Philosophy Now Forum

I think the death sentence is wrong because anyone who is willing to commit a heinous crime is not rational. I do not think people who are sick in the head can be rehabilitated, but should be researched. A large percentage of violent crimes are sexually derived. There is a breed of sharks that their brain produces a sexual endorphin when they hunt. What if we find the chemical imbalance in peoples' heads that causes them to be wicked and develop a medicine to regulate it. As it stands I really don't think we could ever find a cure to people like that and to know if they needed the medicine they would already be condemned. I just don't think its right to kill people, let alone offer some the privilege of pleading legally insane when anyone who would have committed that crime is insane.

This is an interesting post with some ideas worth discussing.

I think the death sentence is wrong because anyone who is willing to commit a heinous crime is not rational.

Do you mean that no one 'in their right mind' would kill? What about someone who reasons that the only way for them to protect either themselves or their loved ones is to kill another or a group of people? If I have reason to believe that my next door neighbour is planning to break into my flat and is himself 'not in his right mind' (and so not receptive to reason) and I kill him to prevent him from doing so, am I acting rationally?

There is also a problem in applying this idea of 'irrationality' in that someone who has always appeared to act rationally (and has never given us a reason to think otherwise) might suddenly do something 'out of character'. Are you saying that the act of killing is 'out of character' for all people and so any instance of this act is to be taken as being 'irrational'? Would you be willing to admit that anyone who doesn't kill is entirely rational? Is the act of killing the only thing a person has to do in order to be irrational?

Lastly, could it be argued that anyone who is not in their 'right mind' is a danger to others and should be focibly removed from society, perhaps even through being put to death? I admit that this is an extreme way of looking at it but it is a possible justification nevertheless.

There is a breed of sharks that their brain produces a sexual endorphin when they hunt

It has also been found that wasps experience a similar degree of pleasure when they sting someone; however, we are talking about sharks and wasps, not people. So far as we know sharks and wasps are not engaged in the activity of 'society' (at least not in the way we are). We may share physiological attributes with other animals but are distinct from them insofar as we are able to recognize these attributes and how they impact on social activity.

What if we find the chemical imbalance in peoples' heads that causes them to be wicked and develop a medicine to regulate it?

We are already attempting to do this. Anti-psychotic drugs, electro-shock therapy and 'behavioural modification' are ways in which society attempts to refine what it deems to be unmanageable (if not necessarily 'wicked') behaviour.

Also, if this wonder drug were to be developed, who would determine which behaviours are to be deemed 'wicked'? Alongside this, if a person were to take such a drug and then commit murder, it could be argued that they are no longer a 'wicked' person so there must have been a wholly rational basis for their act.

As it stands I really don't think we could ever find a cure to people like that and to know if they needed the medicine they would already be condemned

You clearly already see my point. However, this does not stop society from attempting to control what is deemed to be irrational behaviour.


Put simply, while there are many who are either not capable of controlling their actions or not capable of understanding the severity of them, there are countless others who take a measured, rational stance towards what we understand to be criminal behaviour. If everyone who commits murder is 'insane' then what of other criminal acts? Where do we draw the line, cease to medicate and begin to attribute responsibility?

Of course, killing someone who has killed "in the past" is a murder, whatever way you look at it, and if you are to kill every murderer you have to kill every executioner also, which pretty much gives you an endless chain of killing the executioners of executioners. All forms of rationalizations are just labelling murder with a different name except of course in the case of severe self defence (if you have hit someone unconscious that's usually were the OKeyness of violence stops).

In Europe we have mostly gotten ridden of such barbaric activity. I must say I find executions quite hideous, only done my emotionally damaged people. Includes soldiers, at least speaking about soldiers who hold highly superior situations. You don't execute prisoners, for instance. You kill people who "directly" tries to kill you or someone else. Executions of prisoners is both murder and cowardice if you are the superior part (of course you can kill prisoners in a prison-rebellion if they try killing the guards or join outside with armed people etc., that is, that they stand in a direct confrontation with the safety of your life).

AustinGJones wrote:I think the death sentence is wrong because anyone who is willing to commit a heinous crime is not rational. I do not think people who are sick in the head can be rehabilitated, but should be researched. A large percentage of violent crimes are sexually derived. There is a breed of sharks that their brain produces a sexual endorphin when they hunt. What if we find the chemical imbalance in peoples' heads that causes them to be wicked and develop a medicine to regulate it. As it stands I really don't think we could ever find a cure to people like that and to know if they needed the medicine they would already be condemned. I just don't think its right to kill people, let alone offer some the privilege of pleading legally insane when anyone who would have committed that crime is insane.

