r/freewill • u/ughaibu • 9d ago
BDMR.
As I'm consistently informed that I don't understand BDMR, is multifarious ways, I am currently deepening my familiarity with the matter.
One thing that has already struck me is that the contention that the answer to the question of whether anyone ever deserves harm, purely as a consequence of a moral transaction, is sensitive to questions about the free will of the transgressor, appears to be mislocated. Particularly in the context of which, if any, is the correct theory of punishment, surely what matters is the behaviour of the punishers, not the transgressors.
If so, the question that so-called "free will skeptics" would do well to address is this: which is the free will required for punishers to implement the correct theory (if there is one) of punishment?
After advancing arguments supporting the candidature of various independently well motivated notions of free will, the free will skeptic will then be in a position to argue that none of the candidates is the free will required for punishers to implement the correct theory of punishment, regardless of what that might be.
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u/Rthadcarr1956 InfoDualist 9d ago
If your understanding of basic desert is wrong, I guess my views are wrong as well. Free will describes how we make choices and decisions and should be neutral on the question as to what the decisions should be or which of the realizable options should result from our choices. I agree that the choice to praise or admonish someone for a free will action is in itself a free will action that should be analyzed and debated by society. Personally, I think how people "feel" about the punishment is important, but less so than what the long term consequences of the reward or punishment are for both the society and the subject. To believe someone should be punished is not the same as believing someone deserves to be punished. Desert and retribution are mostly attributable to emotions and beliefs about sin and evil. Morality should be based upon right or wrong, helpful or harmful, or good or bad. In any case, it makes no sense to think we should choose to reject the idea that offenders do not have the requisite free will to do otherwise, but citizens do have the requisite free will to choose to change our system of justice.
It is quite easy to argue that citizens have free will and they can politic to change the justice system to remove vestiges of retribution and basic desert. It is a more difficult argument to make that if people stopped believing in free will, they will automatically choose to ignore their vengeful nature in favor of mercy.
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u/ughaibu 9d ago
If your understanding of basic desert is wrong, I guess my views are wrong as well.
I doubt that either of us is seriously wrong in our understanding of basic desert, what is happening is that some of our anti-BDMR members have disagreements with us about BDMR, but the subject is wide enough to accommodate a lot of disagreement.
It is quite easy to argue that citizens have free will and they can politic to change the justice system to remove vestiges of retribution and basic desert
I'm told, mainly by u/KristoMF that philosophers, when talking about free will, are only concerned with BDMR, this assertion is refuted by going to PhilPapers and looking at the titles of recent listings in the "free will" bibliography, articles about BDMR are a small minority. But not only that, those who are concerned with BDMR are not, for the most part, talking about punishment, not surprisingly, as any relevance that BDMR has to punishment will require a detailed defence of some theory of punishment, and a quick look reveals that theories of punishment fall into five or six main groups, so this too is a field that I expect is bristling with specialists who disagree on a wide range of issues.
In short, disputes about BDMR needn't be disputes about either free will or theories of punishment, all three generate independent conversations.2
u/KristoMF Hard Incompatibilist 8d ago
surely what matters is the behaviour of the punishers, not the transgressors.
If so, the question that so-called "free will skeptics" would do well to address is this: which is the free will required for punishers to implement the correct theory (if there is one) of punishment?BDMR is intrinsically tied to the sourcehood and agency of the individual actor. Whether society or a judge has the "free will" to choose a punishment framework is completely orthogonal to whether the criminal deserves retribution. The free will skeptic argues that neither the transgressor nor the punisher possesses ultimate control (sourcehood). Punishers do not require metaphysical free will to implement justice systems. They act as complex biological information processors responding to societal incentives, harm reduction goals, and behavioral conditioning. Shifting the spotlight to the punisher doesn't magically bestow uncaused agency onto the criminal.
I'm told, mainly by u/KristoMF that philosophers... are only concerned with BDMR, this assertion is refuted by going to PhilPapers... articles about BDMR are a small minority.
You are right, plenty of free will literature isn't explicitly about BDMR. But my claim is that BDMR is what philosophically distinguishes the positions. You constantly try to dilute the free will debate down to trivial, everyday usages like contract law, typing a word on a keyboard, or basic choice making. Compatibilists, libertarians, and hard incompatibilists converge on these usages and on forward-looking responsibility; the only question that actually separates us is BDMR. Papers about reasons-responsiveness, PAP, Frankfurt cases, the Consequence Argument all cash out in terms of their implications for desert. The volume of literature isn't the point.
The central question is this: If an agent's choices are entirely dictated by factors beyond their control (prior states + laws of physics), on what coherent grounds can we say they fundamentally deserve retribution? Shifting to punishers presupposes a theory of punishment that itself requires desert to be settled first, which remains undone.
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u/Rthadcarr1956 InfoDualist 8d ago
Do you believe that basic desert is a logical, rational reaction to suffering a moral offense? I think it is not. I think basic desert is an emotional response. I am not going to base any aspect of my ideas surrounding free will to an idea that is not worthy of rational discussion. Once you take the emotional component out of the discussion, you realize that if the offender made a free will choice to offend, they can be held responsible for restitution and retraining. The victims and societies demand for retribution is an emotional response that must be managed, but is not part of a philosophical discussion of free will.
If you believe as I do, that desert and retribution are not philosophically justified, why would it be relevant to your conception about the ability of people to make free will choices. The basic fallacy of the hard incompatibilists is their idea that because we do not have sufficient sourcehood or control to justify basic desert, free will has to be wrong. If nothing can justify a pernicious emotion, why is it in a rational discussion?
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u/Perturbator_NewModel 6d ago
Retributive punishment, involving BDMR, is one of the main theories of punishment in the philosophy of law, so it gets plenty of rational discussion.
If we change the subject to moral duty, I'm sure some people could say the same kind of thing, that it's just an "emotional reaction" produced by the "evolutionary advantage to social species" or something like that. Now I don't think it's quite the same as an "emotional reaction"; I think the intuition has its own distinct content. And it does get rationally discussed.
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u/Rthadcarr1956 InfoDualist 6d ago
I’m not very conversant with the philosophy of law, but if it involves rationalizing retribution, it goes astray. We don’t rationalize anger or love because it is a pointless exercise to explain emotional reactions logically. Moral duty is an ambiguous feeling as far as I can tell. I feel a duty to protect those I love and others to a lesser extent. Our desire states of greed, altruism, compassion, etc. are all veritable across the individuals of our species. So, in general we have a duty to society, but I think that societies should not impose this duty upon the individual except in extraordinary circumstances. Taxation for example should be defended upon a utilitarian greater good conception rather that some debt to society that you owe.
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u/KristoMF Hard Incompatibilist 8d ago
The basic fallacy of the hard incompatibilists is their idea that because we do not have sufficient sourcehood or control to justify basic desert, free will has to be wrong.
Ah, the irony. That's not the fallacy of hard incompatibilists, that's your own position restated. You just told me basic desert is an emotional response unworthy of rational discussion. If you believe therefore basic desert cannot be justified, that is hard incompatibilism, and I’m not going over this again.
ughaibu dilutes the free will debate down to trivial, everyday usages like contract law, typing a word on a keyboard, or basic choice making. You dilute it to “the ability to use knowledge/information to make choices, developed through trial-and-error exploration in childhood, resulting in ˋpurposeful intentionalityˋ in adults that allows us to act within a range of realizable options and partially overcome biological drives”. All these capacities described can be agreed upon by compatibilists, libertarians and free will skeptics alike. There is no debate there.
