"In 1967 a military coup in Greece installed an incompetent but ruthless junta. For the next seven years the government attempted to maintain itself in power through the use of torture. Youths were selected (not on the basis of their sadism) from the regular army and subjected to months of brutal training in which they were beaten and humiliated. At the end of their training they were given uniforms and suddenly treated with respect. They were the new security police and they were expected to torture and murder. Almost all of them did so. When the junta failed many of these men were arrested.
But it wasn’t their fault that they had been selected. They were no better or worse (apparently so) than anyone else. The fact that nearly everyone chosen went on to torture and kill tells us that anyone of us might do the same if we had been selected. So, how could we judge a man for something we probably would have been guilty of? Aren’t we blaming them for being unlucky enough to have been at the wrong place at the wrong time?" Piers Benn, Ethics
Most of us can remember past situations in which our negligence might have resulted in a tragedy. For example, I once set my little brother on fire in a “chemistry experiment” gone awry. Only his heavy winter overcoat saved him from having been badly burned. At summer camp, I once shot an arrow just over a target and struck a young woman (standing behind the target) in the arm. Had I aimed that arrow a half-a-degree further to the left I would have buried the arrow in her heart. While driving I’ve often taken my eyes off the road to retrieve something that had fallen under the seat, etc. Had a child just so happened to cross in front of my car while I was looking down, well…I doubt if I could today live with my guilt.
Kant says that in each of these cases my culpability doesn’t rest with the contingency of the situation. He’d say I had a duty to: keep my brother away from that container of flammable acetone, to look behind the target before I loosed my arrow and to always keep my eyes on the road. It’s clear that in each of these cases I failed in my duty. Should I go out to the barn and hang myself because of what I might have done? Thomas Nagel wrote:
“If one negligently leaves the bath running with the baby in it, one will realise, as one bounds up the stairs toward the bathroom, that if the baby has drowned one has done something awful, whereas if it has not one has merely been careless.”
The element of luck is never entirely absent from our lives. In his book, Being Good, the philosopher, Simon Blackburn, wrote:
â€Luck can do more to sway the ways our lives go than virtue. Yet people are curiously unwilling to acknowledge this; we relentlessly take responsibility, as the myth of original sin shows. It seems we would prefer to be guilty than unlucky… If we are good, it may be because we were never tempted enough, or frightened enough, or put in a desperate enough need.â€
How can we reconcile the the need to hold individuals responsible for their actions at the same time we realize that so much in our lives depends upon luck (or chance)?
Do I understand correctly that you believe murderers owe nothing to anyone except to themselves - and that all they (the murderers) should do is what makes them feel better about themselves?
That is a frightful thought. Please excuse the pun… Here is a concept Frighter. Since you are posting a reply on this forum, are you not participating in a social form? How could one participate in society and not be held accountable to its rules. And no im not talking about laws necessarily, im talking about the socialy established norms. A person can only be as free as the next…
As for moral luck, or chance… That can be such a big topic! I really like this one, it goes with the “What if I didnt have this experiance, or What if that would have happened to me instead?” How would I be as a person?
Polemarchus said:
We have to, do we not? It would scew our, social network if we were to sympathize with persons for their situations in some of these extreme situations. I beleive that there has to ba an equilibrium.
A prisoner will take the prisoner role in a jail, and likewise a jailer his. Although people play their roles, their role does not eliminate free will. Since the concept of free will is socialy accepted, there will be a consequence for every action, regardless of previous experiance. Whether it is a positve or negative consequence… well, we can leave that to fate
— Although caprice plays a part in all human affairs, i do not think it would be prudent to base our laws upon them, any good lawyer will be able to argue to the jury that there were extenuating circumstances beyond the defendant’s control. I am not a Kantian and i find it hard to do anything from a sense of duty, but a great love and respect for life (somewhat like Albert Schweitzer) has helped me tremendously.
— If there is one thing the Stoics have taught me, it’s that you can’t worry about things that you don’t have any control over. (e.g. Epictetus’ enchiridion)
“Zeno was flogging a slave for stealing. ‘But master, I was fated to steal,’ said the slave, ‘And to be flogged,’ Zeno replied.”
Diogenes Laertius
Yes, pragmatic pressures impel society to treat each constituent member as if he or she were an independently responsible moral agent. However, to be forced to accept a belief for the good of something else does not imply that the belief is true. As Isaac Bashevis Singer wittily noted:
“We have to believe in free-will. We have no choice.”
I will oppose any suggestion that men should not be held personally responsible for their actions. Nonetheless, I also believe we need to be aware that this pragmatic belief is little more than a convenient lie. And as Tolstoy tells us in the last line of War and Peace:
“It is necessary to renounce a freedom that does not exist and to recognize a dependence of which we are not personally responsible.”
A conversation with my wife prompted me to begin this thread. My wife heard a story on National Public Radio about a woman who struck and killed a small boy with her car while she was herself quite young. Despite the fact that she was judged not to be at fault, this woman said that a day does not go by that she doesn’t think of the boy she killed. She thought of him on her wedding day, she thought of him when her first child was born, and she expects to think of him on the day she dies. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But weren’t those young Greek soldiers in my above example, also in the wrong place at the wrong time? It’s true that they could have rebelled against their training. But the fact that almost none did rebel must be telling us something about ourselves in general. What makes us so certain that we wouldn’t do the same if placed in a similar situation? For example, how long would you withstand torture before you gave away the names of your friends and loved ones? I’d like to think that I’d die rather than give up the names. But how could I know, sitting here in my comfortable chair, what I’d do with high-voltage wires attached to my testicles? With luck, I’ll never have to find out what I would do under those circumstances. Kant writes in his Metaphysical Elements of Ethics:
“And how many there are who may have led a long blameless life, who are only fortunate in having escaped so many temptations.”
