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Arts and Humanities

Philosophy Theses

Theses/Dissertations

2011

Punishment

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Why Not Penal Torture?, Cleo Grimaldi Dec 2011

Why Not Penal Torture?, Cleo Grimaldi

Philosophy Theses

I argue here that the practice of penal torture is not intrinsically wrongful. A common objection against the practice of penal torture is that there is something about penal torture that makes it wrongful, while this is not the case for other modes of punishment. I call this claim the asymmetry thesis. One way to defend this position is to claim that penal torture is intrinsically wrongful. It is the claim I argue against here. I discuss and reject three versions this claim. I first address a version that is based on the idea that penal torture, unlike other …


Rethinking Legal Retribution, Stephen Parsley Apr 2011

Rethinking Legal Retribution, Stephen Parsley

Philosophy Theses

In this paper I discuss retributivist justifications for legal punishment. I argue that the main moral retributivist theories advanced so far fail to support a plausible system of legal punishment. As an alternative, I suggest, with some reservations, the legal retributivism advanced by Alan Brudner in his Punishment and Freedom.