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There's a big difference between killing defensively and killing in the name of justice, though. There's no conflict in believing that (1) life is always hallow

There's a big difference between killing defensively and killing in the name of justice, though. There's no conflict in believing that (1) life is always hallowed, (2) retributive killing is always wrong, and (3) killing is justified in some situations to preserve life.

dsacco 10y ago
Sure there is. What is your definition of "hallowed"? By implication, I believe the author used it to mean "killing is always wrong", or "life must always be preserved." Is that is indeed the definition, #1 and #3 are directly incompatible. This is the problem with using words like "hallowed" in philosophical debates. One person uses a word without defining it, and they intend it one way. Then the other party argues with their imperfect and improvised understanding of the word's definition, and no one gets anywhere. This is how we end up with six people debating whether or not "the good always matches the beautiful", and it's one of the reasons philosophy as a discipline has a bad reputation to outsiders. If you dig deep enough, what will often happen is one or more parties will try to create an empirical definition and the other parties will just use circular definitions until it's clear they're not saying anything at all. If "hallowed" doesn't mean "must always be preserved", I'm not sure it can mean anything of consequence to the debate. You could define it as "must be preserved unless there is a justifiable reason not to", but then you're not saying anything new. It's redundant.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  There is no incompatibility at all. If life is hallowed, it follows that the only situation in which killing would be justified would be to prevent another killing. If anything, war makes a much more challenging case for this view, unless you accept a position of total pacifism
  - dsacco 10y ago
    Please define "hallowed" for me. As I explained, I believe the only definition of "hallowed" with any consequence to the debate is "must always be preserved." If that is the definition we're working with, it precludes "justifiable" exceptions, because there are no exceptions allowed. You'd need to equate passively allowing someone to kill another life with actively killing to preserve a life, which is another entire debate before we can begin to take that as a premise. If that is not the definition, then why should we bother saying something like "life is hallowed"? What could it mean that would have any consequence for, or add any further meaning to the debate? "Life is meaningful."? "Life is to be respected."? This is the complexity inherent to engaging in dialectics, and in my opinion words like "hallowed" should simply be avoided unless they're rigorously defined by all parties.
    - emodendroket 10y ago
      "Should never be taken except to preserve another life" seems both consequential and fitting.
      - dsacco 10y ago
        Fair enough, I suppose that does fit.
DominikR 10y ago
Capital punishment isn't only retributive in character, it is also deterrence. If you are then going to argue that it doesn't actually deter then why not do away with all punishments for crimes?
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Capital punishment isn't only retributive in character, it is also deterrence. Every study of it -- as practiced in the modern US, at least -- I've seen has shown that it has no or negligible additional deterrent effect, so I'd say that in fact it is not deterrence. Of the five classes of justification for criminal punishment, the modern death penality is obviously not reformative or expiatory (but then, punishment itself usually isn't expiatory, limitations and exceptions to punishment usually are), and empirically not deterrent. If you are going to make a case for it, you probably need to appeal to either retributive or preventive/incapacitory theories of justice.
  - DominikR 10y ago
    You did not answer my question. Is punishment deterring people from committing crimes? Yes or no? If you say no then we need no punishment and we can make every crime legal. There are several possibilities as to why capital punishment may not be or may not seem to be as effective today as it could be. The first obvious one is that universities and most of media has been under control by the left for decades now, so everyone that might tell you death penalty is ineffective is more likely to follow an ideology that views these punishments as inhumane or have an incentive to do so. (Let's not kid ourselves, most people here that are against capital punishment do this because they view it as inhumane. If presented with two studies where one showed that is was ineffective and one that is was effective most of these people would choose to believe the first one - no matter what) The other possibility is that we made changes to how we apply the death penalty that causes it to be less of a deterrence. For example it gets less and less likely for any criminal to be actually executed, and if that happens then often after decades of trials and retrials. Or how about the fact that we seem to be so much more concerned today about the cruelty and the supposed inhumane treatment of the criminal than about what the victims of said criminal had to go through? There used to be a time when we hanged people publicly for everyone (including the criminals family) to see. Today we make criminals that are executed into martyrs against state cruelty (many even reach celebrity status) instead of displaying them as criminals that are likely to piss their pants in public before being hanged for their heinous crimes. This definitely has an effect on deterrence.

