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Moral responsibility
Organichu
poopspeesRegistered User regular
poopspeesRegistered User regular
When I think about the things most central to my character and what sort of person I wish to be, I invariably return to these: the concept of blame; the concept of responsibility; the concept of accountability for one's thoughts and behaviors. This is reflected very commonly on a social level, of course. It also largely encompasses social policy (and not just in the more Darwinian countries, either).
I think that like most 'progressive' people in the West, the degree to which I 'forgive' others their faults and attribute them to external factors grows larger and larger as I age. When I was a kid, if someone stole my toy I was furious! How dare they take something from me! It belongs to me, and they are wrong and bad people for doing this bad thing. Then I got a little older and started to consider their home problems, and whether they were seeking attention. When I was 12 I was in favor of the death penalty, which later changed. I was a teenaged Libertarian, and the more experiences I amassed the more I considered the huge lack of agency in one's social position.
Many conservatives lampoon this sentiment. They deride the entire concept of diffuse responsibility. They'd like wrongdoers to take responsibility and be accountable. It seems like their position is, effectively, that the buck has to stop somewhere. To an extent I can understand that point. We want to normalize behavior and perspectives. It's not okay to hurt people, or to take their things. It's not okay to hate someone because of some unchangeable or resolvable difference. So we need to stigmatize certain behaviors, and sometimes it's difficult to identify the proper recipient of that stigma: the doing those bad things? The people who do those bad things?
So I'm not sure what this is- I don't really have the philosophical chops for an involved discussion about free will. But I find that as I get older it becomes more and more difficult for me to hate anyone. I still think that we have to take steps to normalize behavior, and I definitely find myself judging people with flaws that I regard as especially shitty or egregious. But I doubt myself for those harsh judgments, too.
Are people 'responsible' for those traits which we deem wrong? Are they legitimately deserving of our loathing- insofar as our loathing extends beyond a precisely wielded tool meant to protect the vulnerable?
I think that like most 'progressive' people in the West, the degree to which I 'forgive' others their faults and attribute them to external factors grows larger and larger as I age. When I was a kid, if someone stole my toy I was furious! How dare they take something from me! It belongs to me, and they are wrong and bad people for doing this bad thing. Then I got a little older and started to consider their home problems, and whether they were seeking attention. When I was 12 I was in favor of the death penalty, which later changed. I was a teenaged Libertarian, and the more experiences I amassed the more I considered the huge lack of agency in one's social position.
Many conservatives lampoon this sentiment. They deride the entire concept of diffuse responsibility. They'd like wrongdoers to take responsibility and be accountable. It seems like their position is, effectively, that the buck has to stop somewhere. To an extent I can understand that point. We want to normalize behavior and perspectives. It's not okay to hurt people, or to take their things. It's not okay to hate someone because of some unchangeable or resolvable difference. So we need to stigmatize certain behaviors, and sometimes it's difficult to identify the proper recipient of that stigma: the doing those bad things? The people who do those bad things?
So I'm not sure what this is- I don't really have the philosophical chops for an involved discussion about free will. But I find that as I get older it becomes more and more difficult for me to hate anyone. I still think that we have to take steps to normalize behavior, and I definitely find myself judging people with flaws that I regard as especially shitty or egregious. But I doubt myself for those harsh judgments, too.
Are people 'responsible' for those traits which we deem wrong? Are they legitimately deserving of our loathing- insofar as our loathing extends beyond a precisely wielded tool meant to protect the vulnerable?
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Because I find myself in a similar situation as you: the older I get, the more I see people as products of their environment and of their histories and less as completely independent agents making free moral decisions. I've always understood it, intellectually, since my first undergrad psych classes, but I actually see it more and more in my daily life.
On the other hand, forgiveness might be infinite but there are real resources - money, time, health - which are not. And some people simply have persistent traits - call them character defects; or addictions; or whatever - that make them destructive to be around. If I meet somebody who is in 50s and is a wife-beating meth addict and has been for decades, I'm going to stay away from him and try to keep the people I love away from him. Even if I recognize that much of his problem comes from his past, I wouldn't expect him to reform any time soon.