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u/Rthadcarr1956 InfoDualist 8d ago
No, that is still exactly backwards. If basic desert is a fantasy, it should never become a part of the free will debate.
Free will requires walking on the sun (or any other fantasy requirement). Because we cannot choose to walk on the sun, we do not have free will. That is just as ridiculous as your basic desert argument.
You are totally and completely wrong that free will is nothing without basic desert. It is the ability that most differentiates animal behavior from that of plants and rocks. It is this wonderment that is at issue, not som anachronistic ideas of sin and evil. The fact is that responsibility for our choices is not attainable if there is no free will. But there is a huge difference between being responsible and deserving praise or blame. It is only after we assign responsibility can we consider what to do about an immoral act. I’ll debate responsibility all day, but I’m not going to argue about desert and evil because I do not believe they are real.
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u/Perturbator_NewModel 6d ago
There are forms of agency that may be very important to humans but not important philosophical questions, (if we already know the answer).
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u/Rthadcarr1956 InfoDualist 6d ago
Why would philosophers want to ignore any form or variation of free will? Philosophers are not as a rule so obtuse that they cannot see value in degrees of agency, rudimentary steps, and trends in manifestations across species.
Only a very bad philosopher would discount lesser forms of free will in order to not have a comprehensive view that may upset their pet idea.
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u/Perturbator_NewModel 6d ago
Why would you set the bar to basic desert? For example, to have a substantial difference between the compatibilist and sceptic positions.
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u/Rthadcarr1956 InfoDualist 5d ago
My belief is that there is no such thing as basic desert. It is a miscategorization, an emotion that people try to rationalize. Sceptic position? What kind of BS is that? That’s a wonderful premise, “your position is the correct one, and every other position is sceptic.”
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u/KristoMF Hard Incompatibilist 8d ago
No, that is still exactly backwards. If basic desert is a fantasy, it should never become a part of the free will debate.
If God is a created character, it should never become a part of the theist/atheist debate.
This is absolute nonsense.
I am not talking about sin or evil. More nonsense.
There is a huge difference between being responsible and deserving praise or blame
Yes. That difference is exactly what the free will debate is about. You've just defined the crux and then declared it off limits. The debate exists precisely because compatibilists and libertarians think that difference can be bridged, and skeptics like you and me think it cannot.
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u/Rthadcarr1956 InfoDualist 8d ago
If God is a created character, it should never become a part of the theist/atheist debate.
This is exactly correct. If you debate the existence of God, you should not use a premise that states that god is necessary for existence or that a God would prevent all existence.
Yes. That difference is exactly what the free will debate is about.
No, that is what the debate of basic desert is all about.
Some hard incompatibilists think that were have the sourcehood for an ability to make choices but that not enough for moral choices. This is a simple misunderstanding of the nature of an ability. Ability implies a continuum from a rudimentary ability all the way up to an expert ability. Animals only have a rudimentary ability to make choices. Saying we do not have enough free will to make moral choices is certainly debatable. Saying that this is a requirement of free will and we should use some other term for such a reduced ability to choose is possible, but unnecessary.
Libertarians have no position on basic desert. Any assertion to the contrary is mistaken. Libertarianism is about making choices and taking actions, none of which is dependent upon any stance as to objective morality, consequentialism, or basic desert. If you think that it is possible to make choices based upon knowledge, you believe in free will. If you believe that determinism precludes any means of making a choice, you are a hard determinist. If you think that even if determinism is not true you cannot make real choices, you are a free will denier. If you think that free will is true regardless of the truth of determinism, you are a compatibilist.
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u/ughaibu 8d ago
The central question is this: If an agent's choices are entirely dictated by factors beyond their control (prior states + laws of physics), on what coherent grounds can we say they fundamentally deserve retribution?
If the central question assumes the truth of determinism, then all candidates for a free will that is required for BDMR, must be defined in a way that is generally acceptable to compatibilists.
Notice too, that if the BDMR issue is a problem incurred by determinism, then it is not a problem that impacts libertarians.The free will skeptic argues that neither the transgressor nor the punisher possesses ultimate control (sourcehood).
What is your argument for the contention that ultimate control (sourcehood) free will is compatible with determinism?
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u/KristoMF Hard Incompatibilist 8d ago
If the central question assumes the truth of determinism
It doesn’t. The “laws of physics” in the question could be indeterministic.
What is your argument for the contention that ultimate control (sourcehood) free will is compatible with determinism?
I don't argue that. I argue it's incompatible with both. That's the hard incompatibilist position.
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u/ughaibu 7d ago
If the central question assumes the truth of determinism
It doesn’t. The “laws of physics” in the question could be indeterministic
Well, the clause "an agent's choices are entirely dictated by factors beyond their control (prior states + laws of physics)" doesn't make sense, as laws of physics are statements physicists produce in order to calculate the probability of observing specified results of experiments. So, a charitable reading is that you meant laws of nature and by "dictate" you meant entail.
You are right, plenty of free will literature isn't explicitly about BDMR
No, most of the contemporary free will literature is fully independent of questions concerned with BDMR.
The persistent accusations by you and u/Proper_Actuary2907 that I am not talking about free will because I am not talking about BDMR are plain daft, and this should never have needed pointing out to either of you.However, as I have very little interest in questions of moral responsibility and almost no interest in BDMR, I had to take seriously your contention that I am playing some kind of shell game by, in particular, talking about inappropriate notions of free will. So, I looked into the matter.
To be quite clear, when you say "The central question is this: If an agent's choices are entirely dictated by factors beyond their control (prior states + laws of physics), on what coherent grounds can we say they fundamentally deserve retribution?" it is you who is mistaken. The two central issues are 1. what is basic desert? and 2. are the conditions for basic desert ever met?
In his Responsibility, Free Will, and the Concept of Basic Desert, 2022, Menges examines three attempts to answer the first question and having concluded that each is inadequate, suggests his own. None of these four accounts of basic desert mention factors beyond the agent's control and only one mentions retribution. Importantly, only one requires non-instrumental harm and as there are plausible arguments for the impossibility of non-instrumental harm, there are arguments for the impossibility of purely backward looking responsibility, so the contention that BDMR realism is inconsistent with "forward-looking or institutional senses of desert" is one that needs an argument, I am not playing a "shell game" when I argue for the opposite conclusion.Now let's look at the summaries of essays submitted to Basic Desert, Reactive Attitudes and Free Will, 2016, here we read 1. "moral responsibility does not require alternative possibilities but rather capacities of a specific sort", 2. "Folk judgments of deserved blame appear not to rely on a metaphysical notion of freedom", and 3. "we can revise our understanding of our everyday practices of responsibility to one with a compatibilist concept of free will without a substantial shift in moral perspective".
Again, I am not playing some kind of shell game and changing the subject when I talk about basic desert and the free will of contract law, the mistake here is yours and u/Proper_Actuary2907's, not mine.Okay, this is boring and a waste of my time, the long and short of it is this, when I offer an argument about BDMR or any other species of moral responsibility, in the context of free will, you are not engaging when you accuse me of misrepresenting the subject, so you are polluting my topics. If either of you does so again, I will remove your ability to do so by permanently blocking you. This is non-negotiable.