Precious few Volk living in Nazi-Germany chose to stand in front of a firing squad or endure life in a concentration camp rather than become part of the machinery of a wicked government. If you think of Nazi-Germany as a vast moral experiment, the results suggest that nearly all of us today would have done exactly the same. The only reason most of us can point an accusative finger at them is that we were lucky enough not to be born in similar circumstances. The same can be said of the Greek conscripts turned-torturers. How many examples do we need in order to conclude that most nominally good men will commit horrible crimes if tempted enough, frightened enough, or desperate enough?
I believe that criminals must be isolated from the general society (i.e. go to prison). I do not, however, believe that we should treat criminals inhumanely for the simple reason that a criminal may have acted no worse than you or I would have acted had we been born, raised and lived in his circumstances. My belief is intimately connected with my understanding of the "free-will vs. determinism argument.
Marshall wrote:
Hi Marshall,
I agree, but my point is that society regularly holds us accountable for things for which we had no control. We didn’t choose our country or our parents. It was purely a matter of luck which chimney the stork dropped me down. If I had instead been dropped down the chimney of Herr und Frau Himmler, then I might have gone on to oversee the construction and maintenance of a vast system of death-camps. If I had been dropped down the chimney of Herr und Frau Schweitzer, I might have gone on to oversee the construction and operation of a number of charitable hospitals in Africa. Was it possible that Henrich Himmler and Albert Schweitzer could have reversed their moral lives? Yes, of course. But what small chance event would have sufficed to steer little Heinrich towards a life of charity and little Albert towards a life of wickedness? It might have required nothing more than a fleeting benevolent thought or a kind word at a critical moment in Heinrich’s childhood to place him on the so-called “path of righteousness.” It was his awful luck that the benevolent thought never occurred to him and that no one was there to offer the kind word of encouragement.
I believe that men do have a free-will, though far less than we like to think. Most of the time we’re like Wittgenstein’s falling leaves, who tell themselves, “Now I’ll go this way, Now I’ll go that way.” But I’ll save that argument for later.
I agree with you, but that ignorance is what keeps our society on the same track…
I really like that quote from Kant. Ponder this however, not many people would resist, but there are a few who would… Put an inverse on this situation, where people were being punished before their crimes i.e. Minority Report. How then would we argue this topic?
— Polemarchus, your post (as usual) has made me think, i look forward to the Wittgenstein (or Forest Gump) falling leaves argument, it seems to me in that movie (especially the beginning (where the leaf was falling) and ending) that he was pondering the same free will vs. determinism question. I am not saying that caprice is not a factor, but try to imagine a World in which we deny the (myth?) of free will.
—I don’t think prison is the only viable option, along with Foucault, i believe there remain countless unexplored options for punishment.
— It saddens me to watch someone condemn a criminal they just saw on TV. Perhaps that “criminal” was never loved, habitually beaten. Maybe they never had the educational opportunities, never had the chance to glance above the quagmire in which they were mired. But do we convict that individual’s parents or the society that allowed this to happen? No! We convict the messenger. In so many places, in so many ways, we treat the symptoms while ignoring the causes.
— I know that sometimes people rise above their circumstances but these are the exceptions rather than the rule.
— Do you think there may be a certain mentality that views her/his actions as somewhat disembodied from herself/himself?. I am sure that when great crowds react that this is the mentality, try to imagine National Socialist (Nazi) Germany without this phenomena. Nietzsche said, “Madness is rare in individuals-- but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.” It is sometimes as if we coerce into crimes collectively and punish individually, perhaps with the notion of responsibility we are merely treating the outward appearances of a far more subtle and mysterious malaise.
In reply to the original post:
coincidentally, Polemarchus, you have sent electrical signals to an area of my brain that has been quite active lately. What I mean to say is, I have been thinking very deeply and quite often about the theme within your original post. Firstly, I will answer the questions you pose. Secondly, I will save my personal thoughts for the end of this post. The primary example within you post illustrates some of the unfavorable occurences in our lives that we often have no, or very little, control over. We might bring in the Nazi’s into the example to help put forth the idea of necessity in accepting ones ‘selected’ statis within the regime. If one was asked to help the Nazi’s or to be a Nazi soldier, and refused, then they were shot (usually in public to instill fear). Since, I would assume these ruthless junta would follow a similar for of behaviour. I agree that they were no better or worse than anyone else prior to being selected. I also agree that we too would likely act in the same or similar fashion if we went through the same kind of torture. What in my opinion is the pertinent part of your question paragraph is the following:
Polemarchus stated:
In my opinion, it is wrong to judge a man in that kind of a situation. We should, in my opinion, judge the situation and the foregoing problem of the accused state of mind. Personally, I would have the man incarcerated because of his state of mind. I would also make sure he had frequent, or whatever was necessary, visits from a psychiatrist to help him deal with the dramatic torture s/he went through. Then we should act to make sure that these kinds of military coups do not rise ever again. For, if the coup did not exist, we must assume that the selected members would not have become the criminals they are. This goes in part with what I will further elaborate on at the end of this post: I believe no human being is born ‘bad’ because we don’t know what bad is. If one understands what bad is, they will not do it. The only time they will do it is if there is some kind of coercion forcing them to (this is not to be an excuse though). For example, I understand that hurting others is bad. I understand this because I myself wish not to be hurt and because I am hurt emotionally when I see another physically hurt. But, if I am wronged in some way that is enough (by my standards - we all have our own) or lasts for a long enough period of time then I will hurt that person. The problem is though, that the person who wronged me, according to my theory, is also wronging me because of something that coerced them - and so on with everyone else. Hence, when someone does something wrong, it is not them we should blame or waste energy getting revenge on. Instead, we should find what that coercion was that coerced them into doing so and make sure to remove it. Ofcourse, once a person