When I do come to hate somebody - which is rare - there's sort of a... sadness to it for me. Like a mourning. I feel like there was the possibility that the person could have been somebody better, and I feel sad about the loss of that possibility. I'm not sure if that makes sense.
Edit: What I'm trying to say is that I don't really feel like I've figured out this question for myself yet.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
As I've gotten older, observed others struggles, and more importantly gone through my own, I've realized just how little agency we really do have. That's not to hand wave away responsibility, you are still responsible for your actions, but I don't think you're always responsible for your circumstances. I find it very hard to "hate" anyone anymore, and I find myself feeling guilty when I judge someones situation without knowing all the facts.
Now in my semi-early 30's, with a child, I am staunchly democratic, anti-death penalty, pro social safety net, pro justice system reform. Funny how just experiencing life through a different lens can so drastically change your world outlook.
I just don't think it should end their. I think a "good" society that is truly interested in justice and freedom from iniquity will go on and seek to find out what sort of things cause "bad" behavior. Is there something that is preventing the individual from behaving within legal or moral means? Perhaps there is a mental issue. Perhaps there is an issue in society that closes off options for the individual. I'm sure there are many other possibilities as well. My point is that no man is an island and it's naive to assume that the individual is acting from within a vacuum.
Agreed. Being a lawyer and having spent 6 years at law school I've been indoctrinated with the idea of informed concert and related concepts. Now if I weigh this against the OP's comments and my own personal struggle I find that on one hand I am less willing to accept fault (you are an adult, it is reasonable to expect you understand X), but on the other hand I now understand how people get to strange end points all the sane. Most people do not want to be bad people, or unfair, but they end up with a similar outcome all the same
Which is why I feel sympathy with Rawls
Yet a person with that ... ugh, I don't know whether to call it condition, sexual orientation... whatever... can't seek treatment or admit it to anyone lest they be ostracized before committing any crimes. Integrating this person into society where they have other means to be productive and take pride, rather than dwell on their painful flaws, is important to keeping people in line with society's values. It could be anything, my brain just chose pedophilia since it's easy to grasp as a biological construct since I never "chose" my sexual orientation and don't believe others do.
This country is certainly in the mindset of bootstraps and free will. It's a sounding bell for conservatives these days, but it is apparent that we are not shining beacons of pure willpower.
(I hope this makes sense and people don't think I'm defending pedophilia. I am not in any way.)
I am now more apt to hate and deride other people for their views than I was before. When I viewed people as able to come up with their own thoughts, I believed that arguments could persuade them. Now I try to exercise pure social pressure against viewpoints I dislike, with arguments as an afterthought. The greatest decider of your morality is what you hear from others, so it makes sense for me to be loud instead of eloquent.
Eg, if someone says gay people shouldn't marry, I'll just call them a backwards idiot and shame them publicly if the option is available. Indeed, if their position is based on external factors, I can help be an external factor that decides it. The sad part is it seems vastly more effective.
This.
It's all morally relative and it's all subjective. What you and everyone else around you is willing to let slide or enforce and coming to terms and agreements (or not!) People are in less desirable situations often because they've done something wrong to put themselves there, or they were born into it. Often times the latter has the tenaciousness to pull themselves out of it while others just can't seem to get their foot in the door.
Some people are down right lazy.
Aggressive or violent behavior, lashing out, misogyny, racism, homophobia, etc. In pretty much every instance you can take a deep and material view of someone, their surroundings, upbringing, historical contexts, and consider it against their attitude and actions. Negative? Combative? Remorseful? A man who has done wrong but is sincerely remorseful might get a fair shake from some people compared to one who committed the same act and is defiant in it.
Fairness and consistency are moral responsibilities as well. If the two above men perpetrated the crime with the same motive, how much leniency is allowed to the apologetic? Any at all? Both are likely to have another offense.
Our moral center is different from others in this regard. Our own historical context shape our opinions here, too, and we're all entitled to do so. We all an idea as to what is and is not reasonable.
