quote:I knew you understood this and it was evident in your previous posts. I'm sorry is I some how implied that you didn't. But my question is still a very serious one.
Thank you. I've been spending an enormous amount of thought and energy on this topic lately.
quote:How do we balance the need for criminal justice against our moral obligation to provide care and show compassion for the mentally ill?
I don't see that there is a clear answer to this question, but I know that part of the answer must mean more liberal consideration of mental illness in criminal trials than was allowed in this Arizona court case.
There are means to protect society from people who have violent mental illness besides sending them to prison and I believe we have a moral obligation to the sick that demands we use those means more liberally.
I agree with all of this, 100%, although I suspect we might differ somewhat on the specific contours of how to implement this.
quote:I believe that abandoning attempts to mete out retribution and instead focusing on preventing future crimes is an important step in balancing societal needs for safety and security against our moral obligation for compassion.
I agree there's too much emphasis on retribution. Too many people in this country think sexual assault and rape are legitimate parts of prison and suitable punishment. But I don't think it can or should be entirely excised from criminal punishment, nor do I think it's necessary to do so to restore the proper balance.
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quote from aspectre - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Anyone who murders another is nutso whacko, with a nutso-whacko reason for having committed that crime. The only difference in this case is that the convicted was diagnosed before the murder. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Spoken like someone with no first-hand knowledge of mentally impaired individuals. "
Thank you, TheHumanTarget, sincerely. My mistake is one of the few that I've seen on Hatrack that completely&fully deserves the That sentence should have read: The only difference in this case is that the convicted was diagnosedas mentally ill before the murder.
Hopefully, my follow-up answers clarified my position to one less distasteful. Again, thank you.
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Dag, I think we are much closer to agreeing on this you think. Although I am not Catholic and give little heed to the Catechism as a source for moral guidance, I largely agree with the Catholic church on this issue.
God wants us to have just societies, but even more than that he wants us to be merciful people.
I think God wants us to have just societies because there is overall less suffering in a just society. Punishments that are perceived as proportionate to the severity of the crime, tend to promote respect for the law which is perhaps the most powerful deterrent to crime. When people perceive that they are being treated fairly, they are generally much more likely to treat others fairly. What goes around does indeed come around.
I've never argued here that society shouldn't seek just punishments for crimes. My argument is that any punishment society imposes which is sought with the intent for retribution is not morally justifiable.
This brings me back to my original question, "Why is society ever justified in punishing an individual for crime?"
And the answer I think we've landed on is that society is justified in punishing people for crimes when the punishment deters or prevents future crime and perhaps when it promotes a sense of fairness and justice among the citizens.
I think that you and I have already agreed that punishment is unlikely to be effective at deterring mentally ill criminals. Confining them to treatment facilities is likely to be as effective (possibly more effective) than sending them to prison at preventing future crimes.
As for promoting a sense of fairness in society, I guess that question is still up for debate. There are people, like jeniwren and the family of dead police man, who seem to feel that sending this seriously ill man to prison is just. Then there are those like me who feel that this would both unjust and uncaring. To me, the fact that our prison is populated with the mentally ill is a sign of gross injustice.
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quote:Originally posted by jeniwren: Rabbit, I think for me, the fear is that some doctor would medicate him to the eyeballs, get him stable and say "Yep, he's good to go." and the kid would be out without anyone saying much of anything. Thing is, he's not innocent. He still made a choice, and it's not clear how much the mental illness played a part in that choice. I go back to that guy from A Beautiful Mind. He chose not to let the halucinations control his choices.
If you think that people with mental illnesses can just CHOOSE not to be affected by them...
posted
jeniwren: he managed to choose not to after several decades of homelessness and vagrancy, only able to survive because a closeknit network of friends kept close tabs on him, including calling in favors with various governments, in order to keep him safe.
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quote:Dag, I think we are much closer to agreeing on this you think. Although I am not Catholic and give little heed to the Catechism as a source for moral guidance, I largely agree with the Catholic church on this issue.
Rabbit, I've been thinking it over, and I think you're right in the sense that our views likely have similar policy outcomes. From things posted in this thread and the past, I'd guess (emphasize the guessing) I'm likely to favor a more skeptical means of reviewing reformation as a condition of early release than you would be, and I think I would tend to factor rescidivism more heavily in second and subsequent sentences.
But the emphasis on standard punishment would be on separation from society for the protection of society while separated, specific deterrence once released, and creation of general deterrence based on a perception that punishments will be proportional to the offense.
I'd be interested for your thoughts on meta-punishment. If we have a probation-heavy system, which I think we both prefer, there has to be some kind of threatened punishment backing up demands for compliance. Typically, probation violations lead to jail time. In my mind such punishments are motivated much more by retribution (that is, payment for wrongdoing - specifically, failure to submit to authority) than non-meta-punishments.
Do you agree, or do you see such punishments still serving deterrence effects (or, maybe, allowing the original punishment to serve its deterrence effect)?
quote:And the answer I think we've landed on is that society is justified in punishing people for crimes when the punishment deters or prevents future crime and perhaps when it promotes a sense of fairness and justice among the citizens.
I think this is fair, although I think we mean something different with the "when it promotes" phrase. I think the inclusion of the retributive calculus - including proportionality - will have that effect, so the when phrase is a statement of consequence. I think (and would welcome clarification if I'm wrong) that you are saying that a sentence that does so promote that sense of fairness and justice is serving a non-retributive purpose.
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quote:I go back to that guy from A Beautiful Mind. He chose not to let the halucinations control his choices.
jeniwren, You are drawing an inaccurate conclusion based on a movie which does not tell the full story. John Nash gradually recovered from Schizophreny over a period of about 25 years. Recovery from Schizophreny is not common in the US, but it is in many parts of the world. In the movie, when they show John Nash choosing to ignore the halucinations, what they are showing is that his mind is healing. He is recovering from Schizophrenia. The fact that he was able to make this choice as he began to recover from Schizophrenia, does not mean that he could have made the choice 30 year earlier. When you break a leg, you cannot simply choose to walk on it until it has healed. The same is true for severe mental illness. You may be able to recover, but you can't simply choose not to have the disease.
