I am not conflating feeling with thinking. The opposition is false. Feeling is thinking. Morality is about appropriate moral emotions. Justice without outrage at injustice is incomplete. In my terms you are saying that it is inappropriate feel outrage and anger if torturers walk around unscathed regardless of the deterrent value of punishing them. Put that way, I suggest that it puts the ball back in your court. Obviously it is not inappropriate to feel that way. And if it is not inappropriate to feel that way, why is it inappropriate to act on our feelings? Wrongdoers deserve retribution because they have taken things that they are not entitled to and wrongfully imposed harm or the undeserving. They should be deprived of the value of the benefits that they have misappropriated for themselves. That's the basic idea.
I actually regard the utilitarianism you implicitly espouse (treating the impulse to revenge as a sociobiological route to minimizing suffering) as horrific, degrading, and obviously indefensible. In the context of the theory of punishment, utilitarianism, for example, gives us no reason punish only the guilty and would support disproportionately cruel punishments of guilty or innocent people if these would have good deterrent effects. There are a lot of other reasons that utilitarianism is a bad doctrine, but we can start with those.
--- ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:
> On 11 Jun, 2007, at 12:35 AM, andie nachgeborenen
> wrote:
> >
> > No, the puzzle is why people who would in fact
> rejoice
> > if Pinochet or Kissinger were brought up on
> charges
> > feel obliged to pretend that they think it's
> barbaric
> > to feel that way or do that sort of thing. In fact
> it
> > would barbaric _not_ to do that sort of thing.
> Decent
> > people support justice, although of course in a
> free
> > society people will differ about what that
> involves.
> > (Hence democracy, to resolve such differences
> > peaceably.) But apart from a few philosophers
> whose
> > brains have been washed by some metaphysical
> doctrine,
> > I actually do trust that if push comes to shove,
> all
> > of you would jump the right way on this one too.
> >
>
> If I may: I think you are conflating "feelings" with
> "beliefs" and
> "thinking". When a guy cuts me off on the road when
> I am on my
> motorcycle, I "feel" like choking him to death, but
> I do not
> "believe" or "think" that such a "feeling" is
> meaningful (in a
> theoretical sense) or justified.
>
> Of course I want to see Pinochet or Kissinger
> suffer. For the same
> reasons that I want to watch The Big Lebowski and
> Harold and Kumar Go
> To White Castle every few months. It's a kick. The
> question is: can
> we generalise from this feeling? What is the value?
> I think the
> primary positive contribution of this biological
> impulse is in its
> ability to motivate and force us to act so as to
> relieve and avoid
> such suffering.
>
> It is a stretch to say that it is barbaric or
> "indecent" to not want
> to see Kissinger arrested. That is true only if the
> lack of his
> arrest perpetuates the suffering he imposes on
> others. But that goal
> can be accomplished in other ways. Too many
> respectable people
> (Gandhi and everyone influenced by him including
> Mandela, Tutu, and
> various common participants in struggles of the
> past) hold such a
> view, for it to be summarily dismissed as "silly
> claptrap" or
> "barbaric", etc.
>
> Once again, I think we (the list) can learn a lot
> from you if would
> eschew the flame-baiting and educate us on how a
> legal or moral
> theory can be built out of retribution as an
> instinct and a
> sanctioned act. For instance, the only argument I
> have heard in
> favour of punishment is its deterrence value. It
> seems the data is
> inconclusive on that front. Well there is another
> one that I find
> even more strange if not outright silly: "the
> victim's rights"
> business(*). I am sure more sophisticated arguments
> are available and
> I am certain you have one.
>
> [thank you for your other message, to which I will
> respond shortly]
>
> --ravi
>
>
> (*) A friend of mine lost her brother in an auto
> accident that
> involved a drunken driver who swung off his side of
> an undivided
> highway and smashed into his car (the drunk lived).
> She was
> constantly puzzled by the fact that the police and
> others she and her
> family spoke with were puzzled by her family's lack
> of any great
> interest in the prosecution of the drunk. All the
> talk about
> "closure", coupled with the modern dislike of
> ambiguity (and
> addiction to certainty), projected a sort of
> bloodthirstiness that
> she found scary!
>
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