I think arguments do work, but not in a sterile back and forth aggressive manner. Two keys to persuasion are not to put someone on the defensive and to humanize the subject.
People like to think they're "above" the poor and the poor never had to work hard in this country. They've completely dehumanized the person via fundamental attribution errors of taking into account their own circumstances ("I worked hard." rather than "I could afford school.") while completely negating the circumstances of another person and giving them psychological characteristics to explain their lot in life. ("They are lazy." rather than "They could not afford to take time off from their minimum wage job to finish school and escape a poor area with no job prospects.")
No, social mobility in America is very low. I know it "feels" right for you to say people with a hard work ethic can bring themselves out of it, but the facts do not bear that out.
motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/01/social-mobility-america
While people are all products of their environment, some people do seem to choose to be malicious in spite of an environment that encouraged more positive behaviour. Richard Cheney, for example, grew up in luxury & comfort with a supportive family, went to an expensive & exclusive school, saw tremendous financial success after becoming an adult, etc. He then chose to use all of the resources that had been gifted to him to murder a few hundred thousand people because in his demented view of the world they're the barbarians waiting to lay siege to Athens.
So, fuck him. He's worthy of my hatred because, against all odds, he made the shittiest & most immoral choices possible.
I used Cheney because he's an obvious, contemporary example of this, but the pool is hardly shallow when it comes to this type of person.
I'm more sympathetic when it comes to people who have obviously been sculpted by terrible pasts or medical conditions, but I also recognize that for some of these people a 'time out' is actually beneficial to both them & their community (assuming that they are being jailed in a egalitarian prison, and not put thrown on the rack for the sake of public entertainment), and for those that are simply beyond any reform (clinical sociopaths / pyshcopaths), it's better to keep them institutionalized so they don't kill other people & they don't put themselves at incredible risk.
Some of these people have done things that I have difficulty making myself say. I have worked on documents that describe the actions of people who have stabbed people, beaten people to death, gang-raped children, everything you can imagine. I have worked on documents where people have done these horrible things, and in interviews and psychological assessments they have shown no signs of remorse, or have even spoken of how they enjoyed it.
But what I have also read is those histories. I have seen where these people come from. I have seen that every single one is that way for a reason, and those reasons are utterly predictable. They're clichés out of Law and Order episodes. They are drug addicts, or they had abusive parents, or they endured profound trauma, etc.
One woman, who beat another woman unconscious for drug money with her bare hands, had a father who was an alcoholic, abusive pedophile, and a mother who was a heroin addict. The first time her mother showed her how to use heroin, she was 12 years old. Is it any wonder that she did not learn to control her impulses, or to reflect on her own actions? Is anyone surprised that she did not develop a robust system of ethics? What kind of lessons did she learn, and what kind of behaviour did she develop, when adapting to that environment?
This woman is accountable for the violence that she did to her victim. She is accountable because she did it. Like any other person, she makes decisions, but as a person she is the end product of the monolithic forces that made her the way she is - her family, her peers, her experiences, her environment, her genes, her education (such as it was), the media she consumed. She did something wrong, and it is her fault, clearly. Her mother and father didn't beat the victim, this woman did.
So what does it mean to hold her accountable? It is not "you have done something wrong, something bad. Now you deserve to have bad things happen to you" - the vengeful, atavistic, indulgent, childish response. They've done something wrong because there is something wrong with them. For well-adjusted, well-socialized people, conflicting forces often make us into people who will do a bad thing and then confront it and deal with it. That ability - to be self-aware, to make yourself obey an ethical or practical imperative - is not something everyone is. It simply isn't. Even if they have it, sometimes external input is necessary to prompt it into action.
So yes, she is responsible for her actions. She is responsible because she is that amalgam of forces; the trauma she endured is her. But she can be more; she can change, if other forces act on her. She is responsible for what she did; she caused it. She needs to change, and if she is hurting people then out of practical concerns she needs to be stopped - imprisoned, monitored, even punished if it will deter her. But if she is unable to be the cause of her own change, because she has not developed in a way that would make her capable, then it is our responsibility. Because people are not autonomous, distinct, discrete units. Each person is a nexus of forces, and those forces continue to act on them for their entire lives. We are social creatures who are constantly absorbing and adapting to our surroundings.
