The purpose of this essay is to critically evaluate Jeff McMahan’s methods of analyzing death. In his book, ‘The Ethics of Killing,’ McMahan formulates a method for determining the ‘badness’ of a death, something our society lacks. We have an intuitive way of considering different deaths; we consider a child dying by accident worse than a criminal being executed, for example. But there are more complicated cases, and we cannot always rely on our intuition. We must have a method for determining the badness of different deaths, and McMahan gives us an option. In the essay I will be explaining his method, and then pointing out a flaw, finally suggesting a compromise between the two.
McMahan’s analysis of death begins with an analysis of what makes a death bad in the first place. To begin we must first assume that here is no afterlife, because if there is an afterlife, it would be “to imply that no one really dies” (McMahan 98). McMahan essentially states that if there were an afterlife, we would not die, but simply change form. Additionally, since death has no intrinsic properties it is “bad by comparison with what it excludes” (McMahan 98). Non-existence has no characteristics, so death, by itself, cannot be good bad. The alternative to death is not immortality, but continued life. So we know that death is
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bad based on what is excludes, life, and so the relative badness of death must be a function of the life it excludes. We are not comparing immortality, we are comparing one death to the life that would have occurred until the next subsequent death. McMahan calls this comparison a Token Comparison, and it is the basis for his analysis of death. The token comparison compares two deaths of a single person to determine how bad the first death was. As an example, imagine a 20 year old in perfect health is hit by a bus while crossing the street. Had he not been hit, we might assume that he would live decades longer. Death has excluded the prime of his life; years of positive experiences. In this case death is quite clearly bad, and fairly bad at that. On the other hand, take an aging old woman living in a [hospice]. She is suffering from multiple conditions, any one of which could kill her. She has lived a long and fulfilling life, and one day she passes away in her sleep. Had she not passed away in that moment, she would have shortly passed away from any one of her other conditions. Death excludes only a small amount of life, and isn’t remotely as bad as the 20 year old pedestrian’s death. The token comparison is combined with three other concepts, realism and previous gains, to complete McMahan’s analysis of how bad a certain death is. The Realism Condition, as McMahan calls it, states that “For there to be a loss, a good must have been genuinely in prospect but then have been prevented by some intervening condition” (McMahan 133) When we look at someone’s death using the token comparison we look at how good their life would have been. We cannot assume that they would have won the lottery three times in a row, met the love of their life, and then lived happily ever after. We have to be realistic in our assumptions about what may have been. The second concept, previous gains, exists for cases such as progeria patients. Progeria, a condition which causes advanced aging, could be seen as nothing more than a shorter lifespan. If someone with progeria dies of old age at 12, it would not be a bad event under token comparison and realism. Previous gains tells us that in order to have a good death, you must also have had a good life. For the person with progeria, they were unable to experience a good life, and so died a bad death. McMahan believes that with these three concepts, token comparison, realism, and previous gains, we can analyze a death to determine how bad it is. However, I have an objection to McMahan’s method of measuring badness. The ability to measure the badness of death is very important, especially in today’s world of legality and choice.
In cases of murder, abortion, end of life care, or euthanasia (among others), we need to know just how bad death is before deciding to act. We have our intuition, but that’s only a rough guide, and can be confused by complicated cases. McMahan recognizes our inability to objectively measure badness, but his response to that problem is slightly lacking. What McMahan offers us is a method of objectively measuring the badness of death, but his method is slightly flawed because it is based on conjecture, that is, what we assume will happen in the
future. Benjamin Franklin once said that “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” The uncertainty of life is what I use to challenge McMahan’s token comparison. McMahan himself owns up to the fact that no one can perfectly predict the future. His realism condition requires that events have a reasonable chance of actually occurring. The odds of winning the Vermont Mega Million lottery are 1 in 175,711,536, or .0000005%. We cannot measure the badness of death by saying ‘well had he lived, he would have won the lottery,’ because the odds of such an event occurring are so astronomically low. The problem with this manner of thinking is that someone will win the lottery eventually. By ignoring the tiny odds, we are acting as if the odds of winning were actually 00.00%, but the odds are higher than that. Another example would be a disease with a 99.99% mortality rate. Under McMahan’s method we would assume that the person would have succumbed to this disease, but we can’t say that with any certainty. It doesn’t matter how low the odds are, there’s always some chance of a ‘miraculous’ event occurring. McMahan fails to fully appreciate this as part of his method. As a result, McMahan’s method of analysis works best in hypothetical situations, where every event is controlled. McMahan’s token comparison is a useful and necessary tool for measuring the badness of death. Unfortunately, the token comparison does not provide 100% accurate results, because we cannot predict the future with 100% certainty. McMahan’s ideas of realism and previous gains can still be used to gauge the badness of deaths between two people, but not on a single person. The token comparison can still be used for hypothetical deaths, and even provide general estimates of badness on deaths that are based in reality. We can come up with a probable analysis of death, based on what is likely to occur. This is still very useful; we can still use McMahan’s method to make life or death decisions, but we shouldn’t think of it as perfect.
