Nobel Prize vs Proof that the Death Penalty MUST kill innocents

Yeah this is my term. It does not have a precise definition. There may be a better one somewhere, but I am trying to keep this as simple as possible. Epistemology is already a mouthful.Let me try and run through this...Epistemology is the study of knowledge. It constructs rules regarding what knowledge is and on a more practical note, when we can say we know something.Science is the study of natural phenomenon. We see lightning for example and ask ourselves what that is, and maybe if there is a way to predict it, or perhaps control it.Ep helps Sci by constructing rules which help scientists examine theories as they relate to observed phenomena. As it developed science moved from deductive and rationalist based science to inductive and empirical based science.Part of this shift included some "testing" of empiricism, or really the limits of empirical knowledge, via hypothetical experiments. The same kind I am trying to get started here. DesCartes' "I think therefore I am" was one of the more famous starting points.What emerged is some pretty specific guidelines regarding admitting metaphysically possible theories into the realm of scientific theories. That is for PRACTICAL SCIENTIFIC PURPOSES... examining natural phenomena... some metaphysical possibilities were eliminated as open for study and/or placed lower down for study.Skepticism to the level we are seeing here, when lives are on the line, was firmly rejected as IMPRACTICAL for science, much less for everyday living. It goes even further to the absurd than rationalist/deductive reasoning in not helping us understand or KNOW something.The irony then, of how all of you are arguing from science to reject the very tenets of science, while at the same time in other threads bashing fundies for the same styke of reasoning when SOULS are on the line, is quite evident.In any case I just brought up the difference between science and every day life. The latter is what I am trying to get at with "practical certainty".As said before science cultivated rules for inclusion/exclusion of logical possibilities based on there observed and theorized practical utility to modelling natural phenomena. Thus there is a level of "practical certainty" within science, but we call these things "leading theories" or some such, and recognize that due to the nature of our methodology as well as THE SUBJECT UNDER STUDY, there may be more evidence available in the future and so one of the practical rules in science is an understood tentativity of those "practical scientific certainties".In every day life however, there are also "practical certainties" which are greater in certainty than those held by science to explain the hidden workings of natural phenomena. There is an inherent difference to the questions, did Gould write papers on PE, and does PE pertain to speciation in animals?Indeed to science things such as "did Gould write about PE" are not theories and may more accurately be called "absolute practical certainties". But again, I am using my own phrasing here.Of course it all depends on THE SUBJECT UNDER STUDY. If it were the 31st century, and someone asked if Gould wrote about PE, it may indeed require historical research which could only deliver tentative answers. But its not the 31st century and we can get some pretty straightforward answers. I can go to a library and find his works and find those who read his works and find his friends and family and yes there comes a point where any doubt about this is so implausible, despite being logically possible, that we can say our knowledge is a "practical certainty". It is not a scientific theory, it is epistemological knowledge, or if one wants to be really picky its still not knowledge (to some epistemologists) and so I used "certainty".To disbelieve one's understanding would NOT be practical. It would be impractical uncertainty.Let me circle back to the beginning then. A bunch of people (that will soon become scientists) look at the sky and ask each other what that lightning is about, and how did it light that tree on fire. The one thing they do not ask is was there lightning, was there a tree on fire?They were capable of living in the world without overt incredulity. Such as state can be enjoyable, but should remain in gentleman's parlors with a few brews or other heady substances about.In our court systems I feel safe in applying rational thought, and as we have already learned, there is a point where entertaining some logical possibilities is impractical, overt incredulity.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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If the problem is the possibility of someone getting killed because of extreme abuse of a system, then one begins to pull apart all human endeavour.

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Some of the most graphic examples (and they are much more numerous than frame-ups leading to death sentences) are police killing wholly innocent people. They actually do have the ability (the right) to kill people without every going through court. If the problem with the death penalty is even if we tighten it so no mistakes go through, intentional misconduct can, then what of the other instruments of state that share this power?

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But here you are talking about the side effect of wrongful death occurring as the result of any system...which is a remote possibility in any system, and one that would be impractical to work around.Isn't the topic instead: the possibility of a system designed to kill people accidentally resulting in a wrongful death?Yes, it's impractical to say that chairs should be outlawed because someone could beat someone to death with a chair. But we're talking about a system the purposefully places people into electric chairs, and we want a guarantee that no mistakes will ever be made in this sytem.

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the lies that antiDP people are surrounding themselves with to demonize anyone who supports it,

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What "lies" are we discussing on this thread? That I wouldn't bet anyone else's life on anything is not a lie. That I wouldn't trust any human run system to be 100% pefectly run and decisions to be made with perfect rationality is not a lie (as a Psychologist, I'd say that last part on rational decision making is pretty much a practical impossibility).