dsacco 10y ago

Sure there is. What is your definition of "hallowed"? By implication, I believe the author used it to mean "killing is always wrong", or "life must always be preserved." Is that is indeed the definition, #1 and #3 are directly incompatible. This is the problem with using words like "hallowed" in philosophical debates. One person uses a word without defining it, and they intend it one way. Then the other party argues with their imperfect and improvised understanding of the word's definition, and no one gets anywhere. This is how we end up with six people debating whether or not "the good always matches the beautiful", and it's one of the reasons philosophy as a discipline has a bad reputation to outsiders. If you dig deep enough, what will often happen is one or more parties will try to create an empirical definition and the other parties will just use circular definitions until it's clear they're not saying anything at all. If "hallowed" doesn't mean "must always be preserved", I'm not sure it can mean anything of consequence to the debate. You could define it as "must be preserved unless there is a justifiable reason not to", but then you're not saying anything new. It's redundant.

emodendroket 10y ago
There is no incompatibility at all. If life is hallowed, it follows that the only situation in which killing would be justified would be to prevent another killing. If anything, war makes a much more challenging case for this view, unless you accept a position of total pacifism
- dsacco 10y ago
  Please define "hallowed" for me. As I explained, I believe the only definition of "hallowed" with any consequence to the debate is "must always be preserved." If that is the definition we're working with, it precludes "justifiable" exceptions, because there are no exceptions allowed. You'd need to equate passively allowing someone to kill another life with actively killing to preserve a life, which is another entire debate before we can begin to take that as a premise. If that is not the definition, then why should we bother saying something like "life is hallowed"? What could it mean that would have any consequence for, or add any further meaning to the debate? "Life is meaningful."? "Life is to be respected."? This is the complexity inherent to engaging in dialectics, and in my opinion words like "hallowed" should simply be avoided unless they're rigorously defined by all parties.
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    "Should never be taken except to preserve another life" seems both consequential and fitting.
    - dsacco 10y ago
      Fair enough, I suppose that does fit.

DominikR 10y ago

Capital punishment isn't only retributive in character, it is also deterrence. If you are then going to argue that it doesn't actually deter then why not do away with all punishments for crimes?

dragonwriter 10y ago
> Capital punishment isn't only retributive in character, it is also deterrence. Every study of it -- as practiced in the modern US, at least -- I've seen has shown that it has no or negligible additional deterrent effect, so I'd say that in fact it is not deterrence. Of the five classes of justification for criminal punishment, the modern death penality is obviously not reformative or expiatory (but then, punishment itself usually isn't expiatory, limitations and exceptions to punishment usually are), and empirically not deterrent. If you are going to make a case for it, you probably need to appeal to either retributive or preventive/incapacitory theories of justice.
- DominikR 10y ago
  You did not answer my question. Is punishment deterring people from committing crimes? Yes or no? If you say no then we need no punishment and we can make every crime legal. There are several possibilities as to why capital punishment may not be or may not seem to be as effective today as it could be. The first obvious one is that universities and most of media has been under control by the left for decades now, so everyone that might tell you death penalty is ineffective is more likely to follow an ideology that views these punishments as inhumane or have an incentive to do so. (Let's not kid ourselves, most people here that are against capital punishment do this because they view it as inhumane. If presented with two studies where one showed that is was ineffective and one that is was effective most of these people would choose to believe the first one - no matter what) The other possibility is that we made changes to how we apply the death penalty that causes it to be less of a deterrence. For example it gets less and less likely for any criminal to be actually executed, and if that happens then often after decades of trials and retrials. Or how about the fact that we seem to be so much more concerned today about the cruelty and the supposed inhumane treatment of the criminal than about what the victims of said criminal had to go through? There used to be a time when we hanged people publicly for everyone (including the criminals family) to see. Today we make criminals that are executed into martyrs against state cruelty (many even reach celebrity status) instead of displaying them as criminals that are likely to piss their pants in public before being hanged for their heinous crimes. This definitely has an effect on deterrence.