is coerced into doing something bad, they themselves may not understand what it is that coerced them into doing so. All they usually understand is the rage within them, which is why I would incarcerate them or send them into a mental ward. Each attempting to rehabilitate those who have done wrong. Using your example, those selectees would not have gone around torturing and killing if they were not coerced to do so. As you said, we could all similarily be coerced to do the same. Hence, the problem is the military coup. But, because these selectees have already been victimized, tainted, and altered into a destructive being. They nevertheless, require to be put in a place where they will not go on furthering their destructiveness. Just because we don’t blame someone, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take corrective measures. Many people, who don’t blame a person for something they did, because they see themselves doing the same if they had the same coercions, believe the person the be free from scrutiny, punishment, or criticism. Just because a person has a reason, whether a good one or not, for doing a bad thing - doesn’t make the bad thing good, nor does it make the person a good person doing one bad indiscretion. This is something that, in my opinion, is often looked over or missed by judicial courts and interpretations. If someone kills another person we would agree that they have done a bad thing (assuming the general nature of this theme). Although, the evidence goes to show that any reasonable human being would have done the same in that situation, the courts let the person go and the case is dropped. What should be done, in my opinion, is that the court should sentence the person who killed the other person to a ward or heavy psychiatric meetings to determine whether this person is well enough psychologically to continue residing with the rest of society. Furthermore, the court should be linked to another authoritative body which, in this case, would go forth and make according amendments or additions to law, society, etc to do everything in their power to make sure that kind of coercion doesn’t go on to proliferate amongst the rest of the society. Since, once an act is done, there is no fixing it. All there is left to do is to punish, rehabilitate, blame (not needed whatsoever in my opinion), and instill measures for the act to happen again. Since this act happens due to coercions, we must act to remove these coercions.
Which brings me to Polemarchus’ next point:
Yes we are and we shouldn’t be. It is this wrong place and wrong time (the military coup establishment) that we need to remove. I would still send them to jail or to a ward, not because I blame them, but because they have in a sense been brainwashed or programmed to do something our societal members cannot be programmed to do if we are to have a peaceful society.
In your example of the chemistry experiment, I would say that you needed to have security measures instilled into you more thoroughly. But blaming you does nothing. In fact, blaming in many situations enrages the person into doing the bad act again. You are to blame in the sense that you knew better, the kind of blame I am talking about which needs to be removed is the kind of blame that does nothing but exerts negative energy because of others stress. For instance, if your brother, after being saved from the fire, was to swear and yell at you - it would do nothing but hurt your feelings and relieve his stress or shock of the situation. We are all different and we cannot be blamed for the way we are. The fact that you were not following the security measures to their utmost, may easily mean that the school or instructor didn’t emphasize the safety rules enough. We all break the rules, and we are all aware that if we followed safety rules to their utmost, we wouldn’t be doing anything with our lives but reading instructions, manuals, and taking safety seminars to keep safety a serious enough topic in our minds for every second of every day, of every week, of every month, of every year, for the rest of our lives. Moreover, you didn’t intend to burn your brother.
The only people I would say we can sincerely blame are those who do wrong or bad acts for no reason other than the love of it. There are people who actually enjoy instilling pain on others, as well as, watching others in pain. These people are not being coerced and hence are sincerely responsible for their actions. But even for these people, it makes no sense to blame them in the sense of the word I mentioned before (to yell, scream, swear, demean, and beat). It is these people who should be locked up forever. Although, even for these people, one could make the argument that they could simply be a product of the media. With all the sex and violence around at every corner one shouldn’t be surprised that we find people who get off on hurting others.
Like I said before, people can’t be expected to know all safety measures. This is why, locations and certain people should make sure that those within proximity are aware of the security measures for that person or location. For example, we do not expect people to always check the floor to see if it is wet or slippery, and so we put down wet floor signs in the areas where it is a hazard. These signs are big and usually a neon color to make sure they stand out. But even this isn’t enough, since we are human and do tend to daze off or be thinking about our own problems, we may, unintentionally miss the sign, slip, fall, and hurt ourselves or someone else.
Furthermore, just as in law, these situations need to be analyzed and assessed. The example Polemarchus provided about the military coup would need to be analyzed to see the degree to which these selectees were coerced into doing the act they did. The courts usually use a balance of what a reasonable and rational person would do. If they acted, not as a reasonable and rational person would, then they should be locked up to keep the rest of society safe. Primarily for the reason that they are not reasonable or rational human beings, which is to say, that this kind of action will overfill into all acts within their lives, not just military coup membership. But again, though we can blame them in the sense of - it is their fault. It really isn’t, nor does it make any sense to blame them in the other sense of the word (that we usually don’t admit to meaning though act on right away before we think about the situation. We are a product of our genes and our environment. I would propose, possibly naively, that no one living in an environment that lacked an exhibition of violence, and all other negative stimuli, would commit a crime unless it was in their genes. If it is in their genes, we cannot blame them, but their genes. Nor can we blame the genes because genes cannot be blamed, for the reason that they have no choice in the matter.
Too much time within society is spent on revenge (based on blame in my definition of the word), blame, anger, rage, and aggressive behaviour. All of these, in my opinion, stem from an ignorance of people and the environment around them, put another way…blame. We instinctively want to harm a person when we are harmed. We would be much more productive and emotionally stable if we looked to the problem as a situation not a person. This would remove the personal aspect of such situations, which is the aspect which hurts our feelings.