A group of people, and a society, has enormous power, and the social responsibility - by which I mean its obligation to act in an ethical sense - is accordingly greater than the individual responsibility. Bad things shouldn't happen to anyone. A bad thing happening to someone is never a good thing in itself; it can only be good if it prevents or mitigates other bad things.
It doesn't have to be an issue of ethics, either. It doesn't have to be as dramatic as a profoundly traumatized violent criminal. There is a great deal of contempt, I'm sure we all know, for fat people. Fat people are pariahs of personal responsibility. Let us imagine our friend, who is fat; he doesn't exercise. He eats very poorly. He doesn't have any particular glandular issues or big bones. He complains about it, and hates it, and hates himself. And people will blame him for being fat. They will say, well, if he eats garbage and doesn't exercise, he deserves to be fat. But he isn't exercising for a reason. He isn't eating well for a reason. Does he have a lack of willpower or motivation? Maybe he doesn't, though it is most assuredly much more complex than some kind of obvious character flaw. But even if it was, there is a reason he doesn't have those qualities; some people develop in such a way as to gain those qualities, and he did not. We can't blame him for that. He wasn't in control of that. So shouldn't we feel compassion for someone struggling to overcome their own habits and lifestyle? Instead of telling him to suck it up and stop stuffing his face and get off his ass, shouldn't we explore the best ways to help him do those things? Shouldn't we say, hey bro, it sucks that you have some bad habits, let's talk about how to deal with them?
There is never any such thing as too much compassion.
i don't think that i agree.
i think it's easy to sort one kind of experience into 'positive' and another into 'negative' and use that binary format to justify this sort of partitioning. but it doesn't seem conceptually valid, to me. the simpler explanation seems to be that his experiences acted upon him in a way that's difficult to articulate or perceive. i think that if we're accepting this base case where we're formed by our environments, then it's incongruous to say that the argument fails for people who are bad despite their pampered lives. it's not like for them there's a spark of mystical banality in their souls.
i think it's probably good to stress that education and financial comfort can alleviate a lot of social ills. the connections between poverty and violent crime are well researched and established, so it's helpful from a conditioning point of view to keep those things in mind. but at the same time, look at the huge first world stereotype of pampered, worry-free parents who subsist on an opioid/benzo haze. everyone has problems. i'm not trying to be one of those poor people defending the rich because i think one day i'll be in their position- but privilege is a complicated and non-linear animal.
The distinction is incredibly important. I work with at-risk kids, and although their families' dysfunction is undeniably the more significant factor in misbehavior than any inborn quality, I respond as if they were solely responsible. Keeping the bigger picture in mind does make it easier to remain emotionally detached (even if they're total jerks) but without the useful fiction of personal responsibility it would be impossible to maintain a safe space by condemning poor behavior.
An eight-year-old doesn't say "n---" because he's a racist, he says it because his dad's a racist. But I can't resolve the problem by altering his dad's behavior (for one thing I might get curbstomped, for another I'll never meet him), so I go ahead and tell the kid that what he said was bad, why it's bad, and what he can do differently if he wants candy.
You don't tell a child that his behavior is excused by the ignorance of his parents; you don't even tell him that his own ignorance is an excuse. It isn't so much that personal responsibility isn't real as that it's only the surface layer, and though it may be the one we deal with most often, perhaps to our long-term detriment, it would be impractical to discard entirely.
I think in many cases there are better outcomes if we act as if people had perfect agency and treat them as bearing total responsibility. It's a shortcut, sure, and certainly easy to abuse by going full-on objectivist asshole with it, but using it may be our only real option in a lot of cases.
I'm not commenting on social mobility, nor do I see how what I said could be construed as a negative one. I know about our problems with social mobility and was acknowledging the fortitude of those than manage to climb to a better situation.