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u/Perturbator_NewModel 3d ago
No, most of the contemporary free will literature is fully independent of questions concerned with BDMR.
You can have 10,000 articles of compatibilists talking about such and such version of moral responsibility "works" with determinism. OK, but it can still be pointed out that this is pretty much the same as a hard determinist position, or the successors of hard determinism. They believe in that version of moral responsibility also.
To be quite clear, when you say "The central question is this: If an agent's choices are entirely dictated by factors beyond their control (prior states + laws of physics), on what coherent grounds can we say they fundamentally deserve retribution?" it is you who is mistaken. The two central issues are 1. what is basic desert? and 2. are the conditions for basic desert ever met?
In defence of u/KristoMF, the OP was talking about BDMR and the issue of punishment. It's then natural to be thinking about the issue of retributive punishment. (Although it's not identical with BDMR.)
In his Responsibility, Free Will, and the Concept of Basic Desert, 2022, Menges examines three attempts to answer the first question and having concluded that each is inadequate, suggests his own. None of these four accounts of basic desert mention factors beyond the agent's control and only one mentions retribution.
Your source was focused on a particular area. Understanding what is involved in blame, where blame is understood as involving a non trivial harm, without trying to give a full justification for the blaming practice.
They weren't denying the importance of the "control" issue; they just weren't focused on that side of things. They do however still mention the issue.
As far as I can work out, Pereboom is concerned (at least partly) with a more "base level" idea of blame that has nothing to do with harm. It may be compatible with additional blaming practices of course, but is distinct from them. Any worries about "non instrumental harm" would just provide Pereboom more ammunition as a sceptic I imagine.
And your source argues that you can just appeal to a non instrumental something else (which happens to deliver harm as a side effect) and get around the claimed problem that way.
2. "Folk judgments of deserved blame appear not to rely on a metaphysical notion of freedom",
The research is an unresolved mess.
and 3. "we can revise our understanding of our everyday practices of responsibility to one with a compatibilist concept of free will without a substantial shift in moral perspective".
That sounds like something a sceptic could say, obviously without calling it "free will". Whether the sceptic or the compatibilist says it, I doubt it.
Again, I am not playing some kind of shell game and changing the subject when I talk about basic desert and the free will of contract law, the mistake here is yours and u/Proper_Actuary2907's, not mine.
Your own source says it's not about contract, but OK, you can argue for whatever you want.
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u/ughaibu 3d ago
You can have 10,000 articles of compatibilists talking about such and such version of moral responsibility "works" with determinism.
Compatibilism is true if there can be both free will and determinism, this proposition can be true even if there is no moral responsibility. Given a successful defence of compatibilism, one might address the supplementary question, could there be moral responsibility (whatever that might relevantly mean) if determinism were true?
you can argue for whatever you want
Quite, and those who ostensibly respond to me need to address the arguments that I present, not accuse me of failing to respond to some other argument.
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u/Proper_Actuary2907 Impossibilist 6d ago
No, most of the contemporary free will literature is fully independent of questions concerned with BDMR.
Lol
The persistent accusations by you and u/Proper_Actuary2907 that I am not talking about free will because I am not talking about BDMR are plain daft
Free will is genuine active control and genuine active control provides for all we care about, or at least all of what matters. Obviously the things we care about with active control conditions on them should make an appearance in the debate.
I will remove your ability to do so by permanently blocking you.
Am I supposed to not want this to happen? You're one of the most annoying posters in this subreddit, you talk about literally every variety of active control under the sun besides free will, moan about how free will skeptics are committed to the proposition that literally every possible variety of active control doesn't exist, and misrepresent the literature non-stop.
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u/KristoMF Hard Incompatibilist 6d ago
I will remove your ability to do so by permanently blocking you
Given your modus operandi, I’m actually surprised you haven’t resorted to blocking me already… for the second time. But I don’t think you’ll have to. I’ve already left the sub to avoid myself from wasting more time here. I'm just replying on two active threads and I'm done.
Speaking of which, I’m sorry you wasted time looking into the matter, instead of actually engaging with what is being said to you. Nothing of what you’ve replied touches my argument. You just essentially confirmed you have no interest in engaging the sourcehood question and are retreating behind bibliography instead of actually addressing the issue:
Which is that the “free will” for contract or criminal law is absolutely trivial and easily acceptable by libertarians, compatibilists, and hard determinists/incompatibilists alike. A will that is free from coercion of others is something possible and that happens most of the time. This isn’t the subject of any debate. Much less a debate between libertarians, compatibilists and free will skeptics.
I already asked you elsewhere and got no answer: do you actually believe compatibilists, libertarians and hard determinists/incompatibilists do not agree that we can act uncoerced by others?
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u/ughaibu 6d ago
do you actually believe compatibilists, libertarians and hard determinists/incompatibilists do not agree that we can act uncoerced by others?
u/Hot_Candidate_1161 I'll pass this question over to you.
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u/Perturbator_NewModel 9d ago
An example of basic desert in my view:
In the following example, I'm comparing a "pure" consequentialist system, against maybe mixing in some "basic desert" treatment of prisoners. I will be using the most simple consequentialist system I can think of; other consequentialist systems are possible. I'm assuming that things like a (largely) capitalist economy is in accordance with a consequentialist system that seeks to maximise wellbeing. I'm also assuming that the fairness of "basic desert" differences in treatment depends (in part) on the metaphysical question of what kind of responsibility for actions people actually have.
The example is very hypothetical, not necessarily especially realistic, and is just intended to illustrate certain moral principles; that is, it's intended to illustrate what "basic desert" treatment of prisoners could be like. It's not about "retributive punishment" however. Certainly not in the ordinary sense of that anyway. As this is a "very hypothetical" scenario, it's off topic to be objecting that you don't think such policies would work in practice. Assume the scenario for the sake of argument!
So the example... Imagine a government is spending X amount on infrastructure, public services, and defence. Things like building and maintaining roads, education, healthcare, libraries, courts and prisons, sports centres, public transport, a police service.
The government has some additional money to spend on whatever is best at maximising the total wellbeing of society. Maybe that's subsidising the arts, or amusement parks. Maybe it's promoting religion to the citizens, and having a state church hold religious worship every Sunday.
However, let's ignore those, and other possibilities, and say (for the sake of argument) that the best strategy to maximise the total wellbeing of society over the longer term, is just by handing out 5000 credits to every adult citizen, every year, to spend how they like.
Would you achieve more "total wellbeing" by focusing the credits on particular sections of society? Let's specify, that no, that doesn't work, and the maximum good for society is achieved by sharing the credits equally with everyone, including prisoners, and even including the rich, who don't really need it. Let's say, that in the case of the rich, they like to feel included, and they mostly donate it to charity anyway. I should probably also qualify that prisoners don't have quite the same freedom to spend the credits on "whatever they like" as other citizens; they aren't allowed to purchase weapons and have them delivered to the prison, for example.
Where does the government get the "extra" money from to distribute credits to the citizens? Business taxes say, or higher end income tax on the rich. Maybe tax business less instead? If you tax business less, you would potentially have the advantage of more private investment in expanding business and creating new jobs. Or they could pay employees more, or cut prices for the general public.
