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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 t

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.
- zdragnar 3y ago
  By preventative, I'm describing punishment being used for deterrence purposes, which is where the question of whether also punishing the family is justified comes in, as it might have a further deterrent effect. Minority report is another "dire hypothetical". Like the author, I'm comfortable dismissing any hypothetical that relies on perfect future knowledge as unrealistic and unworthy of consideration. Unlike the author, I'm not taking a stance on either ends or means based philosophy. Just reacting a bit to what the parent post said.
watwut 3y ago
In the baby Hitler experiment, what if you, instead of killing baby Hitler, took the baby out of the abusive family? And had him raised by nice emphatic people? We are talking about hypothetical where we have some supernatural abilities.

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.

zdragnar 3y ago
By preventative, I'm describing punishment being used for deterrence purposes, which is where the question of whether also punishing the family is justified comes in, as it might have a further deterrent effect. Minority report is another "dire hypothetical". Like the author, I'm comfortable dismissing any hypothetical that relies on perfect future knowledge as unrealistic and unworthy of consideration. Unlike the author, I'm not taking a stance on either ends or means based philosophy. Just reacting a bit to what the parent post said.

watwut 3y ago

In the baby Hitler experiment, what if you, instead of killing baby Hitler, took the baby out of the abusive family? And had him raised by nice emphatic people? We are talking about hypothetical where we have some supernatural abilities.