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Dag, Some of the questions you ask are simply beyond my realm of knowledge. I know very little about the probation system and so its difficult for me to form an opinion about whether meta-punishments are retributive or preventative in nature. I do know that parole boards are routinely criticized for releasing criminals who then commit additional serious crimes and think many of the seemingly harsh penalties for routine parole violations are intended to address recidivism and not necessarily intended as retribution.
Sending a person to prison for failing to attending a meeting (a minor parole violation) could seem like a punishment that was disproportionately severe compared to the offense. If, however, you consider the prison time a punishment for the original crime and parole as a merciful action predicated on adherence to strict rules, then the punishment is not necessarily unfair.
As I said, I do not know exactly how the system works. If society is saying, "We believe that 10 years in prison is a proportionate punishment for the crime you committed. We are willing to be merciful and keep you in prison for only 2 years if you will agree to abide by the following rules." Then I would see rules that would send the individual back to prison for the remainder of the 10 years as reasonable and not necessarily retributive. If, however, the individual were sent back to prison for more than the original 10 years, that would seem retributive and unjust.
Perhaps it helps if I reduce this to philosophical terms. Somethings which we desire are "goods of first estate". These are things which we want for their direct value to us. For example, bread is a good of first estate. We want bread in order to eat it and not as a means to some other end. Bread provides us directly with the nutrition we need for our health and well being. Farms tools, on the other hand, are a "good of second estate." We obtain no direct benefit from farm tools. They don't directly contribute to our health and well being. We want farm tools so that we can raise crops to make bread, which is what we really wanted in the first place. Understanding the difference is important because it tells about the relative worth of things. It would be foolish trade bread for farm tools unless we were confident that the farm tools would ultimately bring us more bread.
Now back to criminal justice. What we (or at least I) are really seeking is to maximize the well being of everyone in society. To that end, safety and liberty are "goods of first estate". They are things which people want for themselves and not as a means toward any particular end. Justice, on the other hand, I see as a good of second estate. It is something which is important because it contributes to peoples safety and liberty and not as an end in and of itself. In that vane, the goals of deterence, incapacitation and rehabilitation are essential to a good temporal justice system because they contribute to directly to improving the safety and liberty (goods of first estate) of people in the society. Retribution on the other hand does not contribute directly to producing any good of first estate. It doesn't directly make bring any one more liberty or security. Under some circumstance it can contribute to creating a good of second estate (i.e. deterrence) but it can never lead to a good of first estate. Retribution always hurts people so it is only a good of any kind if it actually provides tangeble benefits that out weight the harm. This is why I believe its immoral to consider retribution as a primary goal in criminal justice. Unless we are confident that retribution benefits society by promoting the safety and security of many people, its a bad thing. If we use retribution as a goal at all with in the temporal justice, we have a moral obligation to verify that our choice is indeed promoting peoples safety and security and to modify our choices as well as our views of what is fair and just if it does not.
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jeni, I've heard 2 main hypotheses both of which seem plausable but neither of which has been clearly demonstrated in sound scientific investigation. Regions which have a high recovery rate, also tend to be areas that have intact traditional communities with functioning multi-generational families. The first hypothesis is that this cultural environment provides emotional and physical support that promotes healing of the underlying physical disease.
In regions with very low recovery rates, the mentally ill are more likely to end up isolated from friends, family and community. They are also more likely to be treated with anti-psychotic drugs. Although anti-psychotic drugs have immediate beneficial effects, they all have serious long term side effects on the central nervous system.
The second popular hypothesis is that poor recover rates in the developed world are a side effect of anti-psychotic drugs. Although they reduce symptoms over the short term, they may contribute to degeneration of the nervous system over the long term and thereby increase the severity of psychosis.
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I'm taking a sociology class on murder this quarter. According to my professor, about 2% of murders (in Washington state) are caused because the offender is psychotic.
There seemed to be dispute earlier in the thread about when a murderer is psychotic and when not. Just thought I'd supply the official answer.
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While looking into this issue I found that the insanity defense is used in about 1% of US murder trials and is successful about 25% of the time.
In contrast, the American Psychiatric association estimates that 1 in 5 US prisoners suffered from serious mental illness and that 5% are actively psychotic at any given moment.
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: Cutting and pasting from Law & Order:
What if the person takes medication in the hospital, the medication "cures" him, and then he decides to stop taking his meds after he's released? He's dangerous again.
My Dad has diabetes, when it is under control he's fine, but when he forgets to eat, or his body chemisty gets off because of stress, he can be a danger to others. If he is driving, or is somehow responsible for another's safety and he gets low on sugar and begins to become mentally altered, accidents could happen. Should my father not be allowed to live a normal free life because there is the potential that his sickness might make him dangerous?
When he gets mentally altered from low blood sugar, he doesn't know the difference between what judgement is good and what is bad, he doesn't have normal control over his emotions or his senses, and he has a lack of proper judgement.
It is his responsibility to accept treatment, but it isn't his fault if he's sick, we have to help people who are sick to function normally, when they can't help themselves.
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quote:While looking into this issue I found that the insanity defense is used in about 1% of US murder trials and is successful about 25% of the time.
In contrast, the American Psychiatric association estimates that 1 in 5 US prisoners suffered from serious mental illness and that 5% are actively psychotic at any given moment.
I definitely think that the range of mental illnesses that should support an insanity defense should be fairly limited.
However, I think treatment for those illnesses that do not qualify for the defense should be the primary focus of the sentence.
I'm still chewing on your previous post - thanks for the thoughts.
My short reaction to it is to think we're using the wor "retribution" very differently. To me, any talk of proportionality means that retribution is being invoked. I also think that retribution can be a good of first estate, but I need to explain this more fully later.
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For along time the mentally ill, or even people who were a little "off" could be committed by virtually anyone who found them a nuisance at any time with very little recourse, particularly in the case of minors. This resulted in a lot of abuse, for instance, children with no mental illness but perhaps a few emotional problems were locked up. As a kid I knew a few kids who said this had happened to relatives of theirs, and I believed it.
Sometime in the 1970s, to save the states money, the powers that be decided the mentally ill had the "right to be crazy if they wanted" and decided to "dump 'em on the feds." I refer to this as "the time they opened up all the looney bins and dumped the inmates at the Greyhound bus stations."
