can generalize further: “I desire that X not occur, therefore other things being equal I won’t do anything that has a reasonable probability of causing X to occur.” Are you seriously contending that this is not a valid generalization about human behavior?

Your point being, I take it, that deterrents don’t always prevent the action in question from occurring? But no one said they did. That’s why they’re called “deterrents” rather than, say, preventatives.

Not so. It depends only on the fact that a desire for X not to occur will, other things being equal, cause an individual to refrain from doing something that he believes might cause X to occur. The strength of this effect depends on the strength of the desire for X not to occur and the individual’s subjective estimate of the probability that the action in question will cause X. Of course this is something of an idealization; people don’t normally think explicitly in terms of probabilities. But clearly a desire for X not to occur will be a stronger motivation for not doing something that seems very likely to cause it than for not doing something that seems to have only a remote chance of causing it to occur. And there’s also a time preference: people normally respond more strongly to a chance that X will occur sooner than to a chance that it will occur later.

The “desire-belief-action” model actually applies even to the more intelligent animals in most cases. If a cat desires food [what cat doesn’t!] and believes that there’s a reasonable probability that it will find food at a certain place, this will motivate it to go there. But if it also believes that there’s a chance that a dangerous dog will be there, that will motivate it not to go there. The decision will depend on the relative strength of the two desires and the subjective probability of finding food and finding the dog. (It will also depend, of course, on what else it wants and what alternatives are available.) None of this depends in the least on the assumption that the cat understands what a “probability” is, or on the assumption that it will stop to reflect on the situation, and certainly not on the assumption that its decision will be “rational” in some sense.

A model that applies even to hungry cats will certainly apply to would-be murderers, unless they’re completely bonkers, like the guy who took his wife for a hat rack.

First off, Christianity does not teach that all sinners go to Hell; on the contrary, it teaches that we are all sinners, every day of our lives. So the fact that one sins every day is not in itself a cause for concern even for the most devout Christian.

But it’s true that there seems to be a disconnect between the professed beliefs of many religious people and their attitudes and actions. Bertrand Russell commented that he once asked a good Christian lady whose husband had died where she thought he was now. Her answer was along the lines of “Oh, no doubt he’s in Heaven enjoying eternal bliss. But do we have to discuss such unpleasant subjects?” The actual behavior of many religious people suggests that they don’t really believe what they profess to believe. Or else they’ve managed to completely compartmentalize their religious beliefs from “real life” so that the one has no effect on the other. Of course, this doesn’t apply to all religious people; some are clearly sincere and take their beliefs seriously. But those are the very people who do worry seriously about their sins and getting to Heaven.

No one who has been in this world for any length of time believes that nothing bad can happen to him, for the compelling reason that bad things have happened to him.

Many people do seem to have a subconscious belief along the lines of “nothing bad will happen to me if I exercise reasonable care and prudence.” Or in other words, that in the final analysis their fate is in their own hands. (An illusion, of course.) But the death penalty can be expected to convince many such people that murder is quite imprudent, that by killing someone they may be bringing the awful fate of being executed on themselves.

Make of it what you will. I stand by my statement. It is ridiculously simple and almost embarrassingly elementary. It’s simply irrational to think that the threat of being executed is not a deterrent. I’m absolutely flabbergasted that so many intelligent people should cling so stubbornly to this belief.

That’s not to say that a theory like Alonzo’s is irrational. (I find it implausible, but that’s another thing entirely.) Unlike you (and some others) he argues that there’s another (subtle, long-term) effect of CP that offsets the deterrent effect. This is not at all the same as claiming that the deterrent effect doesn’t exist in the first place.

This has nothing to do with its being “after the fact”. It has everything to do with the fact that the perceived probability of being executed has increased.

By definition, if someone did something, the possible negative consequences did not prevent him from doing it. They deterred him, but not sufficiently to prevent him, because the positive motivations outweighed the negative ones. In the same way, the fact that about 10% of those who try to climb Mount Everest die in the attempt has not prevented those who die in the attempt from doing it. But we can be reasonably sure that it deterred a great many other people sufficiently to prevent them from trying it.

Do you think that, if the (perceived) probability of being executed had been this high before they committed the murder, they would have done it anyway? Again, this has nothing to do with its being after the fact.

It’s not a non sequitur, but in any case this statement needs no proof. It’s a fundamental fact about human psychology (provided that we understand “probability” here as referring to “subjective” or “perceived” probability).

Oh, please. You keep going back to the absurd idea that if a threat doesn’t succeed in preventing the act in question in every case it isn’t really a deterrent.

Why, yes. That seems very likely. Sitting in their jail cell, the near-certainty of a long prison sentence (much less execution) is probably enough to make them wish they hadn’t done it. But at the time of the crime the probability of being caught and punished was much lower, and they may well have perceived it to be even lower than it really was. That’s why a stronger threat is needed to actually prevent a crime from being committed than is needed to produce remorse on the part of those who are caught. I’m glad to see that you’re beginning to understand these things.


If that’s your criterion, we should never punish anyone for anything. The very fact that a person robbed a convenience store at gunpoint, raped a girl, or whatever proves that the existing sanctions (threat of prison, death, or whatever) would not have prevented him from doing it, because they didn’t prevent him. We don’t have to speculate. The deterrent failed; case closed.