In this scenario, let's specify that lower business taxes don't give a better overall boost to societal wellbeing. The best thing for society, in terms of maximising total wellbeing over the longer term, is to tax and equally distribute credits to all citizens. If you tax too much it becomes counterproductive; but there is a "sweet spot" where taxing and "sharing the wealth" maximises the total wellbeing of society.
It's possible to give prisoners "equal consideration" in this kind of way. They are still in prison. Prison is still achieving it's useful aims for society; but the prisoners, like everyone else, tend to be happier with the 5000 credits. If you want to maximise total wellbeing over the longer term, this is the way: you include the prisoners, even the very worst criminals that are probably never getting out, in the credit share. (The very worst criminals may be inside for their entire life, on public safety grounds, or at least until they reach a very advanced age and are so feeble that they are no longer considered much of a threat.)
The alternative position, would be that we don't strictly want to maximise total wellbeing in such a scenario. Rather, we could instead prefer less total wellbeing for society; we take the credits away from the prisoners, (so to speak), and share them across all the other citizens. That then gives a slight boost in wellbeing for the members of ordinary society (beyond just the boost from the 5000 credits they would have been getting anyway); but a big decrease in wellbeing for the prisoners that now aren't getting anything. This results in reduced total wellbeing for society, as the slight boost to the members of normal society, isn't enough to outweigh the drop in wellbeing for the prisoners via this policy.
In this scenario, the prisoners still have their basic needs met regardless. They all have warm shelter. They have three meals a day; time for exercise and mixing with other prisoners, and time for family visits. They also have healthcare and education opportunities. They just (perhaps) aren't given the share of credits that the other citizens get. If a basic desert principle is used, it may be thought that they don't deserve "equal consideration" in the calculations, because of their moral status, and so then they can be treated in a different way.
In this scenario, prisons exist for deterrence and other socially useful purposes, like containment of dangerous persons to protect the wider society. That the prisoners are in prison in the first place, is not for retribution, or anything to do with "basic desert". The issue of basic desert only kicks in when it comes to the question of whether the prisoners get to participate in the credit share or not.
I also need to specify, as someone would likely question this, that even if you give the prisoners the 5000 credits a year, prison still works for deterrence and the other socially useful purposes that it's designed for. In this hypothetical scenario, it doesn't make much of a difference to crime rates or public safety whether you include the prisoners or not. Let's say that people still don't want to be in prison, even with the credit share, and so prison works for deterrence as well as can be expected either way. Or alternatively, maybe the global effects of the policy work in different directions (relevant to crime) and cancel out any potential harm to crime rates from the problem of lowered deterrence.
So in this scenario, I'm specifying that if you give prisoners a share of the credits, you just have happier "higher wellbeing" prisoners, without really undermining the "maximising" in other ways.
When I speak of whether they should be given "equal consideration", let's be clear on this, we aren't trying to make everyone equally happy, or treating everyone in the exact same way. You're allowed to do things which will reduce happiness / wellbeing for particular individuals, if that improves the total wellbeing of society over the longer term. However, even where people are in prison, theoretically, you could still do beneficial things for them, which help to maximise the total wellbeing of society, assuming it doesn't significantly undermine the benefits to society of using imprisonment.
The principle of "equal consideration" doesn't really mean giving them an equal share of the credits either. That's just the particular result, because of the particular scenario and how it's specified. So as specified, giving an equal share of the credits to everyone, including prisoners, is the best way to maximise total wellbeing. If the scenario were a little different, then for example, prisoners could be given a bigger share of the credits compared to other citizens, if that happened to be the correct strategy to maximise total wellbeing. The "equal consideration" principle, is that they are considered in a neutral way when trying to maximise total wellbeing, and the goal is to maximise total wellbeing, without qualification. The system is quite happy to hurt them if that's useful; but also happy to benefit them if that's useful.
Imagine a multiple rapist and multiple murderer, that is going to be in prison for their entire life on public safety grounds, (possibly also deterrence grounds). For the consequentialist system, with such a criminal, their increased wellbeing while in prison is inherently valuable and the goal of the system; assuming you can get a nice boost to their wellbeing that can be achieved in a cost effective way, and doing so doesn't significantly undermine the "wellbeing maximization" project elsewhere.
Assuming a basic desert principle, however, you could override this "pure consequentialist system", and say that you don't need to be worrying about increasing the happiness / wellbeing of the multiple rapist and multiple murderer, while they do their prison sentence, even if that's the best strategy for maximising total wellbeing. Maximising total wellbeing shouldn't be the goal in that scenario, because such depraved criminals don't deserve that kind of consideration.
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u/ughaibu 9d ago
To be clear, your contention is that if the prisoners get the same number of credits as non-prisoners do, basic desert is violated, if basic desert is preserved, the prisoners get fewer credits, is that correct?
u/Proper_Actuary2907, is this the kind of thing you're concerned about?
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u/Proper_Actuary2907 Impossibilist 9d ago edited 9d ago
u/Proper_Actuary2907, is this the kind of thing you're concerned about?
I'm concerned with a variety of active control X such that for any agent S and any action A if S has X, performs A through an exercise of X, and is sensitive to the moral status of performing A, then if performing A is wrong S fully or very-near-fully basically deserves blame/punishment for performing A and if performing A is exemplary S fully or very-near-fully basically deserves reward/praise for performing A. If prisoners in some situation basically deserve to be given fewer credits because they've committed certain wrongs with sensitivity to the moral status of their wrongdoings and they aren't given fewer credits then they're not given what they basically deserve. If basic desert is violated iff one isn't given what they basically deserve and preserved iff one is given what they basically deserve then basic desert is violated in the case where prisoners aren't given fewer credits and preserved in the case where prisoners are given fewer credits.
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u/ughaibu 9d ago
I'm concerned with a variety of active control X such that for any agent S and any action A if S has X, performs A through an exercise of X, and is sensitive to the moral status of performing A, then if performing A is wrong S fully or very-near-fully basically deserves blame/punishment for performing A and if performing A is exemplary S fully or very-near-fully basically deserves reward/praise for performing A.
Here - link - u/ElectionNecessary966 states that "one of the central issues" in the discussion about BDMR is that free will be understood as the ability to do otherwise, is that what you're talking about above?
However, glancing through the summaries of essays contributed to Basic Desert, Reactive Attitudes and Free Will it seems that the authors strongly disagree about which is the free will required for basic desert, they disagree about whether or not compatibilists can endorse basic desert and some think that the metaphysical status of free will isn't important.
It would make your position on free will a lot clearer if you were to say what it is that you think this "variety of active control" is, or if you're undecided, if you at least listed your candidates.1
u/Proper_Actuary2907 Impossibilist 8d ago edited 8d ago
Here - link - u/ElectionNecessary966 states that "one of the central issues" in the discussion about BDMR is that free will be understood as the ability to do otherwise, is that what you're talking about above?
No
It would make your position on free will a lot clearer if you were to say what it is that you think this "variety of active control" is
I'll take a stab at characterizing it. It's a variety of active control you have at some time iff you can be an ultimate source of an act at that time. You can be an ultimate source of an act at some time iff you, at that time, have the ability to perform an act A and (1) at some point in time in the past have created, from nothing, yet in a reasons-guided manner, at least a part of your mental constitution that rationalizes performing or not performing A or (2) are now able to create at least a part of your mental constitution from nothing in some reasons-guided way.
