IMO punishment has nothing to do with suffering but everything to do with removing the capacity of or precluding the possibility of a similar event occuring in the future. Whether it's imprisonment, reform & rehabilitation etc. the end goal is to minimize the probability of it reoccurring, either by the criminal themselves or by other potential criminals.
I hope you continue this topic of crime and punishment. It is very interesting and can be approached from basically every academic discipline :) Thx for video
From a determinist perspective, consequentialism is a logically preferable theory. Any form of retributivism relies on the concept of free will, because if a person had no choice not to perform an action then they can't really be held accountable, and therefore do not deserve any punishment. So I would argue that we have to adopt a consequentialist stance if we are to implement a system of punishment because the justifications of encouraging rehabilitation and deterring future crimes withstand negation of the idea that the criminal is to blame.
I don't see why a person can't deserve punishment simply because their actions were physically determined. Why not simply say that moral culpability is also deterministic, and that one deserves a punishment if they were the cause of the crime?
Interesting, I feel that to say that 'they were the cause' is shortcutting the argument that they are in fact just the effector of a long chain of causes, and that if 'cause' is the justification for moral culpability, then we may have to take into account the prior causes of the crime, and label them as perpetrators. For instance, psychological abuse may be the root cause of a murderer's actions, in which case you could argue that the abuser is responsible for the murderer's crimes.
Would not embracing a view that denies free will (a position I personally take), if done on a universal level, not lead to an increase in crime and in the necessity of law and punishment to stabilize society? Given the pain humans usually seek to avoid (and that is a product of crime), a pragmatic view would probably be taken despite the refusal of free will so as to keep the peace. I mean, what does that entail, to deny free will universally, that is, for everybody to believe their actions are not a product of their free will and that they experience life only as spectators? What would that change?
exactly, so to that end we can use consequesntialist justifications: that punishment acts as a deterrent to crime and that it promotes safety of non-criminels while providing an opportunity for rehabilitation of those receiving punishment
A small correction: when the Quran mentions the "eye for an eye" principle it is talking about how it was ordered upon the children of Israel in the Torah. But this command is not part of Quranic law. It has been abrogated so to speak.
This is incorrect. We have held that it continues to be applied. You will find a section on "Qiṣaṣ" in most legal treatises that have a section on Jināyāt. You can check Ibn Rushd's (Averroes) Bidāyat al-Mujtahid (The Distinguished Jurist's Primer) volume 2, the second last chapter which is dedicated to Jināyāt, and you will see that is the case. Quoting Ibn Rushd: "The obligation for causing loss of life or limb is either _qiṣaṣ_ (lex talionis) or _diya_ (bloodwit, weregild)." Now one could argue that the mainstream legal schools understood the Qur'an wrong, but that's a different discussion. The point is, most Muslim jurists (as represented by the four most widely acknowledged orthodox schools of legal thought) did not consider it to be abrogated.
I think the punishment of crimes should be similar to the effective method of interrogation. You sit the criminal down and say, "You screwed up, and you caused real harm. How do we go about making this right?" I have a somewhat radical distaste for the notion of judicial precedence. I think there's a certain extent to which every crime is different, and it deserves its own measure. I also believe that criminal punishment should be reparative, not consequential nor retributive. Most criminals aren't depraved or psychotic; they're just broken people who have made a mistake. I think the best method of punishment is to help them see the error of their ways and help them fix what they've made wrong. Return what they've stolen, with interest. Rebuild what they've burned down. Make amends towards those they've harmed. Obviously, it's not as simple as that, but I think that belief, rather than "We want to see criminals suffer for their sins!" or "Trust us, this is for your own good," would make a strong foundational belief for a more ethical court system. But then again, that might be exactly what communicative punishment is, so... XD
I think that, depending on the philosophy of whoever has power over justice, this could go both ways, and backfire. Imagine for example a poor man stealing a loaf of bread from a megacorporation's supermarket to feed his family because he's poor. The justice system sits him in front of two people tasked with making him "understand his crime" in stealing food to feed his hungry family. Although I agree with the distaste you have for retributive justice, and I think some form of "rehab-like" system could potentially be better for society.
I definitely agree with you, but "rehab" is an odd word for it. Rehabilitation fixes the "broken" part, perhaps, but it doesn't fix the "who have made a mistake" part. I know this sounds horrible, but how does this judicial system recompense the company? Sure, if it was just a loaf of bread here and there, the company may not have much to worry about, but what if it was plasma-screen TVs? What if he stole a lot of them to support a whole neighborhood? There's a certain point at which "stealing to support my family" becomes "the company loses so much money that they have to shut down (at minimum, that branch of the store)." This is why I'm talking about reparative action. (Recuperative? What's a better word for it?) Like it or not, find it justified or not, but harm has been done, and it's up to the judicial system to recognize that and figure out how to undo the harm. I don't know what the solution is when the damage is "stock worth more than you will make in a lifetime" or "priceless one-of-a-kind object of personal value," like those vintage photos in John Mulaney's "One thing you can never replace" bit. Again, that's for greater minds than me to puzzle out.
How is that not the same as "trust us, this is for your own good"? If the criminal is aware that they did wrong already then they won't need to trust you about accepting the consequences in order to take personal responsibility for their actions. 0:28 Olly mentions that consequentialism isn't just about deterrence but includes systems in which the aim is "reform" (is that the word you're looking for?). I think a system focused on reformation as well as reparations would fall under there as well. All consequentialism means is that the purpose of punishment should be to achieve a positive result of some sort. Reparations by themselves could also work with retributivism if the focus is on returning value to the wronged party specifically at the expense of the wrong-doer, but I would agree that a consequentialist approach focusing on reformation and making reparations a part of that process makes way more sense. The hurdle I see here is the same one you do, what sort of reparations can be made to make up for the taking of a life? Then another maybe even trickier question is do you give the same punishment for first degree murder as you do for manslaughter? The loss is the same for the victims, but I have a hard time saying the same amount of responsibility for the loss should be applied to the perpetrator. That would seem to entail that the value of a person's life is considerably dependent in at least some cases on how that person dies. Or maybe it would just require some sort of insurance system where the government provides the same compensation in each case but the murderers pay more so that the manslaughterers can pay less. I would prefer a method in which the perpetrator is part of the process of discovering what sorts and amounts of reparations they need to perform in order to take responsibility for their actions, but I can't think of one where some sort of consistency isn't more necessary in order to determine their reformation status.
@@andrewphilos Out of curiosity, have you looked into restorative justice programs and their methodology? It's not a universal fix--there are some folks, like psychopaths, who may never be able to understand their wrongs well enough to follow any sort or reparative process and function healthily in society, and all of this presupposes that you can get criminals to acknowledge their guilt well enough to address it. Still it strikes me that it's methods are very close to what you describe, where the transgressor sits down with a facilitator and reps from the victim, community, and broader society to come to agreement on what happened, why it happened, what the results are, and how the wound should be healed.
I'm looking forward to hearing more about the Communicative theory of punishment; on the surface it sounds more like what I tend to think of as the role of punishment. Retributive punishment has the problems stated, certainly. Consequential punishment has issues of its own - for example, how far down the line are you allowed, or required, to look for the consequences that justify the suffering? What level of good justifies what amount of suffering? Can this be used to justify 'punishing' people who *haven't* committed crimes, simply because their punishment would create a 'greater good'? If Communicative punishment is what I think, I rather like the idea; essentially, punishment is a way for society of communicate to the offender and society as a whole that 'This is not okay to do', in a way that is tangible. It feels very similar to how a parent punishes a child - you aren't punishing them because they deserve to be hurt, and you aren't punishing them to make the world a better place; you're punishing them because they need to know that what they did is not okay, and the normal material consequences of those actions otherwise don't reflect that fact in a way that is tangible. If I shoplift, and there is no punishment, then the negative consequences (personal and societal) are not obvious to me; there is no reason for me not to do it, that I experience. But if the Law communicates to me, via some level of punishment, that 'This is not okay', then I know, at the very least, that getting -caught- shoplifting has negative consequences. Therein lies one of the flaws with this theory of punishment, one shared by retribution theories and consequential theories alike - the punishment is less associated with the crime and more associated with getting -caught- for the crime. I'm not certain how one could get around that issue.
Communicative punishment seems too similar to deterrence, which falls under the branch of consequentialism. So I can't wait for the next video to see how it could be a third distinct category.
If I am correct in my supposition, which by no means am I certain that I am, I think that's actually the point; that it has elements of both. The primary distinction between deterrence and communication likely being the difference between "You should not do this because this punishment is what we do to people who do that" versus "You should not do this, and the best way we can impress upon you that you should not do this is by this punishment." The difference is subtle, I do agree. It is less that the punishment is meant as a primary deterrent, and more that the punishment is the means to convey the information - you should not do this. The hope, I think, is that a proper punishment will convey the message to the point that it is understood that 'you should not do this, even if you aren't caught'. Hard to say. I'll be looking forward to hearing about it.
In my opinion an interesting aspect of this conversation is what happens when crime is the direct result of the potential punisher's influence on the potential criminal? For example many people cannot survive under capitalism which is maintained by the state so some may steal. How can the state imprison them for something it practically forced them to do?
They can't! That's why we storm the Bastille and free the oppressed of their chains! But yeah, this is basically why, as a consequentialist, I cannot support a system like free-market capitalism.
Peregrine O'Connor They do though. People like Trump get elected "offering" security from the results of capitalism while still claiming things like "hey trickle down economics rulez ". This feels so weird to me.
There's a video by leftist RUclipsr Xexizy that explores why that's the case. Basically, when capitalism creates the conditions for revolution, the anger of the people can manifest itself in one of two ways: A fascist revolution which protects property rights while installing an authoritarian government that scapegoats *somebody else* for the conditions that capitalism created, or a leftist revolution. Since the fascists protect property rights, the ruling class supports them over the leftists. In America, they've done a REALLY good job of this: They've basically taken socialist revolution off the table by demonizing it to even the lowest common denominator. Socialism, Communism, Anarchism, etc. are seen as evil or unattainable to almost all Americans, so when the people are angry at the establishment, where else can they turn but fascism, or proto-fascism in the case of Trump?
P Sid - Well, we practically live in Marx's nightmare. And hey, never said leftist revolution was necessarily a good thing. Poorly handled, it can be terrible. But with the number of people free-market capitalism is disenfranchising, the number of angry, unemployed, and incarcerated people growing every day, all that anger is going to go somewhere. Whether it's to fascism or socialism, the current system is going to undergo radical change. People who are angry are rarely moderates.
In considering this question myself, the conclusion I came to was that punishment has no purpose in and of itself - it should only function as a way to repair the damage done. Obviously, this works best for theft or embezzlement, since they could repay in physical goods. It falls apart when it comes to crimes like murder or rape, where the damage is irreversible, but I think moving from a punishment-focused lens to a repair-focused mentality would be a social good.
