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Originally Posted by 1010011010
I think saying people cringe at Us v. Them justification is incorrect.
Depriving criminals of their rights is fundamentally an Us v Them justification, but I don't think pointing out that forcing someone to live in a tiny room for 30 years isn't very nice will garner much sympathy for Free the Murders. Because people feel that the division between The Law Abiding v. The Criminal is a valid one, and so much treatment that would be protested if applied to Us is acceptable when used on Them.
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But there are very good reasons for locking criminal up. In doing this we reduce the amount of suffering in the world. It is certainly true that the criminal in question does suffer. And if there was a solution that would reduce this I would support it.
The reasons for locking up criminal include:
-To prevent the criminal in question from causing further harm to the general public.
-To discourage
other would-be criminals from committing crime.
-To rehabilitate the criminal so that he can be released without fear of him committing more crimes.
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People cringe at the Us v Them justification for racism because many people don't accept race alone as a sufficient justification for different treatment, or find claims of racial superiority/inferiority to be invalid. It's not the type or structure of argument, it's the quality of the argument as presented.
I think most people will readily agree that species is sufficient and valid justification for how we treat an organism. So Racism Bad, Speciesism Good.
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but why will people "readily agree" that this is the case? You do not need to go very far back in time when it was the case that "most people will readily agree that race
is sufficient and valid justification for how we treat an organism."