On punishment

Discussion in 'Off Topic Area' started by Fish Of Doom, May 5, 2014.

  1. Fish Of Doom

    Fish Of Doom Will : Mind : Motion Supporter

    So it's been a while since my latest pseudophilosophical ramble, and I feel like making another one. This time I shall opine on punishment:

    It is often said by people that a given individual or group "deserve" punishment, and this is usually a point of contention when such a view is raised in conversation. I counter with the assertion that nothing, good or bad, is ever deserved, objectively, because merit is a value judgment and therefore purely a question of opinion. Instead, the punishment is wished upon the subject in question, and their deserving it is simply the externalization of this wish in the form of a supposedly objective phenomenon.

    Now as to the goals of punishment: The threat of punishment of any sort can be, and usual is, employed as a deterrent against unwanted acts. Consistency therefore would require that said punishment be effected. The nature of the punishment may or may not also make it overlap with another function, such as prevention of re-incidence of whatever elicited the punishment (Although whether any given punishment actually fulfills this particular function is another matter altogether). Finally, in the absence of an external reason for punishment such as the aforementioned fulfillment of a pre-established threat, what remains are "internal" reasons that one may have to wish someone punished. Long story short, this amounts to personal gratification, and can easily be observed with a cursory examination of comments rendered unto almost any event perceived as criminal: "He should be killed"; "Someone should hurt her"; "I hope he gets raped in prison"; "She should be thrown out to the streets"; so on and so forth. To make it shorter, a punishment may be necessary for a given goal, or it may be unnecessary, and if unnecessary, it may yet be useful for a given goal. A punishment that is necessary but not useful isn't really all that necessary, and thus the category is a moot point (If it is not useful, then why is it necessary?).

    From this follow the results of punishment: If one had threatened with it, and a transgression effected nevertheless, then one may choose to punish and so establish that the threat was genuine, ideally strengthening the deterrent effect of the threat should it remain standing, which ties into the next point; if the punishment has an additional goal (As an example, imprisonment both removes the subject from the environment in which the transgression was committed and provides an extended period of discomfort supposed to instigate an aversion to recidivism), then the punishment is supposed to accomplish that goal as well; if the punishment is neither necessary nor useful for an external goal, then aside from whatever natural consequences the punishment may have (Monetary and/or material loss, physical, psychological and/or emotional suffering, etc), its result is purely the gratification of those who wish to see it effected.

    I don't personally claim innocence from this, and don't presume to judge it ethically/morally, as I hold a mostly relativist view of ethics and morality in general (Which doesn't mean I consider myself completely amoral, mind you; I have my own, but it is purely my own), and there have certainly been such people as would provide me with much gratification through their personal misfortune, but it is, I believe, worth keeping in mind that there is no natural law or anything of the sort that decrees punishment as a necessary reaction to anything. You either have a reason for it outside of your own desire, or you wish it purely for your own satisfaction, and if you fall in the latter category, it behooves you to own up to that fact, methinks.

    Thoughts? :)
     
  2. Grass hopper

    Grass hopper Valued Member

    Personally, I think punishment should be saved for children on a societal level. I have no issue with universities and such punishing adult students because their goal is to teach, but as far as prison goes I don't think the same principal should apply.

    I favor the strategy of education and mitigation. Educate people to an extent that they know right from wrong, and don't have to commit crimes to live and you will see crime drop hugely. But if somebody has been educated but is still a danger to society, keep them away from society (thus mitigating their threat).

    If someone is a rapist, lock them in jail so they can't rape people (that includes inmates, jails need to be kept safe) but I don't care to punish them. My personal want may be to see them punished but I know that's just a petty automatic response to a transgression. It doesn't help anything.
     
  3. hatsie

    hatsie Active Member Supporter

    I am of the opinion jails as they are, are nothing but training camps for criminals and also good for networking. If the incarcerated person is never to be released, then this isn't a problem. However usually they are given a 'sentence' and only do half or less of that.
    Some sort of experiment is required inside I think, ie. take a group of inmates and try education, councilling or what ever, and on another group try more carrot and stick that sort of thing. Very clear lines, ' you do this wrong this will happen
    Experiment and sus out what works basically, perhaps develop a system to assess the prisoners who can have their behavior positively altered and those that cannot.