Thank you for this video! I was debating this with a friend of mine about how imprisonment doesn't seem to always work and is too harsh in some circumstances as it ruins lives after an offender leaves the prison system, leading those to offend again. We did come to a similar conclusion of the ideas of moral desert nihilism where prison isn't punishment but keeping those safe from those we know are dangerous. If this is so it means after prison (when someone is considered safe to enter normal society again) they can 'pick up where they left off' as it were, reapplying for similar work and perhaps even being an active member of he community. However that also leads to the question of whether people who do wrong deserve to rejoin society as though nothing happened. Food for thought anyway, thank you for all your videos!!
Ideally suffering shouldn't be in the equation, Classical Punishment usually has this as the means to reformation: Keep doing X, bad "Y" continues happening. I lean heavily towards Moral Desert Nihilism, but criminal acts do need to be answered for.
On a basic level it seems reasonable to me that property crimes like stealing or vandalism or arson would deserve an economic punishment like community service or time in a work crew (to the extent that those are themselves morally justified - I just mean that this seems like the appropriate *form* of punishment if any). On the other hand, crimes of violence, where the person is found to be a danger to others, seem to deserve incarceration (or exile, but there are practical difficulties) for some period of time. But also, assuming that the criminal is rational (mental illness very clearly seems like its own issue), punishment should have sort of an educational or reforming effect: showing why that person's conduct was in fact anti-social and unjust. In other words, there should be an element of *modelling good/virtuous behavior* in a convict's sentence.
I have kind of an odd perspective on this subject that may make it seem like I support the things we see as ‚bad’, which I don't. This is just my theory and any alternative ideas or counterarguments are welcome. I am merely trying to find my kind of truth. I think we can agree that not a lot of people these days support the theory of ‚an eye for an eye’. A popular argument is that this makes us as ‚bad' as the culprits we hate. However, instead of actually revenging ourselves, what is in fact the whole purpose of 'an eye for an eye’, we allow the judicial system to take care of this. That means that we, as a society, are not better than any of the culprits. We seem to still live in a society based around revenge. And there is nothing wrong with that. But you have to agree that, if we are not doing anything bad by taking revenge (and I am sure we all think we don't), then the culprits are not doing anything bad in the first place. A common counterargument to make the culprit sound ‚worse’ than us, is the argument that he started it and shouldn’t have done it in the first place. But that is a stupid way of thinking because we have even learned in kindergarten, that „it doesn’t matter who started, as long as you contribute to it you are doing as bad as the one who started it”. Why are we so inconsistent and forget all these ‚commonly accepted’ things, just because it is convenient at the time? And sure, "he shouldn’t have done that in the first place” may be (!!) a valid argument, but it happens anyway, and there is nothing you can do to reverse it. Is what we are doing now, with our current judicial system based around revenge for the weak, really the way to go?
I'm not sure this is so much an issue with society as a whole as it is an issue of education and motivation. I do think that most people not only would prefer a more consequentialist system but that many believe that the system is more focused on rehabilitation than it actually is. I don't have actual stats to back this up, but I'd be willing to bet that people who are pro-revenge are, on average, way more passionate about the penal system than those who aren't pro-revenge (including those who think it should be some mixture of the two). As a result they're more likely to vote, more likely to be aware of the state of the penal system, and more likely to be aware of a politician's stance on the state of the penal system. So politicians will get more votes by being vague about details, but always strongly claiming to be "tough on crime" so that the people who are less likely to look further into the issue can think that they simply mean catching more criminals and making their neighbourhoods safer, while the people who do care enough to look further into the issue are more likely to be pleased by retributivist positions. A lot of people just really need to learn that being "soft on crime" should absolutely not make someone unelectable and even more importantly should not be a reason to stop paying attention to what about crime it is they're being "soft" on and what exactly the "tough" position they're being compared to entails. Like a lot of issues if we could reduce the rhetoric then politicians would be able to have positions that better represent the actual desires of the majority of voters.
Certain social psychologist call for "radical non-intervention" that states that people don't really become criminals until they are punished, since they become ostresized in society because of their criminal record and then have little to no other option than to have a 'career' in crime. Also to note, is the fact that the victims of the crime are almost never considered or included in the decision of what punishment should the victimizer should receive. The case of mother whose son was murdered comes to mind, who said she didn't want the murderer to get the death penalty because she did not want the murderer's mother to suffer as she had. P.S. I love you and I love your videos
The purpose of punishment should also be to prevent future crime (both on the part of the criminal and the part of others) in the manor that results in minimum suffering on the part of the criminal. The solution should not cause more harm than the problem and it should be the least harmful method that will work.
Unrelated to anything, I love that you have The Necronomicon, collection of stories by H.P. Lovecraft on your shelf, it brings a layer of awe and mysticism (for lack of a better word) to the discussions you bring. And on that note, would you consider exploring philosophical themes that may be hidden (in plain sight or not) in Lovecraft literature/lore? I'd be very much interested :) (Also asking for my very cultist twin)
Self-loathing borne of chronic depression and trauma forced me to wrestle with the concept of "deserving." Do I deserve to live, have food and shelter, and be happy sometimes even though my brain is telling me that I contribute nothing worthwhile to the universe? Yes, apparently, because "deserving" isn't a thing. We consider murder to be wrong regardless of who the victim is/was. When killing another human is considered justified, it's because it was done to preserve another person's life (self-defense), not because the person killed was "bad" or "worthless." So, human lives have inherent worth and should be preserved. Same with committing other crimes against people: legally, suffering is to be prevented against *all* people. Rich or poor, stealing from or assaulting them is equally wrong. If the person whose things were stolen has done bad things in the past, it's still wrong to hurt them. Even if one might argue that the victim "deserved" it. So, like... why does the state get to say people "deserve" suffering? Who is some earthly judge to say whether a person should have a worse life than they otherwise would have? How is it ever okay to actively decrease the amount of human happiness in the world for the sake of it? We should be working to prevent crimes, not just make "bad" people suffer because it's gratifying.
One could argue that suffering isn't bad, but undeserved suffering is bad. If we can link an unpleasant experience to our own actions, it's much easier to deal with. For example, if someone steals $100 from me, I would feel outraged, because there's no justification for the money being taken from me, but if I lose $100 in a casino, I don't feel that I've been wronged in any way, because I can link the loss of the money to my own decision to place the bet. Likewise, we wouldn't want to see an innocent person kidnapped and held against his will, but a person sitting in jail is a predictable consequence to that person having committed a crime. Of course, this becomes a problem when we feel there's a miscarriage of justice, like a person getting a long prison sentence for a nonviolent drug charge, or person who commits a crime out of desperation, like stealing food. We could look at this and say that it's not the concept of punishment that is wrong, but just some details that need to be adjusted. Still, it makes it hard to believe in any justice system, knowing that even a small imperfection could have serious consequences for people.
I am a strong moral desert nihilist. any form of suffering is immoral, even when done to "evil" people. You don't punish people for doing something because they deserve it - you create a situation around them that helps them do good and attempt to undo whatever suffering they caused. In doing so, they might suffer, but it's a temporary suffering that is still not morally "good", in the same way that cutting someone open for surgery hurts them. Non-punitive methods are preferable to punitive ones for the same reason that non-invasive medical procedures are preferable to invasive ones.
Unrelated to the content of the video, but you're lookin' sharp Ollie and I'm jealous of your tie. I've always been in the consequentialist camp, I've never really liked the idea that the point of the justice system was to avenge other people. I mean for one thing, that's basically one or two steps removed from an old fashioned blood-feud and I think most people would agree that those are pretty archaic. For another, it seems to come a lot closer to justifying vigilantism. After all, if the whole point of the system is simply to grant revenge then what difference does it make who dispenses it so long as it seems equitable? Consequentialism doesn't suffer nearly as much from those kinds of problems, vigilantism is more-or-less absurd on its face with the goal of reform in mind because determining how someone should be safely reformed and acting on that takes a lot more than simply determining guilt and finding some equitable return (for the most part). eg: you punched my friend yesterday, I will now punch you today - VS - you punched my friend yesterday, I will now teach an anger management class for you over the next several weeks.
Aside of what you said, An Eye For An Eye -> Equal Suffering has another problem: What if the victim suffers way more from losing that one eye than the person to be punished? Equal Suffering isn't just hard to measure, it also potentially changes what punishment people would get where Eye For Eye is actually really clear. Proportionality is a little better there, but really it's just the same thing dressed up in a little more nuance? I guess it would serve to refocus punishment to be more equal. The utility of the individual wouldn't go into it, right? Different people same crime? Proportionality, I'm pretty sure, would answer Same Punishment. And so would, in so far as it can be done, Eye For Eye. Equal Suffering necessarily wouldn't. I think Moral Desert Nihilism is actually right, or at least the most right of the options you gave on the retributivist side. But really, consequentialism is where it's at for me. The punishment itself should never be the goal. It should be a means to help a former criminal be a productive and "moral" member of society. (I'm vague with what I mean by "moral" here because I'm not quite sure I have a good answer, but I think it should be clear enough even with this vagueness. - Basically, they should no longer do crimes.) In short, Reform > Punish. Looking forward to hear more about Communicative Punishment though. To see whether that changes anything.
suffering can't really be measured so suffering should not be a standard of punishment. but I believe the mindset of punishment is that a criminal took a something so punishment is means to return what was taken. it's not a 1:1 transaction exactly because a social consequentialism is tacked onto this return mentality
I wonder if a retributivist argument might work better with a theory of ethics that focuses more on autonomy. If person (or people) A takes away person (or people) B's autonomy in some way, then B should benefit in as equal as possible an amount from a loss of A's autonomy. On a small scale it seems like it would work towards filling in the gaps that Lex Talionis leaves. A reckless driver could perform community service for groups that support the victims of car accidents for example. Some work would have to be done to figure out how much a person's reckless driving put others' autonomy at risk, but at least in this case the a lot of the heavy lifting could be done by statistics. The main problem with this theory that I can see at first glance would be that on larger scales (in both severity and number of people affected) it seems like it would inevitably lead to legalized indentured servitude. But I guess in a lot of prisons indentured servitude is already a reality, and at least with this system the essentially free labour would go towards helping those who are considered to have been wronged, so I guess an argument could be made that that might make this morally better than at least some consequentialist models..
Hey Olly! Unrelated to the video, but could you recommend additional philosophy-centric RUclipsrs or podcasts that you find enjoyable or illuminating? I'm a huge fan of your videos, but also a man of large intellectual appetites seeking a buffet
There is also if internal punishment, if someone was suddenly tried for a behaviour they themselves out an end to, and did their best to rectify due to their own guilt then I don't believe they deserve any additional punishment. Punishment, or, forced guilting serves no extra purpose and can also be immoral in it's self. I think the major flaws to these philosophies is assuming all crimes go punished, where in reality the overwhelming majority of crimes are fixed without the need of a court's intervention.
What about Rawls' Practice idea? Is that something to be considered? A practice is created via social rules and forms a sphere in which these rules must be applied. E.g. the justice system. In here you are retributivist by carrying out the rules (what people deserve is dictated by the rules). But you can be a consequentionalist outiside the "sphere" and edit the rules of the practice so that you get good outcomes. In the case of justice this would be done by perhaps the legislature. I apologise, I've probably butchered this idea horribly, but I'm here to learn.