I don’t think Kant, nor the Utilitarians (final outcome) are in the right. It’s more an analysis of the situation in which some cases are to be dealt as utilitarian and others as Kantian (motive).
Polemarchus stated:
No you shouldn’t, as I have said above. But, knowing that you have a tendency to take your eyes off the road is a clear enough sign for you to know you should pay more attention. Although, such evidence of you knowing for yourself that you take your eyes off the road would almost certainly be irrelevant in a court of law. It will do wonders for your guilt. For I’m sure that from now on, if you make an effort to keep your eyes on the road, and you do hit someone, you will feel less guilty than if you didn’t make the effort and hit someone.
Like you said:
It is this luck, forever present in our lives, that is such a contributing factor. We cannot always follow the rules, know the safety laws/conditions, always catch sight of every warning sign or label, read every manual page by page - word for word, otherwise we would spend the rest of our lives doing nothing but reading manuals, walking very slowely, and being extremely aware of our surroundings by looking around, like we are being followed by a stocker, for anything we might miss.
I wished to go further…but it is late and I have to work tomorrow. I will return for any needed clarification or elaboration.
Of course, if I were one of those Greek soldiers, then I would no longer be me, so I’ve no way of telling you how I (“I” now converted to “he”) would answer the question. Any answer I give is necessarily rooted in the stance of who I am at this moment. In order to answer your question, the best I can do is to try and project myself into another man’s shoes (though such projections are quite common in ethics and metaphysics). With these caveats in mind, here is “my” repsonse to your question.
Since I believe (as I’ve stated) that society has no choice but to hold individuals responsible for their actions, I should be convicted of crimes against humanity. Subsequently, I should be compelled to care for the victims of these and other similar crimes for the remainder of my life.
How would you answer your (excellent) question, Brad?
This is a digression from the topic, but a digression (I’ll make it short) that I can’t resist addressing.
One important aspect of the moral behavior of groups is the appearance of diluted personal responsibility. In his Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit describes a situation in which one-thousand “harmless” torturers each have a box with a button on it. If the button is pushed an electrical potential of one volt is applied to a victim; a potential so minute that the victim wouldn’t even feel it. But given that there are a thousand such “harmless” torturers, and as each box is connected in series (similar to a string of Christmas lights), the voltage produced by each box is applied to the victim as a sum total. If, for example, the buttons on all thousand boxes are simultaneously depressed, the victim will receive a shock of one-thousand volts.
In practice, each “harmless” torturer can virtually sit on the button and yet maintain that his action is harmless because no one could feel the voltage that his box produces. In this way societies can commit the most horrible atrocities (misdeeds of either commission or omission) and yet no constituent member of the offending society is burdened with guilt. To use a current example, the United States’ attack on Iraq killed thousands, yet no American has to bear a sense of personal guilt over the matter. The responsibility has been so thoroughly diluted that no one in particular must bear the blame for these deaths. Examples of “harmless” torturers abound throughout history. Parfit writes:
"It is not enough to ask, “Will my act harm other people?” Even if the answer is No, my act may still be wrong…I should ask, “Will my act be one of a set of acts that will together harm other people?” The answer may be Yes. And the harm to others may be great.
Getting back to the main topic, I wanted to say a few words about the perennial free-will vs. determinism debate. To begin at the extremes, consider first what it would mean that you were the sole source of all your actions – to have a perfectly free will. It would mean that all of your actions originate entirely from within you. That is, no outside agency could have the slightest role in either prompting or determining your response. In fact, you could not have a response and at the same time possess a perfectly free-will! Thus, to outside observers it would appear as though our actions were generated entirely at random.
Most of us have observed persons who suddenly blurt-out words or phrases that appear unconnected and non-referential. They might throw their hands about while their successive facial expressions range across the entire spectrum of human mood indicators. Despite the fact that they’ve made no gesture that you yourself have not used in the past, and the words they’ve uttered are the same words you commonly use, there is obviously something very wrong with these persons. The mentally ill often exhibit aspects of an unmoved mover.
Indeed, an unmoved mover (one possessing a perfect free-will) is incapable of reacting to environmental changes. Any reaction constitutes a response; and responses are the very thing unmoved movers are not permitted! The uranium 238 isotope appears to decay spontaneously by emitting an alpha particle at random. Uranium 238 is a very good example of an unmoved mover. A rational human is a very poor example of an unmoved mover. We are homeostatic organisms: we respond both consciously and unconsciously to environmental changes so as to maintain an approximate equilibrium condition. If the ambient temperature rises, the sweat pores on the surface of my skin will open in an attempt to lower my temperature. If I notice someone is about to swing a baseball bat at my head, I’ll do my best to escape injury. Humans are anything but oblivious to their environment. We are not perfectly free-willed beings.
The other extreme is to imagine that our actions are entirely determined. Given enough data concerning our present state of mind as well as the present external stimuli, a Laplacian intelligence (this idea was famously suggested by Pierre Simon de Laplace) supposedly could predict our future actions.