The correct question is whether the threat of execution deters some people from doing such things, not whether it prevents everyone from doing it.

There’s another important point here as well. Suppose that we know that a given sanction will prevent some people from doing X, but not only will it not prevent some others from doing X, it will fail to prevent anyone from doing Y, which pretty much everyone regards as being even worse than X. Shall we then refuse to exercise the sanction against those who do Y on the grounds that it doesn’t deter anyone from doing it? Certainly not. The justice system must be seen as doing justice, or at least approximating it to the best of our ability. If people are to be punished for doing X, they must be punished at least as severely for doing Y. Otherwise the entire system would be (quite properly) seen as not even being aimed at justice, which would be disastrous.

Similarly, suppose that we know that there is a certain class of criminal so incorrigible that they will kidnap young girls, etc. (or whatever) no matter what the legal sanction is. Should we then refuse to punish criminals of this class? Certainly not. To punish those who commit identical offenses because they are less incorrigible while refusing to punish those who are the most incorrigible would regarded as an intolerable travesty of justice by any civilized society.

Finally, justice requires that, so far as possible, significantly worse crimes receive significantly worse punishment, and that more crimes of the same kind be punished more severely than less. Of course, at some point we’ll reach the worst punishment that we’re prepared to inflict on anyone. But the lower we set this “maximum sanction”, the lower we’ll be forced to set the sanctions for lesser offenses in order to satisfy this basic principle of justice. For example, if we are not prepared to execute anyone, ever, then a murderer already serving a life sentence has no reason not to kill again, for whatever reason strikes his fancy.

Thus, the question of whether a given sanction did, or might have, deterred a given person from a given crime is not the only relevant question. We must also consider whether the system as a whole is seen as being just, or at any rate as just as humanly possible.

That’s irrelevant. It doesn’t matter whether the perpetrator did reflect; what matters is whether he could have. To apply any other standard leads to absurdity. Do you really need to have this explained?

This was dealt with earlier. A person might kill someone out of irrational hatred but still have a rational fear of being caught and punished, which he reacts to in a rational way. And in any case, this is taken into account very well by the legal system. Crimes of passion and cases of “irresistible impulse” or “temporary insanity” (although these terms exaggerate the true nature of the condition) are not considered capital offenses on the grounds that a person is less culpable under such circumstances. Even when they don’t fall strictly under such legal criteria, juries almost always allow for such conditions in deciding whether to impose a death sentence. (And in case you didn’t know, only juries can impose death sentences.)

Dahmer was insane only in the sense that he had very unnatural, very rare tastes. But he was perfectly rational in that he was well aware of the possible consequences if he was caught, feared those consequences, and took appropriate steps to avoid being found out. Could he have been deterred by a strong enough sanction? We’ll never know.

But this case brings up another point that’s often overlooked. It may be that by the time he was caught Dahmer couldn’t help himself. But there had to be an earlier point in his life when he could have helped himself; when his depravity was not so far advanced or had not even begun to develop yet. And at that point a sufficiently strong sanction (such as a strong probability of swift execution) would almost certainly have been able to deter him. At any rate, the fact that he had a choice at some point in his life – to take the path he did or choose another - makes him completely culpable regardless of whether he was beyond restraining himself later on.

This is a really easy one. If he planned the killing (“with malice aforethought”, as the law puts it) in such a way as to avoid capture, it doesn’t matter how rational his anger was. Such people can be deterred; all of human experience proves this. The fact that some of them aren’t deterred doesn’t make them any different from other murderers. And again, are we prepared to give the ones who were undeterrable a break for being exceptionally stubborn and bent on vengeance? What kind of justice would that be?

Your original statement was:

What you’re clearly talking about here is whether we can always judge individual cases justly, not whether there’s some flaw in the system. The kind of problem you’re talking about can’t be remedied by “fixing the system” because it’s not a systemic problem; it’s the problem of human fallibility. That was why I replied by saying that of course humans are incapable of rendering “cosmic justice” – i.e., we’re not omniscient and all-wise as God is supposed to be. This answer wasn’t “flip” at all; it was directly to the point.

That’s certainly one desideratum, but it’s hardly the only one, and therefore it should not be pursued single-mindedly at the expense of others. For example we would also like to minimize the harm done by acts that are not so well-intentioned. Why should the one take priority over the other?

But public policy cannot be set on the basis of treating each life as having infinite value. And I seriously doubt whether even your life really has “infinite” value to you. After all, you’re going to die eventually anyway. Surely the value of dying, say, fifty years from now rather than today isn’t infinite! Is there really nothing that you would be willing to die for?

Technically you’re right. What matters is whether you’re deliberately killing an innocent. Although in some cases even deliberately killing innocent individuals is justified.

Yes, but we’re not deliberately killing innocent individuals.

Of course it’s an unintended consequence!

This whole argument depends on an equivocation about what it means to “deliberately kill an innocent person”. You’re treating “(deliberately kill) an innocent person” as meaning the same thing as “deliberately (kill an innocent person)”.

Here’s an example to illustrate the point.