If they get caught speeding they have to drive a certain speed for a certain time down a mildly rough track. They cant go home until their crime is paid for. It sounds fun until you start to spin from a wet patch on your third hour of going 155. Or make it the opposite. Make them drive a nascar car down a beautiful track freshly cleaned at 5mph for a couple days. If they are driving carelessly make it an obstacle course. If they drive drunk then make a drunk obstacle course where they are governed at 5mph. Showing someone why its a bad idea might help. Or maybe it would reinforce confidence, like a normal sobriety test.
Another problem with applying punishment under the assumption that the offendor deseves it is that we're applying a motive to ourr revenge (that the offendor deserves it) without realizing that the offender may have a motive as well. For example, if the offender robs an individual who scammed him out of all his wealth, our attempts of punishing him are akin to his own. I'd say the consequentialist reason seems the most reasonable, as a determinist myself.
criminalization and punishment are the glue that makes society civil and there is also the example of mentally ill people who are criminals should they be in hospital or prison? moreover an interesting criminal case that was cited to state that rehabilitation is better than prison was that of the Vienna Strangler Jack Unterweger whom after prison became a broadcaster and children book author whom started strangling after being released using his broadcasting job to highlight attention to his crimes.
I can't get behind punishment or retribution. However, I do think that we can justify requiring reparation for wrongs done to us when that is possible. There is also scope for a case that societies can morally defend themselves against immoral elements - this can mean imprisonment to prevent likely crime, as well as efforts at reformation.
I should clarify that when I say 'prevent likely crime' I'm not advocating preemptive 'justice' (which has its own problems) but further likely crime - such as might be expected from some serial rapists or psychopaths, or career criminals. In any case, I'm talking about convicted criminals, not people we think might commit crime.
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I'm definitely more swayed to the moral desert nihilism side of things here. The focus should be on forgiveness, and making EVERYONE'S life better rather than using direct blame/punishment. I don't think it's for us to say who should suffer and who shouldn't, regardless we often inflict a certain amount of suffering on ourselves if we do something bad. Someone who drives home drunk and accidentally kills someone will live with that guilt for the rest of their lives, I think that in itself is suffering enough. There needs to be focus on making it as personal as possible so both parties can empathise. However this starts to fall apart when we encounter actual psychopaths who rarely learn from their misdoings.
Could you do a video on the nature of violence? I study international politics with a heavy focus on war, strategy, and intelligence post 9/11 and would be really curious to hear a philosopher's view on violence as a concept!
I just discovered you through ContraPoints' channel. I've been binge watching your videos and love your work! Ethically I'm on the side of whatever reduces net suffering, so I'm a consequentialist. As such, I'm in favor of rehabilitation rather than retaliation. We know based on recidivism rates in the US as apposed to those in Norway that people who go through a rehabilitative system are significantly less likely to re-offend while simultaneously suffering less during their incarcerations, so there's a clear reduction in net suffering. I don't know much about other legal systems (I'm in the US), but I don't think that our retributivism is moral. First, juries and judges are inconsistent in how and when they administer punishments by categories such as race, gender, and class, which would seem to suggest that "fair" retribution is relatively defined by arbitrary categories. Retribution also fails to serve as a deterent to commiting crimes, as our recidivism rates range between 44-76% and our country incarcerates people at a hugely disproportionate rate to other countries.
I'd prefer the overall pragmatist moral framework (later Putnam, M. Lynch) for law. It argues that there are moral facts, but those facts are relative. So instead of going full nihilism, they arrive at a pluralistic conception of moral reality, which allows the pragmatists to say that criminals deserve punishment, or that the propositions in the form of "S deserves X" can be true and false while leaving the contents of such propositions open-ended.
There's always the anarchist response to this, which is to reject punishment for crime as justified, either as a moral desert nihilism, a consequentialist view rejecting the positive consequences of the punishment, a rejection of the legitimacy of the law, or, in most cases, all three of those positions, ie believing that there are no moral deserts, that punishing people for crime isn't morally good, and that the law isn't justified at the same time.
I guess I am a retributivist. I basically think the death penalty should exist, but it should only be reserved for the very worst of crimes such as terrorism and mass murder. There is no point in keeping the Anders Brevik's of the world alive.
Particularly when discussing proportionality, I feel like you jump quickly, if only implicitly, from "This requires us to make a difficult judgement call one has to make" to "This doesn't work."
Couldn't one refute the proportionality dilemma of one minute and ten minutes with the theory of consequentialism, since neither of those sentences would be effective for reform? I guess that assumes that consequentialism is correct?
O think the whole justice debate is off. People do not deserve to suffer( in any way )and should be neither dettered from doing crimes. Society should rather focus on dealing with consequences of immoral and unwanted behaviour and eliminating the causes for those actions, so abolish property to end theft (communism destroys main reasons for immoral behaviour- poverty and selfishness)... I also think that current society is too corrupt to even talk about justice, so it should be destroyed and a new one built, based on common principles(rules we set ourselves) rather than laws forced upon us.
What about those who have faith that God or the universe will dole out punishment or suffering for all negative actions, that is a karma system? I am not a believer myself, but I was just wondering if there were any legal codes that have tried to follow that idea. Personally, I think that each punishment needs to be subjectively determined by both motives and consequences because if you meant to kill someone but you merely harmed them then your motives should net you a harsher punishment than someone who was trying to help someone but accidentally killed them like a doctor who kills a patient during surgery. Keep up the great videos.
ok but if stalin or hitler were on trial, killing them is not about them suffering, killing them is about eliminating a threat to public safety. I think personally that our justice system is bad because we bace it on either "they deserve to be punished" or on "its a deturrant" when we really should be worried about "is this person a threat to themselves and others." We should make prisons much nicer to live in and stop storing petty theives in there but instead put abusers, rapists, murderers, terrorists and buisness execs who exploit their workers there, not because they deserve it or because it will stop others but because they need to be kept away from the public until we can be sure they've reformed and can interact safely with those around them again
One of the biggest reasons why people are imprisoned is just so that they are away from the rest of society and they can't do any more harm to the group. If a person kills someone then they are separated from the group and put in prison so they can't harm the rest of society. I doesn't matter so much wether they dereve it, it matters if the rest of society is safe from the people who commit crimes.
Even if punishment deters crime, is that not the same as threatening people into compliance? If something like extortion could be described as threatening to hurt someone, in some way, to get them to do, or not do, some action, and or behave in a certain way, then is the idea of punishment deterring people from committing crimes not the same? This is because deterrence through punishment also is threatening to hurt someone(jail/prison) to get them to make, or not make certain actions, and or behave in a certain way. If extortion is wrong because it’s that, then punishing to deter crime should also be wrong.
Yeah that's actually a good point. While I hate the "deliberately causing harm for the sake of it", the idea of intentionally ruling by fear doesn't sit right with me either. I prefer the public health and restorative intention when it comes to criminal sentencing. "This person is dangerous so let's put them on probation and put them on the right path", "This person is extremely dangerous so let's lock them in rehabilitative facility", "Fine defendant $xxxx.xx with portions going towards restitution to victim services". If we have to restrict a person's freedom, it should be done for the purpose of containing a threat, not as a way to threaten others or for the fucked up reason of revenge. General deterrence will come as a default though. If other people are getting fined, or having their freedoms restricted after committing serious crimes, it does tell others to avoid doing that.
If all we do and decide is just a consequence of chemical and electrical reactions in our brain how can we be accountable for any of the crimes we do? Punishing someone would be like putting the sun in prison because it's shining.
*Did you get these two books?* Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women & The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender And Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, And Resistant Imaginations *I'm just worried that I got the rug pulled out from under me because I can not confirmed if they've arrived except via email which is dubious..*
Once you feel like you have suffered enough, you have the luxury of feeling absolved of the crime. But how do you tell that to somebody who has to live with the knowledge that their perpetrator has escaped without having to undergo traditional punishments? But, since, imho, no real value ascribed to suffering telling somebody they've suffered enough doesn't undo their crime but merely pacifies the mob within us.
I believe in crime prevention over punishment. I think prison should focus on rehabilitation, criminal behaviour analysis and preparation to succeed outside of criminality. If it's vengeance you want then perhaps there should be a separate body for that. Obviously some criminals don't reform so i don't think it's a punishment to keep society safe from them. But at that point should that criminal not be considered to be severely mentally ill?
I've thought about this in terms of liberal philosophy - that you should allow people the freedom to do wrong (or right). But it's sticky in terms of memory - like for example when someone says "I do not recall" when asked to give evidence in court... are they lying, have they forgot, does the memory no longer exist (was the universe just created in that moment and so the events before never happened). To me I also thought that a brutal act should fade from the memory before someone is allowed to leave prison and rejoin society - but how does this work? Talk Therapy was introduced to council victims of shell shock in world war 1 because without it the traumatized soldiers were unable to move on a create new narratives etc - so should prisoners be socialised back into society? But then whose jobs should that be? - it wouldn't be fair for a teenager to have to speak to a recently convicted murderer. And then there's solitary confinement, which often leads to a high risk of suicide (Chelsea Manning is a case in point). Thought crimes, secrets. It seems as though the violent state thinks we're all dead legally anyway (a legal fiction).
I'd normally go in for consequentialism, but I don't have much faith in the state's ability to reform criminals. Re offending is the norm, sadly. Additionally, for proper career criminals who do it professionally, prisons can serve as training grounds. I read a book once where the author said 'they went in with a bachelors degree in heroine but came out with a masters degree in coccaine.' Where consequentialism truly breaks down is when the criminals have no fear of consequences. How could it possibly work in that instance? Make no mistake, those people exist. I met one recently. But the other theory doesn't always work either. A large percentage of people who suffer abuse go on to abuse other people. So if you're response to abuse is to abuse someone back, they'll continue to abuse others in the future and the cycle just goes on and on. An eye for an eye really does make the whole world blind. So tell me, what should I believe if I think both theories are fundamentally flawed? Could it be that we will never actually eliminate crime?
I have also lost faith in humans ability to be mature about punishment. Norways prisons are very respecting and kind to the criminals and have been shown to work 80% of the time (80% of the criminals never go back to prison) while in america 25% never go back lol, still people are too stupid to accept the fact that criminals should be treated humanely. They let their hearts speak over their head. And in the end more people end up hurt because of it
I've always been staunchly against the death penalty because I believe that the purpose of a punishment is to reduce crime and remove any lingering threat to society while offering the chance for rehabilitation. But I'm also very drawn to ideas of justice based upon what someone deserves i.e. we all deserve human rights because we are human and we can derive what those rights are from what a human deserves simply because of their humanity or dignity. Ultimately, the moral desert nihilist may have a point, but it seems like the consequentialist response is that these punishments keeps society functioning without chaos and so long as they continue to do that, regardless of the moral justification, they should continue to remain in place. But maybe the moral desert nihilists have considered that.
Perhaps in some theories, but I think the basis of morality is answering these questions: "What is the good?" "What is a good action?" "How do we measure goodness?" If you believe that society functioning is the ultimate good that could be the basis for morality, but lots of actions that I would consider immoral could be justified under that theory. Slavery, for instance, could be justified in this way.
