yeahiknow3 @ yeahiknow3 @lemmy.world

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1 yr. ago

Let me again recommended this textbook on Ethics: https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/living-ethics-9780197608876

The death penalty is chapter 20.

Also,

1. “Death” isn’t (or should not be) a punishment. We don’t “punish” rabid dogs when we euthanize them. Sometimes the alternative is simply worse.
2. Earlier you said that “evil cannot be quantified” and therefore doesn’t exist. However, quantifiability is not an ontological prerequisite. If it were, then almost nothing would exist, including you and me.
3. You don’t need to resort to straw men. Respond to my arguments instead of arguing with yourself.
4. Moral claims wouldn't be “arbitrary” unless nihilism is true, which you’ve denied.

The only person using rhetoric here is you. There are morally depraved people out there whom we colloquially refer to as “evil.” I don’t know why you insist on having a semantic argument. If “[moral depravity] does not exist,” as my interlocutor claims, then nihilism would indeed be true.

I would also like to point out that the ethical arguments against the death penalty in the scholarly literature are very weak and it remains an open question whether the death penalty is advisable on practical grounds. Morally it’s unlikely that any good argument exists to make it impermissible to kill “evil” people. You can check out the latest edition of any textbook on ethics, such as Living Ethics by Schaffer Landau, which syllogizes a variety of arguments on this topic.

To be fair, he wasn’t wrong.

What’s extra comical about this claim is that if nihilism were true, as you claim, then a fortiori the death penalty would be completely permissible.

Evil people sure are glad they have you to stand up for them.

That’s a classic.

Worthless system. After the initial threats and subsequent violence that guy should have been on death row. Idk why we cut people so much slack. Seriously.

Entrepreneurship. Getting people what they need in a hostile environment.

Cool, I feel the same way about them.

Your hormones are out of whack. Get yourself tested. It’s not expensive and unaddressed endocrine problems are really shitty.

Fun fact, the moral permissibility of abortion has far and away the most consensus among philosophers. Literally philosophers are more confident that abortion should be permissible than that the external world exists.

As such, you can use opinions on abortion as a litmus test for sociopathic tendency since it’s such an easy moral question. In doing so, however, you’d be confronting the fact that 30% of Americans are moral black holes from whom no rational opinion can be extracted. In that context, slavery, misogyny, religion, and all the evils of humanity suddenly make sense.

“Wisdom” in this case meaning the prejudices accumulated over a lifetime? According to research, an average septuagenarian is more narcissistic, less literate, more bigoted, and less intelligent than the average teenager. Sometimes by multiple standard deviations. (I can provide sources).

Couple the Flynn effect with lead poisoning and you have a gap of almost 30 IQ points in some areas of the country.

By the way, have you ever seen an old person’s brain in an MRI? It’s missing like 20% of its volume.

Daily reminder that the average 15 year old is smarter than the average 70 year old by literally any psychometric standard.

Newsflash brought to you by “news”

Nothing will change until the rich are brought to heel. Nothing.

I think profit is even more central to the system than punishment. If the powers that be could make money rehabilitating inmates instead of enslaving them they would. Punishment almost makes sense if people were making these decisions. But there are no people in the chain of authority. Only insects obsessed with turning their victims into profits.

Old people on cruise ships are notoriously annoying so an occasional stabbing is understandable.