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David Johnson
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My comment might be out of place. I really have 3 questions.
1. Is there any action that is inherently wrong under all societies under all scircumstances? Certainly stuff like killing is not, because of the legititazion and even cebabtration of killing during war. Maybe rape? But what if a society absolutley forbids sex with women under any circumstances…in that case would rape, that would be the only way in which the species can be justified. Is it simply always a utiitstion analysis with the greatest perceived benefits being the right choice. Is the presumpted please that the man gets from rape considered in the balancing?
Is retribution, whether it’s called “justice” or some other politically correct term is revenge. Is revenge a legitimate policy goal for a criminal justice system or should the goals be limited to deterrence, rehabilitation, and incapacitation?
I theory, while revenge does not seem like a legitimate goal in general, because while it is a natural human nature but maybe not one that should be endorsed by society.
The therory is challenged at the extremes. E,g., a man inappropriately touches a little girl (three yesrs old) but causes no physical injuries or emotional injuries because she sleeps through it. Assume the man will never do it again with this girl or any other (it’s my hypo, I can say what I want). Deference nor rehabilitation would be effect or necessary in that case; and the victim suffered no injury. Does revenge mean the man should be punished? It retribution is not justified, man should not be punished.
Are people capable of acting outside of their own perceived self interest? I think not. It’s a product of evolution and the truly altruistic gene would most likey be weeded out long ago. Even doing something “nice” like giving to charity might be motivated by rewards to the giver. Even if not done for publicity, that “good feeling” one gets might have more value to the giver than the money donated. Certainly if one gives charity upon a belief that he or she will be rewarded in another life that is a self-interested act. While hard for me to accept, I suppose it does not matter, the reasons for the gift and whether the giver benefits as long as the recipient benefits as well.
Well, it is a difficult case to consider. I think that the assumption that nearly everyone is making is that punishment works to deter objectionable behavior. Even those who favor a retributive legal system often will use as a justification for it the idea that punishment deters not only the person committing the crime from ever doing it again themselves, but it also would deter other people. So, you can set up a fictitious scenario in which the crime is never known by anyone else, and the man will not do it again. But, I think what a defender of retribution would probably do is just deny that a real situation like that would ever truly exist in real life. They could argue, for example, why would the man ever actually stop doing this if he never faced any bad consequences for doing so? If he was never punished for it, or had to give up anything he values for what he had done, then what would be his motivation for stopping? He obviously derives some pleasure from the criminal behavior, so simply out of self-interest it seems very unlikely that he would ever be willing to quit unless you give him an offsetting penalty that makes it more unpleasant for him to keep doing it than to stop. So, in this case, the pain or displeasure of being punished offsets and counteracts the pleasure that he gets from doing what society considers very immoral behavior. This should change his behavior, and the behavior of others so inclined, to follow the rule in the future. They would follow it simply out of fear of being punished.
It does seem true that pain can act as a deterrent. I remember watching a nature show one time where a little baby hippo was constantly harrassing and abusing an enormous crocodile. You could tell he just wanted so bad to rip that little devil to pieces. As I recall, he was the dominant croc, and he did go after any other crocodile invading his space. But every time he was about to tear into that little baby hippo that was harrassing him you could see him take a glance at the mother hippo and that was all it took for him to leave it alone. Crocodiles aren’t very intelligent, but he was smart enough to know that if he wanted to live he had better leave that baby hippo alone. So, I guess the thinking is that this is just natural, and something even the worst criminal will understand if even animals understand it. If you harm somebody that I care about, I am going to harm you. So, don’t mess with them if you know what is good for you. That seems to really be what it comes down to.
Another factor in all of this is restitution. Typically, if there is monetary value involved, we would say that the just thing is for the criminal to compensate the victim and make it up to him for what he has done. If you stole $50 bucks from someone, and you are really sorry about it, you have to pay them their money back. This keeps you from profiting from the offense, and it makes up for the damage that you did. But, the problem with most criminal offenses is that you cannot really take it back or make up for it. If a man rapes someone, he cannot ever truly make it up to the victim, no matter how sorry he is later. But maybe there is something to the idea of balancing the scales and making him suffer a little bit the way that he made an innocent victim suffer. Maybe that is as close to restitution as we can come with criminal offenses. For example, I heard about a guy who was on drugs and then he was speeding in his car up to around a hundred miles an hour and he hit someone and killed him. Well, obviously he felt horrible about it later, and he hadn’t ever really committed any other major crimes. So, one might say that he shouldn’t have to go to prison for that because it is unlikely he would have ever do it again. But wouldn’t that be awfully hard for the victim’s family to accept? This kid could just do something that stupid, which resulted in their loved one’s death, and not even face any jail time for it? That is sometimes when people take matters into their own hands. I think he was convicted of manslaughter, and served about 4 or 5 years in jail, and to me, that seems pretty fair.
