Well, seems to me the point of being a conservative is to conserve, y’know ? Keep things as they are, were, and have always been, amen. If you want to change something as fundamental as the Constitution, you’re not a conservative. You’re just a progressive going in another direction.
You sure seem to be talking about objectivity to me, otherwise your question doesn’t make any sense. Any moral decision is ultimately rendered down to, “Because I said so.” You want an answer for why torture is immoral? Why don’t you provide one yourself, and we can go from there? You seem to be taking the position that torturing that ten year old boy to death was immoral. Why? What makes that act immoral, other than, “Because I say it is?”
Speaking as a representative of that opposite side, I’d say our position is more consistent. We believe torturing somebody to death is always immoral - doesn’t matter if it’s Michael James and Tina Alberson torturing their child to death or somebody else torturing James and Albertson to death. Both are wrong.
You say your position is that sometimes torturing somebody to death is immoral and sometimes it isn’t. What standard do you use to decide whether it is or isn’t?
I suggest the OP read up on David Hume’s famous “Is-Ought” problem if he thinks he can come up with an “objective” system of morality that has nothing to do with one’s own personal emotional sentiment.
Not in the slightest.
I’m sorry, but this is a rather weak contention. How is that fundamentally any different to those persons who administer a lethal injection? Actually, leaving someone to die in the desert or feeding someone every couple of days is probably not nearly as bad as administering a lethal injection, as someone is actually being “done to” in the latter instance.
Well, first of all, you’ll notice that I said nothing about deterrence, so I need not answer that question. Second of all, I’ve answered the first question about four or five times now, so I’ll answer it again.
My idea would mean that the victims are given the same relative value as those who act against them, unlike now where those who act against others is given a greater value than those they act again. It’s actually really simple. If I kill you, but my life cannot be ended because of it, then what does that say of my relative value versus yours?
A reason needs not be objective. A reason can be subjective. A reason is some kind of explanation or justification for some position or statement. Whoever I was responding to didn’t give any kind of reason at all. (S)he just stated that “It’s immoral to torture someone to death” and when I asked why, responded with “Because it is”. In an honest debate, that’s not going to fly. Furthermore, it’s generally common courtesy to answer the question posed to oneself before demanding someone answer the opposite.
My appologies. :). It’s hard to keep up sometimes when reading on an iPad. It’s a good point though, regardless.
-XT
Consistency doesn’t mean you fall into the “always”/“never” categories. That’s usually how you get labeled an ‘extremist’.
A simple one. Once you violate someone else’s right to live and to not be acted against in a certain manner, you forfeit your own right to live and to not be acted against in the same manner. I said this earlier.
Permitting torture empowers a government to rule based on fear, rather than a democratic ideal of a mandate from the people. Inflicting pain purely for punishment places an incredible amount of power in an organization that is prone to corruption and mistakes.
There are fundamental rights that every person possesses. Even if a state is in the position of taking a person’s life (be it for punitive or military measures), our society has developed an understanding that unnecessary pain or torture destroys the understood respect for human life held both at an individual and societal level. To be clearer, a society where people respect the rights of their fellow human beings is not a society in which torture is condoned.
This is really quite simple: either you subscribe to the belief that there are basic human rights or you don’t. If you don’t, then your proposed schema presents no problems.
So your principle is that it’s wrong if you do it first? That if I torture you on Monday, then it’s morally okay for you to torture me on Tuesday? But if you had tortured me on Sunday, then my Monday torture was morally correct?
Seems kind of strange to argue that both of us tortured the other but one of us was right and one of us was wrong, depending on what order we took.
It says that both lives are equally valuable in the eyes of society. If it was wrong for you to take someone else’s life, then it’s wrong for us to take your life. This one kind of puzzles me, because you seem to be trying to spin it as meaning the opposite: that if you kill someone, and the state refuses to take your life, the state has somehow devalued the life of your victim. But I don’t see any possible way to reason yourself into that position. If you kill someone, you are, implicitly, stating that life has little value for you. If the state then kills you, are they not agreeing with your valuation of life? If the state refuses to kill you, aren’t they suggesting that life has more value that you give it? How do you reason that a refusal to kill someone evinces a lower respect for the value of life?
Sure it can. Except that you’re explicitly rejecting subjective reasons. A subjective reason is, by definition, “Because I said so.” If you want a reason for something other than, “Because I said so,” then you are not asking with a subjective reason. You’re asking for an objective reason.
