Comments Elsewhere

Brian Doss:

Its an argument against capital punishment iff you assume capital punishment is on the same moral plane as torture & inflicting intentional suffering on prisoners.

Well, but why wouldn’t you say that execution of prisoners is on the same moral pain as torture or other gratuitous hurting of prisoners?

Being killed is worse than being tortured, and it’s far worse than an isolated caning or painful restraint. So what sort of reasons could you give for the permissibility of slaughtering prisoners that wouldn’t provide just as good reasons for the permissibility of mutilating, torturing, or gratuitously hurting them?