Yes one could do that but I would argue that the inherent conflict and violence of slavery make a society less stable, since there is always the potential for an violent uprising that disrupts the society and throws it (at least to some degree) into anarchy
That's a reasonable response, but I'm still more convinced by theories of morality that focus on our moral responsibilities to individuals rather than society. For one thing, focusing on the individual is an easier test of when something is wrong whereas many societies still function with great individual harm. I think the resolution here is a non-essentialist one: certainly society functioning is a moral good, but it is one that must be weighed with and sometimes against individual wellbeing.
I agree that individual wellbeing is important but i would base this on the the better functioning of society if the wellbeing of its individuals gets respected. Generally I think that the moral decisions should be based on the principles that support functioning of society and not the immediate consequences.
I think neither consequentialism nor retributivism have it right. I think we, who do not commit any crime are just morally lucky. If any of us were born in the criminal's place, lived their life, shared their memories, I wonder If we would not commit that crimes too. Usually, people who commit crimes had a rough start, they suffered and are frustrated. Something might have gotten wrong in their past, even childhood, others were raised by their parents to steal. How can we blame them? Did we ever put ourselves in their shoes? No, we were raised in good families, values were inspired on us by our parents and had no abusive parents/ adults in our lives while growing up. Those people have their reason for their disfunctional moral compass. They should be seen not as criminals, but as sick people, because they are mentally sick to behave in that way. If a criminal kills a person, how is that criminal being in jail ever make the victim's family feel good about their loss? What matters is that that criminal never kills again, right? but we all know people who go to jail come back worse and continue doing crimes after. Punishing does not work and will never work because you don't punish sick people, sick people go to the doctor. Dostoevsky talks a lot about this dilemma in his books. His views are a bit too religious but the main point is that criminals are sick and society should try all it's best to make those people mentally healthy again.
If you take an excessive number of years away from somebody's life (10 or more), then you may as well have taken their life altogether. It's wrong to have committed a crime, but we all only have one life. Why make someone lose theirs so we can live with the smug feeling that we somehow worked for justice?
Since we're talking about crime and punishment, I'd like to ask for your personal opinion on Lavinia Woodward, the student who stabbed her boyfriend with a bread knife and was told that she would not receive a custodial sentence because of ''her talent'' and that it would ruin her future career. I'll leave the article at the end but my personal opinion is that, yeah, it would ruin her future career but perhaps she should have thought of that before she stabbed her ex with a bread knife. Does this mean that if I was studying in a top uni, at the top of my class that I could get away with such a crime? What if I studied at a mediocre uni and committed the same crime? For my opinion, I may be wrong but I feel - sometimes, you just have to accept the consequences for your actions. Article: www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/may/16/oxford-university-lavinia-woodward-stabbed-boyfriend-may-avoid-jail
i find the very idea of "punishment" a bit pointless. first, it assumes that someone has the right to knowingly and intentionally inflict suffering on someone. second, punishment for the sake of punishment in my opinion doesn't work. i suppose i would take a consequencialist (how the heck do you spell that?) view, but i think it does more harm than good to approach it as a punishment. deterrence doesn't always work - it will stop you from doing something you were only causally considering, but if you feel you have a good reason to commit a crime then you'll likely find a way to avoid getting caught, and if you're caught up in the moment and commit a crime then you weren't thinking about the risk of a punishment anyway. the way i see it is that you should do what you need to do to avoid crimes being committed while causing the least possible harm. so, locking someone up for the safety of the community is fine if that's necessary (and obviously i don't claim to be anywhere near an expert) but it should be seen as a protective measure rather than as a punishment. reform should always be attempted. fines are pointless, unless they serve some purpose - the money is the amount necessary to cover property damage and that is what it is spent on, for example, rather than just a fine for the sake of inconveniencing the criminal. no one "deserves" punishment because to me that implies that there is some standard objective morality outside of humanity and personally I don't believe that there is. no one "deserves" anything, good or bad. I'm not sure how best to articulate this. but my "morality" isn't a code or a rule book, it's just empathy. and my empathy must extend to criminals because if i stop feeling empathy for people who i think have done something bad then that means I'm no longer seeing all people as people.
The Social contract justifies legal punishment. The state protects you and gives you education and other services in exchange for you to give up some of your freedom, when you commit a crime you inflict damage upon others' freedom and rights. So the state has the right to punish you.
atavistic behavior is really all there is, the systems societies have shape that atavistic response but have no ultimate foundation and shift about because of social tensions in a civilization (domestication) of humans. law and ethics are determined often more by class and its branches ( sex, race etc) than by rationally or measure. systems of people embedded in maintaining law amd order have less interest in "justice" than what they actually do act as normalizers of their social seat. the crimes all people in a technological society commit daily against each other, "nature" and the potential future societies is enormous and monsterous, every bit of burnt coal or plastic used once is a total crime against life but we all atavistically continue to eat, drink, shelter, transport, etc in the most detrimental ways because it feels good to us, what ever is our punishment for these act? perhaps the unwillingness to be set free into the chaos, our lack of desire to be free sets us all to the capricious whims of ever shifting happenstance of law and obediance training.
Punishment per say is puposeless. (Retributivism is itself immoral and consequentialism is just philosophically incorrect). However, criminals should be made to make restitution of any harm that they have committed. That automatically makes the "punishment" fit the crime (you broke it, you fix it; cause a bigger mess, you have more to clean up), and eliminates punishment for victimless crimes. Criminals should also be restrained from committing future crimes, including incarceration as necessary to that end (though always with the aim to reform, if possible, and stop having to incarcerate further). And hey, yeah, if criminals find having to pay restitution to their victims or getting locked up for the safety of future victims unpleasant, and it makes them think twice about doing it again or makes them think in the first place and not do it at all, that's a great consequence. But it's a cherry on top. Don't explicitly inflict harm to get good consequences like that. Undo and prevent harm to innocents -- even if it means the one who caused or is aiming to cause that harm suffers for it in the process -- and let the chips fall where they may.
Romanski I second that. Consequentialism is the only system that makes sense, because every human being on earth cares about consequences. To just assert that it's incorrect and leave it at that is absurd.
"Do the ends always justify the means?" (which is what consequentialism-or-not hinges on) is a topic of enormous philosophical debate that I was trying not to get mired in on the way to stating my views on this narrower topic. There's lots of material on the debate available in anything that covers ethics theory (Olly might even have a video on it), and my own particular view is a complexed nuanced position that doesn't fit nicely into any of the traditional boxes in that debate, but just consequentialism simpliciter is an incomplete answer to say the least.
All the criticism of consequetialism essentially boils down to not having considered all the consequences properly enough. Like that invalid "take the organs from a healthy person and save five lives" example (for example).
So, if I pirate music, government should forcebly pay for my musical education, buy me a studio, give me a grant to develop and promote my music label, and then let people pirate my music. That would be fair, no?
Moral desert nihilism feels banal to me, and it's strange to think that that position is somehow strange or questionable. I would've thought that'd been assumed in philosophy circles, honestly.
you know, I suppose desert and deserve are only a couple letters of from each other so they sound alike. and I guess this explains "just desserts"??? although I guess it's "deserts". someone tag me out, I can't handle this
could you make a video of philosophies that you don't really agree with? since you are very left wing (for example) maybe you could make a video on Ayn Rand or Robert Nozick?
Elliott Collins His Ayn Rand video was literally an April Fools joke where at the end he linked like three sources on why he doesn't like her, one of which was the infamous RUclips censoring hypocrite Steve Shives. He never done a video where he examines her philosophy and critiques it and explains why he doesn't like it. This is, by the way, from someone who despises Ayn Rand and actually wrote a huge answer on Quora once specifically critiquing her without stopping to ad hominems like Olly did in the video he made about Rand. Some of Olly's videos are just so blatantly biased and illogical that they touch on the absurd, and his Rand video is one of them. For this reason, I too would love to see this kind of video where he actually examines philosophers he disagrees with and as to why he disagrees with them. Ayn Rand would be a particularly wonderful inclusion in that, as I have my reasons for disagreeing with her and yet don't know Olly's since the video he made about her was a blatant joke video meant to just insult her.
Richy Rich Like you say, his Ayn Rand video was literally an April Fools joke, and you're treating it as though he presented an actual argument. Don't get all superior about it just because he hasn't actually offered a serious critique before. It's okay to just dismiss her and move on.
Elliott Collins I'm not treating it like he presented an actual argument. My criticism of the video he made on Rand is that he didn't bother making any arguments against her, which is very disappointing since he runs a philosophy channel. I'm sorry that my demand of higher quality philosophy content on a philosophy channel is apparently me acting superior to him. He runs a philosophy channel, least he can do is offer an argument against her. He didnt even need to do it in the joke video, he could easily have made a video at any time after that video. Especially after the negative backlash the joke video received. And how exactly is it okay to just dismiss her and move on? I don't believe any sort of thinker deserves that kind of treatment. I don't even agree with Ayn Rand, but at least I actually provide arguments against the points she makes in her writing. Olly's supposed to be a philosopher, philosophers argue against ideas they don't agree with using logic, they don't just dismiss ideas.
killing someone makes you a murderer, it makes a soldier a hero, it makes an enemy soldier a killer. it was the same act, the difference is the people with winning power told everyone else how things are.
The TI(targeted individual) program is the worst punishment.. yet no TI know's what has warranted it yet lol. It not only destroys the body and mind.. but the soul itself
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Question: how can I send you some book ends because your books are always falling over and it distracts me
But the aesthetics!
IMO punishment has nothing to do with suffering but everything to do with removing the capacity of or precluding the possibility of a similar event occuring in the future. Whether it's imprisonment, reform & rehabilitation etc. the end goal is to minimize the probability of it reoccurring, either by the criminal themselves or by other potential criminals.
I hope you continue this topic of crime and punishment. It is very interesting and can be approached from basically every academic discipline :) Thx for video
Keep up the good work Olly, I've been a fan for a long time! :)
It's Abigail
I would also recommend philosopher David Boonin's book "The Problem of Punishment," which criticizes punishment and defends victim restitution.
What about restorative justice instead of punitive justice?
Would fit under consequentialism, I think.
That's a fairy tale. An utopia.
From a determinist perspective, consequentialism is a logically preferable theory. Any form of retributivism relies on the concept of free will, because if a person had no choice not to perform an action then they can't really be held accountable, and therefore do not deserve any punishment. So I would argue that we have to adopt a consequentialist stance if we are to implement a system of punishment because the justifications of encouraging rehabilitation and deterring future crimes withstand negation of the idea that the criminal is to blame.
I don't see why a person can't deserve punishment simply because their actions were physically determined. Why not simply say that moral culpability is also deterministic, and that one deserves a punishment if they were the cause of the crime?
Interesting, I feel that to say that 'they were the cause' is shortcutting the argument that they are in fact just the effector of a long chain of causes, and that if 'cause' is the justification for moral culpability, then we may have to take into account the prior causes of the crime, and label them as perpetrators. For instance, psychological abuse may be the root cause of a murderer's actions, in which case you could argue that the abuser is responsible for the murderer's crimes.
Would not embracing a view that denies free will (a position I personally take), if done on a universal level, not lead to an increase in crime and in the necessity of law and punishment to stabilize society? Given the pain humans usually seek to avoid (and that is a product of crime), a pragmatic view would probably be taken despite the refusal of free will so as to keep the peace.