I’m a policeman. I see someone shooting several innocent people, and I see someone who looks like the shooter fleeing the scene with a gun. I go after him, identify myself, and order him to stop. He turns and points what appears to be a gun at me. I shoot to kill, and I do kill. But it turns out that it wasn’t the shooter. (Maybe he didn’t even have a gun.) I killed an innocent person, and I intended to kill him. But I did not intend to kill an innocent person.

This is a particularly good example because it’s very similar to a number of real-life incidents. And it’s closely analogous to mistakenly executing an innocent person. And it’s clear that there is no moral culpability involved.

But what if you would have had to kill the person who was going to kill the child in order to save him? For that matter, what if you had to do something that would certainly kill one innocent person in order to save five others? I’d certainly agree that this would be a wrenching situation, but if you chose to kill the one in order to save the five, would you be morally culpable? Or rather, the question is not what you would do, but how would you judge a person who made this choice?

Are you speaking of proof beyond a reasonable doubt that a particular person is guilty, or proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the policy of having CP yields a better outcome overall than the policy of not having it? The latter is what I was talking about. And if that is what you mean, how do you justify this? Suppose for the sake of argument that there’s clear and convincing evidence that CP yields the best results overall, how do you justify choosing a policy that is very likely to produce worse results merely because we have only clear and convincing evidence and not proof beyond a reasonable doubt that it does?

Here you lose me. You seem to be saying that what determines the morality of an act is not its consequences, but something else. But what would that “something else” be? Do you believe that some acts have an intrinsic property of “rightness” and others an intrinsic property of “wrongness”, or what? The notion of an “transcendent moral reality” by virtue of which certain acts are “just wrong, that’s all”, completely disconnected from any consideration of consequences, is out of place in a nontheistic framework; it just can’t be “fit in”. There’s no room for a transcendent moral reality in a naturalistic world. And without it, there’s no justification for judging acts as right or wrong independently of their consequences.

To put it another way, deontological moral theories just don’t seem to make sense in the absence of some “divinely revealed” moral principles. Once you decide to ignore consequences in judging the morality of acts, there’s nothing left but arbitrary preference.

Regardless of whether a CP regime has better consequences overall than a non-CP regime? I’m truly baffled. Coming from a theist this position would be understandable, but given that you’re a nontheist I really can’t understand where you’re coming from. It seem to me that you just haven’t thought through your moral philosophy.

The problem isn’t just that there are “hidden premises”, but that to make any sense at all the so-called conclusion would have to be made a premise. (I’m assuming that P3 means something like “CP saves more innocent lives through deterrence (and incapacitation) than it kills through execution of innocents”.) The conclusion is a moral statement, and none of the premises are moral statements. And if you think about what moral premise would have to be added to make the argument go through, it turns out that it would have to look pretty much like the conclusion. What kind of argument is that?

Of course this is a reasonable answer. Even if the argument is perfectly valid and the premises true, it doesn’t purport to show that CP is the best policy, only that it’s beat other things being equal . But it does establish a presumption in favor of CP that must be overcome by other, stronger arguments on the other side. What frustrates me is that CP opponents almost invariably insist that this argument has no force at all; that there is no tradeoff that has to be considered.

I disagree. The state forbids us from taking the law into our own hands, in return for an implied promise to make every effort to protect us from those who would harm us or our loved ones and bring to justice anyone who manages to do so anyway. Having made this promise, it has a responsibility to make good on it so far as it is within its power. In other words, the state has a positive responsibility to prevent harm so far as it reasonably can, in a sense in which individual citizens do not.

The point is that what’s wrong for an individual is not necessarily wrong for the state. The state is in a very different moral position from the individual by virtue of having taken on the responsibility for enforcing the social contract while forbidding us to do so.

bd-from-kg

NHGH:

Yes, you have a point. A bad argument; strike it.

This is highly implausible. People do plan and commit murders every day under these conditions in spite of the fact that the probability of being caught is pretty high. (The murder conviction rate is about 80% of the murder rate, so we can reasonably assume that at least 80% of murderers are caught. The figure is actually higher since some murders are multiple.) So the only way this could be true would be that the perceived risk is systematically, monumentally smaller than the actual risk. No doubt the perceived risk is generally smaller than the actual risk, but by orders of magnitude? Consistently? I don’t think so.

There’s no such threshold, because the perceived probability of being caught could be anything. And this factors into the deterrent effect along with the degree of punishment (or more precisely, the strength of the desire to avoid the punishment in question). If someone is more averse to X than to Y and the certainty of either X or Y would prevent him from doing something, it is mathematically certain that there is some perceived probability at which the threat of Y will fail to prevent him from doing it but the threat of X will succeed.

That’s really beside the point. It has nothing to do with the first part: prosecutors routinely secure plea bargains on the basis of the threat of a possible death penalty. I think any prosecutor would be dumfounded to encounter a person who would refuse such a deal because he preferred death to life. As to the second part, the idea was simply to conjure up this image for its “shock value”, to remind the reader how surreal such an offer would be. It could only be a Monty Python skit, not a scene from real life, even if the law allowed it.

Look. Let’s imagine that prosecutors did have the power to offer execution as an option. Can you seriously imagine suspects accepting execution to save themselves from the even more horrible fate of going to prison? Who do you think you’re kidding here?