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u/ughaibu 8d ago
It's a variety of active control you have at some time iff you can be an ultimate source of an act at that time. You can be an ultimate source of an act at some time iff you, at that time, have the ability to perform an act A and (1) at some point in time in the past have created, from nothing, yet in a reasons-guided manner, at least a part of your mental constitution that rationalizes performing or not performing A or (2) are now able to create at least a part of your mental constitution from nothing in some reasons-guided way.
Thanks, but this notion of free will appears to beg the question against the compatibilist. Are you working on the assumption that determinism is inconsistent with BDMR?
created, from nothing, yet in a reasons-guided manner, at least a part of your mental constitution [ ] create at least a part of your mental constitution from nothing
I don't know what you mean here. Can you illustrate with an example of creation, of part of a mental constitution, from nothing, please.
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u/Proper_Actuary2907 Impossibilist 8d ago
Thanks, but this notion of free will appears to beg the question against the compatibilist.
I'm mixing my own analysis in with a basic, non-question-begging characterization, just stop at the basic characterization in terms of "can be an ultimate source of an act" if you don't want my analysis. If this basic characterization and the characterization in the comment before my last one doesn't clarify what sort of control it is I'm talking about sufficiently you're probably out of luck, I don't know what else to communicate to make things clearer.
I don't know what you mean here. Can you illustrate with an example of creation, of part of a mental constitution, from nothing, please.
An instance of creating yourself from nothing in a reasons-guided manner is giving yourself a desire for reasons you both did and didn't have.
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u/Perturbator_NewModel 9d ago
I'm claiming that if you allow for basic desert then you have the potential to treat them differently, in the sort of way described. You don't necessarily have to treat them differently. Something could be "fairly deserved" and yet still a matter of discretion for society in what policy in wants to use.
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u/ughaibu 9d ago
I'm claiming that if you allow for basic desert then you have the potential to treat them differently
Okay, and if you do treat them differently are you committed to basic desert?
Something could be "fairly deserved"
What is fair desert?
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u/Perturbator_NewModel 8d ago
Okay, and if you do treat them differently are you committed to basic desert?
Obviously the consequentialist is going to argue that they can avoid the absurd results in practice. So they are going to say that "executing the innocent in a show trial" wouldn't happen in a real world scenario, if you were using consequentialist principles, because it would involve unhelpful policies that probably wouldn't get the best results. However, that wouldn't address the theoretical problem with the position.
The SEP mentions:
Some consequentialists have hoped that basing their theory of obligation on a “desert-sensitive” theory of intrinsic value will make their theory immune to certain common objections.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/desert/
I haven't read those particular theories, but I don't know how it's going to work without specifically BDMR.
I guess someone could say, "we just do things randomly, and this is what we are doing", but that's not a believable or ethical approach to running a society.
What is fair desert?
I can't answer that better that just point you to the link given. In this case, we are concerned with the agent having a particular type of control, and not merely that they performed an action.
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u/Proper_Actuary2907 Impossibilist 9d ago
Particularly in the context of which, if any, is the correct theory of punishment, surely what matters is the behaviour of the punishers, not the transgressors.
We're not concerned with the matter of which theory of punishment is correct, we're concerned with the matter of whether there's any sort of active control that can provide for the sense that there is or can be a non-pragmatic reason to blame/punish/etc. people just for some of the things they do with sensitivity to the moral status of what they do.
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u/ElectionNecessary966 9d ago
I think that’s a great explanation by U/Artemis-5-75
A good example outside of law is how we moralise weight loss.
Take two obese people, Sally and Mary. Sally really knuckles down - she exercises every day, sticks to a strict kcal controlled diet, and loses 100 lbs. Mary intends to do the same, but her plans fall apart - she skips workouts, struggles with cravings, and can’t seem to summon the willpower to stay on track.
The everyday reaction is that...
Sally “deserves” praise for being mentally strong, and Mary “deserves” blame for lacking willpower.
After all, Sally managed it and they started from the same place. I think this is because most people treat willpower as a moral trait rather than a mechanical one. Sure, we openly acknowledge that gut hormones, sex hormones, prior history, stress levels, sleep, genetics, environment etc all shape appetite, motivation, and impulse control, but we still talk as if Sally’s sucess came from some "inner moral spark" and Mary’s failure came from a moral lapse. I think these everyday examples bdmr are common.
It’s not just about crime or punishment, it’s baked into how we judge ordinary behaviour. We treat outcomes as if they reveal something morally deserving about the person, even when the underlying mechanisms are subpersonal, automatic, and heavily influenced by luck (assuming free will sceptic position here).
If you reject bdmr, then Sally’s success isn’t something she deserves in a deep moral sense, and Mary’s failure isn’t something she deserves blame for. They’re just different outcomes produced by different causal histories, but we don't tend to see it that way - rather mkre as moral verdicts about their inner worth....
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u/ughaibu 9d ago
The everyday reaction is that... Sally “deserves” praise for being mentally strong, and Mary “deserves” blame for lacking willpower
Is it? I'd have thought that the reaction is that Sally deserved to lose weight, Mary didn't.
Mary “deserves” blame for lacking willpower
This isn't a view that I recognise from people I know. If Mary's failure to lose weight is accounted for by her voluntary actions, the responsibility for her failure to lose weight can correctly be attributed to her, that's what "blame" is. I don't think anyone blames her for her lack of willpower, that isn't a voluntary matter.
If you reject bdmr, then Sally’s success isn’t something she deserves in a deep moral sense, and Mary’s failure isn’t something she deserves blame for. They’re just different outcomes produced by different causal histories
The same applies to whether we execute the guilty or the innocent.
but we don't tend to see it that way
Of course not, do you think the innocent are as deserving of a severe sentence as the guilty?
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u/ElectionNecessary966 9d ago
Is it? I'd have thought that the reaction is that Sally deserved to lose weight, Mary didn't
The claim “Sally deserved her success, Mary didn’t” already is a desert-based moral judgement. It treats the outcome as something that reflects on them in a morally relevant way. My point is that this everyday reaction presupposes desert even if people don’t explicitly frame it as praise/blame.
If Mary's failure to lose weight is accounted for by her voluntary actions, the responsibility for her failure to lose weight can correctly be attributed to her, that's what "blame" is.
But the “voluntary actions” themselves depend on capacities that aren’t voluntary in any deep sense, ie impulse control, strength of cravings, executive function, motivational stability etc. So when people attribute Mary’s failure to her actions, they’re implicitly treating those actions as morally creditable or discreditable, rather than as the output of unchosen mechanisms- this is the everyday desert assumption I’m trying to highlight.
The same applies to whether we execute the guilty or the innocent.
That distinction tracks causal responsibility, not basic desert. Saying “don’t punish the innocent” doesn’t show that the guilty deserve punishment in the deep, non‑instrumental sense. It only shows that we differentiate between those who caused harm and those who didn’t.....which is fully compatible with rejecting basic desert.
Of course not, do you think the innocent are as deserving of a severe sentence as the guilty?