Daniel Challahan attempts to argue that Euthanasia is always seriously morally wrong in his article, “When Self-Determination Runs Amok.” Callahan discusses several reasons depicting why he believes that Euthanasia is morally impermissible. John Lachs, however, does not see validity in several of Callahan’s points and responds to them in his article, “When Abstract Moralizing Runs Amok.” Two points from Callahan’s article Lachs challenges are the fundamental moral wrong view and the subjectiveness of suffering.
In 1608 the case of Captain George Kendall became the first recorder Capital Punishment case in the colonies. Capital punishment has been a very controversial topic since the beginning of the 13 colonies. Capital Punishment is defined as the legally authorized killing of a subject as punishment for committing a crime, mostly involving a homicide. In the first couple of years that Capital Punishment was first used, the subject would be hung from a tree in a public viewing, but as laws changed it became a more private practice. Many people have issues with Capital punishment, while some people believe it is just. Lawyers have fought for many years for what they believe to be the injustice and immoral practice of killing a human being,
In “Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem,” Judith Thomson confronts the moral dilemma of how death comes about, whether one meets their demise through natural causes or by the hands of another (Shafer-Landau 544). If one does in fact lose their life through the action or inaction of another person, a second dilemma must also be considered. Does it matter whether a person was killed or simply allowed to die? The moral debate that arises from these issues is important because if forms opinions that ultimately sets the tone for what is socially acceptable behavior. Social issue such as legalization of euthanasia, abortions, and the distribution of medical resources all hinge on the “killing vs letting die problem”.
I do not believe it would have been just for the state to pardon Tucker’s crimes due to the moral injustice she was responsible for. In Jeffrey Reiman’s article “Against the Death Penalty” he analyzes the principle of lex talionis, which states that one who has harmed another should be penalized to the same or equivalent extent, or as the common phrase goes: “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”. Reiman arrives at the conclusion that there is an equality between human beings by examining the implications of lex talionis, which implies one thinks of other’s pain to be as great as his or her own. Additionally, Reiman explores the Kantian belief that an individual permits the universal form of the objective which guides his action. For example, if an individual kills someone, then he or she authorizes the concept that he or she may be killed, and in doing so there is no injustice done. Thus, this belief also endorses the equality of individuals and helps grant credibility towards Reimans claim. By using Kant’s theory as a basis for his argument, Reiman asserts the concept of lex talionis “affirms both the equality and rationality of human beings and for that reason [lex talionis] is just” (Reiman). Therefore, I believe it would be unjust to grant Tucker a pardon for her crimes because doing so would lose the equality between human beings. Tucker deserved a grave punishment for the brutal murder of two people, but Tucker did not deserve to die.
“How the Death Penalty Saves Lives” According to DPIC (Death penalty information center), there are one thousand –four hundred thirty- eight executions in the United States since 1976. Currently, there are Two thousand –nine hundred –five inmates on death row, and the average length of time on death row is about fifteen years in the United States. The Capital punishment, which appears on the surface to the fitting conclusion to the life of a murder, in fact, a complicated issue that produces no clear resolution.; However, the article states it’s justice. In the article “How the Death Penalty Saves Lives” an author David B. Muhlhausen illustrates a story of Earl Ringo , Jr, brutal murder’s execution on September ,10,
In “The Death Penalty” (1985), David Bruck argues that the death penalty is injustice and that it is fury rather than justice that compels others to “demand that murderers be punished” by death. Bruck relies on varies cases of death row inmates to persuade the readers against capital punishment. His purpose is to persuade readers against the death penalty in order for them to realize that it is inhuman, irrational, and that “neither justice nor self-preservation demands that we kill men whom we have already imprisoned.” Bruck does not employ an array of devices but he does employ some such as juxtaposition, rhetorical questions, and appeals to strengthen his argument. He establishes an informal relationship with his audience of supporters of capital punishment such as Mayor Koch.