I immediately changed my main fear from being unjustly incarcerated without due process, to being attacked by some looney unjustly liberated.
As for the medications, yes, sometimes they help and people should take them, but as for people who call the meds "poison," although some of these people are paranoid I am still not at liberty to disagree. I knew someone who was on one medication for years and developed Parkinson's-like symptoms. They switched her to another and it KILLED her--possibly quicker because her health was weakened by the first one. The doctors lied and said this person, who had never entertained a suicidal thought in her life, committed suicide! NO ONE was held responsible or accountable. Because the person was mentally ill, the medical staff and drug company were allowed to get away with murder. Please, be VERY careful regarding medications!
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This is something of an aside from the topic of mental illness and crime, but regarding the purposes of punishment (retribution/rehabilitation/incapacitation of the assailant for the protection of others/deterrence of similar crimes) I wanted to broach the topic of war crimes.
By the time a defendant in a war crimes trial is brought before a court, their ability to repeat such a crime is most likely already nullified and unlikely to return. The scope of such crimes makes the rehabilitation of such a person unlikely, in as much they are unlikely to ever return to the society from which they came with the perception of them as a normal civilian. And the magnitude of such crimes generally comes from such unusual conditions that deterrence may not be effective.
(And yes, I recognize there are questions about this premise and these conditions arguably don't apply to all war crimes.)
At this point, arguably all that is left for such a conviction is retribution. Consider that Adolf Eichmann's court felt the dignity of his victims demanded his execution...
Is it really acceptable that some crimes go unpunished because of the unliklihood of their repetition?
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quote: I strongly believe in the idea of a temporal moral debt, which involves both compensating those wronged and payment for the fact of wrongdoing itself.
Maybe you can explain to me what a moral debt is supposed to be. I don't understand the concept, at least not if it's the sort of thing that can justify punishment.
It seems almost self-evident to me that it's morally bad to harm people. This badness can be outweighed by the good that could come of it; that's why we fight just wars, and why we kill in self-defense. But you seem to be saying that harm all of a sudden becomes good instead of bad, if the person being harmed has done something morally wrong.
As I said on the other thread, I don't see how doing harm (and accomplishing nothing else thereby) can make the world a better place. Since morality is about making the world better, it can never be moral merely to harm someone, unless you're serving some other purpose.
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This is what is meant by retribution: the creation of a state of being in which punishment is warranted. A system of punishment without an element of retribution is amoral at best.
The idea that the commission of a moral wrong places the actor in a different state of being is very old. It's also inherent in almost all ideas of punishment as rehabilitation, deterrence, and incapacitation. Suppose it were possible to predict, with say 95% accuracy, whether someone would commit a particular offense. Most people would oppose the application of forced "treatment" prior to the commission of the act unless there was evidence that the person could not choose to not commit the act.
Why? Because it is the commission of the act which grants society the authority to use it's coercive power. It would be immoral for a society to deprive a person of their basic liberties and force him into treatment to "fix" whatever caused him to commit crime - or to simply cause him enough suffering to make him not want to do it again (which is what deterrence is) or to separate him from society to prevent commission of the crime - if the crime had not been committed. This is true even if the chances of future offenses is exactly the same between the person who has committed the crime once already and the person who has not.
What provides society with the justification for imposing mandatory punishment on people? The fact that the person has, through virtue of the commission of an immoral act, sacrificed some of the rights and freedoms that we by default have in our society. The very ability to coerce someone to stand trial stems from the idea that we as a society have the right to determine if a moral debt exists.
The exception to this idea that coercion is not justified prior to an act is civil commitment of the mentally ill. What are the requirements? Generally, danger (physical danger) to the patient or to other people (not property) that is due to the patient's inability to choose otherwise. Further, not all harms for which we punish are within the domain of civil commitment. We don’t force someone into treatment because we think they have an uncontrollable urge to saw the heads off parking meters until they’ve actually committed the act.
The very language of criminal law is loaded with moral judgment. Guilt or innocence. Culpability. Responsibility. Duty. All of this points to the idea of the moral debt being the basis for authorizing the punishment.
So why is it important to say that one of the purposes of punishment is retribution? Why can’t we merely say that it is the creation of the moral wrong which grants us the authority to use force to obtain the utilitarian outcomes of rehabilitation, deterrence, and incapacitation?
Because if criminal punishment is based only on those three elements, then there is no inherent limit on the type of punishment that may be meted out. The ability to judge the gravity of a crime - that is, the size of the moral debt it incurs - places an upper limit on the amount of punishment that may be meted out.
This means that punishments that would have greater utilitarian effect - better rehabilitation, more deterrence, or longer incapacitation - cannot be administered in a punishment scheme which includes retribution if that punishment exceeds the moral debt owed by the defendant.
Finally, at least some of the rehabilitation, deterrence, and incapacitation that occurs works through the recognition of the moral debt by the defendant and by society. and subsequent submission to or acceptance of the punishment. However, since this could be construed to merely mean that forms of punishment which create the suffering to allow for such acceptance are really rehabilitative or deterrent, I won’t pursue that line any further.
Any act which can lead to criminal liability has been condemned by society in a very unique way. The grading of offenses by seriousness is a means of further differentiating the moral weight of various acts. We do not want people to not commit crimes merely because of deterrence - that is, merely because the cost of doing so outweighs the cost of behaving lawfully. We want them to eschew crime because it is wrong. And one of the ways we convey the wrongness is by the seriousness of the penalties associated with it. The entire process of grading - even to the extent of criminalizing some acts while not criminalizing others - introduces the concept of moral seriousness, and thus retribution, into the criminal justice system from the very beginning.
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I thought of a simpler way to sum up the response to this:
quote:Originally posted by Destineer:
quote: I strongly believe in the idea of a temporal moral debt, which involves both compensating those wronged and payment for the fact of wrongdoing itself.
Maybe you can explain to me what a moral debt is supposed to be. I don't understand the concept, at least not if it's the sort of thing that can justify punishment.
There are really two choices when considering when coercive "treatment" can be administered: either it is limited to after a wrongful act is committed, or it is not.