Sure, he has that authority in theory. But how many lawyers do you think would even consider exercising it on behalf of anyone but a madman? As soon as the defendant sees what’s up he can fire the lawyer. (He hardly needs to get another one if his intention is simply to not contest the prosecutor’s argument for a death sentence.) All in all, of the 999 cases out of 1000 where the lawyer argues against a death sentence for his client, how many to you think there are where the client really wants a death sentence but allows his lawyer to argue for a life sentence? Do you think it likely that there’s even one such case in a thousand on average?

That doesn’t follow at all. Naturally a person will fear something most when it’s most imminent and certain. It doesn’t follow that he won’t fear it at all, or even that he won’t fear it greatly, when it’s less imminent or less certain.

You’re missing the point. Anyone contemplating murder knows that he’s facing a stiff sentence of some kind – at least 15 to 20 years in jail - if he gets caught. Obviously what the prisoners were saying is that what deterred them was the additional threat posed by the possibility of being executed.

It can be argued at least as cogently that, since prisoners have had first-hand experience of prison and know how awful it is, they can be expected to be even more averse to the idea of going back to it after they get out than those who have never served time. (It seems highly probable to me that most people who have never been to prison have no idea how bad it is.)

Also, a fundamental psychological principle is that of a learned response. When a subject is given a positive experience after doing something, this serves as an incentive to do the same thing again, and conversely when he’s subjected to a negative experience it serves as a “negative incentive” (i.e., a deterrent) to his doing it again – i.e., he becomes more averse to doing it. This is over and above any effect created by abstract knowledge that the experience will be a consequence of the action. (Example: repeated exposure to severe electrical shocks will produce a stronger aversion to electrical shocks than mere abstract knowledge that they’re painful.) In other words, actual experience of a negative incentive increases the aversion to it rather than decreasing it as you suggest.

Now I want to go back to a statistic that you keep harping on:

I don’t know ewhere you got this figure from, but even if it’s correct it’s highly misleading. The reason: pretty much all of those who choose to stop their appeals are executed, whereas a much smaller percentage of those who continue them are.

Here is the actual relevant figure (according to Dudley Sharp of Justice for All, a pro-death-penalty group):

That’s about 1 out of 80, not 1 out of 8, who have chosen to stop their appeals.

And it’s far from clear that a significant number of those who waived appeals did so because they would prefer execution to life in prison. Death row isn’t a bit like ordinary prison. It’s very grim, and everyone there knows that there’s a good chance that he’ll be executed. Most of these “volunteers” may have known that there was virtually no chance of their appeals succeeding, and given that they had nothing to look forward to but more time on death row followed by execution, just decided to get it over with.

But there’s another factor that you haven’t mentioned: the number of “volunteers” has risen sharply in recent years (padding the statistics), and death penalty opponents attribute this to increasingly inhuman conditions on death row. See for example, this article from Reuters and this one by Roger Hummel.

In any case, it stands to reason that the number of people who have a basic preference for death over life in prison has not suddenly changed dramatically, so the rise in “volunteer executions” must be a result of some change in circumstances.

All in all, it’s clear that the number of people who prefer execution to life in prison is vanishingly small – a tiny fraction of 1%; probably less than 0.1%. So we must conclude that almost everyone fears execution more than life in prison – which is to say that the threat of execution is more of a deterrent for almost everyone than the threat of life without parole.

Frankly, both your post and much of Bill Snedden’s strike me as elaborate attempts to deny the obvious. Are you seriously denying that almost everyone is more averse to being fried than being jailed? If not, what’s your point? Merely that this hasn’t been scientifically proven to your satisfaction?

Any serious discussion of capital punishment has to start from the premise that it’s more of a deterrent than life imprisonment. It would be nice if we could have the best of both worlds –a system in which no one is ever executed and which prevents as many murders as possible. But we can’t. We have to decide whether eliminating the death penalty is worth the lives of a significant number of innocent people.

bd-from-kg

Alonzo Fyfe:

I’ll now examine your proposed mechanisms for an “enhancement” effect that might conceivably offset the deterrence effect.

This is of some importance because when one is making an extraordinary claim it is almost mandatory to support it by proposing a plausible mechanism – an unusual causal relationship or state of affairs that applies to the specific case at hand and not to the myriad of “normal” cases where the standard rule applies – that could account for it. Thus, one of the main reasons why ESP claims are generally rejected by well-informed rational people is that there is no plausible mechanism: nothing that is known about the real world could account for how information might pass from one mind to another other than through the known mechanisms of sensory perception. In the absence of any such mechanism the presumption is so strong against the existence of such a phenomenon that one is justified in assuming that any statistical evidence presented for ESP is either faked or a product of selection bias (results unfavorable to the hypothesis are ignored and only favorable ones are presented.) Only very strong, incontrovertible evidence to the contrary would justify abandoning this presumption.

Now let’s look at your theories about how the DP could have an effect that could increase the murder rate.

I’ve already explained why this is completely untenable on its face. If the potential killer accepts the norms of his society, the fact that that society disapproves of murder to such a degree that it executes murderers cannot possibly make it easier for him to rationalize murder. On the other hand, if he doesn’t accept the norms of his society, it’s hard to see why the fact that it executes murderers should have any effect on his thinking at all (other than providing a motive to refrain from murder).