Obscure_reality brought up this point with his mention of the film, Minority Report. While I’ve not seen the film, the premise seems to be that in the future we discover how to emulate this Laplacian intelligence. Accordingly, we send out a task force of precognitive police (Precogs) to stop people before they can commit their crimes. However, this story might have played better to an 18th or 19th Century audience, given that the radical discoveries of the 20th Century provide good reasons to discount Laplacian determinism. The decay of the uranium 238 isotope that I spoke of above is not an isolated case of apparently random activity. Indeed, the work of Neumann, Bell, Kochen and Specker, among others, suggests that the universe taken in the small (the so-called “quantum worldâ€) appears to be fundamentally (I use the word “fundamentally†with all my usual reservations) indeterminate. Quantum mechanics is probabilistic. The reason that we can predict events in the large physical world with a modest degree of accuracy is that large things (humans, stars, galaxies, etc.) are comprised of huge numbers of small things. The so-called “Law of Large Numbers†states that statistical predictions can be made concerning large enough numbers of random events. J.R. Lucas makes the point that while we can not predict when an individual electron will jump into a higher quantum state, we can predict quite well when a human will use his or her legs to jump into orbit around this planet – almost certainly never. Similarly, one might think that since humans are comprised of a huge number of tiny particles that this means we could perhaps statistically determine every aspect of human behavior. Fortunately, or unfortunately, it’s not that simple (is it ever?). In his book, Responsibility, J.R. Lucas writes:
â€We are large, and all too often lumpish, but we are also neural networks, capable on occasion of greatly amplifying small variations, and sensitive in some areas (in sight and hearing, for example) at least to only a few quanta of energy.â€
I don’t wish to reword the many arguments against the notion of a deterministic world (Heisenberg, Gödel, Turing, Chaitin, et. al.). If you’re interested there is no lack of information on the web on these topics. You might, for example, take a look at The Gestalt of Determinism:
I reject both extremes of the free-will vs. determinism argument. We are neither automatic automatons nor are our actions as unpredictable as a pair of thrown dice. We inhabit a world that lies somewhere between these extremes. My current belief is that the human model is captured better by a slightly imperfect determinism than a slightly imperfect free-will.
missing from this discussion, but hinted at my polemarches/micheal is the idea of responsibilty. we have control of our acts and we have control of what we do after our acts take into effect. this is probably the only distinguishable trait that seperates man from the universe and, as is pointed out, it is what defines each of us.
which is why there is this topic on the thread. this does not make anyone less accountable for their actions.
if i were a greek solider, i probably wouldn’t have survived the training period …but if i had passed, i reckon i would have played a very passive role in the kiling bit of it. not that it makes me less culpable. i except to be punished accordingly to the laws established after the junta was overthrown. what is an important distinction here is that my theoretical morality under the junta is no different from that of a passive american in 2003. but allow their actions to be determined by the ruling powers. in practice, the greek solider has far more blood on his hands than the american – but what is important is that the solider was operating the same way most americans (even westerners) do. thus, to truly lead a moral life, it is important to develop a firm, rational set of beliefs and actively apply them in life.
this discussion is ancient polemarchus! just like your name…
Thanks very much for the response. I generally agree with your post, especially with your belief that our justice system is bent too far on the side of revenge. However, I think punishment still has a limited use as a deterrent. It goes without saying that we need to prevent a convicted criminal from committing future crimes, but it makes just as much sense to try and deter others from committing these same crimes. While no deterrent at all is needed to make a virtuous man do good, humans are such complex creatures that it’s difficult to know how deeply the threat of punishment deters, say, a child molester. If we made the penalty high enough (z.b. death by torture) then any reasonable man (virtuous or not) would see that it was in his best interest not to commit the crime. Unfortunately, some of the same people that lack the necessary virtue simultaneously lack the sufficient reason to decide what’s in their own best interest.
Daniel Dennett wrote (Elbow Room, p. 159):
â€The incidence of running red lights could be dramatically reduced by either installing a squad car at every intersection 24 hours a day (making apprehension very likely) or by making the penalty life imprisonment."
Dennett is saying that if we maintained a huge (and prohibitively expensive) police force to insure that all criminals would be instantly apprehended, then the prisons might remain relatively empty. On the other hand, we might choose to put our resources into prisons rather than into police cars (those aren’t our only options). I doubt whether any deterrence would be severe enough to dissuade some persons from doing wrong. And yet another nasty type of person fully comprehends the punishment, but this person thinks that his cleverness is so great that his crime will escape detection.
Magius wrote:
I imagine that a number of criminals might be helped in this way. But I’m reminded of one well-meaning program in which inner-city juvenile offenders were sent to work and live as part of the crew of a beautiful wooden sloop off the coast of Maine. Granted, the kids had to attend behavior modification meetings while on the ship, still, I wondered what was wrong with the picture in which good kids were left to rot in the slums while those with criminal records got to spend part of their summer cruising the Maine seacoast?
Even though the fear of punishment is not a perfect deterrent, I think its reasonable to assume that the dread of punishment does provide some deterrence. While I abhor fascism, my father-in-law, raised in Italy during the time of Mussolini comments on how the people commonly left their doors unlocked during Mussolini’s dictatorship. And he strongly contrasts that time with the lawlessness that followed “Il Duce’s†being placed on the meat hook. We’ve seen the same thing recently in Iraq. The robbing and looting came to the fore after the authority (and thus, the deterrence) was removed.
I don’t think there is a device or a public policy that will insure that every greedy, lustful, hotheaded, or insane person will walk the “straight-and-narrow.†I think the best we can hope for is an overlapping system of education and deterrence. But no amount of education or deterrence will put a complete end to crime. As the recent American accounting scandals illustrate (Enron, Global Crossing, etc.), it’s possible to have some very highly educated criminals.
I would dearly love to see a world with no crime, no police, and no punishment. Since the likelihood of that is rather small at the moment, my next thought is how we might create the most humane world possible. I say, lets have a justice system that stresses education and mental evaluation, but I think its too early to abandon (imperfect as it is) a limited measure of humane punishment as a means of deterrence.