I mean, what does that entail, to deny free will universally, that is, for everybody to believe their actions are not a product of their free will and that they experience life only as spectators? What would that change?
mrcrispyroll We would still have to pretend people have free will because we could never predict what they are going to do.
exactly, so to that end we can use consequesntialist justifications: that punishment acts as a deterrent to crime and that it promotes safety of non-criminels while providing an opportunity for rehabilitation of those receiving punishment
A small correction: when the Quran mentions the "eye for an eye" principle it is talking about how it was ordered upon the children of Israel in the Torah. But this command is not part of Quranic law. It has been abrogated so to speak.
Ah, thank you for the correction!
This is incorrect. We have held that it continues to be applied. You will find a section on "Qiṣaṣ" in most legal treatises that have a section on Jināyāt. You can check Ibn Rushd's (Averroes) Bidāyat al-Mujtahid (The Distinguished Jurist's Primer) volume 2, the second last chapter which is dedicated to Jināyāt, and you will see that is the case. Quoting Ibn Rushd:
"The obligation for causing loss of life or limb is either _qiṣaṣ_ (lex talionis) or _diya_ (bloodwit, weregild)."
Now one could argue that the mainstream legal schools understood the Qur'an wrong, but that's a different discussion. The point is, most Muslim jurists (as represented by the four most widely acknowledged orthodox schools of legal thought) did not consider it to be abrogated.
I think the punishment of crimes should be similar to the effective method of interrogation. You sit the criminal down and say, "You screwed up, and you caused real harm. How do we go about making this right?"
I have a somewhat radical distaste for the notion of judicial precedence. I think there's a certain extent to which every crime is different, and it deserves its own measure. I also believe that criminal punishment should be reparative, not consequential nor retributive. Most criminals aren't depraved or psychotic; they're just broken people who have made a mistake. I think the best method of punishment is to help them see the error of their ways and help them fix what they've made wrong. Return what they've stolen, with interest. Rebuild what they've burned down. Make amends towards those they've harmed.
Obviously, it's not as simple as that, but I think that belief, rather than "We want to see criminals suffer for their sins!" or "Trust us, this is for your own good," would make a strong foundational belief for a more ethical court system. But then again, that might be exactly what communicative punishment is, so... XD
I think that, depending on the philosophy of whoever has power over justice, this could go both ways, and backfire. Imagine for example a poor man stealing a loaf of bread from a megacorporation's supermarket to feed his family because he's poor. The justice system sits him in front of two people tasked with making him "understand his crime" in stealing food to feed his hungry family.
Although I agree with the distaste you have for retributive justice, and I think some form of "rehab-like" system could potentially be better for society.
I definitely agree with you, but "rehab" is an odd word for it. Rehabilitation fixes the "broken" part, perhaps, but it doesn't fix the "who have made a mistake" part. I know this sounds horrible, but how does this judicial system recompense the company? Sure, if it was just a loaf of bread here and there, the company may not have much to worry about, but what if it was plasma-screen TVs? What if he stole a lot of them to support a whole neighborhood? There's a certain point at which "stealing to support my family" becomes "the company loses so much money that they have to shut down (at minimum, that branch of the store)." This is why I'm talking about reparative action. (Recuperative? What's a better word for it?) Like it or not, find it justified or not, but harm has been done, and it's up to the judicial system to recognize that and figure out how to undo the harm. I don't know what the solution is when the damage is "stock worth more than you will make in a lifetime" or "priceless one-of-a-kind object of personal value," like those vintage photos in John Mulaney's "One thing you can never replace" bit. Again, that's for greater minds than me to puzzle out.
How is that not the same as "trust us, this is for your own good"? If the criminal is aware that they did wrong already then they won't need to trust you about accepting the consequences in order to take personal responsibility for their actions. 0:28 Olly mentions that consequentialism isn't just about deterrence but includes systems in which the aim is "reform" (is that the word you're looking for?). I think a system focused on reformation as well as reparations would fall under there as well. All consequentialism means is that the purpose of punishment should be to achieve a positive result of some sort.
Reparations by themselves could also work with retributivism if the focus is on returning value to the wronged party specifically at the expense of the wrong-doer, but I would agree that a consequentialist approach focusing on reformation and making reparations a part of that process makes way more sense. The hurdle I see here is the same one you do, what sort of reparations can be made to make up for the taking of a life? Then another maybe even trickier question is do you give the same punishment for first degree murder as you do for manslaughter? The loss is the same for the victims, but I have a hard time saying the same amount of responsibility for the loss should be applied to the perpetrator. That would seem to entail that the value of a person's life is considerably dependent in at least some cases on how that person dies. Or maybe it would just require some sort of insurance system where the government provides the same compensation in each case but the murderers pay more so that the manslaughterers can pay less. I would prefer a method in which the perpetrator is part of the process of discovering what sorts and amounts of reparations they need to perform in order to take responsibility for their actions, but I can't think of one where some sort of consistency isn't more necessary in order to determine their reformation status.
@@andrewphilos Out of curiosity, have you looked into restorative justice programs and their methodology? It's not a universal fix--there are some folks, like psychopaths, who may never be able to understand their wrongs well enough to follow any sort or reparative process and function healthily in society, and all of this presupposes that you can get criminals to acknowledge their guilt well enough to address it. Still it strikes me that it's methods are very close to what you describe, where the transgressor sits down with a facilitator and reps from the victim, community, and broader society to come to agreement on what happened, why it happened, what the results are, and how the wound should be healed.
I'm looking forward to hearing more about the Communicative theory of punishment; on the surface it sounds more like what I tend to think of as the role of punishment.
Retributive punishment has the problems stated, certainly. Consequential punishment has issues of its own - for example, how far down the line are you allowed, or required, to look for the consequences that justify the suffering? What level of good justifies what amount of suffering? Can this be used to justify 'punishing' people who *haven't* committed crimes, simply because their punishment would create a 'greater good'?
If Communicative punishment is what I think, I rather like the idea; essentially, punishment is a way for society of communicate to the offender and society as a whole that 'This is not okay to do', in a way that is tangible. It feels very similar to how a parent punishes a child - you aren't punishing them because they deserve to be hurt, and you aren't punishing them to make the world a better place; you're punishing them because they need to know that what they did is not okay, and the normal material consequences of those actions otherwise don't reflect that fact in a way that is tangible.
If I shoplift, and there is no punishment, then the negative consequences (personal and societal) are not obvious to me; there is no reason for me not to do it, that I experience. But if the Law communicates to me, via some level of punishment, that 'This is not okay', then I know, at the very least, that getting -caught- shoplifting has negative consequences. Therein lies one of the flaws with this theory of punishment, one shared by retribution theories and consequential theories alike - the punishment is less associated with the crime and more associated with getting -caught- for the crime. I'm not certain how one could get around that issue.
Communicative punishment seems too similar to deterrence, which falls under the branch of consequentialism. So I can't wait for the next video to see how it could be a third distinct category.
If I am correct in my supposition, which by no means am I certain that I am, I think that's actually the point; that it has elements of both. The primary distinction between deterrence and communication likely being the difference between "You should not do this because this punishment is what we do to people who do that" versus "You should not do this, and the best way we can impress upon you that you should not do this is by this punishment." The difference is subtle, I do agree. It is less that the punishment is meant as a primary deterrent, and more that the punishment is the means to convey the information - you should not do this. The hope, I think, is that a proper punishment will convey the message to the point that it is understood that 'you should not do this, even if you aren't caught'.
Hard to say. I'll be looking forward to hearing about it.
In my opinion an interesting aspect of this conversation is what happens when crime is the direct result of the potential punisher's influence on the potential criminal? For example many people cannot survive under capitalism which is maintained by the state so some may steal. How can the state imprison them for something it practically forced them to do?
They can't! That's why we storm the Bastille and free the oppressed of their chains!
But yeah, this is basically why, as a consequentialist, I cannot support a system like free-market capitalism.
Peregrine O'Connor They do though. People like Trump get elected "offering" security from the results of capitalism while still claiming things like "hey trickle down economics rulez ". This feels so weird to me.
There's a video by leftist RUclipsr Xexizy that explores why that's the case. Basically, when capitalism creates the conditions for revolution, the anger of the people can manifest itself in one of two ways: A fascist revolution which protects property rights while installing an authoritarian government that scapegoats *somebody else* for the conditions that capitalism created, or a leftist revolution.
Since the fascists protect property rights, the ruling class supports them over the leftists. In America, they've done a REALLY good job of this: They've basically taken socialist revolution off the table by demonizing it to even the lowest common denominator. Socialism, Communism, Anarchism, etc. are seen as evil or unattainable to almost all Americans, so when the people are angry at the establishment, where else can they turn but fascism, or proto-fascism in the case of Trump?
Peregrine O'Connor I agree completely with your second paragraph. The first one looks like Marx's dream vs his nightmare.
P Sid - Well, we practically live in Marx's nightmare.
And hey, never said leftist revolution was necessarily a good thing. Poorly handled, it can be terrible.
But with the number of people free-market capitalism is disenfranchising, the number of angry, unemployed, and incarcerated people growing every day, all that anger is going to go somewhere. Whether it's to fascism or socialism, the current system is going to undergo radical change. People who are angry are rarely moderates.
In considering this question myself, the conclusion I came to was that punishment has no purpose in and of itself - it should only function as a way to repair the damage done. Obviously, this works best for theft or embezzlement, since they could repay in physical goods. It falls apart when it comes to crimes like murder or rape, where the damage is irreversible, but I think moving from a punishment-focused lens to a repair-focused mentality would be a social good.
Thank you for this video! I was debating this with a friend of mine about how imprisonment doesn't seem to always work and is too harsh in some circumstances as it ruins lives after an offender leaves the prison system, leading those to offend again. We did come to a similar conclusion of the ideas of moral desert nihilism where prison isn't punishment but keeping those safe from those we know are dangerous. If this is so it means after prison (when someone is considered safe to enter normal society again) they can 'pick up where they left off' as it were, reapplying for similar work and perhaps even being an active member of he community. However that also leads to the question of whether people who do wrong deserve to rejoin society as though nothing happened.
Food for thought anyway, thank you for all your videos!!
Ideally suffering shouldn't be in the equation, Classical Punishment usually has this as the means to reformation: Keep doing X, bad "Y" continues happening. I lean heavily towards Moral Desert Nihilism, but criminal acts do need to be answered for.
On a basic level it seems reasonable to me that property crimes like stealing or vandalism or arson would deserve an economic punishment like community service or time in a work crew (to the extent that those are themselves morally justified - I just mean that this seems like the appropriate *form* of punishment if any). On the other hand, crimes of violence, where the person is found to be a danger to others, seem to deserve incarceration (or exile, but there are practical difficulties) for some period of time.
But also, assuming that the criminal is rational (mental illness very clearly seems like its own issue), punishment should have sort of an educational or reforming effect: showing why that person's conduct was in fact anti-social and unjust. In other words, there should be an element of *modelling good/virtuous behavior* in a convict's sentence.
I liked the music drop/start at 4:40. Combining music with philosophies made it easier to separate them and also made the video more interesting.