I admit it does make people defensive, but that's an unfortunate and minor side effect. It's about moving the overton window and using skinner style punishment. People learn that if they say stuff like that, they get negative feelings and reduced social station so they don't speak against it, and others don't speak against it. After a long enough time of not hearing anything against it, people forget that there ever was another side.
It doesn't matter if they're just pretending to agree because they don't want to make you angry or get insulted. Even by pretending, they start to believe what they pretend. It's been proven time and again since the Asch conformity experiment.
To bring it more back to the topic, I think it's the ultimate realization that people are defined by their external situation. If you want to change what people are, you need to change what they see in their social surroundings. And like Ghandi said, we must be the change we want to see in the world.
Oh, okay. I read this as about wealth since I wasn't thinking of being born into crime. You mean like a crime ridden neighborhood/parents addicts/etc.? Those kind of factors stacked against you?
My views are pretty similar to those of Galen Strawson. There's an interview with him here that I really like. Chu, I think you might like to read through it too, as it touches on a lot of the stuff you do in your original post.
Sorry to drop this and run. I will try and come back to discuss my own views later (or, more likely, perform a core dump of my thoughts and unravel them into what looks like a discussion.) I think that Galen's interview is worth reading though.
this is where i'm getting hung up.
what about when we can't predict- or be emotionally impacted- by those life trajectories? it's easy to feel sympathy and even an entirely clinical sort of understanding when the experiences are heinous. i think the challenge comes when we can't parse any of the underlying life experiences as causative. i have a large family; as anyone who knows me is aware, a huge chunk of them are fucked up. whenever someone does something bad, another brother or sister inevitably talks about how awful that person is. the reasoning is usually i grew up in the same household, we didn't get beat, we ate every night... he/she is just an asshole.
that is the sort of thing that bothers me. it's a pretty spectacular bout of very micro level privilege and ego, imo.
I don't think you're working with a fiction of personal responsibility here. You are acknowledging that he is responsible for his actions and words by attempting to influence them. You know that his current set of beliefs/decision-making urges is powerfully influenced by his father, or whoever is the racist influence here; you also know that as someone who works with the child from a position of authority, you also have a powerful influence. How you approach the use of that authority and power to alter the child's future decisions is not a matter of whether or not he is responsible - it's a matter of practical efficacy. Making a kid feel bad for saying something racist is not you hurting him because he deserves it for being a little jerk; it's you trying to have an impact on his thought process and personality. If the kid isn't at a point where he can understand that it's wrong to say mean things, you're offering candy as a way to motivate him. All of this implicitly acknowledges two things: 1) the decisions he makes come from various sources, and all decisions can be traced to influences known and unknown, and 2) that he is the one ultimately making those decisions, and he is the one upon which you must act to affect those decisions. In the end, that knowledge just makes your attempts potentially more effective, because you have a better understanding of the kid in question.
I don't think it's in most people (not excluding myself) to really dig at the heart of why they choose to do things as a natural course.
It would be in society's best interest to know the answer to this question. So maybe we already do...?
I had to call the police to put out an APB on him, but I distinctly remember thinking to myself, "Even though he could have killed people on the road with his driving, I spent all this time trying to help this pile of shit, and his care required me to ignore actually sick patients and make the other nurses' jobs harder to do. I know there's a whole litany of socio-economic factors that put him where he is today, but a part of me hopes he falls into that creek and drowns."
And I felt awful, mostly because it was an awful thought to think of another human being, but also a little bit because I couldn't ever totally vacate the thought.
I think it's important to realize that nobody is "just" an asshole, sure. There is a reason they're an asshole, whether it's a past experience or a book they read or a quirk of brain chemistry, and it may be unknowable, but there is a reason.
That doesn't mean they're not an asshole. I think knowing there's a reason behind it will only change the way you behave, really. The best way to make someone who's a dick continue to be a dick is to confirm all their rationalization and justification for being such a dick. Usually that's what happens when you retaliate in kind, with dickishness. So you try not to be a dick, and even when you confront someone about being a dick, you don't lash out or get nasty (as much as you can avoid it).