I am sympathetic to all of these ideas to some extent, but I don’t think any of them completely captures it either. I am currently actually trying to work out my own solution and position on punishment and particularly when and if the death penalty is ever justified. I don’t have it all completely worked out yet in my own mind, but I will let you know when I have developed it more so that we can discuss it further.
The position that you are describing is often referred to as moral relativism. I personally am not a relativist. There are a couple of things to consider on this. If you are simply asking whether there is anything that all societies believe to be right or wrong, then I imagine that the answer would be no. But whether there are things that are always right or wrong, regardless of how any society views them, is another question. On that, I do personally believe that there are some things that are always wrong. It would always be wrong to torture an innocent person for fun, for example. I believe this is true regardless of whether there is a culture out there that permits it. If it is okay to do that within a certain culture, then that culture is simply wrong on that issue.
It is more difficult to find something that would always be morally permissible in every case. I haven’t been able to find anything like that, at least not yet.
I do think that you are right in suggesting that morality is not as exact as science or math. What is right does somewhat depend upon the circumstances and the situation. Each case is different with its own unique set of circumstances, so sometimes that means that it can be right to do something in one situation and wrong to do the same thing in another situation. That does make it appear as though there are not fixed rules, but I think there can still be some general guidelines that are almost always applicable. Maybe we could think of a moral person as something of an artist creating a great work of art each day. With art, there seem to be no fixed rules that are always applicable in every case. But there are underlying principles that make one work of art better than another one. I think it is the same way with people’s lives. I think you can tell who is living the best kind of life, and I also think that you can tell which civilizations have the best moral standards. You and I both know that some people are more informed, more knowledgeable, and more skilled at certain things than other people are. Why does everyone simply assume that morality is different, and on that particular subject, everyone’s opinion is equal, and no one knows more about what is good and bad than anyone else does?
I don’t know about the evolution argument against altruism, because from what I have read, scientists are now coming to believe that evolutionary explanations need to be more nuanced than previously thought. We have to remember, that if evolution is true, then that means that beehives and ant colonies evolved as well. We have such a complex social network, that it doesn’t seem unreasonable to me to think that we could have evolved an “altruistic gene” because if I am willing to give up my life to save the lives of six members of my group, then it seems as though that group will have a higher survival rate than a group in which each member simply looks at it as every man for himself. We have to look at what kind of behavior allows the group to survive and reproduce more rather than only what benefits the individual.
I also think that we should distinguish a “good feeling” from other types of benefits. I just don’t really feel like it is equivalent to say that someone who does something for money is equivalent to someone who does it for a good feeling. Now, granted I guess the person who wants the money wants it because he thinks eventually it will give him good feelings and happiness, but I just feel like it is more difficult to say for sure that the good feeling is completely based upon self-interest. For all we know, that feeling could be a pleasant by-product. Maybe someone is motivated strictly by concern for another person only, and the good feeling that they get from acting that way is simply a result that they were not necessarily seeking? I just don’t see a good feeling as fully accounting for the motivation of someone to do some altruistic acts. For example, why would a soldier throw himself on a grenade to protect his comrades? He probably will not survive to feel anything, but if he does, it will only be pain. Would any rational person acting solely from self-interest inflict that much physical pain upon themselves and sacrifice that much merely for a good feeling that they had done something nice for his companions? I just don’t believe it. I think his motivation has to be love for his friends, and any good feelings that result from the action are only a by-product of his decision, not the motivating factor itself. So, I do think people are capable of truly altruistic acts without self-interest mixed in, although I admit that they are probably rare. Usually someone has at least some self-interest as a motivation even if there are other motivations as well.
While discussing the soldier performing a “truly” altruistic action I think it is important to consider his background and his belief. If he were an incredibly headstrong person who thought himself to be an invincible super badass of the army, he might be willing to take that dive under the idea that he would survive and reap many different rewards from his action. Or perhaps he is a religious zealot who believes that this is why god put him on the planet, and that by passing this divine test he will move on to a better plane of existence and be rewarded for all eternity.
Now along the lines of if we could have evolved with an altruistic gene that programs us to behave in such a way, why would one person’s gene kick in before any other? I think perhaps by one brain that computes faster than others. Though if it is a thought process that we are unaware of then I think it would have to do with the subconcious mind, which is basically a super computer of its own. So I think if that was the scenario then everybody would move toward the grenade with intent to protect their fellow man. While only one might actually get there soon enough to dive on it, they would all still receive injury. I think it is more a product of upbringing. If you are brought up to believe that other lives are worth more than your own, you are much more likely to take that fatal dive into oblivion. I think you would also have people there willing to throw another person atop the grenade, because they were brought up in such a way that they view themselves highly above others, or perhaps in such a way that they fear death before anything else. I think that our view of our fellow man almost always comes from our upbringing. The only case where it would be genetically predisposed would be a person born with some sort of mental illness. A few examples could be where they might view the lives of others as meaningless, or that perhaps that they are the god of their own reality and nobody else really exists anyway. So to conclude nurture beats nature this time around.