No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Capital Punishment and Realism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2009
Extract
In its treatment of capital punishment Amnesty International gives a central place to the suffering of the prisoner. Two quite distinct forms of suffering are relevant here. There is the psychological anguish of the person awaiting execution; and there is the physical suffering which may be involved in the execution itself. It is suggested that if we reflect clearly on this suffering we will conclude that the death penalty involves cruelty of a kind which makes it quite unacceptable. It is to be condemned on the same ground as torture is to be condemned: on the ground, that is, that it involves the infliction of an unacceptable degree of suffering.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1991
References
1 Amnesty International, When The State Kills… (London: Amnesty International Publications, 1989).Google Scholar
2 Mill, John Stuart, ‘Speech in Favour of Capital Punishment’, Hansards Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, 21 04 1868 (London, 1868).Google Scholar Reprinted in Applied Ethics, Singer, Peter (ed.) (Oxford University Press, 1986).Google Scholar
3 Amnesty notes, but does not draw out the implications for its position, that before the death penalty was abolished in the Philippines prisoners facing the electric chair could choose to be anaesthetized first. There are, no doubt, interesting questions to be asked about why this is not the normal practice.
4 Op. cit. note 2, 99.
5 I am assuming that Amnesty's argument is, basically, a utilitarian one. It is possible that that is a distortion. It might, for example, be insisted that the suffering of the prisoner is not simply one factor to be weighed in the utilitarian balance since there is a crucial moral distinction between the suffering that we cause in executing an individual and any suffering that we fail to prevent through not having the death penalty. Additions of this kind would only in part evade the worries that I am raising in this paragraph.
6 Nagel, Thomas, The View From Nowhere (Oxford University Press, 1986), 109.Google ScholarChurchland, Paul, Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind (Cambridge University Press, 1979), ch 5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar While it does not affect my point here, it should, perhaps, be noted that Nagel insists that the ‘objective’ does not exhaust the ‘real’. See also Papineau, David, Reality and Representation (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), ch 7.Google Scholar The ‘measuring instrument’ image is, of course, a direct descendant, more or less remote, of a very familiar traditional empiricist approach to epistemology.
7 I should, perhaps, note that I do not think that the claims in this sentence are completely trouble-free. There are problems about the term ‘emotional’ to which I will return; problems about the idea that there could be a society in which nothing akin to any of these notions played any role; and, perhaps, problems about the explaining it is claimed we can do. On the second of these points see Winch, Peter, ‘Nature and Convention’, in his Ethics and Action (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972)Google Scholar; on the third see McDowell, John, ‘Non-Cognitivism and Rule-Following’, Wittgenstein: To Follow a Rule, Holtzman, Steven H. and Leich, Christopher M. (eds) (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981).Google Scholar My point then is just that once we have got this far these claims are very tempting.
8 As opposed to those who, for example, think that a distinction between primary and secondary qualities can be drawn along these lines.
9 This is mere assertion. Those who do not believe it might still find something of interest in the remainder of this paper in so far as they accept that there is no such thing as a moral view which does not reflect the nature of the perceiver.
10 Orwell, George, ‘A Hanging’, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, volume I (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1968). 44–48.Google Scholar
11 For a more detailed discussion of this point see Winch, Peter, ‘Eine Einstellung zur Seele’, in his Trying to Make Sense (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987)Google Scholar, and Cockburn, David, Other Human Beings (London: Macmillan, 1990), 155–158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12 I am grateful for comments on an earlier version of this paper by Michael Coughlan, Howard Mounce and Maureen Meehan. One thing their comments have made clear to me is that almost nothing that I say in this paper has been given anything like the defence it requires. My main aim has been to bring out connections between various ideas; not to defend the particular view of the matter which it will be clear that I favour.