Actually, I meant the revenge bit to refer to people in general. Though I am glad that you relayed it to the justice system as well.
Polemarchus stated:
I agree, did I say otherwise? I don’t recall saying “punishment shouldn’t be used as a deterrent” - what I mean to say is, it appears that you are under the impression, from my post, that I had said punishment isn’t a deterrent. Just to further elaborate on my previos post, in terms of punishment, in every day life, people are quick to hurt back before thinking about why a person is acting in the way they are. We are quick to punish before we think about whether we have a right or a reasonable reason to do so. Furthermore, in the sense of jail, or fine punishment by the courts; the publics mentality are to punish the crook - not so they are rehabilitated or or deter others from doing so - but so that they can know that they are being punished. Put another way, so they know that vengeance has been carried out one way or another. It is this mentality, that most of my post was devoted too. Much of this mentality, in my opinion, is due to this vague and naive notion of blame that, to me, serves very little, if any, constructive purpose at all. I think, possibly, I didn’t clarify the distinction between peresonal interactions with punishment between people face to face, and punishment from a court of law to a criminal.
Polemarchus stated:
I agree.
Polemarchus stated:
That’s just the thing, you would think that was true, as I did for a long time. Instead, my studies in law (criminal cases especially) have shown that these threats of punishment don’t work. For the crimes that hold capital punishment as the deterence, they get committed anyway. So deterence must be put aside for these instances - though I agree with you wholeheartedly that it has its limited deterence. I assume that a man or women who commits a crime with capital punishment as its consequences, assuming the accused is aware of the consequences, is in either one of two situations. 1) They are in a situation of such desperation that they care not what the punishment is. 2) They are not a rational or reasonable human being.
Once again, if a person does kill someone but doesn’t get charged because of the situation given evidence for in a court of law, then they get set free. Hence, the crook who needs deterence is told by analogy ‘go and kill as long as you have a good enough defence to fit the law’. But, if the person who in an extreme situation kills another and is proven to have acted as any reasonable and rational human being would in the same situation, but does not get set free and must go through intense psychiatric treatment to make sure that they are stable enough to participate with the rest of society - then the crook gets the following message ‘if I kill someone, no matter what defence I use or how good of a lawyer I have - I will be stuck in a mental institution for the lack of my mental stability.’ - this, to me, is much more effective. You see, I am not taking away from the current system of justice, I am merely adding to it, strengthening it in my opinion. Moreover, whether the accused is actually reasonable, rational, sane, or insane doesn’t matter as long as the psychiatrists are accurate. But even if they aren’t 100%, they would help prevent setting loose some mentally unstable criminals as opposed to none in the current system, given the above example of someone who kills another but is found not guilty due to the circumstances of the situation. Since, a person who is set free for killing someone because that is what any of us would do, doesn’t necessarily make that person one of us (sane). Which is a fallacy, I believe, many make.
Polemarchus stated:
The latter part of your above quote is one thing I would also have said about the former part of your quote. I wish only to add that I think my above response to your previous quote also holds criticisms, that I think are well founded, that being that the person may not be a reasonable, rational, or sane person. Also, they may be in such an extreme situation that it really doesn’t matter what the penalty is.
Although I agree in principle with Daniel Dennett, running red lights is something we can try to be more cautious of. But even then, unintentionally, some of us would run a red light - once again, no matter what the penalty is we cannot be super safe human beings no matter how hard we try. Like Dennett says, running red lights would be dramatically reduced, which is to say that they would still happen, just not to the same degree they do now.
The reason much of this and the previous post have been devoted to putting light on those who wish not to commit crime, is because I believe many crimes are of that very nature. Simply failing to pay attention, lack of knowledge of certain laws, etc. Hence, it is these people, as well as, outright crooks who need to be put through a system of justice that rehabilitates the accused whether they are a crook or not. Also, I wished to shed light on these kinds of people, for it is these people that seem to be missing from your posts, examples, etc. For instance,
…my point is only to say that I agree with what you say, but there is quite a large portion of people who do not fit into the few categories or descriptions you have provided. I didn’t assume those selectees to the military coup to be, as you put it, a nasty typ of person. I assumed them to be like you an me, only that they were turned. Hence, it isn’t right to blame or punish these selectees. It is only right to rehabilitate them, if possible, and to put our effort into dissassembling this military coup.
Your example of the juveniles going out on sea filled me with disgust, as I imagine it did to you, I would never offer such a program to juveniles. Strictly speaking, in my previous post I spoke of criminal offenders being sent to asylums (mental wards) where they will have to reside until they are proven to be sane and mentally stable to join in with the rest of society.
Polemarchus stated:
I have always been against fascism and running a society on fear. Nothing needs to be done from fear, in my opinion. Not even law. If a person understand why something is wrong, you don’t need a deterent. If they don’t understand why something is wrong, instilling fear will only suppress their confusion until one day they are pressed hard enough and will act wrongly once again, regardless of the punishment.
Polemarchus stated:
I agree. Although there is no device that can ensure a societies straight-and-narrowness, history is my only force against fear being an effective form of deterrence. It simply fails to work. In my opinion, grab two societies - make one understand why wrong things are wrong and instill no fear in them. Grab the other, don’t tell them why wrong things are wrong, simply instill fear in them that if they do wrong things certain punishment will follow. Both will have either the same criminality rate, or the society who knows why wrong things are wrong, will have a smaller crime rate. Again, that is my opinion.
Polemarchus stated:
I agree with you wholeheartedly on education being a hope for an end to crime, but why deterrence?
Polemarchus stated:
I agree, change cannot come quickly or rebellion will likely arise. But I do believe that human punishment as a means of deterrence is on its way out, sooner or later.
