As a parent, I am genuinely staggered that more people don't kill their own kids, given how many emotionally fragile people we know there are around. There is no greater provocation to violence than a small, whining child.
Society's response to needless loss of life should always be draconian. I see hundreds of people yapping into their mobiles while driving, even when negotiating roundabouts for God's sake. When they career into pedestrians and kill them then they should be treated harshly if only to signal to others that this behaviour will not be tolerated.
But you haven't 'killed a kid'. A kid has died as the culmination of a set of decisions and random circumstances - none of which was taken with the intention of killing a kid. However, they might just as easily have not culminated in any such outcome. That to me seems highly significant from the perspective of moral guilt.
Of course you're right. The law is also there to make examples of people who break it with dire - albeit unintended - consequences. It is also there to be seen to be done. Those things are important from a societal point of view, of course, but they have nothing whatsoever to do with ethics.
The bond is real, but it's mainly down to the fact they're cute. The same reason we'll feel sad if we see a dead cat, but not a dead ant.
I don't really buy into the whole kin selection stuff. I mean, I'm sure the theory is scientifically sound, but it pales into insignificance as soon as your kid starts whining.
Because a kid is dead and you killed him. Its the issue you first raised, the difference between intent and outcome.
Should attempted murder be a longer sentence than manslaughter? Is it worse to try and kill someone and fail, or to kill them by mistake when you only meant to hurt them a bit?
Very difficult one for a reintroductionist to argue against that. Almost as if we need a third level of proof. We have 'balance of probability' for civil law, 'beyond reasonable doubt' for criminal law'. We might have to introduce 'absolutely and irrefutably guilty without any hint of question'* wherever the death penalty is being considered.
* or Irish of course
But the fact that you see hundreds of people doing it is proof that it is tolerated. It is tolerated, but when someone does it with dire consequences, condign punishments ensue. However, it's clear that those condign punishments aren't stopping people doing it.
i would agree, but why......
Who would you rather bump into down a dark alley- the guy who loves a bit of murder but is clearly **** at it or the bloke who is so good at it that he ends up killing people without even trying?
Which is the bigger danger to the public?
Well it would be astonishing if one custodial sentence caused all illegal mobile use to cease immediately but, as with drinking and driving, the message will seep into the collective conscious and the behaviour will become unacceptable. Something you would be ashamed to tell your friends and family you had been caught doing.
"Who would you rather bump into down a dark alley- the guy who loves a bit of murder but is clearly **** at it or the bloke who is so good at it that he ends up killing people without even trying? "
Neither
One has the intent
The other has the accidental skill to off me
Given the outcome with the latter I would say that 'achievement'/'consequences' is equal to intent legalistically
Sure. We are essentially talking about the difference between a high-flown ethical notion of justice and the grim, workaday and entirely pragmatic operation of law as a means to control a civil society. My point is that they have little or nothing to do with one another.
More difficult. The drink driving thing played on deep-seated puritanical notions of shame about drinking and intoxication in this country. Even now, there are very different moral attitudes to drink-driving depending on where you go. It's harder to induce similar levels of shame about mobile phone use.
Look at it this way. With murder and attempted murder we group the two crimes by intent (to kill) but sentence them according to effect (death or otherwise). With murder and manslaughter we group the effect (death) but sentence according to intent.
So we can all agree it is worse to intentionally kill someone (intent and effect) than to do it by accident (effect alone). We also seem to agree that it is worse to intentionally kill someone than to try and **** it up (intent but not effect). The grey area is whether attempted murder (intent) is worse than manslaughter (unintended effect).
So what Do we deem more serious, the intent or the effect?
In operation they have little to do with each other, quite deliberately. In practice, as mentioned earlier, many people take the law as a moral yardstick, at least in the vaguely moral sense that if the law deems something wrong then it probably is. For some individuals this is an effective deterrent beyond the threat of punishment. For the rest of us there is the risk of punishment.
Well if you regard law as a means to protect society, one could argue that the attempted murderer should serve just as long as the successful killer. After all, the person has demonstrated a willingness and desire to kill, which makes them no less dangerous to the public at large than if they'd succeeded. There, it seems to me, is where our insistence on consequence-based sentencing falls down badly.
I went on a speed awareness course (twice) and the guy attempted to draw a moral parallel with stealing (I would argue you are stealing somebody's safety) and then drink driving (you wouldn't endanger someone by drink driving, why do it through excessive speed).
It was the only point where it threatened to get interesting.
Three hours and they didnt even offer us any speed :(
A man who successfully punches someone with the intent to kill them is morally equal to a man who unsuccessfully punches someone with the intent to kill him.
A man who successfully punches someone with the intent to kill them is morally worse than a man who punches someone without intent to kill them, but kills them anyway.
How the law treats each case should be informed by, but not not necessarily follow, these rules of thumb, for the reasons Berni articulates elsewhere in this thread.
The BEST punch I ever threw in my whole life was during a football fracas.I didn't mean to kill him but I deffo wanted to hurt him.I swear to wee baby Jebus it was a real beaut.Caught the **** right on the chin and down he went :proud:
Only problem was the fúcker got up again :-(
Quite. And, of course, this is where the capital punishment thing becomes interesting. After all, as you say, a chap who attempts murder but fails will come out of prison while still relatively young as a person who is still capable of and willing to kill. I could make a good public safety case for capital punishment that that man should be turned off now because he's demonstrated that he has that club in his bag and it's better to end him before he actually succeeds. That to me would be more logical than only executing the successful killer.