If it is limited to aftet the commission of the wrongful act, then it seems to me that you believe that the temporal moral debt created by a wrongdoer is limited to the obligation to submit to deterrent, rehabilitative, and incapacitating treatment. But you still believe in the moral debt itself.
If coercive treatment can be imposed prior to the commission of the wrongful act, assuming there exists a reliable predictor for future wrongdoing, then there doesn't have to be the idea of a moral debt. But I would consider such a system to be immoral.
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quote:This is what is meant by retribution: the creation of a state of being in which punishment is warranted. A system of punishment without an element of retribution is amoral at best.
The idea that the commission of a moral wrong places the actor in a different state of being is very old.
Obviously I agree that committing a wrong changes the status of the wrongdoer. Certain evaluative attitudes might become appropriate, like blame and resentment, and feelings of guilt on his part. What I don't see is how his status could change so radically that his pain, suffering or death becomes a good thing rather than a bad thing. More about this below.
quote:Suppose it were possible to predict, with say 95% accuracy, whether someone would commit a particular offense. Most people would oppose the application of forced "treatment" prior to the commission of the act unless there was evidence that the person could not choose to not commit the act.
This is false. In practicality, there are some situations in which we might know that someone has a very high chance of committing a wrong, but has not yet done so. For example, he might have declared his intention to commit the crime, or be sneaking up behind his intended victim. In these cases we are indeed justified in applying force, not just to prevent the immediate danger but to restrain and rehabilitate him.
quote:The very language of criminal law is loaded with moral judgment. Guilt or innocence. Culpability. Responsibility. Duty. All of this points to the idea of the moral debt being the basis for authorizing the punishment.
I agree that this is the basis for our actual laws. It's too bad that our justice system was founded on an incoherent concept, but fortunately it works fairly well anyway.
quote:The fact that the person has, through virtue of the commission of an immoral act, sacrificed some of the rights and freedoms that we by default have in our society.
I cannot, for the life of me, understand what it is to "sacrifice a right," especially to sacrifice some but not all of one's rights. (I understand what it is to lose legal rights, of course, but not what it is to lose moral rights.)
Let's say that I have the absolute right to my life, but that I come at you with a knife intending to kill you. You would say that I have lost my right to life, since it's now permissible for you to kill me in self-defence. But that doesn't seem to accurately describe the situation. Suppose you have a tranquilizer gun in your right hand and a normal, lethal gun in your left. You know the tranquilizer gun can bring me down. Then it's immoral for you to kill me in this situation, even though it would be perfectly moral to kill me if you only had the lethal gun and not the tranquilizer.
Does my losing the right to life depend on how well-armed you are? Of course not. Obviously I must have the same rights in both situations. The only way I can explain this example is to conclude that I still retain my moral right to live -- it's just that taking away my life is a means to achieving other goods (such as your right to live and be free, etc).
(You might object: rights are absolute, so how could one right take precedence over another? But although many people think rights must be absolute, they cannot be. Let's suppose that you are obligated to respect my right to life no matter what -- no considerations can outweigh it. Does this mean you can't do something that you know has a 0.05 percent chance of killing me, even if you can accomplish something morally significant by doing it? Of course not. But what about something that has a 50 percent chance of killing me, or a 99 percent chance? If rights are absolute, we have no way of drawing the line. It must be that our rights are very important, but not strictly speaking inalienable.)
quote:We do not want people to not commit crimes merely because of deterrence - that is, merely because the cost of doing so outweighs the cost of behaving lawfully. We want them to eschew crime because it is wrong.
I absolutely agree. But I would think the only way to achieve that end is through moral education. Punishment can teach us which acts we are supposed to do and not do -- we learn what brings pain and hardship on us, and what relieves these things, pretty well. But that can't be the same as understanding the moral reasons why one should not do these things.
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quote:If coercive treatment can be imposed prior to the commission of the wrongful act, assuming there exists a reliable predictor for future wrongdoing, then there doesn't have to be the idea of a moral debt. But I would consider such a system to be immoral.
You know, I wouldn't.
I mean, what counts as coercive treatment anyway? Our reaction to Minority Report (which I'm assuming you've seen, let me know if not) is largely due to the fact that the punishment is so terrible. The system in that movie is far more coercive than necessary.
But what if they just locked the pre-criminals up for a day, then let them go? That's still coercive. You've still done a bit of harm to the pre-criminal, preventing him from doing what he wanted to do that day. But far from being immoral, such a system would seem incredibly just to me. There would be no violent crime at very little cost to the citizens.
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quote:This is false. In practicality, there are some situations in which we might know that someone has a very high chance of committing a wrong, but has not yet done so. For example, he might have declared his intention to commit the crime,
In many cases declaring an intention to do so is a wrongful act. For example, if the person is present and the speaker has the ability to carry out a threat of bodily harm, it's assault. It would even be possible to make statement of intent a crime - we consider agreement to commit a crime conspiracy. Either way, I think the case can be made that a moral debt is incurred by the statement and it is this which justifies intervention.
quote: or be sneaking up behind his intended victim.
In this case he would almost certainly be guilty of attempt - a crime. So it doesn't contradict my theory.
quote:In these cases we are indeed justified in applying force, not just to prevent the immediate danger but to restrain and rehabilitate him.
You have added "immediate," which often is an element of a crime - either a crime involving threats, or an attempt. Further, I'm hard pressed to see how "immediate" could be judged without an act of some kind - buying the gun, picking up the knife, etc.
quote:I agree that this is the basis for our actual laws. It's too bad that our justice system was founded on an incoherent concept, but fortunately it works fairly well anyway.
It's not fundamentally incoherent.
quote:I cannot, for the life of me, understand what it is to "sacrifice a right," especially to sacrifice some but not all of one's rights. (I understand what it is to lose legal rights, of course, but not what it is to lose moral rights.)
You have the right to not be put in prison. This is a general right most of us share. Those who don't have this right have sacrificed it through their commission of things we call "crimes." Your distinction between legal and moral rights doesn't make sense to me here. I'm aware of the difference between the two, but we are positing restrictions on state action - by definition, a legal right.
quote:Does my losing the right to life depend on how well-armed you are? Of course not. Obviously I must have the same rights in both situations. The only way I can explain this example is to conclude that I still retain my moral right to live -- it's just that taking away my life is a means to achieving other goods (such as your right to live and be free, etc).