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Not everything is science, and science is not meant to apply to everything. Indeed some rules of knowledge are necessarily tighter than modern science uses.

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Right! Right! Right!That's it! When we're talking executions, I want the rules of knowledge to be TIGHTER than science! Exactly!I'll accept "practical certainty" (if I understand what you mean by the term) in science, with the notion that there's a remote but implausible possibility that Fact X may be shown not to be true.I won't with regard to executions.

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Can you tell the difference between your knowledge of whether Gould's PE theory applies to real life, and whether Gould published papers on PE theory?

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Yes, they are different. The latter is more certain than the former. In fact I'd bet my life vs. $100 that Gould has published papers on PE theory.But, I wouldn't bet anyone else's life on it.

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What this says is that rules of knowledge must scale according desirability of moral outcome. Think about that. That is exactly what it says.

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No it doesn't. Think about it. That's not what it says at all.It says that levels of certainty must scale to the risk involved. The purposful taking of a life is a very large risk, and is completely irreversible.

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Okay so the one thing YOU would never be willing to wager is a person's life, and so if it is in the balance we throw out not just modern scientific methodology,

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Whoa? What have I said that prevents us from hypothesis testing?We can agree that someone is "certainly" guilty (quotes are important there...), but agree that the practical application of this theory is too risky.I mean, they sent dogs into space before humans, even though that was a practical application of nearly certain knowledge. But the practical application could lead to a death, so they hedged their bets.In this case, we should hedge our bets on practical applications (death penalty) of our "theory" (X committed heinous acts).

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that is a subjective moral position

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Well, yeah. Killing innocent people IS a subjective moral position. I kinda assumed we shared that position.

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Am I willing to risk one person's life on a tentative theory? No. It is only a stock dilemma that I'd have to. Not all knowledge is as tentative as a scientific theory

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What are you willing to risk executing someone for? What is your "bet" that you would accept?This message has been edited by Zhimbo, 04-14-2005 09:51 AM

What the hell are you talking about? You mean "give me untentative conclusion, or a tentative death sentence, which can you give me?"... or... "I don't have to talk about it if I don't want to"?That is an avoidance of my answers on both subjects. If you have read my posts to crash you will see I directly answered his statements regarding tentativity and why Schiavo is relevant.You are almost right however that my position has not changed. That is of course because I started with trying to use a gedanken experiment. You know that pesky thing which we use against creos sometimes to explain things.Only not one person will take part. The closest has been jar, whose only move toward it was admitting he'd accept it if the guy wanted to die.... revealing of course (if your assessment is true it is only because it is the guy's wishes) that his is a moral stance and has nothing to do with irreversibility.What is everyone scared of?Oh yeah, and now I am getting the filtering in of "if a life is in the balance I cannot admit to any knowledge". That's the exact position of the creos only there's is a soul that hangs in the balance. Either case is using a priori metaphysical and moral positions to drive epistemological rules and NOT using accepted epistemological rules to make metaphysical or moral decisions.Don't you guys understand that?

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Yes, because unlike all of my opponents in this thread, I apparently am the only real scientist and understand when tentativity ends and overt incredulity begins.What's more I am a philosopher who has studied, and at this point has explained at least once, how your very argument is anti-science and anti-knowledge, by requiring an a priori moral dictate to drive your rules of knowledge.Are you willing to risk your soul on the ToE, by saying it is a better model that creationism?Creos would say not.In light of your criticism of me, your criticism of them has now been diluted to PCKB.This message has been edited by holmes, 04-14-2005 10:01 AM

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Yeah, see this is what I am talking about. I have an OP which explains my position and sets out a hypothetical, and yet I am yet again supposed to deal with a patent strawman of my position. Probably the husband. What does that have to do with the death penalty? No I am quiet uncomfortable with the level of doubt shown by people in this thread. The incredulity is so preposterous that I feel like I'm in the twilight zone.Oh wait, you think the system you just outlines has anything to do with what I am talking about? Actually read my posts and then respond. You'll find my posts plainly suggest that the above situation would not (or should not) come close to ending in a death penalty.Now play nice and actually work with me here. Is there ANY case, hypothetical or from reality, where you can say you definitively know a person has done something. At this point I'm even willing to go for noncrimes.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

The connection is that "every-day knowledge" is probably even more fallacious than scientific knowledge; perverted as it is by confirmation bias and other human mental shortcuts.And that's exactly what you're doing. You're shortcutting right to certainty without any justification about how you got there. No, but then, the consequences of those acts rarely involve the execution of another human being. Maybe you could turn down the snippiness? While you're at it, it's necessary for you to do more than just call me a creationist for you to rebut my reasoning. Nope. Not beyond a tentative conclusion, anyway. I realize that you'd just like to handwave tentativity and solipsism away, but tentativity isn't just a practical limitation on science. It's a fundamental limitation on how we know things about the real world. Oh? And which scientist was that?