Although, on a day-to-day level, sometimes the satisfaction you get from being a dick to someone who has been a dick overrides that, but I try not to let that be a guiding principle.
I'm not sure why this is the case, but it seems to be so, and it makes me curious as to where it comes from. I know there's hatred from ignorance and fear, but I know people here are not ignorant in that way.
I hope this isn't outside the purview of the thread.
Isn't this somewhat coercive though? It seems kinds of empty to attempt to alter beliefs in that manner. Do you use this methodology for all confrontation with values that oppose yours?
In the 'murder on the internet' thread, I found that some who were arguing from the same position I was, acted outwardly hostile to others and I didn't quite understand why. In any argument I participate in, my objective is to understand and experience the opponents perspective. Not to dominate them. I believe that attempting to form a dialogue can be effective in getting people to at least listen or consider your perspective. I don't think most arguments are 'won' on the spot anyways, more so in the later pondering stages after the individual has departed the conversation.
I feel similarly.
I don't think I'd describe what you're talking about as "hatred" though. I just don't do "hate" any more. I feel sad about people who are unfortunate enough to have had the circumstances that make them as they are. Hatred just seems weird and illogical to me. Maybe I'll become re-acquainted with it if my circumstances change, but I'm fortunate enough at the moment to have the notion just seem really weird to me.
Punishment is bad, but necessary. People are victims of their circumstances, and as such punishment seems wrong in a sense - given that wider perspective - but punishment works, and so we punish. It's all very sad, I guess.
This thread reminds me of one of my old threads on determinism/free will.
Well, you're shaped by your environment (and by your genes, but since those were also sculpted environmentally, we'll just call them another part of the environment for now), and this weighs into your decision-making & sense of self - but you're not zombie. You make decisions with your history & environment push or pulling you in particular directions.
Consider Ted Bundy: despite his incredibly wonderful personal life, his psychopathic brain is what ultimately stood at the base of his decision-making when it came to many of his fatal choices. Now, you might say, "He's not responsible for his psychopathology," and of course I would agree, but it's his fucking brain at the end of the day, isn't it? Nobody imparted it on him, nobody's negative influence made it that way - it's just one more product of human imperfection.
I don't think it's wrong to have hatred or contempt for that imperfection or it's products, and moreover, I think a contempt for it can service us in attempts to mitigate it.
I think that this could be something that can lead down the rabbit hole of self concept and identity. Like, when you frame things as 'his brain', and we're dealing with an individual who may have a self concept that is very distorted, what does this mean for responsibility?
The truth of the matter is, we are as we are because of our environment. There is no way around that. In order to be fully responsible, in the sense that many people mean, those Chu says would "like wrongdoers to take responsibility and be accountable," they'd need to control the circumstances that surround them. They need to already be formed to do that though, which would require that they control the circumstances of their formation, which would require them to be formed.... all the way down the rabbit hole. Since we don't create ourselves ex nihilo, we're not ultimately responsible for who we are. And since everything grows from there, emerging from the uncontrolled environment surrounding an uncontrolled formation, no entity at any point is more responsible for themselves than a hurricane.
It's an easy truth to see, but a hard one to grasp. I still struggle with it, and I've been thinking about it for years. You can still assign proximate blame, e.g., that guy is responsible for forgetting to pick his kids up last Tuesday, but it feels sort of empty when you ask whose fault THAT is, and the truth is ADHD, or stress at work, or something else, and you end up in a spiral back to "well, that's just how things are."
I do not think this means we have to abandon the stigmatization of certain behaviors, or anything like that though. It is entirely possible to hold this framework as truth and still act pretty much like everyone else in most regards (I manage it). We should act to make the world a better place, regardless of why it is the way it is. Now, this is pretty easy for me to say, as someone who's pretty approximately a utilitarian (meaning, since I tend to think of "responsibility" as a term only really useful to schools of morality that I don't subscribe to, I don't have to cast anything aside to ignore the notion of responsibility here.)