Why not? Why is, “Because I said so” not a perfectly valid answer for this kind of debate? Can you give an example of a better answer?
Not really. Some questions can’t be answered without further information from the person posing the question. This appears to be one of those times, because you are presenting your question in such a way that it appears to be impossible to answer it. If you provided an answer to your own question, we could either resolve the communication difficulties that are preventing us from understanding your question, or use your answer to demonstrate to you the flaw in your question. Getting huffy because “you asked first,” and then didn’t get the answer you wanted, isn’t going to do anything to move the debate forward.
Why should this be true? Remember, per your own rules of debate, “Because I said so,” is not an acceptable answer.
“But Mom! He started it!”
I don’t care who started it-I want you both to knock it off right now!"
Sound familiar?
I don’t see where I endorsed vigilantism…
The principle isn’t that it’s wrong if you do it first; the principle is that if you do to another you lose your right to not be done against in the same manner. I would have figured that most people realize that to be constrained to the law, but apparently not. But moving on… If I, for example, viciously beat you today, I could be jailed for it tomorrow. Is that morally problematic? Few people would say it is. It’s the same principle with my statement. The only difference is that I’m stating that, conceivably, if I viciously beat you today, that instead of being jailed tomorrow, I could be viciously beaten myself. It’s the same thing in effect to being jailed for my actions against you the day prior, just with a different punishment.
blink, blink backs away slowly and without making eye contact
Well, fundamentally, nothing. Which is in part why I, like most of the western world, am against the death penalty.
Mechanically however, all countries who do or did use the death penalty made it a point to keep it quick and clean. If you’re going to kill a criminal, kill him. Making him suffer before you do accomplishes what, exactly ?
Yeah ? By what standard ?
Which accomplishes… what ? What objective purpose is served ?
You realize you just contradicted your entire argument that slowly dying of starvation/lack of food is an especially horrible way to die? Nice work!
Notice that OMG isn’t proposing that we torture criminals because it will deter crime, or that it will reform criminals, or that it will make our society a better place. He proposes that we torture criminals because they deserve it, and since people should get what they deserve, we’re morally obligated to torture those who deserve to be tortured, regardless of any bad effects this will have on the rest of us.
Of course, this is contrary to everyone else’s idea of penology. We have a goal, to protect ourselves from bad actions. We try to accomplish this goal in several ways, but the main way we do it is by isolating people who we deem to be dangerous. We put serial killers in jail because if they’re in jail they aren’t out murdering prostitutes. It wouldn’t make sense to rape a serial killer and stuff his body in a refrigerator, because it wouldn’t make us any safer than if we locked him up. Or, if locking him up won’t work, we can give him the Ol Yeller treatment. He’s sick, his sickness is dangerous to the rest of us, he won’t get well, so we put a bullet in his brain.
Not because he deserves a bullet in his brain, or even deserves to be locked up, but because we don’t want to have to live with a serial killer for a neighbor.
But you want to inflict this same sort of thing on others as well; you stated in the OP:
So allow me ask you to answer your own questions:
I count three questions there; let’s see your answers to them, please.
How valuable can someone’s life be if the punishment for taking their life is less than the cost to the person killed for taking their life? The idea that society cares about both of them equally by refusing to inflict a punishment on the perpetrator equal to that of what the other suffered simply cannot be true. One is being valued more than the other in the given situation.
Now, I have to say that your contention that if the state kills me that it agrees with my valuation of life to not make much sense. If I, for example, kill someone, we can assume that their life had little value to me or, more specifically, less value than my own. If the state kills me, it does not hold that the state agrees with my valuation of life. That is quite a leap in logic. If the state kills me, it more than likely does so because it disagrees with my valuation of life. If the other individual was worth less than me in actuality, then it wouldn’t make sense for the state to kill me. Fine me and/or jail me, maybe. But outright kill me? No. Furthermore, I would presumably value my life more than the state, meaning that the state would be attributing a lesser value to myself than I place on myself. And quite probably, that value would be equal to the value of the individual I killed. In effect, what this means is that I value myself too high or I value someone else too low. Either way, the state would disagree my assessment of value.*
“Because it is!” isn’t a subjective reason-- or a reason at all-- because there is no reason given. A subjective reason would be, for example, “It’s wrong to torture someone to death because all humans have an inherent value which is to be respected”. That’s a subjective reason. The answer I was given was far removed from anything of the sort. Considering the fact that (s)he scoffed at the notion of even explaining why torturing someone to death was immoral in the first place, I think it’s pretty fair to assume that the “Because it is!” was given solely as a way to avoid answering the question.