And sometimes absurd things happen. How will you rule them out? Certainly not by any appeal to the evidence, apparently. Sorry, but that's not good enough for me. I'd like the death penalty to be delivered based on a little more than what Holmes finds "absurd."I don't think that's too much to ask, but you've consistently failed to deliver a system that eliminates your subjective assessment of what is "absurd" and what is not.Even the scientific definition of fact stipulates provisional, tentative acceptance. Why is it that you can just handwave that necessary tentativity away, as though it doesn't apply to you? I don't accept that line of reasoning; it's just fallacious special pleading. Yet, we must obviously have the highest threshold practically possible. Clearly, then, we know that the highest possible threshold still executes innocent people. Well, keep working on it then. I'm sure it'll come to you.

yes. there is a case in which i would say without a doubt that someone did something. but. the point is that cases like the one i mentioned DO end in the death penalty. in such event, we cannot continue the death penalty until this is eliminated.so yes. i suppose if the death penalty were only permitted in cases in which there was uncoerced admission of guilt and multiple eyewitnesses who had not spoken to each other and their stories match nearly exactly and there was photographic or videographic evidence limiting the possible killers to the suspect and a phantom identical twin. then yes, i'd be in support of the death penalty. but the likelihood of that happening without installing government cameras everywhere and infringing on citizens' reasonable expectation of privacy... and of course having clean cops.

Alright, I think it's pretty clear. Let me know if this is the way you are proposing this should proceed.1)The death penalty will ONLY be used in the circumstances where there is no ambiguity over whether or not the person committed a crime (the list of pre-reqs in the OP, maybe even more)?2)If all of the parameters you listed in the OP are not met then the death penalty IS NOT a punishment that can be decided for since this would lead to the possibility, depending on how the evidence was presented, of a reasonable doubt....and of course the ultimate problem of convicting an innocent person to death.Seems to me that the instances where it, the death penalty, would even be an option would be far and few between...good, and even then it would be finalized by maybe a panel of judges?Seems like this proposal might work.What is the other thread where Schiavo's death is being discussed?

Look, Holmes, we've laid it out for you. We believe that the only just application of the death penalty comes under a system where either all doubt, even the absurd doubt, is removed; or else the penalty is delivered reversably.Well? Which do you give us? It really is just that simple, and no, that's not a strawman of your position. It's simply asking you to meet the only possible conditions under which delivering the death penalty would be just and fair.But all you do is tapdance around this issue and make hilarious misstatements about scientific knowledge; statements that I'm embarassed to read from someone of your learning and intelligence. You really should know better, in regards to science, by now. Why do you think that science isn't a search for truth? It's not because scientists are so half-assed at their jobs that they can't get things right, or because they go off half-cocked with just a part of the information. It's because there's fundamental limitations about the level of knowledge you can achieve by induction, because induction is an inherently fallacious mode of reasoning. Ultimately all inductive reasoning is circular.Well, I'd like a little more than circular reasoning to base the death penalty on, and I don't think that's absurd. And it's pretty clear that you can't deliver that, so aren't we done here?

But that's the thing. Tentativity never ends. It's inescapable.The methodology you apply casually, day to day, is a weaker, more error-prone methodology that the scientific one. It's ludicrous to suggest that the casual methodology somehow provides conclusions that are stronger or more certain than the scientific methodology. How could that be the case? If the scientific methodology, which to the large part is the strictest methodology possible for the aquisition of knowledge, can't deliver any better conclusions than tenative ones, what hope would a lesser, more error-prone methodology have? Wouldn't I have to have a soul, first? That's their perogative. They don't have to learn evolution if they don't want.

As I recall, his OP included a confession as necessary for the death penalty; the knowledge of this requirement would mean that nobody would ever confess.If Holmes wants to propose a system where the death penalty, as a result of an obvious and easily met condition, is never used, how is that practically different from what we have proposed, which is a system where the death penalty is never used because there's a rule against using it?