The hamirabi way of punishing tax evasion is either the repayment of those taxes or a tax increase for the duration of tide evaded.
I have kind of an odd perspective on this subject that may make it seem like I support the things we see as ‚bad’, which I don't. This is just my theory and any alternative ideas or counterarguments are welcome. I am merely trying to find my kind of truth.
I think we can agree that not a lot of people these days support the theory of ‚an eye for an eye’. A popular argument is that this makes us as ‚bad' as the culprits we hate. However, instead of actually revenging ourselves, what is in fact the whole purpose of 'an eye for an eye’, we allow the judicial system to take care of this. That means that we, as a society, are not better than any of the culprits.
We seem to still live in a society based around revenge. And there is nothing wrong with that. But you have to agree that, if we are not doing anything bad by taking revenge (and I am sure we all think we don't), then the culprits are not doing anything bad in the first place. A common counterargument to make the culprit sound ‚worse’ than us, is the argument that he started it and shouldn’t have done it in the first place. But that is a stupid way of thinking because we have even learned in kindergarten, that „it doesn’t matter who started, as long as you contribute to it you are doing as bad as the one who started it”. Why are we so inconsistent and forget all these ‚commonly accepted’ things, just because it is convenient at the time?
And sure, "he shouldn’t have done that in the first place” may be (!!) a valid argument, but it happens anyway, and there is nothing you can do to reverse it. Is what we are doing now, with our current judicial system based around revenge for the weak, really the way to go?
I'm not sure this is so much an issue with society as a whole as it is an issue of education and motivation. I do think that most people not only would prefer a more consequentialist system but that many believe that the system is more focused on rehabilitation than it actually is. I don't have actual stats to back this up, but I'd be willing to bet that people who are pro-revenge are, on average, way more passionate about the penal system than those who aren't pro-revenge (including those who think it should be some mixture of the two). As a result they're more likely to vote, more likely to be aware of the state of the penal system, and more likely to be aware of a politician's stance on the state of the penal system. So politicians will get more votes by being vague about details, but always strongly claiming to be "tough on crime" so that the people who are less likely to look further into the issue can think that they simply mean catching more criminals and making their neighbourhoods safer, while the people who do care enough to look further into the issue are more likely to be pleased by retributivist positions.
A lot of people just really need to learn that being "soft on crime" should absolutely not make someone unelectable and even more importantly should not be a reason to stop paying attention to what about crime it is they're being "soft" on and what exactly the "tough" position they're being compared to entails. Like a lot of issues if we could reduce the rhetoric then politicians would be able to have positions that better represent the actual desires of the majority of voters.
Certain social psychologist call for "radical non-intervention" that states that people don't really become criminals until they are punished, since they become ostresized in society because of their criminal record and then have little to no other option than to have a 'career' in crime.
Also to note, is the fact that the victims of the crime are almost never considered or included in the decision of what punishment should the victimizer should receive. The case of mother whose son was murdered comes to mind, who said she didn't want the murderer to get the death penalty because she did not want the murderer's mother to suffer as she had.
P.S. I love you and I love your videos
Well as a Dane we hear a lot for our justices system compared to the Eye for an Eye system in the us
The purpose of punishment should also be to prevent future crime (both on the part of the criminal and the part of others) in the manor that results in minimum suffering on the part of the criminal. The solution should not cause more harm than the problem and it should be the least harmful method that will work.
I think that's the jdea behind consequentialism.
Unrelated to anything, I love that you have The Necronomicon, collection of stories by H.P. Lovecraft on your shelf, it brings a layer of awe and mysticism (for lack of a better word) to the discussions you bring.
And on that note, would you consider exploring philosophical themes that may be hidden (in plain sight or not) in Lovecraft literature/lore?
I'd be very much interested :)
(Also asking for my very cultist twin)
love it. But the bigger question is what consitutes a crime and were does 'free will' or its lack come into the equation?
Thank you Olly for all the great work, please try to upload more !
Self-loathing borne of chronic depression and trauma forced me to wrestle with the concept of "deserving." Do I deserve to live, have food and shelter, and be happy sometimes even though my brain is telling me that I contribute nothing worthwhile to the universe? Yes, apparently, because "deserving" isn't a thing.
We consider murder to be wrong regardless of who the victim is/was. When killing another human is considered justified, it's because it was done to preserve another person's life (self-defense), not because the person killed was "bad" or "worthless." So, human lives have inherent worth and should be preserved. Same with committing other crimes against people: legally, suffering is to be prevented against *all* people. Rich or poor, stealing from or assaulting them is equally wrong. If the person whose things were stolen has done bad things in the past, it's still wrong to hurt them. Even if one might argue that the victim "deserved" it.
So, like... why does the state get to say people "deserve" suffering? Who is some earthly judge to say whether a person should have a worse life than they otherwise would have? How is it ever okay to actively decrease the amount of human happiness in the world for the sake of it? We should be working to prevent crimes, not just make "bad" people suffer because it's gratifying.
One could argue that suffering isn't bad, but undeserved suffering is bad. If we can link an unpleasant experience to our own actions, it's much easier to deal with. For example, if someone steals $100 from me, I would feel outraged, because there's no justification for the money being taken from me, but if I lose $100 in a casino, I don't feel that I've been wronged in any way, because I can link the loss of the money to my own decision to place the bet. Likewise, we wouldn't want to see an innocent person kidnapped and held against his will, but a person sitting in jail is a predictable consequence to that person having committed a crime.
Of course, this becomes a problem when we feel there's a miscarriage of justice, like a person getting a long prison sentence for a nonviolent drug charge, or person who commits a crime out of desperation, like stealing food. We could look at this and say that it's not the concept of punishment that is wrong, but just some details that need to be adjusted. Still, it makes it hard to believe in any justice system, knowing that even a small imperfection could have serious consequences for people.
I am a strong moral desert nihilist.
any form of suffering is immoral, even when done to "evil" people. You don't punish people for doing something because they deserve it - you create a situation around them that helps them do good and attempt to undo whatever suffering they caused. In doing so, they might suffer, but it's a temporary suffering that is still not morally "good", in the same way that cutting someone open for surgery hurts them. Non-punitive methods are preferable to punitive ones for the same reason that non-invasive medical procedures are preferable to invasive ones.
Unrelated to the content of the video, but you're lookin' sharp Ollie and I'm jealous of your tie.
I've always been in the consequentialist camp, I've never really liked the idea that the point of the justice system was to avenge other people. I mean for one thing, that's basically one or two steps removed from an old fashioned blood-feud and I think most people would agree that those are pretty archaic. For another, it seems to come a lot closer to justifying vigilantism. After all, if the whole point of the system is simply to grant revenge then what difference does it make who dispenses it so long as it seems equitable? Consequentialism doesn't suffer nearly as much from those kinds of problems, vigilantism is more-or-less absurd on its face with the goal of reform in mind because determining how someone should be safely reformed and acting on that takes a lot more than simply determining guilt and finding some equitable return (for the most part). eg: you punched my friend yesterday, I will now punch you today - VS - you punched my friend yesterday, I will now teach an anger management class for you over the next several weeks.
Aside of what you said, An Eye For An Eye -> Equal Suffering has another problem: What if the victim suffers way more from losing that one eye than the person to be punished? Equal Suffering isn't just hard to measure, it also potentially changes what punishment people would get where Eye For Eye is actually really clear.
Proportionality is a little better there, but really it's just the same thing dressed up in a little more nuance? I guess it would serve to refocus punishment to be more equal. The utility of the individual wouldn't go into it, right? Different people same crime? Proportionality, I'm pretty sure, would answer Same Punishment. And so would, in so far as it can be done, Eye For Eye. Equal Suffering necessarily wouldn't.
I think Moral Desert Nihilism is actually right, or at least the most right of the options you gave on the retributivist side. But really, consequentialism is where it's at for me. The punishment itself should never be the goal. It should be a means to help a former criminal be a productive and "moral" member of society. (I'm vague with what I mean by "moral" here because I'm not quite sure I have a good answer, but I think it should be clear enough even with this vagueness. - Basically, they should no longer do crimes.)
In short, Reform > Punish. Looking forward to hear more about Communicative Punishment though. To see whether that changes anything.
suffering can't really be measured so suffering should not be a standard of punishment. but I believe the mindset of punishment is that a criminal took a something so punishment is means to return what was taken. it's not a 1:1 transaction exactly because a social consequentialism is tacked onto this return mentality
Quality education about relevant, useful philosophy, as always! Great job, Olly!
I wonder if a retributivist argument might work better with a theory of ethics that focuses more on autonomy. If person (or people) A takes away person (or people) B's autonomy in some way, then B should benefit in as equal as possible an amount from a loss of A's autonomy. On a small scale it seems like it would work towards filling in the gaps that Lex Talionis leaves. A reckless driver could perform community service for groups that support the victims of car accidents for example. Some work would have to be done to figure out how much a person's reckless driving put others' autonomy at risk, but at least in this case the a lot of the heavy lifting could be done by statistics.
The main problem with this theory that I can see at first glance would be that on larger scales (in both severity and number of people affected) it seems like it would inevitably lead to legalized indentured servitude. But I guess in a lot of prisons indentured servitude is already a reality, and at least with this system the essentially free labour would go towards helping those who are considered to have been wronged, so I guess an argument could be made that that might make this morally better than at least some consequentialist models..
Hey Olly! Unrelated to the video, but could you recommend additional philosophy-centric RUclipsrs or podcasts that you find enjoyable or illuminating? I'm a huge fan of your videos, but also a man of large intellectual appetites seeking a buffet
There is also if internal punishment, if someone was suddenly tried for a behaviour they themselves out an end to, and did their best to rectify due to their own guilt then I don't believe they deserve any additional punishment.
Punishment, or, forced guilting serves no extra purpose and can also be immoral in it's self.
I think the major flaws to these philosophies is assuming all crimes go punished, where in reality the overwhelming majority of crimes are fixed without the need of a court's intervention.
What about Rawls' Practice idea? Is that something to be considered? A practice is created via social rules and forms a sphere in which these rules must be applied. E.g. the justice system. In here you are retributivist by carrying out the rules (what people deserve is dictated by the rules). But you can be a consequentionalist outiside the "sphere" and edit the rules of the practice so that you get good outcomes. In the case of justice this would be done by perhaps the legislature. I apologise, I've probably butchered this idea horribly, but I'm here to learn.
If they get caught speeding they have to drive a certain speed for a certain time down a mildly rough track. They cant go home until their crime is paid for. It sounds fun until you start to spin from a wet patch on your third hour of going 155. Or make it the opposite. Make them drive a nascar car down a beautiful track freshly cleaned at 5mph for a couple days. If they are driving carelessly make it an obstacle course. If they drive drunk then make a drunk obstacle course where they are governed at 5mph. Showing someone why its a bad idea might help. Or maybe it would reinforce confidence, like a normal sobriety test.
nice tie and good video
Another problem with applying punishment under the assumption that the offendor deseves it is that we're applying a motive to ourr revenge (that the offendor deserves it) without realizing that the offender may have a motive as well.
For example, if the offender robs an individual who scammed him out of all his wealth, our attempts of punishing him are akin to his
own.