No. you sacrifice your right not to be shot by attempting to take my life. I, however, only have the moral right to use lethal force if I have no other way to stop you. Your right to life doesn't depend on how armed I am, though. It depends on your actions. My right to use lethal force depends on how armed I happen to be.
I think the heart of this disagreement (heightened by your post below the one I'm responding to here) is that you seem to think physical outcome is the most important part of a moral calculus. I don't.
quote:I absolutely agree. But I would think the only way to achieve that end is through moral education. Punishment can teach us which acts we are supposed to do and not do -- we learn what brings pain and hardship on us, and what relieves these things, pretty well. But that can't be the same as understanding the moral reasons why one should not do these things.
And part of moral education is the promulgation of the social consensus of which crimes deserve which punishment. This provides knowledge of the relative severity of the wrongful acts and a tangible scale upon which it can be measured.
quote:You know, I wouldn't.
Then we have a fundamental, irresolvable difference in moral philosophy. A system which imposes such treatment, absent moral culpability or lack of choice, is fundamentally amoral to me.
quote:I mean, what counts as coercive treatment anyway?
Treatment which the person is not free to refuse.
quote:Our reaction to Minority Report (which I'm assuming you've seen, let me know if not) is largely due to the fact that the punishment is so terrible. The system in that movie is far more coercive than necessary.
That might have been your reaction. It certainly wasn't mine. Over-punishment, while wrong, is not the moral question being explored by the movie.
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quote:It would even be possible to make statement of intent a crime - we consider agreement to commit a crime conspiracy. Either way, I think the case can be made that a moral debt is incurred by the statement and it is this which justifies intervention.
This seems like a strange position. Clearly the intent to commit the future wrong is what makes my declaration of intent morally bad. If I had kept my mouth shut, I would still have the same intent.
Let's say I write in my diary that I plan to kill Bill tomorrow. The act of writing this down is clearly not morally or legally wrong. But if you find the diary and read this page, you have every right (and indeed an obligation) to try to prevent me from killing Bill. This will probably involve using force, and it might be easier for you to act before I have the sword in my hand.
Do you disagree?
quote:You have added "immediate," which often is an element of a crime - either a crime involving threats, or an attempt.
A rhetorical move. Remove the word "immediate" and I stand by my claim. We are justified in acting to foil the plans of a man who we know is plotting to kill someone next week, even if this involves some coercion.
quote:No. you sacrifice your right not to be shot by attempting to take my life. I, however, only have the moral right to use lethal force if I have no other way to stop you. Your right to life doesn't depend on how armed I am, though. It depends on your actions. My right to use lethal force depends on how armed I happen to be.
So wait, your right to use lethal force and my right to life are separate rights?
This doesn't fit my understanding of what rights are supposed to be. I understand "rights" to mean negative rights. A negative right is a claim one has to a certain sort of consideration from others -- my right to property entails that others can't do what they please with my things unless I allow it. The right to life also has this structure.
Your right "to use lethal force" sounds like a positive right -- something that a libertarian, for instance, would not believe in.
quote:I think the heart of this disagreement (heightened by your post below the one I'm responding to here) is that you seem to think physical outcome is the most important part of a moral calculus. I don't.
So what do you think is most important?
quote:And part of moral education is the promulgation of the social consensus of which crimes deserve which punishment.
Ah, but this begs the question: is punishment ever deserved?
quote:This provides knowledge of the relative severity of the wrongful acts and a tangible scale upon which it can be measured.
If I understand this correctly, you seem to think there's no notion of how severe a moral wrong is, except the notion of what punishment is appropriate. But I can think of several other ways to quantify this. For example, how much resentment or anger I am justified in feeling toward the wrongdoer. Or how hard I should work to prevent people from performing the wrong act.
quote:Over-punishment, while wrong, is not the moral question being explored by the movie.
Obviously not, but it is a way that the movie manipulates the audience's reaction to the central moral question. Likewise for the fact that the precogs do turn out to be fallible. If the movie didn't manipulate its audience this way, I think the typical viewer would reach a different conclusion about pre-crime.
Do you really think that no amount of force, however small, would be justified in stopping pre-criminals? That seems like a case of you bending over backwards to make your judgement in this case conform to your principles.
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quote:This seems like a strange position. Clearly the intent to commit the future wrong is what makes my declaration of intent morally bad. If I had kept my mouth shut, I would still have the same intent.
My primary distinguishing factor has been choice. A person who has made a statement of intent has made a choice. I'm comparing this to a theoretical construct where we know what a person will do but they haven't chosen to do so yet.
quote:Let's say I write in my diary that I plan to kill Bill tomorrow. The act of writing this down is clearly not morally or legally wrong. But if you find the diary and read this page, you have every right (and indeed an obligation) to try to prevent me from killing Bill. This will probably involve using force, and it might be easier for you to act before I have the sword in my hand.
Again, there is the element of choice already made here.
There are many acts that can be taken to prevent the killing that are not coercive. Increasing the protection around Bill, for example.
There are other actions which are coercive, and these are not justified prior to some overt act.
quote:A rhetorical move. Remove the word "immediate" and I stand by my claim. We are justified in acting to foil the plans of a man who we know is plotting to kill someone next week, even if this involves some coercion.
Yes, it was a rhetorical move you made. I'm glad you recognize it.
Planning is more than a statement of intent. Once planning has begun, there are actions against which that intent may be judged.
Remember, my primary differentiating factor is volition or choice. Planning clearly indicates choice.
quote:So wait, your right to use lethal force and my right to life are separate rights?
Of course they are.
quote:This doesn't fit my understanding of what rights are supposed to be. I understand "rights" to mean negative rights.
Then you are only dealing with a subset of rights. I make a contract with you and do the work I promised. You withhold the pay you promised. I have the right to that money, and that is not a negative right.
Leaving that aside, my right to shoot is really my right to shoot without later suffering criminal liability. So it still is a negative right - the right to do something includes the right to not be punished for doing it.
quote:A negative right is a claim one has to a certain sort of consideration from others -- my right to property entails that others can't do what they please with my things unless I allow it. The right to life also has this structure.