On December 18th 2015 Netflix aired with great popularity a 10 part documentary series called “making a Murderer” The documentary, written by Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demo, present the case of Steven Avery; a convicted murderer exonerated on DNA evidence after serving 18 years for the assault and attempted murder of Penny Beerntsen. The writers present the series in a way that suggest that Avery was framed by the Manitowoc Country police department. and present that the police planted evidence to frame Steven Avery because he had been exonerated from the previous crime. The ethical problem with this as is presented by Kathryn Schulz in The New Yorker, is that the documentary argues their case so passionately that they leave out important
In her paper entitled "Euthanasia," Phillipa Foot notes that euthanasia should be thought of as "inducing or otherwise opting for death for the sake of the one who is to die" (MI, 8). In Moral Matters, Jan Narveson argues, successfully I think, that given moral grounds for suicide, voluntary euthanasia is morally acceptable (at least, in principle). Daniel Callahan, on the other hand, in his "When Self-Determination Runs Amok," counters that the traditional pro-(active) euthanasia arguments concerning self-determination, the distinction between killing and allowing to die, and the skepticism about harmful consequences for society, are flawed. I do not think Callahan's reasoning establishes that euthanasia is indeed morally wrong and legally impossible, and I will attempt to show that.
There are over sixty offenses in the United States of America that can be punishable by receiving the death penalty (What is..., 1). However, many individuals believe that the death penalty is an inadequate source of punishment for any crime no matter how severe it is. The fact remains, however, that the death penalty is one of the most ideal forms of punishment. There are other individuals who agree with the idea that capital punishment is the best form of punishment. In fact, some of these individuals believe that this should be the only form of punishment.
Narration: When it comes to the death penalty there are Opponents and Proponents and although both aim to defend and protect society from crime their beliefs differ in how to accomplish this.
In this paper I will argue for the moral permissibility of the death penalty and I am fairly confident that when the case for capital punishment is made properly, its appeal to logic and morality is compelling. The practice of the death penalty is no longer as wide-spread as it used to be throughout the world; in fact, though the death penalty was nearly universal in past societies, only 71 countries world-wide still officially permit the death penalty (www.infoplease.com); the U.S. being among them. Since colonial times, executions have taken place in America, making them a part of its history and tradition. Given the pervasiveness of the death penalty in the past, why do so few countries use the death penalty, and why are there American states that no longer sanction its use? Is there a moral wrong involved in the taking of a criminal’s life? Of course the usual arguments will be brought up, but beyond the primary discourse most people do not go deeper than their “gut feeling” or personal convictions. When you hear about how a family was ruthlessly slaughtered by a psychopathic serial killer most minds instantly feel that this man should be punished, but to what extent? Would it be just to put this person to death?
This essay will discuss the various views regarding the death penalty and its current status in the United States. It can be said that almost all of us are familiar with the saying “An eye for an eye” and for most people that is how the death penalty is viewed. In most people’s eyes, if a person is convicted without a doubt of murdering someone, it is believed that he/she should pay for that crime with their own life. However, there are some people who believe that enforcing the death penalty makes society look just as guilty as the convicted. Still, the death penalty diminishes the possibility of a convicted murderer to achieve the freedom needed to commit a crime again; it can also be seen as a violation of the convicted person’s rights going against the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution.
Americans have argued over the death penalty since the early days of our country. In the United States only 38 states have capital punishment statutes. As of year ended in 1999, in Texas, the state had executed 496 prisoners since 1930. The laws in the United States have change drastically in regards to capital punishment. An example of this would be the years from 1968 to 1977 due to the nearly 10 year moratorium. During those years, the Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment violated the Eight Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. However, this ended in 1976, when the Supreme Court reversed the ruling. They stated that the punishment of sentencing one to death does not perpetually infringe the Constitution. Richard Nixon said, “Contrary to the views of some social theorists, I am convinced that the death penalty can be an effective deterrent against specific crimes.”1 Whether the case be morally, monetarily, or just pure disagreement, citizens have argued the benefits of capital punishment. While we may all want murders off the street, the problem we come to face is that is capital punishment being used for vengeance or as a deterrent.
Ethics and morality are the founding reasons for both supporting and opposing the death penalty, leading to the highly contentious nature of the debate. When heinous crimes are com...
Michael Sanders, a Professor at Harvard University, gave a lecture titled “Justice: What’s The Right Thing To Do? The Moral Side of Murder” to nearly a thousand student’s in attendance. The lecture touched on two contrasting philosophies of morality. The first philosophy of morality discussed in the lecture is called Consequentialism. This is the view that "the consequences of one 's conduct are the ultimate basis for any judgment about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct.” (Consequentialism) This type of moral thinking became known as utilitarianism and was formulated by Jeremy Bentham who basically argues that the most moral thing to do is to bring the greatest amount of happiness to the greatest number of people possible.