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I'm not sure I understand why this is a problem for consequentialists any more than it is a problem for the author's own position. The basic idea seems to be:

by why_at 3y ago

I'm not sure I understand why this is a problem for consequentialists any more than it is a problem for the author's own position. The basic idea seems to be: In some cases it might prevent more harm to punish innocent people i.e. family members of criminals, therefore consequentialists should endorse punishing family members in those cases. The author seems to think this logic doesn't apply to their own position because they believe that the reason to punish wrongdoers isn't to prevent further harm, but because the punishment of wrongdoers is justice which is good. The opposite side of this would be punishing innocent people, which would be injustice. This contrasts with pure consequentialism which doesn't care about justice vs. injustice, it only cares about the end result. The key part is from the definition from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which says: > 3. that it is morally impermissible intentionally to punish the innocent or to inflict disproportionately large punishments on wrongdoers. But then, the author then goes on to say: > What if harming Hitler’s baby was the only way to save the world? As a moderate deontologist, I reluctantly endorse this implication. But only in dire hypotheticals with little real-world relevance. So it seems like the author also endorse harming the family members of wrongdoers, but for them it's ok because it's only in "dire hypotheticals". This feels like a bit of a cop out to me. It seems like you could just as easily call yourself a "moderate consequentialist" and say that punishing people is only good as a deterrent, but also punishing innocent people is wrong.

theelous3 3y ago
> The thing is, it doesn't seem to me like this precludes punishing family members for a better result. Correct. The "system" if you can even call it that is not stemming coherently from any moral foundations. 1 and 2 are the same. To say a wrongdoer deserves punishment is to say it's good to punish. Deserves is language of morality. 3 is completely unrelated. This article is nonsense. Also from the article: > My challenge for readers: Propose any alternative to retributivism that precludes family punishment. I'm sorry but that is hilarious. Here's one off the top of my head, having literally never thought about this before. 1. Punishing the innocent is wrong. 2. Literally any ideas at all about crime and punishment that don't violate point 1. That passes the author's sniff test anyway. Is there a bounty for such a challenge? > That’s right, I think that inflicting suffering on vicious wrong-doers is morally praiseworthy even in the absence of any deterrent effect. Deterrence is a happy byproduct, but the fundamental point of punishment is to balance the scales of justice. This is caveman levels of moral justification. What does it mean to balance the scales? If somebody is maimed, and we maim the maimer, does that count? The first act worsened the victims life and the second act did nothing to help them. Doesn't feel like the scales are tipping correctly. It doesn't even seem that using analogies about scales is even useful to the conversation. It's almost like the issue is really complex and can't be summed up as a system in 2.5 bullet points by way of measuring scales.
- Gibbon1 3y ago
  The best argument about why and how governments punish people was. If you consider the hoary old governments that implemented this stuff you find that contrary to what you might assume they can't even begin to care about a the guy that got in a fight and died. The farmer whose chickens were rustled. Life is cheap and the peasants lives are barely worth the paper to mark their existence. What do they care about. The the system keeps functioning. Someone does something like beating a man do death in a drunken brawl, stole some chickens. That causes problems if unchecked. So what do you do. You reserve retribution to you and you alone. So that exacting private retribution is a challenge to your authority. You also reserve truth, only you get to say a man is a badie or not. And once you've done so you force his community to accept him back. If you accept the above punishing his family makes things worse not better. You gave him 20 lashes and he's butthurt about that, so what. Give his family 5 lashes each and they hate you not him.
zdragnar 3y ago
I'm not sure where I fall in any of this. That said, two things stuck out to me: First, and less importantly, I think "dire hypothetical" is a bad phrase for the Baby Hitler thought experiment. I suspect dire is used as a synonym for "presaging" rather than "extreme". The only point of the Baby Hitler example is to examine the philosophy under entirely unrealistic circumstances: what if we had perfect knowledge about the future? It is intended to emotionally prejudice people, typically towards ends-based philosophies. The author concedes the imaginary hypothetical, but only those hypotheticals with unreal perfect knowledge. At that point, you could say that yes, the sky is green, but only in hypothetical worlds with green skies. As for the rest, it is essentially the classic means versus ends debate. Punishment of wrong doing as an intrinsic good, rather than as a deterrent, should obviously preclude punishing family members- if we were to also postulate that punishing wrongdoing is good, then punishing innocence is intrinsically wrong. Punishment itself would be wrongdoing. Basically, this boils down to a simple means versus ends debate; "preventative" punishment cares only about results, while the author only cares that the "means" (the act) punishment is morally right.
- why_at 3y ago
  > Basically, this boils down to a simple means versus ends debate; "preventative" punishment cares only about results, while the author only cares that the "means" (the act) punishment is morally right. Yeah, after thinking about it some more I edited my comment slightly to emphasize the "means versus ends" idea that I think the author is getting at. The part that still bugs me is that the author seems to be taking a middle ground where punishing the innocent is okay in arbitrarily extreme cases, but they don't accept that a consequentialist could just use the same trick to say that punishing family members is wrong.
- the_af 3y ago
  Isn't "preventative" punishment basically the plot of Minority Report (story and movie)? The problem is that, even if it worked, I wouldn't want to live in a world where people are punished or executed before they actually do anything wrong. In a sense, I think it's valid to "throw in the towel" and claim: if this is what it takes to minimize suffering, I don't want anything to do with it; to hell with it.

by why_at 3y ago

theelous3 3y ago

> The thing is, it doesn't seem to me like this precludes punishing family members for a better result. Correct. The "system" if you can even call it that is not stemming coherently from any moral foundations. 1 and 2 are the same. To say a wrongdoer deserves punishment is to say it's good to punish. Deserves is language of morality. 3 is completely unrelated. This article is nonsense. Also from the article: > My challenge for readers: Propose any alternative to retributivism that precludes family punishment. I'm sorry but that is hilarious. Here's one off the top of my head, having literally never thought about this before. 1. Punishing the innocent is wrong. 2. Literally any ideas at all about crime and punishment that don't violate point 1. That passes the author's sniff test anyway. Is there a bounty for such a challenge? > That’s right, I think that inflicting suffering on vicious wrong-doers is morally praiseworthy even in the absence of any deterrent effect. Deterrence is a happy byproduct, but the fundamental point of punishment is to balance the scales of justice. This is caveman levels of moral justification. What does it mean to balance the scales? If somebody is maimed, and we maim the maimer, does that count? The first act worsened the victims life and the second act did nothing to help them. Doesn't feel like the scales are tipping correctly. It doesn't even seem that using analogies about scales is even useful to the conversation. It's almost like the issue is really complex and can't be summed up as a system in 2.5 bullet points by way of measuring scales.

Gibbon1 3y ago
The best argument about why and how governments punish people was. If you consider the hoary old governments that implemented this stuff you find that contrary to what you might assume they can't even begin to care about a the guy that got in a fight and died. The farmer whose chickens were rustled. Life is cheap and the peasants lives are barely worth the paper to mark their existence. What do they care about. The the system keeps functioning. Someone does something like beating a man do death in a drunken brawl, stole some chickens. That causes problems if unchecked. So what do you do. You reserve retribution to you and you alone. So that exacting private retribution is a challenge to your authority. You also reserve truth, only you get to say a man is a badie or not. And once you've done so you force his community to accept him back. If you accept the above punishing his family makes things worse not better. You gave him 20 lashes and he's butthurt about that, so what. Give his family 5 lashes each and they hate you not him.

zdragnar 3y ago

I'm not sure where I fall in any of this. That said, two things stuck out to me: First, and less importantly, I think "dire hypothetical" is a bad phrase for the Baby Hitler thought experiment. I suspect dire is used as a synonym for "presaging" rather than "extreme". The only point of the Baby Hitler example is to examine the philosophy under entirely unrealistic circumstances: what if we had perfect knowledge about the future? It is intended to emotionally prejudice people, typically towards ends-based philosophies. The author concedes the imaginary hypothetical, but only those hypotheticals with unreal perfect knowledge. At that point, you could say that yes, the sky is green, but only in hypothetical worlds with green skies. As for the rest, it is essentially the classic means versus ends debate. Punishment of wrong doing as an intrinsic good, rather than as a deterrent, should obviously preclude punishing family members- if we were to also postulate that punishing wrongdoing is good, then punishing innocence is intrinsically wrong. Punishment itself would be wrongdoing. Basically, this boils down to a simple means versus ends debate; "preventative" punishment cares only about results, while the author only cares that the "means" (the act) punishment is morally right.

why_at 3y ago
> Basically, this boils down to a simple means versus ends debate; "preventative" punishment cares only about results, while the author only cares that the "means" (the act) punishment is morally right. Yeah, after thinking about it some more I edited my comment slightly to emphasize the "means versus ends" idea that I think the author is getting at. The part that still bugs me is that the author seems to be taking a middle ground where punishing the innocent is okay in arbitrarily extreme cases, but they don't accept that a consequentialist could just use the same trick to say that punishing family members is wrong.
the_af 3y ago
Isn't "preventative" punishment basically the plot of Minority Report (story and movie)? The problem is that, even if it worked, I wouldn't want to live in a world where people are punished or executed before they actually do anything wrong. In a sense, I think it's valid to "throw in the towel" and claim: if this is what it takes to minimize suffering, I don't want anything to do with it; to hell with it.