Ethics

A philosopher writes, "Capital punishment is immoral. It was immoral even when the majority of people were convinced it was moral. They were simply wrong." Is there any empirical, verifiable, and falsifiable method of testing a statement like "Capital punishment is immoral"? If not, why can't an advocate of capital punishment insist with equal vehemence that the philosopher is simply wrong?

Comments

You boil things down very effectively. To respond in kind: There's not, and he or she can.

But that doesn't make conversation, debate, argument, etc. about capital punishment pointless. Why not? Because there's more to discourse about morals than vehement insistence. Moral conversations can shape participants values, their sentiments, their ways of seeing things so that they come to feel and think differently about issues like capital punishment. Participants might be unaware of certain facts (such as the ways race and class and error play into capital punishment or the effects of capital punishment on those who administer it). They might be unaware of various logical inconsistencies in their positions (for example, the inconsistency between capital punishment and the 8th Amendment to the US Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment). They might through the course of their conversation come to change their metaphysical commitments (for example, about the nature of a person or about the existence of God). So, in addition to simple insistence upon one's position, moral discourse can effectively modify people's moral judgment, even though there's no empirical test that can settle things for good.

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