Later you suggest that a reduction in capital punishment might

But no society says that killing is so wrong that it is virtually never justified. For example, killing in self-defence is considered justified in all societies. Killing to defend one’s family is held in the same light almost everywhere. In more enlightened societies killing to protect strangers is considered justified if the threat is coming from the person or persons killed. Killing a smaller number to save a larger number, even when those killed are perfectly innocent, is generally considered justified as well: for example, making an emergency landing of a plane full of passengers on a road with a small car that will inevitably be wiped out; or throwing a live grenade from a place with a crush of people to one where there are relatively few.

A very important exception to the “killing is wrong” rule, of course, is war. All societies either are prepared to fight wars themselves or depend on “patron states” that will fight in their behalf if necessary. And it’s not always feasible to wait until one is attacked. Israel’s Six day War is a perfect illustration; if they’d waited until the attack came they’d have been annihilated. And in this day of international terrorism it’s sometimes necessary (or at least morally defensible) to destroy the terrorists who are working to destroy you before their plots reach fruition.

Now in a war even the enemy combatants are often innocent; either they’re being forced to fight or have been misled. No nation can refuse to fire at such soldiers on moral grounds unless it is willing to commit suicide on behalf of its moral principles. And, of course, even in this time of high-tech weaponry it’s inevitable that some completely innocent civilians will be killed; in fact, in some cases the soldiers will know in advance that some specific civilians will be killed (for example, if they blow up a bridge).

Only a complete imbecile is unable to make the kinds of elementary moral distinctions involved in these examples - and for that very reason imbeciles are not considered moral agents. So your concern that some people will conclude that there’s nothing wrong with killing in general merely because they learn that society makes exceptions to this rule in some cases is completely misplaced for anyone who can remotely be considered a moral agent.

Later you give it another try:

As I pointed out above, a non-capital-punishment society does not believe that killing is never okay; no society believes that. Besides, to judge from the anti-DP arguments I’ve seen here, a great many of those who oppose the death penalty do so because they think it’s to costly, or that it’s pointless because it doesn’t deter murderers anyway, Neither of these is a moral objection; all of these objections are purely practical. Others oppose it because they’re concerned that in practice innocents might be executed by mistake. This is a moral objection of sorts, but it’s not an objection based on the principle that killing is wrong per se. Presumably those who oppose CP on this ground would have no problem with it if they could be sure the that “right” people were executed. Similarly, many people oppose it because they believe that it’s applied in a discriminatory fashion. Their objection is thus to discrimination, not to executing murderers. Presumably if the system executed murderers in a nondiscriminatory fashion these people would have no objection to it. Still others oppose it because it’s irrevocable. This is really just another version of the concern that innocents might be executed by mistake; presumably these people would have no moral objection to executing those who are really guilty if we could be sure that this was what we were doing.

So it’s not at all clear why a child (even a very precocious child, who had some real grasp of the issues involves) would conclude from the fact that his society does not use the DP that it is more committed to the principle that killing is (almost) never okay than a society that uses it. In fact, if he did conclude this he would be mistaken. It’s more likely that such a society is simply more cost-conscious, or more pessimistic about its effectiveness, or more averse to killing innocents (but with no objection to killing the guilty) or more averse to discriminatory outcomes.

Besides, the idea that a six-to-eight-year-old’s basic moral attitudes are going to be significantly affected merely by the abstract knowledge that his society uses the DP is ludicrous. Children at this age are not terribly cerebral. They’re much more affected by their own experiences, the example set by their parents, and to a lesser extent by what they actually see with their own eyes (even if only on television or in a movie). Any abstract knowledge that they might happen to acquire about their country’s legal system is going to be so far down the scale influence-wise as to be virtually nonexistent. Only a person who has had no actual experience with children of this age could possibly believe that their moral attitudes are affected by knowledge of whether their country uses capital punishment. And the vast majority of them will have no idea whether it does or not anyway; six-to-eight-year-olds are not exactly avid newspaper readers or fans of the six o’clock news.

The violence the children see on television and in the movies is far more likely to affect their attitudes than the kind of abstract knowledge that you’re talking about. This is especially true because children at that age don’t distinguish as clearly as adults between reality and make-believe. They know (generally) that what they see on TV, etc. is fiction, but its effect on their attitudes (their tastes and aversions) is closer to what the effect would be of seeing the same kind of thing in “real life” than it would be for adults. And this sort of thing very likely has a significant effect even on adults.

Finally, you offer this version:

As it stands this is unintelligible. The sentiment of approving of someone getting what he or she deserves is morally unexceptionable; it’s not at all clear why anyone would want to discourage it. Why should we be concerned that capital punishment might encourage the valid sentiment that sometimes people who are killed are getting what they deserve? Of course, it’s possible that some people will unjustifiably extend this sentiment to say something like “anyone whom I dislike, or disagree with, or whose death I would profit from, deserves to be killed.” But one cannot seriously argue that a valid moral principle should not be acted on, on the grounds that some people might get the wrong idea and take it as an instance of a much broader, and hence invalid, moral principle. We do not, for example, refuse to lie in those rare instances when lying is justified, on the grounds that the children might learn about it and get the idea the lying is always OK, or that it might reduce their aversion to lying. We do not refrain from using physical force on another person in the kind of unusual circumstances when doing so is justified, on the grounds that it might encourage young children who learn of it to think that using physical force is always OK, or that it might reduce their aversion to using it. The government does not refrain from confiscating the property of a citizen when this is appropriate on the grounds that children who are told about it might get the idea that taking other people’s property is perfectly OK; that it might undermine their respect for property.

