In general I take a consequentialist view of punishment (and most things). So, of course bad actions ultimately have to have some kind of material cause, but this doesn't really change anything because punishments should anyway be calibrated to make the world overall better off. On this view, harming someone who has misbehaved is only ju…
In general I take a consequentialist view of punishment (and most things). So, of course bad actions ultimately have to have some kind of material cause, but this doesn't really change anything because punishments should anyway be calibrated to make the world overall better off. On this view, harming someone who has misbehaved is only justifiable if that prevents more harm elsewhere. I think our evolved sense of justice is somewhat aligned with this goal but far from perfectly.
i think that truth is a cardinal virtue. framing other people as 'bad' (and the implicit assumption behind it that they have supra-material accountability for how they turned out) is a social fiction designed to disincentivize bad behavior. i understand the purpose, but i disagree with social fictions, and i feel like there are other effective ways to decrease bad behavior (psychiatric treatment, school reform, rehabilitation-oriented or harm-mitigatory incarceration, etc).
I of course agree that "bad people" is a social fiction, but I used that phrase not to try to reinforce that social fiction but simply to emphasize that in this post I didn't want to contest if any particular set of actions are bad but rather what to do in cases where they are. I think most people, if they tried to be charitable, could think of cases where they'd say punishment was appropriate but no institutional punishment currently exists.
i don't think that there is any practical way to perform social ostracism without reinforcing that fiction. maybe it is abstractly doable, but i don't think i have ever seen anybody practically ever do it. i would rather just have people not socially ostracize anybody, and instead: (a) count on the criminal justice system to handle extreme cases of antisocial behavior and (b) behave judiciously in regards of who they choose to associate with.
I think it would be very hard to draw a line between (b) and social punishment. If everyone decides Bob sucks and stops associating with Bob, that would be social punishment as far as the way I'm using that word.
In general I take a consequentialist view of punishment (and most things). So, of course bad actions ultimately have to have some kind of material cause, but this doesn't really change anything because punishments should anyway be calibrated to make the world overall better off. On this view, harming someone who has misbehaved is only justifiable if that prevents more harm elsewhere. I think our evolved sense of justice is somewhat aligned with this goal but far from perfectly.
i think that truth is a cardinal virtue. framing other people as 'bad' (and the implicit assumption behind it that they have supra-material accountability for how they turned out) is a social fiction designed to disincentivize bad behavior. i understand the purpose, but i disagree with social fictions, and i feel like there are other effective ways to decrease bad behavior (psychiatric treatment, school reform, rehabilitation-oriented or harm-mitigatory incarceration, etc).
I of course agree that "bad people" is a social fiction, but I used that phrase not to try to reinforce that social fiction but simply to emphasize that in this post I didn't want to contest if any particular set of actions are bad but rather what to do in cases where they are. I think most people, if they tried to be charitable, could think of cases where they'd say punishment was appropriate but no institutional punishment currently exists.
i don't think that there is any practical way to perform social ostracism without reinforcing that fiction. maybe it is abstractly doable, but i don't think i have ever seen anybody practically ever do it. i would rather just have people not socially ostracize anybody, and instead: (a) count on the criminal justice system to handle extreme cases of antisocial behavior and (b) behave judiciously in regards of who they choose to associate with.
I think it would be very hard to draw a line between (b) and social punishment. If everyone decides Bob sucks and stops associating with Bob, that would be social punishment as far as the way I'm using that word.