Yes, it does. And attempting to kill another person means that you forfeit the right not to have your life taken during the attempt.
quote:Your right "to use lethal force" sounds like a positive right -- something that a libertarian, for instance, would not believe in.
Good thing I'm not a libertarian then. (Actually, I doubt many libertarians would agree with your statement. I believe most would say a person has the right to use lethal force to defend their own life but not the right to be given a gun with which to do so.) Further, my "right to use lethal force" is of the exact same kind as your right to speak, except that ther circumstances in which I may exercise the right to use lethal force are more limited. Either way, the right entails not being prevented from carrying out a specific action by the state and also not suffering subsequent penalty for carrying out that act.
quote:If I understand this correctly, you seem to think there's no notion of how severe a moral wrong is, except the notion of what punishment is appropriate.
Then you don't understand it correctly. The punishment levels represent society's consensus (not unanimous opinion, but the end results of a means by which society comes together to judge such things). It's an indication of how bad society thinks something is, not the actual measure.
quote:Obviously not, but it is a way that the movie manipulates the audience's reaction to the central moral question. Likewise for the fact that the precogs do turn out to be fallible. If the movie didn't manipulate its audience this way, I think the typical viewer would reach a different conclusion about pre-crime.
I disagree.
quote:Do you really think that no amount of force, however small, would be justified in stopping pre-criminals? That seems like a case of you bending over backwards to make your judgement in this case conform to your principles.
Only because you are continuing to apply your judgment to my positions.
If a person has not chosen to act wrongfully, then coercion (actual coercion, not the coercive effect of knowing punishment is likely) is not justified. I don't think this is a particularly novel concept, nor am I unique in holding to it, so I don't think that your incredulity well-grounded.
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quote:My primary distinguishing factor has been choice. A person who has made a statement of intent has made a choice.
Ah, I see. It wasn't clear to me before that this was the distinguishing feature for you.
This is an interesting position, but I see a lot of potential problems. For one thing, there are many morally wrong acts for which we can punish people, but which involve no element of choice.
Negligence is a prime example. Suppose I run a red light. Not because I wanted to -- indeed, I wanted not to -- but because I just didn't see the light turn red. I didn't choose to run the light, but still I have done wrong and am liable for it.
Also, it seems like there are plenty of cases where someone can choose to do wrong and yet not be liable. A friend of mine recently became very angry with his girlfriend and declared that he would do some nasty, undeserved things to her. If she had been around then, he'd have done these things. He had, at that time, chosen to do them. But I knew that in fact he would change his mind before he had a chance to commit the wrong. I think in this case we would say that my friend was not culpable.
quote:There are many acts that can be taken to prevent the killing that are not coercive. Increasing the protection around Bill, for example.
There are other actions which are coercive, and these are not justified prior to some overt act.
Of course I'm asking you to suppose, as is the case in rare examples, that there are no non-coercive methods available if you want to stop the wrong from happening.
quote:I make a contract with you and do the work I promised. You withhold the pay you promised. I have the right to that money, and that is not a negative right.
An ethical libertarian like Robert Nozick would say that it is a negative right, since the money became your property when your end of the contract was fulfilled.
quote:Leaving that aside, my right to shoot is really my right to shoot without later suffering criminal liability. So it still is a negative right - the right to do something includes the right to not be punished for doing it.
I would think that your right not to be punished would just be explained by a right you mentioned earlier -- the overall right not to be imprisoned that you believe is forfeit in some cases of wrongdoing. Or is the picture here that I have a whole bunch of separate rights -- the right to shoot without imprisonment, the right to take a pee without imprisonment, etc? That seems weird to the point of being unbelievable.
quote:Then you don't understand it correctly. The punishment levels represent society's consensus (not unanimous opinion, but the end results of a means by which society comes together to judge such things). It's an indication of how bad society thinks something is, not the actual measure.
OK. So now I say to you, there are many other scales by which we can measure the severity of a wrong. Why is punishment necessary in order to educate people morally?
Also, I deny that punishment provides an accurate measure of how wrong an action is according to society. Willful theft seems, in many cases, more wrong than negligent killing. If I make a mistake and kill someone while driving, that doesn't mean I'm a bad person. But the punishment is more severe.
Moreover, telling a vicious lie or betraying a friend's trust can be terribly wrong, even in cases where these acts are in no way illegal.
quote:If a person has not chosen to act wrongfully, then coercion (actual coercion, not the coercive effect of knowing punishment is likely) is not justified. I don't think this is a particularly novel concept, nor am I unique in holding to it, so I don't think that your incredulity well-grounded.
But I am incredulous. What about if the situation were more serious than mere murder -- what if the precogs told you that someone would soon choose to commit an act of nuclear terrorism that would kill millions? Would you oppose forceful intervention prior to choice in this case?
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quote:This is an interesting position, but I see a lot of potential problems. For one thing, there are many morally wrong acts for which we can punish people, but which involve no element of choice.
Negligence is a prime example. Suppose I run a red light. Not because I wanted to -- indeed, I wanted not to -- but because I just didn't see the light turn red. I didn't choose to run the light, but still I have done wrong and am liable for it.
Not true. The choice to act without due care is a choice. In the case of running a red light, you chose to drive, making an implict agreement to pay attention. You failed to do so.
Note that we take this into account in grading. Premeditated murder is worse than killing in the heat of passion, which is worse than negligent homicide.
quote:Also, it seems like there are plenty of cases where someone can choose to do wrong and yet not be liable. A friend of mine recently became very angry with his girlfriend and declared that he would do some nasty, undeserved things to her. If she had been around then, he'd have done these things. He had, at that time, chosen to do them. But I knew that in fact he would change his mind before he had a chance to commit the wrong. I think in this case we would say that my friend was not culpable.
I disagree. He was culpable of something, just not physically harming her. But the more imminent his ability to cary his intent out, the greater force is justified.
quote:I would think that your right not to be punished would just be explained by a right you mentioned earlier -- the overall right not to be imprisoned that you believe is forfeit in some cases of wrongdoing. Or is the picture here that I have a whole bunch of separate rights -- the right to shoot without imprisonment, the right to take a pee without imprisonment, etc? That seems weird to the point of being unbelievable.
