On Sun, 10 Jun 2007 13:35:17 -0700 "Jordan Hayes" <jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-n.com>
writes:
> I thought I'd seen it all on this here intertubes, but this one takes
>
> the cake:
>
> -=-=-=
>
> Carrol writes:
>
> > "I want torture to stop -- but it's incidental to me
> > whether someone is made morally responsible for
> > its occurrence."
>
> Andie writes:
>
> > No, you don't.
>
> Carrol writes:
>
> > Well, what can I say. You know more about what I
> > really think/feel than I do.
>
> Andie writes:
>
> > Actually I think I do know better than you what you
> > think about this, and if you were honest with yourself
> > you'd admit it too. just like all of us on this list.
>
> -=-=-=
>
> I think the word I'm thinking of here is 'delusional' ...
>
> But it's worth going back to what he thinks he's right about:
>
> > It's time to stop lying to ourselves. You want see the
> > torturers jailed or executed, the same as all decent people
> > do.
>
> I guess I now know who not to ask about how to characterize "decent
> people" ... I'm with Carrol on this one, and I wish I could laugh at
>
> Andie's pronouncements -- if they didn't just scare me.
I am with you and Carrol on this. Frankly, I think that andie is out to lunch on this, especially with his pronouncements that he knows what we think better than we do. Perhaps he does, but the burden of proof falls very much on his shoulders to establish that to be the case. The more interesting question is why such a smart and humane guy should take that sort of position.
Since I mentioned my friend Tom Clark before, it is relevant to note that over the past couple of years, he has been engaged in a sort of dialog/debate with U. Penn law professor, Stephen Morse, over the justifiability of retributivism. Morse holds that even if we accept a fully naturalistic view of man which denies libertarian free will, that retribution as a goal (indeed the central goal) of criminal justice can still be justified. Tom Clark on the other hands holds that once we dispense with the notion of libertarian free will, retribution as such becomes increasingly harder to justify. See: http://www.naturalism.org/morse.htm
Jim F.
>
> /jordan
>
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