No, this is not a flying guillotine or something.The purpose of a court is to find guilt or innocence regarding a crime and then assess proper sentences for the crime. As part of the sentencing phase the death penalty option need not even come into play if we set rules (neccessary requirements) regarding level of evidence such that it is a practical certainty that no innocents will be killed. I called them "myths" in the original thread where all this started, but one could easily point to the statement all pro DP advocates want to kill innocent people (that was a keen one), or what we are dealing with here: The claim that it is IMPOSSIBLE to come up with a system that employs the death penalty and NOT kill an innocent person.Its possible and that should be pretty obvious, unless we lose all sight of reason. I want you to think about your statement VERY CAREFULLY. In addition to tentativity, science also has exclusivity. The current argument against my position is not for the rules to be TIGHTER. If it were then we would not have to entertain every logical possibility no matter how ludicrous (that is crash's stated position and most certainly schraf and your suggested position).Indeed, tentativity itself can eventually be excluded as a practical tool with tighter rules for evidence, when we are discussing a body of evidence which can be shown to be exhaustive of all plausible evidence that can be had on a subject.One of the biggest catches would have to be an inclusion of the requirement that the suspect freely confesses and does not dispute the confession during trial or after, on top of the body of evidence.The absurd lengths that would be required for all of this to accidentally happen is not practical to entertain... and is a rejection of rational thought in deliberation. The absurd lengths that it would be required for all of this to be manufactured is equally impractical, and even if not a rejection of rational thought, than simply a strawman as one is talking about a plot by the victim (in which case it is not the system's failure) or it is a buyout and switch of the system to something else. If you do not see that "risk involved" and "taking life is a very large risk" is a moral supposition, especially when used to scale down epistemology, then there is nothing more for me to say. It is pretty obvious.But here's the analogy again...Levels of certainty must scale to the risk involved. The purposeful destruction of an immortal soul is a very large risk, and is completely irreversible.In any case it is also circular argument. Check it again. To call it a risk, or that one is risking a life is to imply (to presume) the conclusion that any system will have that risk. The death penalty does not risk life, life is taken. The question is does a system of rules which allows for the application of the death penalty (ie uses levels of knowledge to determine its ability to be used) actually result in a risk? Ughhhh... that is an awful analogy. But thankfully really gave me the first thing to smile about today. Yes we can, but then we don't logically have to. Indeed we can even point out it is not a "theory" in the sense of a scientific theory (despite repeated attempts to make that fallacious connection) and depending on the level of knowledge show that it is epistemologically true.If the person really is guilty, which we can determine by a set of rules so tight that it is not possible for there to be any reasonable or practical possibility the person is not guilty, then there simply is no risk.The question here is can humans devise rules of knowledge? Can epistemology exist?The one thing that has been shown is when moral imperatives, thus ethics, force people to craft epistemology for specific results, knowledge is pretty much out the window.I'm sticking to my guns.Maybe I ought to be turning the tables and putting it this way...Am I willing to risk rational judgement and argument (i.e. logic) in order to make sure I can say at least I didn't "risk" the life of a guy who says he killed people and people say he killed people and all well tested evidence says he killed people?I would say no.Would you? Yawn, yes we do, so you missed the point. Try again. Personally I am willing to accept the level of evidence that was collected and presented for both Dahmer and Gacy. They are pretty clear cut cases of non questionable attainment of evidence, and mountains of it. I can't remember if Gacy confessed now or not. But this goes to show I am not necessarily feeling a system requires a confession. There are instances where it is practically impossible for there to have been a setup, or the likelihood of new evidence from any arena.Indeed I am still waiting to hear what plausible kind of evidence could have appeared such that Dahmer would have been shown to be innocent. Citing "tentativity" in that case is simply mocking science.However, if requirements of undisputed confessions made people feel even safer, I'd be for that. And just for hypotheticals, though I think this is a little much, we can even make it where the person is actively asking for the death penalty.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

The nature of the "absurdities" which would be required have already been detailed, specifically to you. Carting this argument out again, means you have either forgotten, or you are intentionally lying.If you forgot, go back and look. If you are lying, please stop posting. Handwave? I'm sorry, I figured a discussion on how modern scientific methodology, including tentativity came to be, would have explained something to you.I'll have to remember that when you "handwave" at creos. This is a joke right? This is even worse than a person saying the ToE defies the 2nd law of thermodynamics. I thought you said you "read stuff"?Highest theshold practically possible? Given that you have both avoided direct questions and when the parallels are clearly pointed out you both duck and run, yes it has come to me.I love that buz gets kicked out for this kind of garbage and now its alright for everyone else.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

1. Yeah, oversight on my part. I think that could be eliminated actually.2. By "obvious and easily met condition" you are referring to the confession? Well, the above statement I made (which is not what Holmes originally suggested...you're right) I think would make this less of a similarity with not having the death penalty at all.