If you give a speech denouncing the war and are imprisoned for it, your right to free speech was infringed.
quote:Why is punishment necessary in order to educate people morally?
I didn't say it was. I said moral education was a good obtained through the inclusion of retributive concepts in the criminal punishment system.
quote:Also, I deny that punishment provides an accurate measure of how wrong an action is according to society. Willful theft seems, in many cases, more wrong than negligent killing. If I make a mistake and kill someone while driving, that doesn't mean I'm a bad person. But the punishment is more severe.
I didn't say it provided an accurate measure of how wrong an action is. It provides a measure of how wrong society thinks an action is. If the law were as you stated, then society has said that it finds involuntary killing to be worse than theft.
The law isn't as you stated, however. In Virginia, for instance, involuntary manslaughter is punishable by 1-10 years. Grand larceny (theft of $5 or more from a person, $200 or more not from a person, or any firearm) carries a sentence of 1 to 20 years. Burglary can carry a life sentence. So many instances of wilfull theft are treated more seriously than involuntary manslaughter.
quote:Moreover, telling a vicious lie or betraying a friend's trust can be terribly wrong, even in cases where these acts are in no way illegal.
Of course it is. I never claimed the punishment scale represented a complete scale of wrongdoing. I said it represented a societal judgment, one society has a duty to educate about.
quote:But I am incredulous. What about if the situation were more serious than mere murder -- what if the precogs told you that someone would soon choose to commit an act of nuclear terrorism that would kill millions? Would you oppose forceful intervention prior to choice in this case?
There are many illegal choices before nuclear terrorism can be carried out, and intervention can occur at any of them.
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quote:Not true. The choice to act without due care is a choice. In the case of running a red light, you chose to drive, making an implict agreement to pay attention. You failed to do so.
Surely it's sometimes possible for me to be attentive and to make a mistake. Anyway, I don't think it's accurate to characterize negligence as a choice. It's not like I ever say to myself "I've decided to be negligent for the next few minutes." In fact, I might fully intend to pay attention and still fail to do so. I decided to pay attention, and I tried to, but my attention wavered for a moment and I made a mistake. Our minds aren't fully under our conscious control.
It seems wrong to say that I can ever choose to do something without intending to do it. But unintentional wrongdoing is possible, as the case of negligence shows. So clearly the moral significance of actions is not, as you say, necessarily connected to the notion of choice.
quote:I said moral education was a good obtained through the inclusion of retributive concepts in the criminal punishment system.
Right, and what I'm saying is that if moral education could be accomplished through non-harmful means (I'm not saying it always can be, but suppose it could be), then the non-harmful education would be more beneficial than punishment.
quote:I didn't say it provided an accurate measure of how wrong an action is. It provides a measure of how wrong society thinks an action is.
So society doesn't think it's at all wrong to lie or betray someone's trust when there's no money involved?
Seems more likely that the severity of punishment measures something quite different from the severity of moral wrong -- to wit, how much of society's effort should go into deterring people from committing certain acts.
quote:There are many illegal choices before nuclear terrorism can be carried out, and intervention can occur at any of them.
Dag, we're talking ethics here. You have to be able to deal with some idealized thought experiments. (And I know from your thread about the two guys and the bear that you're quite comfortable doing this. )
Let's suppose you know that, by the time the prospective terrorist decides to carry out the act, there will be nothing you can do to stop him. Your only chance to prevent the bomb from going off is to act before his choice. Your view entails that it's morally wrong to use any amount of coercive force to stop him. I find that impossible to accept.
quote:Surely it's sometimes possible for me to be attentive and to make a mistake. Anyway, I don't think it's accurate to characterize negligence as a choice. It's not like I ever say to myself "I've decided to be negligent for the next few minutes." In fact, I might fully intend to pay attention and still fail to do so. I decided to pay attention, and I tried to, but my attention wavered for a moment and I made a mistake. Our minds aren't fully under our conscious control.
You chose to drive and you chose - by going through licensure and driver's ed - to accept the risks associated with inattentive driving.
quote:But unintentional wrongdoing is possible, as the case of negligence shows.
But you stole chose to commit the negligent act - you just didn't realize it was negligent at the time. The choice to perform the act was present.
quote:Right, and what I'm saying is that if moral education could be accomplished through non-harmful means (I'm not saying it always can be, but suppose it could be), then the non-harmful education would be more beneficial than punishment.
This was the last of several points I made to support the idea of moral debt in punishment. I didn't say it alone justified this. I said it's a benefit that occurs because of it.
quote:So society doesn't think it's at all wrong to lie or betray someone's trust when there's no money involved?
No. It means such wrongs will be treated as private wrongs, and that the coercive force of the state will not be used to punish such acts.
quote:Seems more likely that the severity of punishment measures something quite different from the severity of moral wrong -- to wit, how much of society's effort should go into deterring people from committing certain acts.
Which is what brings about draconian penalties for crack while cocaine dealers can sell 100 times more before reaching the same level of punishment - the desire to deter an act outside the scope of the moral wrong caused by the act. Without the concept of moral debt, punishment becomes merely getting people to do what we want them to do.
Of course, that happens. The point is that it shouldn't happen.
quote:Dag, we're talking ethics here. You have to be able to deal with some idealized thought experiments. (And I know from your thread about the two guys and the bear that you're quite comfortable doing this. [Smile] )
Let's suppose you know that, by the time the prospective terrorist decides to carry out the act, there will be nothing you can do to stop him. Your only chance to prevent the bomb from going off is to act before his choice. Your view entails that it's morally wrong to use any amount of coercive force to stop him. I find that impossible to accept.
Not all ills can be prevented. Why do you think people debate whether going back in time to kill Hitler would be a good thing? Because it's a hard question, and it's not at all obvious to the human conscious that all choices which prevent death are good.
If you had the knowledge of the bomb plot, and you couldn't convince anyone else, would you kill this person and then confess to doing so?
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posted
I still think you're wrong about negligent acts being intentional.
quote:But you stole chose to commit the negligent act - you just didn't realize it was negligent at the time. The choice to perform the act was present.
Now we're getting closer to the real issue. If I don't know that an action of mine will bring about some bad consequence, is it wrong for me to do it?