Well i'm against capital punishment too, but i find your advocating some path of enlightenment about our knowledge of the sharp end criminal behaviour slightly baffling.
Here in the UK we there are loads of books banged out each year full of pseudo science about the physical and mental causes of pathological behaviour etc, and all systematically fail to pin down anything conclusively.
I think it's a kind of behaviourist legacy that causes this laboratory lab rat approach, if we can identify the gene, or the hormone etc that gives the rat the propensity for this or that we can modify it's behaviour,... it's just an absurd reductionism.
We know males kill more than females, so should we castrate men at birth?
There have been murderers in all societies since the dawn of time, there always will be, and you have to ask what kind of a society would it be that had no crime and no murder, what would we have to do to make that kind of society-it sounds Orwellian to say the least.
But there are practical issues like gun control or lack of it, and poverty that can have a very real effect in lowering homicide rates but which seem to be largely sidelined in the US, in favour of the more barbaric death penalty in which some genuinely mentally ill are sometimes put to death.

If there is no free will, then it is irrelevant if the defendant committed an act of murder because she wasn't in her right mind. Furthermore, one could still rationalize the death penalty on other grounds, for example, IF it provided deterrence and could be shown to save lives. (I don't believe there is actual empirical evidence to support such a position, I was just throwing the idea out there to show deterrence for others is also a factor to weigh in deciding what punishment to give a defendant.)

ForgedinHell wrote:If there is no free will, then it is irrelevant if the defendant committed an act of murder because she wasn't in her right mind.

For all intents and purposes we must act as if free will existed. Otherwise everything becomes irrelevant.

The main argument against the death penalty is that it's final. Courts do make mistakes and it does happen that innocent people are sentenced for crimes they did not commit, and death is irrevocable.

To take the life of another person is the worst of crimes, and the state should not commit such a crime. Even if you think that it would be justified if the person was truly guilty, the state should not even risk committing such a crime.

[quote="Notvacka]For all intents and purposes we must act as if free will existed. Otherwise everything becomes irrelevant. The main argument against the death penalty is that it's final. Courts do make mistakes and it does happen that innocent people are sentenced for crimes they did not commit, and death is irrevocable. To take the life of another person is the worst of crimes, and the state should not commit such a crime. Even if you think that it would be justified if the person was truly guilty, the state should not even risk committing such a crime.[/quote]

You are making an unfounded assumption when you state that we must act as if free will existed. We don't. We could actually use our brains, our knowledge of science, and base our actions on the truth: that there is no free will. Punishment would then be worthless if it were based on revenge, and that would be an improvement.

I agree with you that courts make mistakes and the death penalty is final. Did I ever state otherwise? The death penalty is based on revenge, which is more in line with your belief that we must delude ourselves into believing free will exists, when it does not.

ForgedinHell wrote:You are making an unfounded assumption when you state that we must act as if free will existed. We don't. We could actually use our brains, our knowledge of science, and base our actions on the truth: that there is no free will. Punishment would then be worthless if it were based on revenge, and that would be an improvement.

I'm pretty sure that you act as if free will existed most of the time too, even if you know better. It's almost impossible not to.

Having said that, I don't believe in revenge either. And I agree that punishment based on revenge is worthless. But the problem of finality is a better argument against capital punishment, because it's valid even to those who happen to believe in revenge.

ForgedinHell wrote:I agree with you that courts make mistakes and the death penalty is final. Did I ever state otherwise? The death penalty is based on revenge, which is more in line with your belief that we must delude ourselves into believing free will exists, when it does not.

No, I don't think you stated otherwise. I was addressing the whole thread there, not just you. As for free will, I have debated that concept extensively all over this forum. Here is the short version of how I see it:

Notvacka wrote:As a concept, free will is intrinsically linked to the concept of identity.

Free will and identity are core concepts of the human experience. Both may be mere illusions, but we all experience them, which makes them important.

Who am I? My identity is defined by circumstances and by my actions. Circumstances determine me, but I determine my actions. You could exclude me from the equation and conclude that circumstances determine my actions. But that would be to deny my existence as a human being.

Free will does not exist in a strictly objective sense. Neither do I. (I'm not talking about my body, which could probably be objectively verified to some degree. )

Without free will, we don't exist. And in some perversely objective way, we don't. But that's not how we experience it.

Free will and identity is what we experience between circumstances and actions.

On a purely subjective level, free will is experienced as having alternatives to choose from. On the same subjective level, identity is experienced as being the one doing the choosing.

My point being that the subjective experience is perhaps more important than any objective reality. We don't live in reality anyway, but rather in a collectively constructed and shared illusion.