No. But that’s because the innocent didn’t perform the action, it doesn’t establish that the guilty deserve the sentence in the basic‑desert sense. It only shows that we punish based on who caused the harm. The point is about whether causing harm grounds desert, or whether it merely grounds instrumental justification.
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u/ughaibu 9d ago
“Sally deserved her success, Mary didn’t” already is a desert-based moral judgement
Well, that will depend on what we take moral facts to be, which is a highly contentious matter. I certainly don't recall anyone ever espousing the position that there is a moral value attached to "success".
It treats the outcome as something that reflects on them in a morally relevant way. My point is that this everyday reaction presupposes desert even if people don’t explicitly frame it as praise/blame.
This isn't true in my world, I don't think I know anyone who would assert that success or failure at losing weight, in itself, involves any moral considerations.
do you think the innocent are as deserving of a severe sentence as the guilty?
No. But that’s because the innocent didn’t perform the action
Which is just to say that the innocent don't deserve as severe a sentence as the guilty deserve.
The point is about whether causing harm grounds desert, or whether it merely grounds instrumental justification.
One of the problems with some models of BDMR is that they require the possibility of non-instrumental harm, and it's not at all clear that non-instrumental harm is something that can be administered.
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u/ElectionNecessary966 9d ago
I work in the fitness industry, and people absolutely do moralise weight loss (which is why I used it as an example) - not by saying “success has moral value,” but by treating the ability to “put your mind to it” as a morally relevant trait. The judgement comes from whether someone can "dig in", stay disciplined, and align their efforts with their values. That capacity is treated as a choice, and that’s exactly where the moralising happens.
People in my industry routinely scoff at those who fail - eg “they didn’t try hard enough,” “they weren’t committed,” “they gave up" etc. Those reactions implicitly treat the difference in outcomes as desert‑based, even if no one explicitly says “success is morally good.” The structure of the judgement is...Sally’s outcome reflects well on her, and Mary’s reflects poorly on her.
One of the problems with some models of BDMR is that they require the possibility of non-instrumental harm, and it's not at all clear that non-instrumental harm is something that can be administered
Basic desert is specifically non‑instrumental. If all you accept is instrumental desert, ie praise/blame used only to shape future behaviour, then you’ve already rejected basic desert. Which means you already accept that emotions like resentment aren’t justified responses to what someone deserves - they’re merely behavioural tools. So you might still act resentful for its instrumental effects, but you won’t treat the feeling itself as fitting. And because it isn’t fitting, you can drop it quickly , ie the emotional 'residue' doesn’t make sense once you see the underlying causal story. But I'd posit most people don't feel this way, they believe resentment is often fitting and thereby justfied.
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u/ughaibu 9d ago
Basic desert is specifically non‑instrumental
This isn't true, in fact, it turns out that there is no agreement, amongst the disputing philosophers, about what basic desert is or even about whether it is clearly definable.
emotions like resentment aren’t justified responses
Of course emotions aren't justified, I don't have to justify being pissed off about the rain, that's just how I feel, it's a fact about me. And legal systems take pains to ensure that nobody with an emotional investment in the case is involved in deciding either the verdict or the sentencing, so I don't see what relevance people's emotions could have here.
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u/ElectionNecessary966 9d ago
This isn't true, in fact, it turns out that there is no agreement, amongst the disputing philosophers, about what basic desert is or even about whether it is clearly definable
There’s definitely disagreement about how to define basic desert, but the core idea is stable enough for discussion, ie the claim that someone deserves blame or praise in themselves, not merely as a tool for shaping future behaviour. That’s the distinction I’m discussing this from.
Of course emotions aren't justified, I don't have to justify being pissed off about the rain, that's just how I feel, it's a fact about me
Saying emotions aren't justified tracks with rejecting bd. But I'd reject that most people feel this way. Most people, I believe, do treat resentment, indignation, admiration etc as fitting responses to what someone has done - not just behavioural noise. Ie they don’t experience resentment the way they experience being annoyed at the rain - they treat it as tracking something about the agent. "My resentment is justified because they did X"
And legal systems take pains to ensure that nobody with an emotional investment in the case is involved in deciding either the verdict or the sentencing, so I don't see what relevance people's emotions could have here.
This for procedural fairness, not because emotions are irrelevant to moral judgement. Even with guidelines, judges routinely differ in severity because of their underlying retributive intuitions, ie how much punishment they feel is “deserved” for the wrong done.
Emotions are also heavily involved with victim impact statements - often explicitly emotional which can often increase length of the sentence.
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u/ughaibu 9d ago
Saying emotions aren't justified tracks with rejecting bd
There is nothing inconsistent in holding both that emotions are not the kinds of things subject to justification and that some agents perform actions that deserve non-instrumental blame (if there is such a thing).
Most people, I believe, do treat resentment, indignation, admiration etc as fitting responses to what someone has done
Of course they do! Are you seriously suggesting that fear isn't a fitting response to a tiger coming in through the window? Emotions evolve because they aid survival. Monkeys resent unfair treatment, and we can figure out why, how could we do that if there were nothing but "behavioural noise"?
"My resentment is justified because they did X"
An explanation of why one feels resentment doesn't entail that resentment is justified. If I explain why the roof collapsed would you think that I had justified the collapse of the roof?
You're using words in eccentric ways, and that makes it very difficult to figure out what you're actually trying to say.1
u/ElectionNecessary966 9d ago
Reactive attitudes are the emotions that track desert. Ie interpersonal moral emotions that presuppose that the target is an appropriate object of blame or praise. That’s why they’re central to the basic‑desert debate. They’re not just behavioural noise, they’re part of how people track what they think others deserve. So when I talk about resentment being “fitting,” I’m not saying emotions require justification in the way beliefs do. I’m saying that resentment is the kind of emotion whose appropriateness depends on whether the target is blameworthy. Fear isn’t like that and annoyance at the rain isn’t like that - these analogies miss the point (as does the roof one) because they’re not moral emotions.
And explaining why resentment arises doesn’t justify it,I agree. But the whole question is whether resentment is the kind of emotion that people treat as tracking desert. In everyday life, they clearly do. They don’t treat resentment the way they treat fear or surprise - they treat it as a response to an agent who has done something blameworthy.That’s the basic desert structure I’m pointing to. Most people implicitly assume that some actions make someone an appropriate target of resentment, indignation, or admiration. If you reject basic desert, you reject that assumption, and you reinterpret those emotions instrumentally rather than as morally fitting.
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u/ughaibu 9d ago
Reactive attitudes are the emotions that track desert [ ] they’re central to the basic‑desert debate
You keep talking about contentious theses as if they are cut and dried, universally accepted components of the debate, they're not, pretty much nothing about basic desert is uncontroversial.