I'd say the consequentialist reason seems the most reasonable, as a determinist myself.
criminalization and punishment are the glue that makes society civil and there is also the example of mentally ill people who are criminals should they be in hospital or prison? moreover an interesting criminal case that was cited to state that rehabilitation is better than prison was that of the Vienna Strangler Jack Unterweger whom after prison became a broadcaster and children book author whom started strangling after being released using his broadcasting job to highlight attention to his crimes.
I can't get behind punishment or retribution. However, I do think that we can justify requiring reparation for wrongs done to us when that is possible. There is also scope for a case that societies can morally defend themselves against immoral elements - this can mean imprisonment to prevent likely crime, as well as efforts at reformation.
I should clarify that when I say 'prevent likely crime' I'm not advocating preemptive 'justice' (which has its own problems) but further likely crime - such as might be expected from some serial rapists or psychopaths, or career criminals. In any case, I'm talking about convicted criminals, not people we think might commit crime.
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I'm definitely more swayed to the moral desert nihilism side of things here. The focus should be on forgiveness, and making EVERYONE'S life better rather than using direct blame/punishment. I don't think it's for us to say who should suffer and who shouldn't, regardless we often inflict a certain amount of suffering on ourselves if we do something bad. Someone who drives home drunk and accidentally kills someone will live with that guilt for the rest of their lives, I think that in itself is suffering enough. There needs to be focus on making it as personal as possible so both parties can empathise. However this starts to fall apart when we encounter actual psychopaths who rarely learn from their misdoings.
Could you do a video on the nature of violence? I study international politics with a heavy focus on war, strategy, and intelligence post 9/11 and would be really curious to hear a philosopher's view on violence as a concept!
I've mentioned it here and there, including in one video about X-Men! ruclips.net/video/7xE6Pb5y9hs/видео.html
I just discovered you through ContraPoints' channel. I've been binge watching your videos and love your work!
Ethically I'm on the side of whatever reduces net suffering, so I'm a consequentialist. As such, I'm in favor of rehabilitation rather than retaliation. We know based on recidivism rates in the US as apposed to those in Norway that people who go through a rehabilitative system are significantly less likely to re-offend while simultaneously suffering less during their incarcerations, so there's a clear reduction in net suffering.
I don't know much about other legal systems (I'm in the US), but I don't think that our retributivism is moral. First, juries and judges are inconsistent in how and when they administer punishments by categories such as race, gender, and class, which would seem to suggest that "fair" retribution is relatively defined by arbitrary categories. Retribution also fails to serve as a deterent to commiting crimes, as our recidivism rates range between 44-76% and our country incarcerates people at a hugely disproportionate rate to other countries.
You should cover natural law vs positivism.
All I can say to a retributivist is _"I don't know what you mean by 'deserve'"_.
I'd prefer the overall pragmatist moral framework (later Putnam, M. Lynch) for law. It argues that there are moral facts, but those facts are relative. So instead of going full nihilism, they arrive at a pluralistic conception of moral reality, which allows the pragmatists to say that criminals deserve punishment, or that the propositions in the form of "S deserves X" can be true and false while leaving the contents of such propositions open-ended.
This is an older video, but an episode (or series) on Foucault would be awesome.
There's always the anarchist response to this, which is to reject punishment for crime as justified, either as a moral desert nihilism, a consequentialist view rejecting the positive consequences of the punishment, a rejection of the legitimacy of the law, or, in most cases, all three of those positions, ie believing that there are no moral deserts, that punishing people for crime isn't morally good, and that the law isn't justified at the same time.
I guess I am a retributivist. I basically think the death penalty should exist, but it should only be reserved for the very worst of crimes such as terrorism and mass murder. There is no point in keeping the Anders Brevik's of the world alive.
Particularly when discussing proportionality, I feel like you jump quickly, if only implicitly, from "This requires us to make a difficult judgement call one has to make" to "This doesn't work."
Couldn't one refute the proportionality dilemma of one minute and ten minutes with the theory of consequentialism, since neither of those sentences would be effective for reform? I guess that assumes that consequentialism is correct?
O think the whole justice debate is off. People do not deserve to suffer( in any way )and should be neither dettered from doing crimes. Society should rather focus on dealing with consequences of immoral and unwanted behaviour and eliminating the causes for those actions, so abolish property to end theft (communism destroys main reasons for immoral behaviour- poverty and selfishness)... I also think that current society is too corrupt to even talk about justice, so it should be destroyed and a new one built, based on common principles(rules we set ourselves) rather than laws forced upon us.
What in your opinion are the "non-main" reasons for immoral behaviour?
What about those who have faith that God or the universe will dole out punishment or suffering for all negative actions, that is a karma system? I am not a believer myself, but I was just wondering if there were any legal codes that have tried to follow that idea. Personally, I think that each punishment needs to be subjectively determined by both motives and consequences because if you meant to kill someone but you merely harmed them then your motives should net you a harsher punishment than someone who was trying to help someone but accidentally killed them like a doctor who kills a patient during surgery. Keep up the great videos.
ok but if stalin or hitler were on trial, killing them is not about them suffering, killing them is about eliminating a threat to public safety. I think personally that our justice system is bad because we bace it on either "they deserve to be punished" or on "its a deturrant" when we really should be worried about "is this person a threat to themselves and others." We should make prisons much nicer to live in and stop storing petty theives in there but instead put abusers, rapists, murderers, terrorists and buisness execs who exploit their workers there, not because they deserve it or because it will stop others but because they need to be kept away from the public until we can be sure they've reformed and can interact safely with those around them again
One of the biggest reasons why people are imprisoned is just so that they are away from the rest of society and they can't do any more harm to the group. If a person kills someone then they are separated from the group and put in prison so they can't harm the rest of society. I doesn't matter so much wether they dereve it, it matters if the rest of society is safe from the people who commit crimes.
Even if punishment deters crime, is that not the same as threatening people into compliance? If something like extortion could be described as threatening to hurt someone, in some way, to get them to do, or not do, some action, and or behave in a certain way, then is the idea of punishment deterring people from committing crimes not the same? This is because deterrence through punishment also is threatening to hurt someone(jail/prison) to get them to make, or not make certain actions, and or behave in a certain way. If extortion is wrong because it’s that, then punishing to deter crime should also be wrong.
Yeah that's actually a good point. While I hate the "deliberately causing harm for the sake of it", the idea of intentionally ruling by fear doesn't sit right with me either. I prefer the public health and restorative intention when it comes to criminal sentencing. "This person is dangerous so let's put them on probation and put them on the right path", "This person is extremely dangerous so let's lock them in rehabilitative facility", "Fine defendant $xxxx.xx with portions going towards restitution to victim services". If we have to restrict a person's freedom, it should be done for the purpose of containing a threat, not as a way to threaten others or for the fucked up reason of revenge. General deterrence will come as a default though. If other people are getting fined, or having their freedoms restricted after committing serious crimes, it does tell others to avoid doing that.
TIL I’ve been arguing for Moral Desert Nihilism for years
If all we do and decide is just a consequence of chemical and electrical reactions in our brain how can we be accountable for any of the crimes we do? Punishing someone would be like putting the sun in prison because it's shining.
*Did you get these two books?*
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women
&
The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender And Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, And Resistant Imaginations
*I'm just worried that I got the rug pulled out from under me because I can not confirmed if they've arrived except via email which is dubious..*
Why did you say inches?
Once you feel like you have suffered enough, you have the luxury of feeling absolved of the crime. But how do you tell that to somebody who has to live with the knowledge that their perpetrator has escaped without having to undergo traditional punishments? But, since, imho, no real value ascribed to suffering telling somebody they've suffered enough doesn't undo their crime but merely pacifies the mob within us.
I believe in crime prevention over punishment. I think prison should focus on rehabilitation, criminal behaviour analysis and preparation to succeed outside of criminality. If it's vengeance you want then perhaps there should be a separate body for that. Obviously some criminals don't reform so i don't think it's a punishment to keep society safe from them. But at that point should that criminal not be considered to be severely mentally ill?
I've thought about this in terms of liberal philosophy - that you should allow people the freedom to do wrong (or right). But it's sticky in terms of memory - like for example when someone says "I do not recall" when asked to give evidence in court... are they lying, have they forgot, does the memory no longer exist (was the universe just created in that moment and so the events before never happened). To me I also thought that a brutal act should fade from the memory before someone is allowed to leave prison and rejoin society - but how does this work? Talk Therapy was introduced to council victims of shell shock in world war 1 because without it the traumatized soldiers were unable to move on a create new narratives etc - so should prisoners be socialised back into society? But then whose jobs should that be? - it wouldn't be fair for a teenager to have to speak to a recently convicted murderer. And then there's solitary confinement, which often leads to a high risk of suicide (Chelsea Manning is a case in point). Thought crimes, secrets. It seems as though the violent state thinks we're all dead legally anyway (a legal fiction).
I'd normally go in for consequentialism, but I don't have much faith in the state's ability to reform criminals. Re offending is the norm, sadly.
Additionally, for proper career criminals who do it professionally, prisons can serve as training grounds. I read a book once where the author said 'they went in with a bachelors degree in heroine but came out with a masters degree in coccaine.'
Where consequentialism truly breaks down is when the criminals have no fear of consequences. How could it possibly work in that instance? Make no mistake, those people exist. I met one recently.
But the other theory doesn't always work either. A large percentage of people who suffer abuse go on to abuse other people. So if you're response to abuse is to abuse someone back, they'll continue to abuse others in the future and the cycle just goes on and on. An eye for an eye really does make the whole world blind.
So tell me, what should I believe if I think both theories are fundamentally flawed? Could it be that we will never actually eliminate crime?
I have also lost faith in humans ability to be mature about punishment. Norways prisons are very respecting and kind to the criminals and have been shown to work 80% of the time (80% of the criminals never go back to prison) while in america 25% never go back lol, still people are too stupid to accept the fact that criminals should be treated humanely. They let their hearts speak over their head. And in the end more people end up hurt because of it
Is consequentialism the same as/a form of utilitarianism, as applied to crime and punishment?
As a person with synesthesia I can say with certainty that the number nine is purple. 👍
I wonder to what extent does Public Shaming work?
This would have been so helpful for my final last week .....
Isn't it desert - the barren wilderness, not dessert - the after-dinner treat?
It’s pronounced like “dessert” - think of the sound of the word “deserve”.
I've always been staunchly against the death penalty because I believe that the purpose of a punishment is to reduce crime and remove any lingering threat to society while offering the chance for rehabilitation. But I'm also very drawn to ideas of justice based upon what someone deserves i.e. we all deserve human rights because we are human and we can derive what those rights are from what a human deserves simply because of their humanity or dignity. Ultimately, the moral desert nihilist may have a point, but it seems like the consequentialist response is that these punishments keeps society functioning without chaos and so long as they continue to do that, regardless of the moral justification, they should continue to remain in place. But maybe the moral desert nihilists have considered that.
But isn't the functioning of society the basis of Morality ?
Perhaps in some theories, but I think the basis of morality is answering these questions: "What is the good?" "What is a good action?" "How do we measure goodness?" If you believe that society functioning is the ultimate good that could be the basis for morality, but lots of actions that I would consider immoral could be justified under that theory. Slavery, for instance, could be justified in this way.