    Time and effort could then be put into retraining the trainable, and the others could be lifers, never to be released, or given the option at any point to walk into the 'chamber' and press the red button.

    Obviously this chain of thought is based around very serious offenders, not the odd parking fine!
     
  4. Zinowor

    Zinowor Moved on

    A pitfall smart people often fall into, is that they use too many big words to explain their concepts. And even if someone could understand, it's not easy to read through like in my case. :p

    I find it much more impressive if someone is able to explain difficult concepts through simple words.

    And now to go for a second read to check if I understood correctly...:cry:
     
  5. Fish Of Doom

    Fish Of Doom Will : Mind : Motion Supporter

    tl;dr: punishment is one of three things: useful, necessary, or for personal satisfaction, and people confuse them, which is dumb and screws everything up.
     
  6. Happy Feet Cotton Tail

    Happy Feet Cotton Tail Valued Member

    Some questions:

    Do you personally collapse useful and necessary into the same camp?

    On the topic of personal satisfaction, do you put any faith in the idea that punishment may be warranted on the grounds that it satisfies a desire for just deserts?

    That for the sake of cohesion within society (however arbitrary the demarkation of "society" may be) it is important for members to be satisfied that people who behave well get rewarded and those who misbehave suffer (regardless of whether or not that influences them to behave well).

    I don't really subscribe to it but I find the idea of punishment as some sort of psycho-socio ritual that re-affirms the communities belief in itself, kind of interesting.
     
    Last edited: May 5, 2014
  7. m1k3jobs

    m1k3jobs Dudeist Priest

    Pain instructs or it brings more pain.
     
  8. Fish Of Doom

    Fish Of Doom Will : Mind : Motion Supporter

    a wild questions appears! fish uses answer!

    nope. from the OP: "To make it shorter, a punishment may be necessary for a given goal, or it may be unnecessary, and if unnecessary, it may yet be useful for a given goal. A punishment that is necessary but not useful isn't really all that necessary, and thus the category is a moot point (If it is not useful, then why is it necessary?)."

    thus, it may be helpful to get something done, but not necessary, but it could be necessary to get something else done. it could also be necessary for one thing, while also being useful for something else, but if it's not useful, then obviously it's not necessary, so that category is invalid,

    well, it would only be so for whoever has that desire, but not for any productive reason unrelated to the simple want of seeing the other person suffer. i maintain that nothing is ever deserved, warranted or whatever; rather, we have the opinion that X would be an appropriate reaction, and we state it with the phrase "warrants X", "deserves X", etc, as if the merit of X were an observable phenomenon, when it's just a desire we have.

    well, if it doesn't influence them to behave well, i don't see why it's that important :p

    well, one thing i've observed a lot is that people tend to hold very tight to traditions and behaviours that make perfect sense if you're in a semi-isolated self-sufficient tribe, village or whatnot out in the middle of the second century, but in a globalized multicultural world under the auspices of scientific advance... not so much. definitely interesting, and certainly important to study, though.
     
  9. 47MartialMan

    47MartialMan Valued Member

    So, shall the punishment fit the crime?
     
  10. Happy Feet Cotton Tail

    Happy Feet Cotton Tail Valued Member

    Ok, What would count as a useful punishment and what would count as a necessary punishment?

    Though the merit of an action doesn't necessarily need to be an observable phenomenon, if the parameters for evaluation are adjusted accordingly.

    Well one could make some appeal to the values of community and see punishment not as a way of necessarily directing an individuals behavior but rather as a necessity for the community to hold onto a shared identity that facilitates communal life, at the expense of the criminal of course.

    I'm not sure whether they are specifically about the utility of the traditions in so much as their significance to people who feel their identity is being diluted and that holding tight to certain traditions allows them to re-affirm their own importance in the face of a world that deems them not so.
     