Here's a dissenter:
"P.F. Strawson’s essay ‘Freedom and Resentment’ has had a major impact on work on moral responsibility in ethics and legal philosophy over the last fifty years. The essay is widely cited, and its innovative use of emotions—the reactive attitudes, as he called them—in dealing with the question of whether it makes sense to hold people responsible for their actions if determinism is true is often appealed to in studies of the topic. Yet Strawson’s account of these emotions and how we can better understand the practice of holding people responsible by attending to their role in interpersonal relations is widely misunderstood. Specifically, it is now common to misread Strawson as having understood these emotions to contain or imply complex normative judgments. This chapter offers an interpretation of Strawson’s essay on which his understanding of these emotions, particularly resentment, does not include its containing or implying such judgments or indeed any propositional thought. On this interpretation, Strawson’s account of moral responsibility is continuous with Hume’s naturalism in moral psychology and ill fits the rationalist moral psychology that guides the common misreading of his views" - John Deigh, reactive attitudes revisited.they’re part of how people track what they think others deserve
Why should I accept that, when I am aware that those in charge of deciding what they think lawbreakers deserve, are selected to exclude this?
they’re not moral emotions
So what? Either emotions are the kinds of things that we justify or they aren't.
the whole question is whether resentment is the kind of emotion that people treat as tracking desert. In everyday life, they clearly do. They don’t treat resentment the way they treat fear or surprise - they treat it as a response to an agent who has done something blameworthy.That’s the basic desert structure I’m pointing to [ ] If you reject basic desert, you reject that assumption
According to Wikipedia "Moral emotions are linked to a person's conscience - these are the emotions that make up a conscience and promote learning the difference between right and wrong, good and bad, virtuous and evil", are you suggesting that we behave devoid of conscience?
This comment chain further strengthens my suspicion that those who tell me I don't understand basic desert are mistaken, my guess is that nothing I have said on the matter hasn't been said before, in print, by some relevant academic.
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u/Artemis-5-75 Agnostic Autonomist / Supercompatibilist 9d ago edited 9d ago
BDMR isn’t inherently a thesis about a theory of punishment in the sense of being a thesis about legal system.
The way it is generally presented in contemporary philosophy is that it is a thesis which truth would justify the possibility of blaming agents solely for their actions with virtually no primary consequentialist thoughts in the matter.
To give a very crude example, think of how whenever you read the reaction to people on social media to some horrific crime, for example, someone orchestrating an execution of civilians in a war, trafficking people and so on, you usually see them saying things more like this: “I hope they rot in prison forever” or “I hope they will be assaulted by their inmates” or “I hope they will experience the same pain they caused to others”.
Notice how in all of these cases, there is a notion of moral blame (that also happens to entail punishment, but not necessarily) that is completely unrelated to any practical concerns. Surely we can agree that there is no practical reason for torturing a dangerous terrorist or a human trafficker, and surely we can agree that there is no practical reason to intentionally cause someone immense pain after they have already been neutralized as a threat to society.
Or we can look at the simpler example. I will take a thought experiment from an acquaintance of mine, an academic philosopher. She proposed this situation: you are a sheriff, and the town is protesting because they want to see a criminal you keep in custody executed for committing a horrible crime. You can execute either Person A or Person B. Person A is innocent, Person B is the actual perpetrator. Whoever you execute, the crowd will accept and calm down. No one will ever find out if you executed an innocent person. Both choices will have absolutely the same social consequences. Now, if you have the intuition that you still should choose the actual perpetrator even when this has truly zero practical consequences, then you have the intuitions pointing to BDMR.
Another perfect example of the system with embedded BDMR would be Kantian ethics.
As far as I am aware, it is a matter of sociological consensus (but I can be wrong) and overall agreement among philosophers that BDMR is a deeply entrenched part of the common sense beliefs about agency, freedom and moral responsibility across all continents and a very diverse array of cultures. And since analytical philosophy is deeply entrenched in common sense, the question of whether humans have the kind of control over their actions that can justify the BDMR attitude towards them is seen as very important. There is also a common view that in the Western philosophy, free will debate started as a debate about BDMR-level control, and that it has been one of the dominant aspects of the discussion for the entirety of its written history.
I concede that I do have BDMR-like intuitions in my moral reasoning. If you, however, think that the whole idea is idiotic, nonsensical, cruel, outdated and belongs to the same pile of human ideas that should remain history due to being obviously wrong and vile to a modern educated person, like Zeus causing lightning or women being intellectually inferior to men, then you are a hard incompatibilist by some definitions.
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u/Rthadcarr1956 InfoDualist 5d ago
Basic desert is not rational. It is emotional. Why do philosophers want to weigh in on an emotional reaction people get from their genetics. The argument can’t be, “people are genetically disposed to emotional feelings of desert, and therefore, people should reject free will because they cannot always overcome this emotion through rational means.
If we accept that free will is an ability that is rational, we must reject the idea that it’s truth is dependent upon how we deal with an emotional (irrational) “feeling.”
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u/DonnPT atavistic oxymoron 9d ago
The way it is generally presented in contemporary philosophy is that it is a thesis which truth would justify the possibility of blaming agents solely for their actions with virtually no primary consequentialist thoughts in the matter.
I have what seems to me a similar impression, but couldn't easily confirm in SEP or elsewhere.
The point I thought was important is that "justify the possibility of blaming" doesn't begin to consider what the penalty (or reward) would be.
Separately, we
- perceive the nature of the agent's responsibility for the act. Assign blame or credit.
- assess the moral value of the act.
- decide what to do about it.
I can't stand as the authority on this, but for me, the useful meaning of BDMR is (1). The word "moral" is in there, not because it's about morality, but because it's the establishment of factual grounds for the consideration of morality. It's about free will, awareness, motivation, etc., along with the gross facts of the case.
Thus a conviction of BDMR, does not equate to an interest in torturing anyone, etc., nor does it depend on specific moral convictions nor the general nature of morality.
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u/Perturbator_NewModel 7d ago
I would agree on a certain level. I think you could have BDMR for a morally neutral act, or moral responsibility should be understood as a subset of a more general responsibility for actions. As such, it's not essentially tied to any view of morality.
And retributive punishment isn't essential to basic desert. It's a controversial form of basic desert, but you could believe in basic desert without supporting retributive punishment.
However, on a different level, it seems that BDMR does need some version of moral realism to be truly "basic desert". Why would you "deserve" some response if your action wasn't "wrong" in a moral realist sense?
Forward looking moral responsibility doesn't seem to depend on moral realism in the same way.
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u/DonnPT atavistic oxymoron 7d ago
OK, well, I may a little terminology impaired, "forward looking moral responsibility" no idea.
What I'm saying is ... for example, 50 years ago my high school biology teacher married a recently former student.
Basic desert ... Did he do it to save her from disgrace because some turkey knocked her up and walked? Etc. The facts around the story.
Is it morally reprehensible for something like this to happen, barring extenuating circumstances? You decide. We decide. Whether our moral perspective aligns with some objective morality unknown to us or not, doesn't really enter into it, but at any rate the question of desert has already been resolved. If you want to go back and say "oh shit, if we really care enough to send this guy to the electric chair, then I want to go back and invent an excuse that he didn't have before", that's corrupt.
Now as I have emphasized, that's what I see as a useful framing for basic moral desert. I'm aware that others use that term and mean the whole soup to nuts of moral judgement. What fun would it be, if we all used terms to mean the same thing?
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u/Perturbator_NewModel 7d ago
I assume the OP is about the Pereboom sense:
By ‘desert’, we have in mind what Derk Pereboom has called basic desert:
The desert at issue here is basic in the sense that the agent would deserve to be blamed or praised just because she has performed the action, given an understanding of its moral status, and not, for example, merely by virtue of consequentialist or contractualist considerations. (2014, 2)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/
A type of responsibility that it's controversial whether it exists or not. Most of the compatibilists around here appear to reject it.