In fact, this argument is so manifestly absurd if we start from the premise that executing people is sometimes morally justified (or even morally mandated) that one must conclude that it must really be based on the opposite premise: that capital punishment is always morally wrong; that no one ever deserves to be killed. But of course if no one ever deserves to be killed, capital punishment is wrong and should be abolished; end of discussion. So this entire argument is nothing more than an elaborate form of question-begging.

Yet another version of this sort of thing often encountered in the literature is that capital punishment is “brutalizing”, meaning apparently that it produces more “brutal” attitudes or sensibilities in those who are aware of it. Once again the implausibility of this idea is obvious. People are not “brutalized” by abstract knowledge, but be actual experiences. And ordinarily the experiences in question have to brutal to be brutalizing. So in the final analysis this is just a fancy way of expressing the opinion the capital punishment is “brutal” – i.e., the sort of thing the brutes – i.e., beings who are not fully human – would do. To anyone who regards capital punishment (as practiced in the U.S. at least) as a just, measured penalty for criminals who display a wanton disregard for human life, this argument is absurd on its face. If anything, the sight of a man who has committed an especially brutal series of murders walking out of the courtroom to a life of three squares a day courtesy of the state is far more likely to be brutalizing than the knowledge that he will pay the just penalty for his acts.

Thus the mechanisms that you propose are hopelessly implausible on their face. If there were some convincing actual evidence that they exist, this wouldn’t matter so much; sufficiently good evidence can overcome even a strong prime facie presumption against a theory. But unfortunately, so far as I know there is no such evidence. If there is, by all means bring it to our attention. But if not, these theories can be dismissed out of hand.

The AntiChris

You appear to be arguing that the DP is a "just penalty" for murder simply because, in your view, the DP undoubtedly deters some potential murderers.

By your reasoning, it would seem that a penalty more fearsome than the current method of execution (such as torture and humiliation prior to a prolonged and painful death) would be an even greater deterrent. Would you endorse such measures? If not, why not?

How do you draw the line between between what is effective but unacceptable and what may be slightly less effective but acceptable?

Chris

bd-from-kg

The AntiChris:

No. Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. This was prefaced by the statement:

In other words, if CP is just in some cases, it’s absurd to argue that it’s “brutalizing” to know that it’s actually being justly applied in such cases. The point is that the “brutalizing” argument is based on the assumption that CP is not a just punishment, even in the kinds of cases in which it is almost always used in the U.S. But if this is true (or rather if the CP opponent can show that it’s true) there’s no need for the “brutalization” argument, or any other argument for that matter; the injustice of CP would be a sufficient grounds for abolishing it. (In fact, I believe that a general consensus that it’s unjust would be sufficient grounds.)

A further comment on this may be in order. For consequentialists the justice of a penalty depends on its overall effects (not necessarily just its deterrent or suppression effects, but nevertheless on its effects and nothing else). So it could be argued that CP is unjust precisely because of its brutalizing effects. But if the supposed brutalizing effects depend on its being unjust, this argument is transparently circular.

Yes, of course. And there are others that would be more effective still: for example, raping, mutilating, torturing, and killing the convicted man’s wife and daughters (in addition to the measures you mention).

No.

These are good questions, and it looks to me as though you’re trying to steer the debate in a more fruitful direction.

The most obvious answer is that such punishments would be unjust. But the problem with that answer is that different people have different notions of “justice”; what seems unjust to me may seem perfectly just to thee and vice versa. There doesn’t seem to be any objective standard of “justice”, or what constitutes a “just” punishment.

But this suggests a more reasonable answer:

(1) Such punishments would be generally regarded as unjust.

As I pointed out in my last reply to Bill Snedden, the “justice system” must be seen as dispensing justice, or at least doing its best to do so. I think that a society in which the laws are generally seen as fundamentally unjust must inevitably collapse.

Does this mean that such measures would be acceptable if they were generally regarded as just? So far as this answer is concerned, the answer is “yes”. And it’s not at all clear that there’s a better one. After all, the Romans routinely used crucifixion, which is a form of prolonged torture and humiliation. (Being “hung from a tree was regarded as the ultimate humiliation in those times.) Is there an objective standard by which crucifixion can be called “unjust” (or simply “wrong” for that matter)?

More recently, it was common in England (and I believe in some other countries) to execute someone who had committed a serious offence against the Crown by beheading him and displaying his head on a pole for some time – the point being largely to humiliate the person and his family. Was this wrong? It certainly strikes us, with our modern sensibilities, as pointlessly cruel, but apparently it didn’t strike the people living at the time as being so.

So it may be that the question of what punishments are appropriate or just in a given society is simply a matter of what “works” for the society in question.

Another possible answer is:

(2) Such punishments violate the “social contract”.

I don’t subscribe to “social contract” theory as a moral philosophy, but it has a lot going for it as a fruitful way of thinking about moral issues, especially the kind that involve society as a whole.