  11. Fish Of Doom

    Fish Of Doom Will : Mind : Motion Supporter

    necessary: any punishment that is a necessary step for the fulfillment of a goal. example: you have a killer or an abuser roaming the streets. you need to isolate him from society so he doesn't hurt innocents (that's your goal). it is therefore necessary to capture and relocate him, usually to a prison (which is the punishment).
    useful: one that may not be necessary to fulfill your goal, but which contributes towards the fulfillment of another goal. if your secondary goal is that the abuser doesn't abuse again, you would have to rehabilitate him. if he has a really rough time in prison and that overrules his violent tendencies so that he now behaves to avoid getting time again, then the punishment was both necessary to stop him from committing crime in the short term, and useful in that it stopped him from committing crime in the long term. now as a more extreme example, if you've read or watched "a clockwork orange", you would be familiar with the 'ludovico technique' used to brainwash alex into not committing any more crime. that would definitely be a punishment (maybe even a cruel and unusual one, being effectively psychological torture), that's not exactly needed, but it is one that gets him away from his criminal tendencies, and thus it is useful. obviously one that's necessary is useful in relation to the goal for which it is needed, whereas if it's not useful for anything, then it's not needed.



    but those parameters are entirely a matter of individual judgment.

    sounds similar to the sort of thing feudal japan did, where different sorts of ritual suicide or severe self-flagellation, ordinarily a punishment ordered by a higher authority, were voluntarily employed in order to overstep one's boundaries and rebuke said higher authority.

    well, tradition will always be a tricky subject to tackle. i am first and foremost an individualist, and don't self-associate with any particular culture, so i dislike and tend to poo-poo that sort of behaviour, but i certainly like to think i understand why it occurs.
     
  12. Happy Feet Cotton Tail

    Happy Feet Cotton Tail Valued Member

    Hmmm... that seems a little arbitrary. I mean, if you want to hammer nails into a piece of wood the hammer is both necessary and useful. In fact in light of it being necessary it is useful. Maybe some useful actions aren't necessary but I'd only see that in so far as their job could be done some other way.

    Depends. Is the need to imprison a serial killer with the aim of him not harming innocents really the result of individual judgement in the way we commonly think of it?

    I mean we can argue that all actions are meaningless and so any parameters for evaluation (moral or otherwise) are pointless... but I don't see where that gets us outside of mere naval gazing.

    I'm thinking more in terms of a bottom up approach. We punish X crime because we dislike X crime and as a community that is symbolic of our values and important to re-affirming our membership.

    That's something that's very easy to say, but it's rarely true.
     
  13. Fish Of Doom

    Fish Of Doom Will : Mind : Motion Supporter

    which i addressed in the very paragraph you just responded to by giving examples of both ;). as i stated. if it's necessary, then of course it's useful (for the thing for which it's necessary). if it's not necessary for one given thing, it could still be useful for another. if it's not useful, though, then there's no way for it to be necessary for anything (if it were, then it'd be useful for that). if it's not necessary, and doesn't achieve any goal , then it's being done purely because you wish to see it done (arguably, it'd be useful for self-satisfaction or personal gratification, if we want to be super specific)


    yes. some simply want to kill him. some will want to torture him. some won't care as long as they're not in contact with him. everyone will have a different opinion of what is the proper response to it, but it's usually stated, through an accident of linguistics and a lack of statement qualification, as if it were imperative that that happened ("he should X", "X should be done to him", "he deserves X", rather than "i believe that he deserves X", etc). besides, i just said a killer, not a serial killer. could be jack the ripper, but could just as easily be a really angry guy who stabbed a guy in a barfight. that will of course make people's opinions on the matter vary wildly.

    actually, i only navel-gaze when bassai tries to kill me (inside joke).

    well, that wouldn't be exclusive to punishment. its simply conforming to the existing paradigm. X values -> X likes and Y dislikes -> acting accordingly.

    nope, i said i don't self-associate with any culture, not that i have no traits from any culture. so it's true :). it would have been patently false if i'd said that i am an entirely self-constructed person. i am perfectly aware that i've been shaped by the places in which i've lived, but i do not identify as a member of any of them, regardless of my citizenship. (EDIT: unless you meant the understanding part, which is why i put the "like to think" qualifier, which is also true, i like to think i do; whether i actually do is another matter)
     
  14. Happy Feet Cotton Tail

    Happy Feet Cotton Tail Valued Member

    I still feel that I'm not understanding you here.

    So something cannot be necessary but not useful (seems straight enough) ergo if it is necessary it must be useful.