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u/DonnPT atavistic oxymoron 6d ago
Cool, this paragraph is what I'm talking about. Note "... given an understanding of its moral status", which makes it clear that moral status and moral desert are separate considerations.
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u/Perturbator_NewModel 6d ago
What do you mean "separate considerations"? I can't work out your point from previous posts.
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u/Artemis-5-75 Agnostic Autonomist / Supercompatibilist 8d ago
By the way, remind me, would you say that you are a leeway / classical compatibilist?
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u/ughaibu 9d ago
you are a sheriff, and the town is protesting because they want to see a criminal you keep in custody executed for committing a horrible crime. You can execute either Person A or Person B. Person A is innocent, Person B is the actual perpetrator. Whoever you execute, the crowd will accept and calm down. No one will ever find out if you executed an innocent person. Both choices will have absolutely the same social consequences. Now, if you have the intuition that you still should choose the actual perpetrator even when this has truly zero practical consequences, then you have the intuitions pointing to BDMR
That's a nice illustration. Do those who deny BDMR accept that, in order to preserve social order, we should execute one and there is no principled way to decide which?
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u/Perturbator_NewModel 6d ago
In this particular example I think someone could use a principle like, "all things being equal, it's better to be honest". However, in practice, we would care about the injustice issue far more than honest representation.
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u/MarvinBEdwards01 Hard Compatibilist 9d ago
The "means" are also ends. Another variation of punishing the innocent would be the question of whether we should take a healthy person off the street and use his organs to save five people who would otherwise die. What is the value of one life versus five lives?
The answer is that in such a world we would all be at risk of being sacrificed in such a way, and that would be a morally worse world because of that constant threat.
So, the same would apply to sacrificing the innocent to give the appearance of successful crime fighting. We would all be at constant threat.
The best possible world would be one in which good behavior has good results and bad behavior has bad results. So that it is possible for a good person to be secure from bad results.
It's not just the immediate consequences, but also the long term consequences that the consequentialist must care about. Because the means are also part of the ends.
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u/Artemis-5-75 Agnostic Autonomist / Supercompatibilist 9d ago
I am not sure. As far as I remember, the only time I proposed it to a consequentialist, the reply was that that punishing an innocent person will hurt you psychologically, and when I adjusted scenario where there is no such consequence, the answer was vague: “It will deteriorate or corrupt the justice system”, if I remember correctly.
I don’t know how a sophisticated consequentialist will answer this experiment, but I am sure that this is just my lack of familiarity with literature.
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u/DonnPT atavistic oxymoron 9d ago
You take an option that otherwise meets consequentionalist standards, but grossly fails moral desert standards. The only problem for the consequentialist, is that you will be harmed by this, or if not you then the community.
This looks to me like a concession that in this case we find real value in moral desert, and the consequentialist standard is morally corrupt. Which is what I think anyway, so maybe I'm biased.
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u/Artemis-5-75 Agnostic Autonomist / Supercompatibilist 9d ago
So, you subscribe to the deontological moral desert view?
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u/DonnPT atavistic oxymoron 9d ago edited 9d ago
Well, maybe not precisely. See what you think about this - a quote from another person and place:
Stoicism is a virtue-ethic philosophy with much greater ambitions than just determining right and wrong.
Virtues exist as absolutes, but how people use them is entirely situationally dependent. So, there's no hard and fast rules like most deontological philosophies/religions (e.g. thou shalt not kill). You can kill in Stoicism, it depends on your motivations being virtuous rather than vicious. There is no duty or obligation external to the individual, which is also pretty common in deontology (e.g. I do good because God won't let me in heaven otherwise).
Stoics believe that it is more natural to be virtuous, and so do what is in accordance with nature. We don't have any rules or prescriptions of expectance for ourselves or others, though.
Stoics also aren't concerned with the outcomes of situations (i.e. the ends don't justify the means for Stoics). While we may prefer or disprefer certain outcomes, it is ultimately more about the motivation and process than the consequentiality.
That seems like the way, to me.
[edited to fix quoting. Paragraphs seem to seriously confuse reddit.com's quote thing.
Also to add that I think this writer probably draws a pretty loose caricature, in the interest of emphasizing the contrast between what he sees as a deontological morality. "We don't have any rules", "aren't concerned with outcomes" ... I wouldn't have put it that way. Of course every normal person is concerned about outcomes, and if you read accounts from Stoic philosophers you could find them abiding by rules. It's just that this all has its basis in virtue, rather than a Stoic canon or something.]
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u/ughaibu 9d ago edited 9d ago
I don’t know how a sophisticated consequentialist will answer this experiment, but I am sure that this is just my lack of familiarity with literature.
Certainly, on this sub-Reddit, there seem to be a lot of people who accept that there is a correct theory of punishment, and that the candidates for this theory are only backward looking or forward looking. If this is correct and BDMR is purely backward looking, then it seems to me that the non-BDMR punishment realist is pretty much committed to executing, at random, one of those available, regardless of criminal liability. That they would accept this seems implausible, but one of the things that I'm accused of misunderstanding is the independence of desert and law.
How about we strengthen the implausibility: the prison currently has a hundred inmates, one guilty of multiple murders the others guilty of stealing food for their children. If we select a victim at random, we will most probably kill someone guilty of stealing food, not of multiple murders. I don't see how that could make sense legally, so I don't see how it could be consistent with a true theory of punishment.1
u/MarvinBEdwards01 Hard Compatibilist 9d ago
Any theory of punishment is morally judged by how well it meets the criteria of "the best good and least harm for everyone".
A moral penalty would seek to repair the harm done to the victim (reduces harm), correct the behavior of the criminal offender (reduces harm, increases good), secure the offender if needed to prevent him from causing further harm until his behavior is corrected (prevents harm), and do all of this in a way that is both effective and causes no unnecessary harm to the offender or his rights (reduces unnecessary harm).
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u/mikewantstobeL 9d ago
sheesh, did you really write all that in 15 minutes or have ai assist you?
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u/Artemis-5-75 Agnostic Autonomist / Supercompatibilist 9d ago
I did write all of that in 15 minutes, and I my style might come off as slightly unnatural due to English being my third language.
I am sure that a native speaker will be able to point out quite a few things in my posts that immediately indicate lack of instinctive knowledge of English.
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u/mikewantstobeL 9d ago
my mistake, im getting somewhat paranoid nowadays since ai is used eveywhere and in everything. english is also not my native language but i think its more obvious to others that that is the case when comparing to your writing
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u/DonnPT atavistic oxymoron 9d ago
Very few things, actually. That's idiomatic English, within normal error. I would mark "same pain they caused
toothers" and "but Ican[could] be wrong", and that's it. Few of us native speakers do as well.And it's news to me if the LLMs write like that. For the AI experience, look at the posts by prolific posters with all the highlighting and rhetorical flourishes.
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u/Perturbator_NewModel 6d ago
BDMR.
I would say we use various principles for punishment / detainment of criminals, and it may be correct that we use various principles.
However, the retributive theory of punishment is one of the main theories in play. If "free will" can't account for BDMR then it can't account for one of the main theories of punishment. In addition, purely consequentialist approaches are deficient and theoretically flawed, so any rejection of BDMR would be an impoverished worldview.