Now it’s arguable that people are willing to accept a small risk of being mistakenly executed in return for a substantial reduction in the risk of being murdered, but that they are not willing to accept even a small risk of being tortured and humiliated, etc., even in return for a greater reduction in the risk of being murdered. And the chances of being tortured, etc. by a criminal are vanishingly small.

Also, it’s not unreasonable to imagine that there’s a small chance that one might actually murder someone and would be willing to “pay the price” of being executed, but would not be willing to be tortured, etc.

Thus it can be reasonably argued that most people in our society would not be willing to enter into a “social contract” that involved the possibility of being subjected to punishments more severe than execution, but would be willing to accept the possibility of execution because it’s not significantly worse than some of the crimes that they face a nontrivial risk of experiencing.

Yet another answer that suggests itself is:

(3) Punishments that involve torture, humiliation, and the like really are brutalizing.

Here again the difference between such punishments and execution is that such things (unlike killing) are quite rare in our society as things stand, so that introducing them as punishments would increase their frequency enormously. Moreover, execution (if it’s performed in a reasonably humane manner) merely subjects the convicted person to something that he will inevitably experience anyway someday. But the same cannot be said of torture and humiliation. Such measures smack of vengeance, not justice, and the appetite for vengeance is something that we must not feed, but rather must be vigilant to suppress, if we are to remain a civilized society.

But none of these arguments is a slam dunk, and moreover it can be argued that similar arguments can be mounted against capital punishment. Where should we draw the line, and why? Or shouldn’t there be a line? For example, is torture perhaps an acceptable punishment for criminals who torture their victims? Any other thoughts on this?

Mike Rosoft

Death penalty says: "This person can never be corrected and must be put to death." On the other hand, life imprisonment with a possibility of conditional release after twenty years says: "We believe that this person can never be corrected. But we might be wrong."
Nope, it doesn’t say that. It says, "All things considered, sentencing this person to life with possible parole/death penalty appears to be the best course of action."

And what other reasons do you assume? To deny a chance of release to a criminal who can be reformed is to deny justice; to release a criminal who hasn't been reformed is to endanger the society.

Don’t presume to say what other people’s reasons are for doing what they do, or for favoring this policy or that. It’s just barely possible that someone might favor the death penalty in one cases, life with parole in another, and life without parole in a third simply because he feels that these are the just, appropriate punishments in each case.

Now I don't understand where you are going with this statement.

Most of the objections [in the Amnesty International Report] are not to capital punishment per se but to inappropriate applications of it.
I didn’t say “all”, I said “most”.

And I granted that.

Amnesty International also addresses this issue [of possible execution of innocents]:
[Their] answer is nonsensical. If death penalty opponents don’t have time to make their case, what do they have time for?

Seriously, do you suggest that they ought to spend time and money to overturn convictions of people who have already been put to death? Aren't they better spent on someone who can be helped? In fact, this is what they do; the case of Anthony Porter (Illinois, 1998) whose innocence was proven 48 hours before his scheduled execution by a group of students is an example.

And they do have time to make their case. They point out cases when the executed person may have been innocent. But at the moment, trying to prove their innocence at a court is a waste of resources.

Are they busy trying to break into the prisons where the executions are taking place and trying to stop them? Give me a break.

Do I have to comment on this baseless accusation?

It’s beyond understanding why AI thinks that new cases of this kind will miraculously come to light as a result of abolishing the DP.

Just like they "miraculously" came into light after death penalty was abolished in United Kingdom. Yes, right.

There is an estimate that about twenty innocent people were executed during the past 100 years.
Wow. I’m impressed. I estimate that perhaps one innocent person was executed during that time. Sorry, I don’t have a source either.

After a short search on Internet, I found out where this number is from. It is a study by Hugo Bedau and Michael Radelet, named "Miscarriages of Justice in Potentially Capital Cases".


Mike Rosoft

The AntiChris

bd-from-kg
Well, as you've already observed, there is no objective standard of justice which will help us decide where we should draw the line.

As a society, the only way we can resolve this is by consensus. As individuals, I think the only thing we can ask is that any judgement on where the line is to be drawn should, as far as possible, not be based on ignorance or false information.
Simply because we (or at least most of us) find some forms of punishment so repugnant that our aversion to them outweighs the perceived benefit they might have as a deterrent.

Of course, as reasonable people, we try to justify our personal distaste, or preference, for certain forms of punishment by appealing to "facts" or "evidence". However, at root, our attitudes to CP are formed from a combination of perceived "facts" about the real world effects of the death penalty and our individual values and emotional preferences.

I personally find the notion of taking a captive prisoner who is no longer a danger to society and cold bloodedly executing him, repugnant. Of course it can be argued that his execution may save innocent lives by deterring potential murderers. However, as you yourself have demonstrated, the ability of a punishment to deter is not the sole criterion we use to determine its acceptability - we each draw our own line, based on our own values and principles.

I think it's indisputable that most "western" and "enlightened" societies have abolished CP. Although this doesn't help us decide where the line should be drawn, I think it does give an indication as to where the line is drawn in most civilized societies.

Chris

The AntiChris

Duplicate post - "server busy" cockup.