Seems like it depends. Let's say that I'm a paramedic and I inject someone with a drug that, totally unbeknownst to anyone, he's allergic to. The patient dies. Seems I'm not responsible for this. Although I chose to inject him, I didn't choose to kill him and I couldn't be expected to know that he would die.
But now let's say I'm driving and I step on the gas; unbeknownst to me, this causes me to run a red light and hit another car. I didn't choose to run the light or hit the car, but I do seem responsible. Why? Because I should've known that stepping on the gas would cause me to run the red light.
So it seems that what I'm culpable for is not my choice to run the light, but my ignorance. And we've stipulated that I didn't choose to be ignorant. I was trying to pay attention. My normal faculties just happened to fail me on this one occasion.
quote:Without the concept of moral debt, punishment becomes merely getting people to do what we want them to do.
Ideally: not what we want them to do, but what they should do, and for the right reasons.
Note also that I've never committed myself to the view that punishment is justified whenever it will deter future wrongdoing. I just believe that it is never justified unless it will deter future wrongdoing.
quote:If you had the knowledge of the bomb plot, and you couldn't convince anyone else, would you kill this person and then confess to doing so?
Yes, if there was no other way to stop him. Except I probably wouldn't confess if I thought I'd be found guilty. No point in my getting in trouble for doing the right thing.
The examples could get worse and worse, by the way. It has to be permissible to use coercive force against the innocent in some cases. What if someone is carrying a plague that will wipe out the human race? Isn't it my duty to incarcerate him if that will prevent the spread of the disease?
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quote:Seems like it depends. Let's say that I'm a paramedic and I inject someone with a drug that, totally unbeknownst to anyone, he's allergic to. The patient dies. Seems I'm not responsible for this. Although I chose to inject him, I didn't choose to kill him and I couldn't be expected to know that he would die.
If you didn't ask him if he were allergic (assuming he was lucid) or if you failed to check his medalert bracelet, you would have chosen to not follow your duty of care. If you did those things, then you weren't negligent.
You've postulated negligence. Negligence is the failure to meet the standard of care. There are many situations where one causes a bad outcome where one is not negligent, and generally no culpability attaches.
quote:So it seems that what I'm culpable for is not my choice to run the light, but my ignorance. And we've stipulated that I didn't choose to be ignorant. I was trying to pay attention. My normal faculties just happened to fail me on this one occasion.
No. What your culpable for is not following the appropriate duty of care, which states that you should know conditions before proceeding.
quote:Ideally: not what we want them to do, but what they should do, and for the right reasons.
Note also that I've never committed myself to the view that punishment is justified whenever it will deter future wrongdoing.
Then what puts that upper limit on what is justified? I submit that it is the amount of moral culpability in the act - something that is measured as part of the retributive element of punishment.
quote:Isn't it my duty to incarcerate him if that will prevent the spread of the disease?
His choosing to go into populated areas where he could infect people would be a wrongful act. Therefore he can be prevented from doing so. If he doesn't know he has the disease, then he can be informed.
You keep skipping over the choice part. It's not his fault he's infected (presumably). It is his fault if he knows he's infected and doesn't take steps to not spread the disease. And at the time of fault, or when it is imminent, then coercive force is justified.
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Sorry I wasn't clear, the paramedic case wasn't supposed to be an example of negligence. It was supposed to be a case where you chose to do something that turned out to be harmful, but you did it in ignorance like in the case of running the red light. The moral difference between the two cases is that in the red light case you're to blame for your ignorance -- you should've known that you were running the light.
quote:What your culpable for is not following the appropriate duty of care, which states that you should know conditions before proceeding.
That sounds much like what I'm saying. I didn't know the light was red, and I thought I knew it was green, so my culpable ignorance (and not my choice) is what explains the wrongdoing.
quote:Then what puts that upper limit on what is justified?
Roughly, the fact that society can't justly demand heinous sacrifice from anyone, including criminals, unless there is some overwhelming good (like saving a nation or the world) that can't be achieved any other way. This is also why I think the death penalty is wrong. It's one thing to demand, in service of the Greater Good, that you submit to imprisonment, and quite another to demand your life.
quote:His choosing to go into populated areas where he could infect people would be a wrongful act. Therefore he can be prevented from doing so. If he doesn't know he has the disease, then he can be informed.
Dag, again, these are thought experiments. I can stipulate that the guy doesn't know he's sick, and I have no way of convincing him quickly enough to save humanity. Suppose he's already on his way to a populated area and it's crucial that I act immediately.
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quote:Dag, again, these are thought experiments. I can stipulate that the guy doesn't know he's sick, and I have no way of convincing him quickly enough to save humanity. Suppose he's already on his way to a populated area and it's crucial that I act immediately.
Yo! You've got a plague that will kill humanity. Stop.
*doesn't stop*
*use minimum necessary force to stop plague bringer with perfect justification*
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posted
No, because as I've stipulated, he's ignorant of the facts that make his action wrong, assuming he doesn't believe you that he has the plague.
I assure you, there are ways to adjust the example such that the only way to prevent the extinction of the species is to harm a blameless person. He might have cotton in his ears. He might be in a car with the windows shut and the radio off. He might just not be in the habit of taking it seriously when someone says "Yo! You've got a plague that will kill humanity." Whatever.
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Assume that the guy with the plague does not understand any English. He does not understand you when you say "plague", "kill", or "stop". If he does not understand, he has not made a conscious choice to ignore the warning. He has not chosen to act wrongfully. Unless you have invented a moral obligation to understand English, or a moral obligation to verify that you are free from disease before interacting with other humans, this man has not made a wrong choice.
This isn't far fetched or concocted, its done regularly. If I were to visit some country outside the US and there was an outbreak of Typhoid (for example) while I was visiting, I would prevented me from returning to the US until I could prove that I was not carrying the disease. In essense, I would be considered guilty of carrying the disease until proven innocent. Such quarantines are unquestionably a restriction of peoples rights and it is generally considered a just action.
Which leads me back to my original contention. Societies have a right and responsibility to ensure the safety and security of their citizens. This societal right must be balanced against the rights of individuals. It is this balancing which necessitates considerations of the severity of crime and not a moral obligation of retribution.
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