But the outrage of a lesser sentence than is deserved is much less than the outrage of execution when it is not deserved, not least of which because no one ever stands trial for the murder of a falsely executed man.
Now I understand what you were saying. Your original wording did not make your point clear to me.
That last part is a very interesting point. No one serves time for the imprisonment of and innocent man either. You are correct that there is some measure of injustice within our justice system, which rewards convictions and not necessarily justice.
I'm perfectly willing to accept that you perform the moral calculus with different values than I do; but that shouldn't lead you to criticise my position as "extreme" when, in fact, it's a perfectly reasonable and pragmatic compromise between two moral outrages.
I explained very carefully why it was extreme. It involves two errors. I see you did not deal with those points at all.
If you said to me "I don't like executions and so I do not think the state should be employing them" then that would be beyond criticism. In that case we'd simply be using different moral rules. The specific arguments you used and under discussion involved factual statements combined with logic. There are errors within the facts and the logic.
No, because the moral outrage of false imprisonment is less than the moral outrage of never imprisoning anyone who deserves it.
I think you may be equivocating between imprisoning and punishing. Being fined is still a punishment... or how about simple house arrest?
It doesn't seem to me that "the outrage of a lesser sentence than is deserved is much less then the outrage of imprisonment when it is not deserved" is inconsistent with the logic you are using... unless you are going to be arbitrary.
You ended up with a process with evidentiary standards that, by definition, could never be met; and thus, you wound up with a situation in which the death penalty could never be given.
In other words, you came over to my side. What was I supposed to argue with? You surrendered.
I'm not sure what world you are living on. The evidentiary standards could very well be met and indeed had been met in real cases. Yeah, even killers asking to be killed exists.
I certainly did not outline a case where executions never could happen, even if they would be much rarer than they occur today.
And as far as surrendering is concerned, it ended where it did because I said what I did and every critic packed up their marbles and went home. I had people agreeing with my position, and I was prepared to start moving the line forward. I don't think absolute confession is necessary. That was simply a plank I threw in to make things more clear.
"Absolute practical certainty"? It's not self-evident that such a thing is possible. By definition, in fact, it would appear that if your certainty was "practical", then it could not be "absolute".
That isn't true at all. Absolute theoretical certainty would involve clear knowledge on all possible explanations. Absolute practical certainty involves clear knowledge on all plausible explanations. We can set a boundary on implausibility of explanation such that it is only possible in an absurdly theoretical world that a person is innocent.
The problem is that they may not be guilty, merely suicidal and extremely unlucky, and it's not the purpose of the state to employ the apparatus of justice and allow a murderer to go free in order to help someone commit suicide.
Again, the possibility of this happening is absurd on its face. If the evidentiary rules exclude mere circumstantial evidence, you cannot simply have an unlucky person who happens to be suicidal falling into a guilty verdict. It would require a suicidal person actually setting themselves up to be killed by the system.
That in itself would require aiding and abetting a real murder which makes them complicit in a murder anyway. And in any case, why would it be a greater moral outrage to kill a person who is so intent on killing himself he frames himself for murder (and lets a real murderer get away), than not killing a known murderer?
in fact, have succeeded only in developing explanations for why such a system cannot exist.
To explain theoretical issues, not to determine if they tied their shoe this morning or not. You are discussing a community you are not a part of and appear to not want to be a part of, so your discussion of their findings sort of falls like a lead balloon to me.
Still holding out for a perpetual motion machine, as well?
You did not show evidence of absence. In any case I am holding out for the time you are more adamant on sticking to logic, than sticking to a position. That may be just as futile.
...I do not have "absolute practical certainty" (whatever that could possibly be) that the Holocaust happened, merely a tentative conclusion that it did.
A tentative conclusion that millions were killed in concentration camps, despite photographic and eye witness accounts of its occurence, as well as remnants you can see and touch and test?
The jews aren't fossils buried in time or chemical/physical entities we cannot observe, some are still alive to tell the story. You have truly lost the line between practical and theoretical reality. That is not good.
Here is the difference between theoretical and practical certainty. If you believe there is no difference then you have no reason to criticize holocaust deniers. And our lack of evidence will only grow with time.
Honestly, as a prosecutor in post war germany you'd tell hundreds of survivors of a concentration camp, that they might possibly be wrong about whether the guard soldiers caught at the camp and on records as being a guard at the camp, killed or was responsible for killings at the camp, evidenced by bodies found at that camp?
but at least, war is symmetrical. (Or it should be.) Two armies clash with nothing but their skill at arms and the genius of their tactics, and a fair bit of luck, to determine the victor.
War is never guaranteed symmetrical, and my point was that even when one tries to keep it army against army, some innocent people get caught up and killed.
But sometimes force must be used to repel force, violence is sometimes the appropriate answer to violence. Defense, in my mind, is the only appropriate use of violence. But self-defense by the state generally isn't the rationale for the death penalty.
Ahhhhhh... now that was sweet. This is better, straightforward. I agree that defense is the only justifiable use of force by the state.
The question is then raised whether a single person can pose a threat to the state. Certainly not in the same way as another nation, as in wholesale destruction (well that is changing with tech), but certainly as a persistent threat to lives within that state. Given that in a democratic republic the state is of by and for the people, a killer is a threat to that state.
A state will kill wild animals, particularly rabid animals. Do animals pose a threat to the state? Not as much as a person, and the battle is even more uneven. Is that wrong? Are serial killers that much different than a rabid animal, such that they should not be treated in the same way?
holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)
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