Bill Snedden

bd-from-kg:

I was originally going to respond point-by-point, but upon reflection, I don't think it would be of any value. So far I've apparently been unable to communicate exaclty what I mean.

I think I can sum it all up with one of the last points to which you responded:

Perhaps I haven't been clear, but I've not been attempting to argue that the argument as you presented it has no force, merely that it isn't as strong as you argue.

In other words, just as I said, I question whether or not "all things" are or really can be seen as equal in the circumstances we see in capital crimes.

The fact that we have an intuitive belief that CP should be a stronger deterrent than LIP and yet statistical studies don't seem to bear out this relationship consistently should give us pause, don't you think? As I see it, this is in fact what we would expect to see if "all things" are indeed not equal.

I'll leave out the rest of the stuff as it really bears on why we should be so concerned given that the data doesn't bear out the relationship we intuitively believe to be true rather than the argument itself. Still, I think the AntiChris has made a rather interesting point regarding the legitimacy of particular forms of punishment...

Regards,

Bill Snedden

bd-from-kg

The AntiChris:

So far as the existence of some sort of “transcendent” standard of justice, independent of what anyone thinks or feels, I think it’s clear that there isn’t one. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s no objective way to approach the question. If we can agree on the desideratum – on the function and purpose of the notion of “justice” – it’s possible to examine objectively what standard of justice best fulfills this function.

Now if your desideratum when it comes to justice is simply to make yourself “feel good”, then the fact that you experience a certain emotion when you contemplate certain forms of punishment is dispository: implementing such a punishment doesn’t make you feel good, and that’s that. But if your desideratum is (like mine) to put into place the regime that is most likely to produce the greatest good of the greatest number (or as Alonzo would say, to satisfy the most “good” desires) we have a basis for a fruitful discussion. Otherwise we’ll be wasting our time: I’ll be arguing that such-and-such a measure is likely to conduce to the greatest good, while you’ll be replying that this may be true, but it doesn’t make you feel good.

Yes, but the consensus that’s needed is a consensus about what we want the system of justice to do; what the criterion is for comparing one system to another. It’s possible that people might agree on this, and also agree mistakenly that certain measures are or are not desirable according to this criterion. In that case the question will probably be resolved by “consensus”, but it will be an erroneous consensus.

Isn’t that exactly what CP opponents are arguing in effect? Polls show that CP is favored by a substantial majority, but CP opponents say that it should be abolished anyway. Aren’t they saying that the majority is wrong in some sense? And if not in the sense that I just described, what sense are they talking about?

We can ask for something else: that the judgment be based on an objective analysis of what measures will best fulfill the function and purpose of the justice system as we see it. A judgment can be based on perfect information, yet also be based on emotion rather than a dispassionate analysis of what measures will enable the system to accomplish what you want it to accomplish.

That’s a perfectly good reason if you view the justice system primarily as source of emotional satisfaction – if the main purpose of punishment is to make you feel good, or at least not feel bad.

Of course. Your attitude toward a lot of things is based in part on emotional preference. And sometimes that’s perfectly OK. My emotional preferences (together with perceived facts and personal values) determine what house and car I buy, what movies I watch, who I marry, etc. It’s less clear that emotional preferences should enter into public policy decisions.

A couple of examples should make this clear. Suppose that you believe in equal rights, tolerance, etc., but the sight of a couple of mixed race just makes you sick. Should you base your decision as to whether to support a ban on interracial marriage on your considered views on civil rights, etc., or on your emotional reaction? Or again, say that you firmly believe that people should be allowed to do what they want so long as they don’t hurt anyone else, but you find the idea of homosexuality totally repugnant. Should you base your views on laws banning homosexual acts on your beliefs about personal freedom or on your distaste for homosexual acts?

So do I.

Yes, deterrence (and incapacitation for that matter) is not the sole criterion. But at no time did I suggest that one’s emotional reaction is a rational criterion. So far as I’m concerned, the effects on society, taken as a whole, are the appropriate criterion. (In a few cases, such as war, a course of action can have enough of an effect on other societies that their interests must also be taken into account.) All of my arguments were based on such effects.

You also mention “values and principles”. These are legitimate considerations, but typically one has a great many values, and they sometimes conflict with one another. For example, I hold it as an important value that a person should not be punished for a crime that he did not commit. Another major value for me is liberty: people should be free to go about their business; they should not be coerced to do things they don’t want to or to stay in a place they want to leave. I also hold it as an important value that people (especially innocent, law-abiding ones) should be protected from social predators: thieves, con artists, rapists, murderers, etc. Unfortunately these values conflict in a number of respects: prisons severely restrict the freedom of those who are placed in them, punishing anyone for anything always runs the risk of punishing an innocent person, etc. So in basing your position on “your values and principles” it’s important to consider whether your “emotional preferences” are causing you to focus excessively on some of your values while losing sight of others that may be equally important to you.

It’s not clear why western societies figure prominently in your thinking here. Are western societies the only “enlightened” ones?

In any case, as I pointed out earlier, the great majority of western countries that have abolished CP have done so against the wishes of their own citizens. So all that the fact that CP has been abolished in these countries tells us is that a small, undemocratic political elite opposes CP there. Considering the other policies that this elite favors, that doesn’t impress me in the least.