Yes one could do that but I would argue that the inherent conflict and violence of slavery make a society less stable, since there is always the potential for an violent uprising that disrupts the society and throws it (at least to some degree) into anarchy
That's a reasonable response, but I'm still more convinced by theories of morality that focus on our moral responsibilities to individuals rather than society. For one thing, focusing on the individual is an easier test of when something is wrong whereas many societies still function with great individual harm.
I think the resolution here is a non-essentialist one: certainly society functioning is a moral good, but it is one that must be weighed with and sometimes against individual wellbeing.
I agree that individual wellbeing is important but i would base this on the the better functioning of society if the wellbeing of its individuals gets respected. Generally I think that the moral decisions should be based on the principles that support functioning of society and not the immediate consequences.
I think neither consequentialism nor retributivism have it right. I think we, who do not commit any crime are just morally lucky.
If any of us were born in the criminal's place, lived their life, shared their memories, I wonder If we would not commit that crimes too. Usually, people who commit crimes had a rough start, they suffered and are frustrated. Something might have gotten wrong in their past, even childhood, others were raised by their parents to steal. How can we blame them? Did we ever put ourselves in their shoes? No, we were raised in good families, values were inspired on us by our parents and had no abusive parents/ adults in our lives while growing up. Those people have their reason for their disfunctional moral compass.
They should be seen not as criminals, but as sick people, because they are mentally sick to behave in that way. If a criminal kills a person, how is that criminal being in jail ever make the victim's family feel good about their loss? What matters is that that criminal never kills again, right? but we all know people who go to jail come back worse and continue doing crimes after. Punishing does not work and will never work because you don't punish sick people, sick people go to the doctor.
Dostoevsky talks a lot about this dilemma in his books. His views are a bit too religious but the main point is that criminals are sick and society should try all it's best to make those people mentally healthy again.
What if some if some sick people can't be brought back to health?
No one deserves anything. Desert is an inherently irrational idea.
good effort olly lad
If you take an excessive number of years away from somebody's life (10 or more), then you may as well have taken their life altogether.
It's wrong to have committed a crime, but we all only have one life. Why make someone lose theirs so we can live with the smug feeling that we somehow worked for justice?
In other words, I likely agree more than Moral Desert Nihilism.
Since we're talking about crime and punishment, I'd like to ask for your personal opinion on Lavinia Woodward, the student who stabbed her boyfriend with a bread knife and was told that she would not receive a custodial sentence because of ''her talent'' and that it would ruin her future career. I'll leave the article at the end but my personal opinion is that, yeah, it would ruin her future career but perhaps she should have thought of that before she stabbed her ex with a bread knife. Does this mean that if I was studying in a top uni, at the top of my class that I could get away with such a crime? What if I studied at a mediocre uni and committed the same crime? For my opinion, I may be wrong but I feel - sometimes, you just have to accept the consequences for your actions.
Article: www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/may/16/oxford-university-lavinia-woodward-stabbed-boyfriend-may-avoid-jail
i find the very idea of "punishment" a bit pointless. first, it assumes that someone has the right to knowingly and intentionally inflict suffering on someone. second, punishment for the sake of punishment in my opinion doesn't work.
i suppose i would take a consequencialist (how the heck do you spell that?) view, but i think it does more harm than good to approach it as a punishment. deterrence doesn't always work - it will stop you from doing something you were only causally considering, but if you feel you have a good reason to commit a crime then you'll likely find a way to avoid getting caught, and if you're caught up in the moment and commit a crime then you weren't thinking about the risk of a punishment anyway. the way i see it is that you should do what you need to do to avoid crimes being committed while causing the least possible harm. so, locking someone up for the safety of the community is fine if that's necessary (and obviously i don't claim to be anywhere near an expert) but it should be seen as a protective measure rather than as a punishment. reform should always be attempted. fines are pointless, unless they serve some purpose - the money is the amount necessary to cover property damage and that is what it is spent on, for example, rather than just a fine for the sake of inconveniencing the criminal.
no one "deserves" punishment because to me that implies that there is some standard objective morality outside of humanity and personally I don't believe that there is. no one "deserves" anything, good or bad. I'm not sure how best to articulate this. but my "morality" isn't a code or a rule book, it's just empathy. and my empathy must extend to criminals because if i stop feeling empathy for people who i think have done something bad then that means I'm no longer seeing all people as people.
The Social contract justifies legal punishment. The state protects you and gives you education and other services in exchange for you to give up some of your freedom, when you commit a crime you inflict damage upon others' freedom and rights. So the state has the right to punish you.
Quick comment: lex talionis = talion's law
number 9 is actually dark blue, so...
Clearly its red-orange
I always imagined it being a shade of lime green. Not chartreuse, but still really bright.
atavistic behavior is really all there is, the systems societies have shape that atavistic response but have no ultimate foundation and shift about because of social tensions in a civilization (domestication) of humans. law and ethics are determined often more by class and its branches ( sex, race etc) than by rationally or measure. systems of people embedded in maintaining law amd order have less interest in "justice" than what they actually do act as normalizers of their social seat. the crimes all people in a technological society commit daily against each other, "nature" and the potential future societies is enormous and monsterous, every bit of burnt coal or plastic used once is a total crime against life but we all atavistically continue to eat, drink, shelter, transport, etc in the most detrimental ways because it feels good to us, what ever is our punishment for these act? perhaps the unwillingness to be set free into the chaos, our lack of desire to be free sets us all to the capricious whims of ever shifting happenstance of law and obediance training.
Punishment per say is puposeless. (Retributivism is itself immoral and consequentialism is just philosophically incorrect). However, criminals should be made to make restitution of any harm that they have committed. That automatically makes the "punishment" fit the crime (you broke it, you fix it; cause a bigger mess, you have more to clean up), and eliminates punishment for victimless crimes. Criminals should also be restrained from committing future crimes, including incarceration as necessary to that end (though always with the aim to reform, if possible, and stop having to incarcerate further). And hey, yeah, if criminals find having to pay restitution to their victims or getting locked up for the safety of future victims unpleasant, and it makes them think twice about doing it again or makes them think in the first place and not do it at all, that's a great consequence. But it's a cherry on top. Don't explicitly inflict harm to get good consequences like that. Undo and prevent harm to innocents -- even if it means the one who caused or is aiming to cause that harm suffers for it in the process -- and let the chips fall where they may.
Basically: just make sure any harm anyone generates is suffered only by themselves. Then nobody's ever punishing anyone but themselves.
Why do you consider consequentialism to be "just philosophically incorrect"?
Romanski I second that. Consequentialism is the only system that makes sense, because every human being on earth cares about consequences. To just assert that it's incorrect and leave it at that is absurd.
"Do the ends always justify the means?" (which is what consequentialism-or-not hinges on) is a topic of enormous philosophical debate that I was trying not to get mired in on the way to stating my views on this narrower topic. There's lots of material on the debate available in anything that covers ethics theory (Olly might even have a video on it), and my own particular view is a complexed nuanced position that doesn't fit nicely into any of the traditional boxes in that debate, but just consequentialism simpliciter is an incomplete answer to say the least.
All the criticism of consequetialism essentially boils down to not having considered all the consequences properly enough. Like that invalid "take the organs from a healthy person and save five lives" example (for example).
nine is yellow
(puts on sunglasses) looks like I just punched a hole into the intact baloon of your argument (baloon shrinking noisily in the background)
This the first time ever wanted to donate to someone on RUclips, too bad I have no money.
Aw, well I appreciate the sentiment anyway!
most people are really into retribution... like Ceasar's Legion.
Irrelevant but, How do you kill an immortal? (Maybe for another video.)
The problem with the criminal justice system is that some people are too rich, white, and powerful enough that the law doesn't apply to them.
frontier justice!
So, if I pirate music, government should forcebly pay for my musical education, buy me a studio, give me a grant to develop and promote my music label, and then let people pirate my music. That would be fair, no?
Moral desert nihilism feels banal to me, and it's strange to think that that position is somehow strange or questionable. I would've thought that'd been assumed in philosophy circles, honestly.
you know, I suppose desert and deserve are only a couple letters of from each other so they sound alike. and I guess this explains "just desserts"??? although I guess it's "deserts". someone tag me out, I can't handle this
creshiell Yeah. "Desert" is the noun form of "deserve". It basically means "the deserving".
for what reason does Stalin deserve to suffer ?
Yes one kilogram of suffering please
It's all too complicated therefore I propose that we just have one punishment death.
Hey! Hands off Stalin!
im guessing 2 minutes untill he mentions michel Foucault
One week, to be exact: the two-parter on Foucault starts next Friday!
Have you been hanging out with any mad arabs lately? Because I see your Necronomicon there!
could you make a video of philosophies that you don't really agree with? since you are very left wing (for example) maybe you could make a video on Ayn Rand or Robert Nozick?
He's done an Ayn Rand video before.
I'd actually really like to learn about Nozick. I don't hear about him too often. Particularly, I'd enjoy learning about his theory of knowledge.
Elliott Collins His Ayn Rand video was literally an April Fools joke where at the end he linked like three sources on why he doesn't like her, one of which was the infamous RUclips censoring hypocrite Steve Shives. He never done a video where he examines her philosophy and critiques it and explains why he doesn't like it.
This is, by the way, from someone who despises Ayn Rand and actually wrote a huge answer on Quora once specifically critiquing her without stopping to ad hominems like Olly did in the video he made about Rand. Some of Olly's videos are just so blatantly biased and illogical that they touch on the absurd, and his Rand video is one of them.
For this reason, I too would love to see this kind of video where he actually examines philosophers he disagrees with and as to why he disagrees with them. Ayn Rand would be a particularly wonderful inclusion in that, as I have my reasons for disagreeing with her and yet don't know Olly's since the video he made about her was a blatant joke video meant to just insult her.
Richy Rich Like you say, his Ayn Rand video was literally an April Fools joke, and you're treating it as though he presented an actual argument. Don't get all superior about it just because he hasn't actually offered a serious critique before. It's okay to just dismiss her and move on.
Elliott Collins I'm not treating it like he presented an actual argument. My criticism of the video he made on Rand is that he didn't bother making any arguments against her, which is very disappointing since he runs a philosophy channel. I'm sorry that my demand of higher quality philosophy content on a philosophy channel is apparently me acting superior to him. He runs a philosophy channel, least he can do is offer an argument against her. He didnt even need to do it in the joke video, he could easily have made a video at any time after that video. Especially after the negative backlash the joke video received.
And how exactly is it okay to just dismiss her and move on? I don't believe any sort of thinker deserves that kind of treatment. I don't even agree with Ayn Rand, but at least I actually provide arguments against the points she makes in her writing. Olly's supposed to be a philosopher, philosophers argue against ideas they don't agree with using logic, they don't just dismiss ideas.
killing someone makes you a murderer, it makes a soldier a hero, it makes an enemy soldier a killer. it was the same act, the difference is the people with winning power told everyone else how things are.
The TI(targeted individual) program is the worst punishment.. yet no TI know's what has warranted it yet lol. It not only destroys the body and mind.. but the soul itself