Tending to see people as products of their environments helps to free one from a lot of unpleasant feeling. When I think about it, it's hard to be mad at anyone for anything. It's.. sad that some people are bad. If I could fix them, I would. If I can't... well, that sucks. I just have to try and stop them from hurting other people. Frankly, it's freeing to think like that.
So, no. People don't deserve loathing. They don't deserve... well, they don't deserve. That verb doesn't ultimately mean anything to me, other than being a tool to communicate with people who believe that some people 'should' get things that others shouldn't. People are products of their environments, and the good ones should be left to be good, and the bad ones are unfortunate, but we should treat them to make everything better, realizing the entire time that we would be them, had we their genes and circumstances.
The reason I mention that is because, to the extent that I could be born another person, I'd be that person, and would do everything they would. If I were born as Hitler, would I 'deserve' something different? It seems silly to say that I would, when it's nothing inherently bad about me - indeed, what sense does it make to blame someone when all that separates them from the blameless is things entirely unrelated to them? After all, if only the people and world around me had been different, I would've developed the smallpox vaccine. Can you blame someone for something that is clearly caused, entirely, by others? If you can't, then what does blame even mean? If you can, then you're operating under a definition of blame I've never seen.
I don't think you can, sensibly. This isn't how most people think, clearly. But I think it to be both true and useful. When we stop blaming people for what's wrong, we can stop trying to tear down others and instead try to make things right.
Thanks. I enjoyed this.
Well, this is where language gets a bit tricky. 'His brain' is just how I'm used to saying it, and one of the only ways to frame it without sounding awkward, but of course that's not accurate: you are your brain. It's not owned by you, it is you (well, unless you ascribe to dualism, in which case I regret to inform you that your horse is dead. And I think I can hear men clubbing it with sticks even as we have this conversation).
I hold you responsible for what you've done, even if what you've done can be directly attributed to illness or whatever other trauma. If you prove to be a totall defective product, I also probably loathe your existence, and I justify that loathing on the basis that your defective nature means that you will only ever be destructive. I don't care that it's not your fault - it is, and that's enough for me.
The problem I then run into, though, is how my particular slice of civilization has chosen to deal with the issue of crime. I may hate people who are psychopaths, but I think it's incredibly immoral to choose to torment them as a form of emotional relief / entertainment. We should be putting them into safe havens where they can neither continue being predators or be the target or reprisal, and they can live out their lives in relative comfort. Instead, we kill them, shove them into cages, etc, all to satiate our own bloodthirst while trumpeting the righteousness of striking-back for the victims.
So, while I don't really agree with Chu, Feral or Multifarious in that I can by no means claim to bear no hatred for some people, I find I just side with their end of the spectrum anyway because those on my end of the spectrum think that their emotional reactions - justified or not - are a sound basis for erecting a violent penal system.
What are 'you' is sort of what I'm getting at.
Take someone with Borderline Personality Disorder(a term I'm happy is being considered for revision), a common symptom is the feeling of lack of clear self or identity. They feel that they aren't a person in the same way as the average individual. If a person such as this is involved in committing an immoral deed/act, how do we hold it against 'them', when they don't recognize a connection to a self? Could this then be a case of others projecting an identity on them?
I think a psychopath could be considered similarly, in that they face dissolution of self perception through living a life of lies and manipulation, used to satiate a primitive needs/wants based persona.
Also, do you believe all psychopaths to be condemned to a life of destruction? I'm not sure if that is actually the case, and that there may be psychopaths who lead relatively stable or semi functional lives.
I'm also somewhat unsure of the reasons for loathing or hatred. My question would be 'why?'. I'm kind of confused with your declaration of hatred, then the wish for them to be able to live away from society in a comfortable fashion.