In relation to law, I wish only to say here that I don’t believe it acts as a deterent, rather a scale between an act and its consequences. I’ve actually heard people say “I would never steal something small, if I was going to steal something it would have to be worth millions”. They would go on to explain their mentality, to be, that if your gonna go to jail or get the death penalty, then it better be for something good. Furthermore, in my limited studies of law, psychology, and criminology; I have come to believe that a criminal does some weighing before they do a premeditated crime. I think they weigh the benefits of a successful crime, the consequences of being caught doing the crime, and the chances between succeeding and failing in accomplishing the crime. In fact, many writers on the topic of law have conceded that this is the purpose of law, to make them think and weigh the odds, and the law has a duty to make sure that the crime will outweigh the benefit of the crook getting away with it, so that we can ensure they will choose to not do the crime. This kind of mentality, in my opinoin, is more economic than legal. Furthermore, different consequences will range differently as will the benefits on the scale each different person weighs in their head.
In a society like the one we live in, this kind of weighing of law proves ineffective for those who have a crummy life, work hard labour day and night, and are planning to rob a bank for which they may (as a maximum) receive life imprisonment. What have they to loose? They will loose those crummy jobs working like dogs and be put in a place where they are fed, given a bed, and a chance to read/work-out/and hang out with other guys.
— Perhaps an excessive weighing of whether to break the law or not by a criminal is a direct result of punishment and fear. I think education is a more viable option both for reformation and prevention, but as was stated earlier such far sweeping reforms would have to be implemented gradually.
— One aspect of punishment that has not been discussed much here is that the state has the obligation to protect society from truly harmful, repeat-offender criminals. Often, however, prison is a just a place of “concentrated criminality” where the criminal is allowed to perfect his art. None of our solutions seem to work and yet we will not change the solutions!
— Thank you for the thousand one-volt mini torture machine analogy Polemarchus.
Sorry Magius, I think I made an over-generalization when I read your post. For example, you wrote:
I’m afraid this gave me visions of something Robert Nozick said. He wrote that we:
“…should not simply give Hitler treatment and send him happily on his rehabilitated way.” Philosophical Explanations, p386
But rereading your post, I noticed that you did say:
I apologize for my having misread your position. Actually, I like your mention of the criminal’s “state of mind” that should be punished, rather than the person. There have been a number of cases where the criminal has fallen deathly ill before punishment could be carried out. In almost every case society has nursed the criminal back to health before executing him. It initially sounds ridiculous, but if we imagine a death-row inmate who suffers, say, a massive cerebral stroke and is reduced to a vegetative state by it, there seems little point in executing his now comatose body. By that time the criminal has already vanished. The same can be said of severe mental defectives. There is no reason in punishing, for example, those who suffer from severe mental retardation. One might as well punish a rock for stubbing one’s toe.
This reminds me of a famous snap-judgement for punishment. Upon hearing of a revolt in Mitylene, the Athenians hastily voted to execute all the inhabitants. A ship was dispatched to carry out the order. When the Athenian assembly met the next morning they had a sudden change of heart. A second ship was quickly dispatched. The men on the second ship rowed their trireme in shifts (How I would have loved to have been at an oar!) for all they were worth. They arrived shortly after the first ship, and luckily, before the order to execute the inhabitants could be carried out.
Capital punishment does not deter all, or probably even most, murderous acts. I oppose capital punishment on other grounds. Still, the fact that punishment does not deter all crime is not to say that it does not deter some crime.
When I spoke of the “nasty type” I wasn’t speaking about the Greek soldiers, I was speaking abut the type of person that cleverly tries to beat the system.
I care less why a person doesn’t attack my wife than I care that they simply don’t attack my wife. I suppose we could come down to semantics to say that a person could knowingly do a wrong. Some would say that if they committed a moral outrage then they didn’t really understand the full nature of their outrage. After WW2 the Allies forced some of the German and Austrian townspeople to tour nearby concentration camps. Some of the Volk fainted, most wept, but nearly all seemed to be disgusted at what they had a shared responsibility in doing. Was it simply a case of not wanting to know what they were doing? Ah, well…that I can understand. Nearly all of us today are guilty of that.
Oops, I’m out of time for today. Thanks again for the nice argument, Magius.
I got thinking about this, I realized that in the system we have now, atleast in Canada. Not only would Hitler have a chance for parole, he would probably get sent free. That is to say that he wouldn’t be rehabilitated. I fail to see, from the knowledge I contain on jails, what critical steps they take to rehabilitate anyone. To try to make them, the criminals, understand what they did to be wrong and why it is they shouldn’t have done it, and why they should never do it again. I would disagree with Nozick and say that if Hitler could be rehabilitated, why not send him on his rehabilitated way? If Nozick is going to have that attitude, it makes it appear that if he could have his way, all criminals would either be in prison for life without chance of parole - or they would be sentenced to die by whatever means permitted in that area. Hitler was not crazy to begin with, nor was he out to do evil for the sake of evil or to destroy mankind as one other poster at ILP put it, but he truly believed he was doing something that was going to help the world and it’s people. We all do acts with good intentions that turn bad. Ofcourse, Hitler did them in much higher proportions. But the point is, we cannot blame people, we can only blame their past. Blaming the past is of no use to just blame. So, we must look to the past and learn from it to make sure that it doesn’t get repeated. Lastly, we can try to help, rehabilitate, those who had unfortunate circumstances in their lives that brought them to have wrong beliefs, assumptions, and logics. We all have these to certain degrees. Many of us don’t realize how much damage we would do with our wrong assumptions, beliefs, and logics because we are not in a place of power nor do we hold an ability to affect people in such grand ways in such a short period of time. It is always easy to judge, it’s harder to understand.