    If it is useful then that doesn't mean it is necessary. Again that seems straightforward.

    I mean my question is still where are the parameters of necessity set? I mean for a persons satisfaction it is still necessary for that person to suffer (whether or not we consider that satisfaction to be worth satisfying is a different question).


    Cool, my point here is simply that the idea that we should protect innocents is a value judgement in itself and is functionally no different to the value judgement that person X should suffer for performing action Y.



    Yeah, it effectively blurs the lines between social ritual and punishment.

    My point is more that culture isn't really about choice, it's just something you experience which conditions you to respond and think about events and people in a certain way.
     
    Last edited: May 5, 2014
  15. Fish Of Doom

    Fish Of Doom Will : Mind : Motion Supporter

    it's not necessary if the same goal can be reached with other methods, but it may still be useful in helping reach that goal (as in my example from clockwork orange of psychological torture to prevent criminal reincidence; you could also use a non-punishment method like simple reeducation; but if the punishment helps, then it IS useful).

    note that i'm looking at it in terms of specific goals. if you want to fulfill a goal, there are steps you must take. occasionally, one of those steps will be something that is considered a punishment (locking someone away because they're dangerous, taking something away from a child because of misuse, etc), and that would make the punishment necessary, not because of a specific need to punish, but because the punishment happens to be a required step for something that you want to do. (i may also have a few logical loopholes bouncing around here and there though)

    when you have a goal and determine the necessary steps for its fulfillment.

    dunno. you'd have to ask that person, and even that may vary (some people forgive, some people lash out and wish harm in moments of stress).


    indeed. which is why i initially proposed that nothing is "deserved" (including good things) because the notion itself depends on value judgements and statements of opinion.

    well, we'd have to define culture :p (i was using the term more in relation to a collective or national identity than in terms of ingrained behaviour)
     
  16. Happy Feet Cotton Tail

    Happy Feet Cotton Tail Valued Member

    Awesome, makes sense.

    Yeah, this was more related to the above questions. That if it were the case that it was a necessity for someone to suffer for another to be happy then within that system their suffering is necessary.


    Maybe but, with all respect, I think that's a kind of pointless route to go down. It's like saying "we cannot prove that anything exists"... true... but one would suggest that after a fashion such a statement is pointless and calls for a re-adjustment of what we take to be "proof".

    Fair enough, different conversation for a different day. :p
     
    Last edited: May 5, 2014
  17. Fish Of Doom

    Fish Of Doom Will : Mind : Motion Supporter

    indeed. my point was more along the lines of arguments that go "deserves X!" "does not!" "does too!" "NUH-UH!" "UH-HUH!" "no, deserves Y!" "no, X!" being dumb and soul-shattering, because their underlying fundament is entirely subjective and absolutely no different than arguing about stuff like which genre of music is better.
     
  18. Happy Feet Cotton Tail

    Happy Feet Cotton Tail Valued Member

    I dunno, that sounds more like a lack of argument rather than "the argument is subjective" to be honest.
     
  19. Fish Of Doom

    Fish Of Doom Will : Mind : Motion Supporter

    well i dunno either, i myself have been known to rant against the very notion of arguments themselves, basically because people don't actually argue :p. in any case it kinda ****es me off, so i dropped in my dissenting two cents.
     
  20. Saved_in_Blood

    Saved_in_Blood Valued Member

    Problem for me is that all I see is the "bad guy" always getting all of the sympathy, or only part of the story is told. We'll go back to the Zimmerman case, as he was attempted to be made out as the bad guy, and so was Martin... the truth is that Martin was involved in quite a bit of bad stuff and wasn't the innocent kid that everyone was forced to look at instead of the bigger man he was at the time of that whole incident. With now having a son, I can imagine that no matter what, I would take his side with all of the facts, but he's 10 months old now and he already knows that no means no... period. He stops what he's doing looks at me and will move onto something else. The problem is that most kids are not "punished" while they are younger and thus wind up being the downfall of society... such as what I see everyday when I drive down my road... I literally cannot stand seeing these kids because I know from my friends store that they are thieves who he's either caught before, or knows the people who know they have been into trouble. I agree with the above that if they are brought up right that most of these issues will not exist later in life for them.
     

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