Obviously this framework can be used for mega-evil (specifically eugenics, pseudo-fascist-logic racism, etc), but I think if we try to be humane about it, and regard the larger totality of the individual as still relevant - that is, that we can understand each other as collections of traits and also something more than the sum (this ineffable gestalt not necessarily being codified in law but at least thoroughly and implicitly understood), then I think it will lead to an actual discussion of just deserts without the whole postmodern quibbling about whether such a concept can possibly apply to luck-derived components. We're dealt the hand we're given, but that doesn't mean we can't call it a bad draw - and more importantly, once comprehending this injustice, work to rectify it. But that also requires a hell of a lot of personal knowledge and databasing, which seems difficult to implement...
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
The literature I've read essentially indicates that while there may be fringe cases of clinical psychopaths leading somewhat normal lives, the overwhelming majority of psychopathy cases lead to violence and / or total dysfunction. Without any empathy or sense beyond, "What do I want?", such individuals prove to be negative influences.
Because they are forces of ruin.
I don't think it's either practical or reasonable to try to 'dispose' of people, so locking them away seems most reasonable to me, and it seems to have proven effective in the places where it's the norm (the netherlands, for example).
As a deterrent? As cathartic punishment? If the goal is transgression minimization, it is worth pointing out that purely punitive measures are rarely the optimal way to achieve this - as a material point about crime management rather than high ethical theory.
Furthermore, it is costly. Never mind the cost of an extensive state-funded punitive apparatus, you would also have to have a phenomenally invasive police state to ensure that all rule-breaking is identified. Now you're additionally punishing people who did follow the rules, by imposing these costs on them. Surely this illustrates that you cannot escape the relativity of reward vs punishment?
I think this is a wrongheaded approach. When a person transgresses, i.e. does wrong, the problem is not that they prosper, the problem is that other people suffer. Our ultimate goal is not to prevent their prosperity; everyone should be as prosperous as possible, in fact. Our ultimate goal is to prevent the suffering that transgressive acts can cause.
Deterrent justice is a popular idea, though the extent to which deterrents actually work is questionable. It seems like whatever motivates or enables a person to commit a crime, if it is strong enough to overcome the sense of ethics with which we are generally instilled, is strong enough to overcome fear of being caught and fear of punishment, as well. And the severity of punishment also seems to have little bearing on how effectively it deters people.
So, yes, we want to keep people who do wrong from prospering, in that we want to show people that "crime doesn't pay." We want to remove positive motivation - the idea that there is substantial gain from criminal activity - and establish negative motivation - the idea that criminal activity often results in being caught and punished. Empirically, though, these tactics are bandaids. They don't address the real problem. They are costly, with diminishing returns, and negative motivation often backfires, creating resentment for government, for law enforcement, and for class difference.
This seems incoherent. You do not "justify why" something occurred. Justification is what we do to explain why it is acceptable that something occurred. More importantly, your logic here does not connect.
1. Failing to hate criminals means we have to justify their transgressions. (How so? We can explain their trangressions, but this does not mean they are not transgressions)
2. Justifying transgressions elevates the transgressor's rights above those of non-transgressors. (No, it doesn't, even if we replace "justify" with "explain." It enables you to understand why the transgression occurred, and act more efficiently in preventing it, so that the transgressor can be helped to live a life where they do not cause harm, and potential victims will not be harmed in the future.)
Trying to understand someone, and even having compassion for someone, does not mean that you are elevating their rights above the rights of others. It means that they need more effort because there is dysfunction. You don't need to work very hard to understand and feel compassion for someone who is much like you, a prosocial, contributing member of society who doesn't bust into stores or beat people up.
Again, there is a lack of reasoning here. Why does someone being hurt mean we should hate, scorn, and punish someone? Shouldn't we treat them in whatever way is most effective in preventing them from committing their offence in the future, for the benefit of our society and the benefit of the offender themselves? What makes you think that reacting with hate, scorn, and punishment is more effective than understanding, compassion, and correctional justice?
the only sensible follow on question is "to what degree does the concept of responsibility inasmuch as it dictates how we treat people when they do naughty things help us with our goal (whether it is punishment, rehabilitation, or whatever".
Seconded. This is an outstanding post, and I appreciate being given a chance to read your insight into the matter, EM.
because they are different from us, duh
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat