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If you take the consequentialist point of view ("The suffering you save must exceed the suffering you inflict"), then isn't this trivially ruled out by his own

If you take the consequentialist point of view ("The suffering you save must exceed the suffering you inflict"), then isn't this trivially ruled out by his own admission that "What’s clear is that when rulers enforce family punishments, the ruled shiver with terror"? If on top of all the excess suffering caused by the collateral punishment, you add that the entire population lives under constant fear, then it seems difficult to imagine that you are "obviously" compensating for this by saving enough suffering to make it worthwhile. I certainly consider the psychological effect of living under such a system as suffering. This is without even getting into the disproportionate amount of "false positive" suffering from identifying the wrong criminal and punishing the wrong family vs. just punishing one incorrect person.

mistercow 3y ago
Yeah, you can’t just leave out knock-on effects when talking about consequentialism. They’re consequences too.
- klipt 3y ago
  And of course the end result of all the knock on effects is impossible to compute. At best you can approximate it. Which leads to two observations: 1, consequentialism is really hard, actually. 2, most other moral systems are really just varying approximations of consequentialism in disguise. "Follow my rules." "Why?" "Because the consequences of not following them would be disastrous!"
deleted 3y ago
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function_seven 3y ago
This is a good objection. The family punishment scenario must include the massive “background suffering” that is created solely by the policy existing.
- hef19898 3y ago
  And family pinishment is, for valid rwasons, illegal across the democratic world. No idea how people think re-implementing that would be a good idea...
aragonite 3y ago
If I contemplate some criminal act, various unpleasant potential consequences may occur to me, and I may decide against that act "for fear" that those consequences should come to pass. However, "fear" in this sense is rather different from say the fear I feel if I'm held at gunpoint during a robbery. The latter is real suffering in and of itself (as evidenced by the fact that if the "robber" turns out to be friends pulling a prank, one may rightfully be angry at the friend), the former arguably is not "suffering", at least not in any significant, weighty way. In any case it's possible to generate much clearner counterexamples to consequentialism in the same vein as Kaplan's but without any knock-on societal effects. Imagine a man breaks into a woman's house while she's asleep, and sexually assaults her (1) without her awareness, (2) without causing any physical injury or giving her any disease (3) without her ever discovering that this had taken place. By stipulation, the act made no difference to her, physically or mentally, over her whole life. A consequentialist would be hard put to say why such an act would be wrong, given that it seems to cause no negative consequences, and often need to resort to saying some decidely non-consequentialist-sounding things, for example by making up abstract, symbolic 'consequences' (such as: "the act caused a violation of a moral norm") to yield the intuitively correct result.
- watwut 3y ago
  > However, "fear" in this sense is rather different from say the fear I feel if I'm held at gunpoint during a robbery. The latter is real suffering in and of itself (as evidenced by the fact that if the "robber" turns out to be friends pulling a prank, one may rightfully be angry at the friend), the former arguably is not "suffering", at least not in any significant, weighty way. This does not ring true to me at all. Also, the distinction is not really relevant. The both fears are exactly the same - the only difference is that the former one is "deserved" and the latter is "undeserved". But, there is not difference to think the subjective suffering is different. Second, with family example, the family is in the "held at gunpoint during a robbery" situation. They risk being mistreated, but did not caused it and have no control over the situation. What this rule would do is that the abusive and criminal family members would had even more power within their families and more ability to mistreat family members. Because family members wont be able to turn them in. Once someone committed crime, everyone in the family would need to protect them just out of self interest.
watwut 3y ago
This would mean that turning in your abusive criminal uncle would had his innocent kids and your dad punished, so you will be less likely to do that. And being turned in by family or someone close to you is fairly standard way of being caught.
cjbprime 3y ago
Yep, came here to leave exactly this comment. Terror is a form of suffering! That's the thing we're measuring and trying to avoid across the population! It's remarkable how often these "ah hah, gotcha, answer that atheists"-style posts are triumphantly self-defeating within their own argument. It feels like so much bad faith arguing.

mistercow 3y ago

Yeah, you can’t just leave out knock-on effects when talking about consequentialism. They’re consequences too.

klipt 3y ago
And of course the end result of all the knock on effects is impossible to compute. At best you can approximate it. Which leads to two observations: 1, consequentialism is really hard, actually. 2, most other moral systems are really just varying approximations of consequentialism in disguise. "Follow my rules." "Why?" "Because the consequences of not following them would be disastrous!"

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

function_seven 3y ago

This is a good objection. The family punishment scenario must include the massive “background suffering” that is created solely by the policy existing.

hef19898 3y ago
And family pinishment is, for valid rwasons, illegal across the democratic world. No idea how people think re-implementing that would be a good idea...

aragonite 3y ago

If I contemplate some criminal act, various unpleasant potential consequences may occur to me, and I may decide against that act "for fear" that those consequences should come to pass. However, "fear" in this sense is rather different from say the fear I feel if I'm held at gunpoint during a robbery. The latter is real suffering in and of itself (as evidenced by the fact that if the "robber" turns out to be friends pulling a prank, one may rightfully be angry at the friend), the former arguably is not "suffering", at least not in any significant, weighty way. In any case it's possible to generate much clearner counterexamples to consequentialism in the same vein as Kaplan's but without any knock-on societal effects. Imagine a man breaks into a woman's house while she's asleep, and sexually assaults her (1) without her awareness, (2) without causing any physical injury or giving her any disease (3) without her ever discovering that this had taken place. By stipulation, the act made no difference to her, physically or mentally, over her whole life. A consequentialist would be hard put to say why such an act would be wrong, given that it seems to cause no negative consequences, and often need to resort to saying some decidely non-consequentialist-sounding things, for example by making up abstract, symbolic 'consequences' (such as: "the act caused a violation of a moral norm") to yield the intuitively correct result.

watwut 3y ago
> However, "fear" in this sense is rather different from say the fear I feel if I'm held at gunpoint during a robbery. The latter is real suffering in and of itself (as evidenced by the fact that if the "robber" turns out to be friends pulling a prank, one may rightfully be angry at the friend), the former arguably is not "suffering", at least not in any significant, weighty way. This does not ring true to me at all. Also, the distinction is not really relevant. The both fears are exactly the same - the only difference is that the former one is "deserved" and the latter is "undeserved". But, there is not difference to think the subjective suffering is different. Second, with family example, the family is in the "held at gunpoint during a robbery" situation. They risk being mistreated, but did not caused it and have no control over the situation. What this rule would do is that the abusive and criminal family members would had even more power within their families and more ability to mistreat family members. Because family members wont be able to turn them in. Once someone committed crime, everyone in the family would need to protect them just out of self interest.

watwut 3y ago

This would mean that turning in your abusive criminal uncle would had his innocent kids and your dad punished, so you will be less likely to do that. And being turned in by family or someone close to you is fairly standard way of being caught.

cjbprime 3y ago

Yep, came here to leave exactly this comment. Terror is a form of suffering! That's the thing we're measuring and trying to avoid across the population! It's remarkable how often these "ah hah, gotcha, answer that atheists"-style posts are triumphantly self-defeating within their own argument. It feels like so much bad faith arguing.