If you don't kill any people, you won't kill innocent people. If you do kill some people, you might kill innocent people. Where is the equivocation?
Can you clarify why feelings of guilt are important here?
They aren't particularly, but
We mostly don't seem to care.
I thought we were talking about feelings, my mistake. I suppose the point was that I do care if innocent people die, so by extrapolation I assume other people do too.
I mean, I have no idea how much guilt executioners feel.
Please, pardon my rhetoric.
Also, I think got carried away with the whole "guilt" theme - feeling guilt, guilt by assocation...
...But how much guilt they feel or don't feel doesn't play much of a role i
What you say is true, but when I get into my car I'm not planning to go out and find a suspicious looking pedestrian to hit hoping he'll turn out to be not innocent ;)
More seriously, the one time I was involved in a pretty serious collision the sensation of heart-squeezing dread I experienced in the moments I thought someone might have been killed or even just injured and that I might have been at fault... was not pleasant. If an innocent person were hurt as a consequence of my actions I would certainly feel the guilt of it. Does the hangman feel the guilt of his noose?
I enjoyed reading the essay, finding it insightful and well-written, which is probably why the bit I disagreed with prompted me to argue.
or because they know it has a gruesome history of occasionally killing the falsely accused. But I still don't think this is a good argument.
I've never understood how proponents of capital punishment can simply sweep aside the possibility of killing even a single innocent person as a negligible consequence.
But taking something with both costs and benefits and then placing it next to something that only has costs
Cap...
I was going to give military an honourable mention but I didn't want to make my comment any longer than it already was. Yes the military frequently does aim to kill people, but not always. Capital punishment is defined as putting someone to death.