The death penalty is a savage, bloodthirsty, utterly indefensible practice. apnews.com/article/sc-sta…
The death penalty was the first policy question that forced me to grapple with the "run aground" problem. To me, saying "you shouldn't kill people" is to morality what, say, "there is a rock" is to epistemology. If someone responded, "no, there's no rock," you quickly realize ...
... there aren't a lot of *arguments* you can mount. You can only repeat, "no, look. A rock! Right there!" Maybe kick it. The sensory experience of the rock is the foundation of your case. You can't go further down, find deeper justification. You've run aground.
Similarly (to me anyway), "you shouldn't kill people" is just moral bedrock. I can make prudential or consequentialist arguments, but they aren't the real root of it. "You shouldn't kill people" is the basis of other arguments, but not the result of argument. It's self-evident.
It's what it means, for me, for there to *be* morality. That's where it has to start if there's to be any such thing. I've run aground.
So when I encounter people who *don't* experience it that way, who view it as a tendentious or arguable claim, I'm a bit flummoxed.
So when I encounter people who *don't* experience it that way, who view it as a tendentious or arguable claim, I'm a bit flummoxed.
Sure, I can argue the death penalty is expensive, or inequitably applied, or whatever, if those arguments seem useful. But it always feels a little surreal, like we're standing around a rock arguing whether there's a rock. I just wanna say, "look! There's the damn rock."
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