(1) Because it’s not 
(2) I did above.
There was nothing impossible about my question. It wasn’t a trick question and it most certainly wasn’t hard, either. I merely asked someone who made a statement why that statement was true, and they refused-- and still have refused-- to explain why it’s true. It has little to do with receiving the answer I want and everything to do with not receiving an answer at all. I should try that way of arguing. I wonder how well that would go over? 
It shouldn’t be true. But it would be nice if it were true.
*This could also work in the case that society values the perpetrator to be worth less than the one acted against.
A humane killing is a bit of an oxymoron. Death is death. Slow or painful, the end result is the same.
The standard by which actively injecting someone with a dose of lethal injection actively kills them, while dropping them off in the middle of the desert does not.
Accomplishes in what terms? As a manner of fewer crimes? Probably little. As a manner of providing a manner of equity between the perpetrator and the victim? A lot.
I think you’re a bit confused on one of my responses to what someone else wrote out.
Yes, it shouldn’t be impermissible and they don’t. Not hard questions.
Agreed. Therefore, if we decide that someone needs killing, then why not do it the quick way? Once they’re dead, they no longer exist, and the pain and suffering we inflicted on them before their death is meaningless. To them. It only matters to us, the living.
Huh? How is that different? If I push you out of an airplane with a parachute, have I actively killed you or not? If I point a gun at you and pull the trigger, I haven’t actively killed you, I’ve just put you in the path of a bullet, and the bullet kills you, not me.
And here’s the nub. WHY is it important to create equity between the perpetrator and the victim? If there is a case where the victim can be made whole, then it makes sense. If I steal a candy bar, it makes sense for me to have to give back the candy bar, and one extra. But if I chop off someone’s foot, chopping off my foot doesn’t give the victim back his foot. And so what’s the point of chopping off my foot? Yes, I’ll get the same thing that happened to my victim. And so what? Then you let me go? Or, do you put me in jail, since I’ve beens shown to be the soft of person it isn’t safe to have feet around. And when I’m isolated in jail, I can’t chop anyone’s feet off.
Since I can’t chop off anyone’s foot, because I’m in jail, what is accomplished by chopping of my foot? Don’t say, “equity”, because that just puts a name on it. Why is creating this state of so-called equity important? What’s the purpose? Will it lead to a better society? Will we be happier? Will we be safer? Will fewer people cut off feet in the future? If you say it doesn’t matter if we’re safer or happier after you cut off my foot, then why would you do it?
Nonsense. You’re using one actor’s valuation for one half of the equation, and a different actor’s valuation for the other half. That’s neither a fair not accurate way to address the problem. Suppose, for the purposes of illustration, that I say, “All life is infinitely valuable,” and you say, “I’d kill someone for a plugged nickel.” If you kill someone and I refuse to take your life in retaliation, I’m not validating your estimation of human worth. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite - if I kill you, I’m admitting that my initial valuation was incorrect, and needed to be adjusted to be closer to your evaluation. I’m certainly not making any statement about the worth of your victim, because no matter what I do to you, the status of the victim remains unchanged. There is no direct equation between how I treat the murderer, and how the murderer treated his victim. Whatever price I put on the victim’s life, high or low, my treatment of his killer cannot pay it.
And why do human lives have an inherent value?
Because I said so.
Or that poster treats the concept of not torturing people to death as so fundamental to a human moral system that it is axiomatic, and does not need elaboration. The only difference between the “non-answer” you got, and the “subjective answer” you provided as a counterexample, is where one chooses to define their axioms.
When I said your question was impossible, I did not intend to imply that it was a trick question, or particularly difficult. What I was saying was that it was based on incorrect premises. Namely, you do not appear to understand what “subjective” means. You were asking for subjective answers on one hand, while adding a stipulation that specifically barred subjective answers. It would be like asking for a list of the five most influential US presidents of the 20th century, but asking that people not name any Americans. Or, for that matter, if you’d said something like:
Because that’s another turn of phrase that is rendered meaningless by internal contradiction.