I would not say there is specifically an upside to keeping a serial killer alive, but there are many downsides to the death penalty both ethically and in practice, not the least of which is the chance that you would execute an innocent person. For those of us who are anti-death penalty, that is usually where we’re coming from.
I’m against the death penalty, and I know the best argument against it, something nobody in this thread has even approximately articulated.
Currently, as far as I know, there is only one strong argument against the death penalty, and it has to do with moral proscriptions against treating the death of a person as a spectacle, which I notice nobody mentioned.
It’s important not to conflate moral facts with practical policy. Most of your arguments focus on how people should be treated, whereas the relevant question is how governments should behave and why. These are very different things.
Regardless of what people deserve, no government should go around killing its own citizens. That is because killing as a punishment makes a spectacle of death. It is profoundly unhealthy for any civil society to revel in death. That’s the answer. It has nothing to do with what serial killers deserve. They do not matter.
Killing serial killers is tantamount to putting down rabid animals.
A serial killer can be removed from society and prevented from having an opportunity to kill. “Putting him down” is just you stooping to his level out of misguided self-righteousness
A rabid animal is suffering from the final hours of a horrible communicable disease that is 100% fatal. It’s in horrible pain, out of its mind, and you are doing a mercy to end its misery
Listen, if you want to keep a psychopath alive in your basement for some unknown reason, well, as long as he doesn’t get out and maul anyone that’s fine by me. But you’re insane if you think normal people should spend their hard-earned money contributing to that exercise in immiseration.
I don’t want someone to kill me; therefore I believe it is also not okay for me to kill someone else. It’s just the golden rule. I am not a student of ethics or philosophy but it seems pretty straightforward to me.
In the event that I were guilty of causing great harm to innocent people, then I should be killed. Not in revenge, but as a matter of course, given that my life would no longer be worth living.
This is the golden rule in action, which is about how you would want to be treated in similar circumstances.
Currently, as far as I know, there is only one strong argument against the death penalty, and it has to do with moral proscriptions against treating the death of a person as a spectacle, which I notice nobody mentioned.
Nah I think not killing innocent people is a pretty strong argument, death being a spectacle doesn’t really matter to me- someone killing someone is much worse than the part where they post it on LiveLeak
I would not say there is specifically an upside to keeping a serial killer alive, but there are many downsides to the death penalty both ethically and in practice, not the least of which is the chance that you would execute an innocent person. For those of us who are anti-death penalty, that is usually where we’re coming from.
I’m against the death penalty, and I know the best argument against it, something nobody in this thread has even approximately articulated.
Currently, as far as I know, there is only one strong argument against the death penalty, and it has to do with moral proscriptions against treating the death of a person as a spectacle, which I notice nobody mentioned.
it isn’t a deterrent,
It is cheaper to let them rot in prison for life,
nobody wants to make the drugs involved for the ‘humane way’ so it is really difficult to obtain enough where it is used,
it is fundamentally inhumane to kill someone that knows it’s coming (mental torture),
risk of executing an innocent, and as already stated
it is hypocritical to kill someone for killing.
That killing serial killers causes them harm isn’t a particularly compelling point, since we disagree over whether harming them is, in fact, good.
This is a good point and one I would explore further. However, it leaves open exceptions where the evidence is overwhelming.
Killing isn’t always bad. Killing innocent creatures is bad. Killing serial killers is tantamount to putting down rabid animals.
And you trust the state to make that decision? Or a jury?
So you’re dishonest. Got it.
No, I am genuinely against the death penalty.
It’s important not to conflate moral facts with practical policy. Most of your arguments focus on how people should be treated, whereas the relevant question is how governments should behave and why. These are very different things.
Regardless of what people deserve, no government should go around killing its own citizens. That is because killing as a punishment makes a spectacle of death. It is profoundly unhealthy for any civil society to revel in death. That’s the answer. It has nothing to do with what serial killers deserve. They do not matter.
A serial killer can be removed from society and prevented from having an opportunity to kill. “Putting him down” is just you stooping to his level out of misguided self-righteousness
A rabid animal is suffering from the final hours of a horrible communicable disease that is 100% fatal. It’s in horrible pain, out of its mind, and you are doing a mercy to end its misery
Listen, if you want to keep a psychopath alive in your basement for some unknown reason, well, as long as he doesn’t get out and maul anyone that’s fine by me. But you’re insane if you think normal people should spend their hard-earned money contributing to that exercise in immiseration.
I don’t want someone to kill me; therefore I believe it is also not okay for me to kill someone else. It’s just the golden rule. I am not a student of ethics or philosophy but it seems pretty straightforward to me.
In the event that I were guilty of causing great harm to innocent people, then I should be killed. Not in revenge, but as a matter of course, given that my life would no longer be worth living.
This is the golden rule in action, which is about how you would want to be treated in similar circumstances.
Nah I think not killing innocent people is a pretty strong argument, death being a spectacle doesn’t really matter to me- someone killing someone is much worse than the part where they post it on LiveLeak
If you’re so against killing innocents, I assume you’re vegan. Or… is your morality as twisted and inconsistent as I suspect?
Or I care about human life and not chicken life?
So your morality is arbitrary, and at least we can both agree that the chicken has more reason to live than you do.
Yours isn’t? Where does it come from?
You’re clearly not trolling
This is literally nihilism.
I’m genuinely happy to discuss metaethics, but I’m getting a sense that you don’t actually care about ethics very much, given your nihilism.
No, it’s not.
Nihilism requires intentionally rejecting morality. Accepting that any belief is inherently arbitrary, but still caring about that, is not nihilism