Don’t worry about misreading my position, I reread my own post and took note that I could have elaborated a little more, specified here and there, and generally I could have been clearer and smoother from one paragraph/idea to the next.
I stated:
Polemarchus responded:
I didn’t mean to say that the criminal should be punished for his state of mind. To me criminals shouldn’t be punished, they need to be helped. They need to be made understand. To me it’s not punishment to incarcerate a man for rehabilitation. It’s help. It’s doing something for their own good. Ofcourse, I would have jails the way there are jails now. Like I mentioned earlier, I fail to see where this assumed and supposed sincere attempt at rehabilitation happens in North American jails. In summation, I don’t believe in anyone or anything getting punished.
Polemarchus stated:
It’s funny, cause that’s exactly what I see people doing. When I see someone bump into something they get even more angry and try to kick it. We get frustrated with our computers and bang on them. Sometimes we are in a hurry to write an essay, our pen runs out of ink, and some will throw the pen across the room because they are so upset with it. As if the pen could help running out of ink. It is absurd behaviours like these, in my opinion, that enforce and promote concepts such as blame and punishment. I see no use for them. It’s not that I would change the system we live in today so much, it’s just that I would completely change our reasoning for why we have the system we have.
Polemarchus stated:
I couldn’t agree more, in fact, in my previous post I did agree with you on this…the fact that Capital Punishment does have its limited deterence. Although I agree that capital punishment is wrong, I’m curious to hear on what grounds you oppose it.
Polemarchus stated:
Ah, but Polemarchus, I am trying to cleverly beat the system. It is my hypothesis that in order to beat the system you must go through it. I would, in a sense, be the “nasty type” to those who are happy with the system. As Morpheus puts it most eloquently: “You have to understand that most of these people are not ready to be unplugged and many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it.”
Polemarchus stated:
Yes I understand. As weird and occult as it may sound, I think this is humanities problem. It’s takes much from us to let things go, to be free, to accept consequences, change, and understand that things are the way they are, while also having the courage and hope to try to change the future. I too, in a position of having someone attack my wife (if I had one) would care more to stop them then to wonder why they were doing so. It is this problem that gets generalized to all situations that inhibits our progress. In the situation you mention, I would say you should care first about your wife, and about stopping the attack. But, you should also, once the attack is off, inquire why they were doing so. Not just out of curiousity, but because you care to know, because you don’t want this attacker to be bothered by whatever it is that they are bothered by so they don’t attack your wife again or anyone elses. In the same way, to draw the analogy to law, when someone breaks the law we should do everything in our power to make sure they don’t go through with it. We should always inquire into why they are attempting to or why they have committed the crime. This is the very problem of law, law doesn’t act to STOP crimes from happening. It acts to PUNISH once a crime has been committed. There are no security measures to stop a someone from stabbing or shooting me on the street. Especially if the criminal thinks it worth his while and risk to do so given the consequences the relative law in the area gives. In my opinion, we are still in prehistoric times when it comes to the law of punishment as a deterrence, or of anything of value for that matter.
Polemarchus stated:
Yes, this is more important than one may think at first sight. From the beginning of time of the first forms of law it was always understood and purported to be upheld that one of the greatest pillars of law is promulgation. It is promulgation that is the most failed of all pillars of law. I’m not talking about parking zones, speed limits, or non-smoking signs in elevators. I’m talking about laws of safety, security, freedoms and rights. I have never heard of a society that was proactive about teaching their society the laws of the nation.
In conclusion, we are all human. That is to say that we behave on reason. Rarely does one care for anothers reason in doing something wrong. We are only interested in them not doing a crime that affects us, once they do, all we care about is soothing that ache in our heart by hurting them back or seeing them hurt. To me, this is selfish, naive, and childish - and the last thing to help us understand each other or to bring closer the ever growing distance between human beings.
No, capital punishment is not a deterent. In the US 10 out of the 12 states that do not have capital punishment have below average crime rates. Moreover, the vast majority of crimes are spur of the moment or while the perpetrator is under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or even commited by the mentally retarded, and the offender has no proper chance to make the decision. The UN and Amnesty International have researched this issue ad nauseum and have concluded that the death penalty does not provide deterence of any form.
— Thanks Metavoid. Reality is the ultimate arbiter.
— Polemarchus you have stimulated my brain also when you say:
— Didn’t Mandela do something similar by bringing people closer to the consequences of their actions? It has been said that if politicians were forced to fight in the wars that they start they would be less apt to do so.
Today people are so divorced from the consequences of their actions due to a variety of reasons. I recall reading a short story where the protagonist was living (unknowingly) in a computer simulation. He had just killed someone in a car crash. When he awakens they ask them if he is ready for his driver’s license, he responds, “yes”, and they refuse to give it to him. I think most criminals (like the example of Germany) would be truly repentant if exposed to the results of their actions often enough, however, some, like in the driver’s example may not care. All of these things like the State, property, etc that stand between us and the consequences of our actions may in fact be desensitizing us.
…but if i had passed, i reckon i would have played a very passive role in the kiling bit of it. not that it makes me less culpable. i except to be punished accordingly to the laws established after the junta was overthrown. what is an important distinction here is that my theoretical morality under the junta is no different from that of a passive american in 2003. but allow their actions to be determined by the ruling powers. in practice, the greek solider has far more blood on his hands than the american – but what is important is that the solider was operating the same way most americans (even westerners) do. thus, to truly lead a moral life, it is important to develop a firm, rational set of beliefs and actively apply them in life.