Castigation

Mere criticism is a statement that something—an action, a thought, an object, etc.—falls short of an applicable standard. But sometimes instead of merely criticizing a person, we do something more, which I’ll call “castigation”. When we castigate people to their face, we are not merely asserting that they have fallen short of a standard, but we blame them for it in a way that is intended to sting. Mere criticism may sting, but stinging isn’t part of its intent. Mill’s “disapprobation” is an example of castigation:

If we see that ... enforcement by law would be inexpedient, we lament the impossibility, we consider the impunity given to injustice as an evil, and strive to make amends for it by bringing a strong expression of our own and the public disapprobation to bear upon the offender.

But now notice something:

1. Castigation is a form of punishment.

2. It is unjust and inappropriate punish someone who is not morally culpable.

3. So, it is unjust and inappropriate to castigate someone who is not morally culpable.

In an extended sense of the word, we also castigate people behind their backs—we can call this third-person castigation. In doing so, we express the appropriateness of castigating them to their face even when that castigation is impractical or inadvisable. Such castigation is also a form of punishment, directed at reputation rather than the feelings of the individual. Thus, such castigation is also unjust and inappropriate in the case of someone lacking morally culpability.

I exclude here certain speech acts done in training animals or small children which have an overt similarity to castigation. Because the subject of the acts is not deemed to be a morally responsible person, the speech acts have a different significance from when they are directed at a responsible person, and I do not count them as castigation.

Thus, whether castigation is narrow (directed at the castigated person) or extended, it is unjust and inappropriate where there is no moral culpability. Mere criticism, on the other hand, does not require any moral culpability. Telling the difference between the castigation and mere criticism is sometimes difficult, but there is nonetheless a difference, often conveyed through the emotional load in the vocabulary.

In our society (and I suspect in most others), there is often little care to observe the rule that castigation is unjust absent moral culpability, especially in the case of third-person castigation. There is, for instance, little compunction about castigating people with abhorrent (e.g., racist) or merely silly (e.g., flat earth) views without investigation whether they are morally culpable for forming their beliefs. Politicians with policies that people disagree with are pilloried without investigation whether they are merely misguided. The phrase “dishonest or ignorant” which should be quite useful for criticism that avoids the risk of unjust castigation gets loaded to the point where it effectively castigates a person for possibly being ignorant. This is not to deny, of course, that one can be morally blameworthy for abhorrent, silly or ignorant views. But rarely do we know an individual to be morally culpable for their views, and without knowledge, castigation puts us at risk of doing injustice.

I hope I am not castigating anyone, but merely criticizing. :-)

Here is another interesting corollary.

4. Sometimes it permissible to castigate friends for their imprudence.

5. Hence, sometimes people are morally culpable for imprudence.

In the above, I took it that punishment is appropriate only in cases of moral wrongdoing. Mill actually thinks something stronger is the case: punishment is appropriate only in cases of injustice. If Mill is right, and yet if we can rightly castigate friends for imprudence, it follows that imprudence can be unjust, and the old view that one cannot do injustice to oneself is false.

Rational and irrational desires

Odysseus is told by Athena that he is very unlikely to reach Ithaca, unless he suppresses his desire to reach Ithaca. If he does suppress it, he will quickly by accident find his way to Ithaca, and as soon as he is within ten stadia of it, his desire will return. Athena points to a pear from a tree on the banks of Lethe, and tells him that this pear will suppress his desire to reach Ithaca. But Odysseus longs for Ithaca too much to be willing to let go of his desire to return there. He tosses the pear by the wayside and wanders the world for many years.

Odysseus was irrational to hold on to his desire to return to Ithaca. It was thereafter irrational for him to have the desire. Yet the desire to return to his home was a perfectly rational one.

Irene never desired to experience friendship. Finally, one day, Matthew gave her a fallacious argument whose conclusion was that friendship is worth having. Irene didn't see the fallacy, and concluded that friendship is worth having. She then hired Dr. Mesmer to hypnotize her into desiring friendship. A couple of months later, while having an intense desire for friendship, she found the fallacy in Matthew's argument. But while she believes that friendship is not worth having or desiring, she irrationally refuses to hire Dr. Memser to hypnotize the desire for friendship away.

Irene acquired her desire for friendship irrationally and is irrational in holding on to the desire. But the desire for friendship is perfect rational.

Patrick comes to be convinced by Irene, whom he has excellent reason to think to be an epistemic authority even whe she says things that seem absurd (she has said many seemingly absurd things to him, and turned out to be right), that he ought to desire to be the heaviest man on earth. By constantly dwelling on the excellent reasons he has for trusting Irene, and on Irene's advice, he comes to desire to be the heaviest man on earth, and starts to eat.

Patrick acquired his desire to be the heaviest man on earth quite rationally, and is rational in holding on to the desire. But the desire is irrational.

Collectively, the cases force a distinction between (ir)rationally having or acquiring a desire, and a desire being itself (ir)rational.

But now what does the irrationality or rationality of a desire in itself consist in if it does not consist in the irrationality or rationality of the agent who has it in respect of the having of the desire? I suspect that a good answer will have to advert to the human good, to human flourishing, but even so, I don't know how to answer.

More on evil thoughts

When I say, in class or blog, that some thoughts are immoral, there is much resistance. Sometimes, this resistance is formulated as: "Only actions, not thoughts, are immoral." I have argued earlier that voluntary thoughts are actions. In this post, I just want to give a quick argument that some mental activities are immoral.

Suppose Maurice sincerely and prejudicedly believes a racist claim R about members of group G, and he says: "It is my opinion that R." We think Maurice deserves criticism. Even those who think that only physical actions are subject to moral evaluation are likely to agree that something has been done wrong—after all, Maurice has done something physical, namely he has spoken.

But what has gone wrong, and in what way? First of all, it need not be the case that Maurice's speech-act was either morally or rationally criticizable. After all, what he said was true: he said that it was his opinion that R, and indeed it was his opinion that R. He sincerely spoke the truth. What is wrong with that?

We should not criticize Maurice for telling us what his opinion was. We should, instead, criticize him for having that opinion. Now, we have two possibilities here. We can criticize him for epistemic failure, or for both epistemic failure and immorality. If we criticize him for both n the holding of the opinion that R, then we have agreed that mental activities, such as coming to the opinion that R, are subject to immorality.

So, let us explore the option of criticizing Maurice merely epistemically. But if so, then we cannot criticize him any more than we would criticize other people who hold equally or more irrational beliefs, such as that the earth is flat, or that the works of Shakespeare are a 19th century fake, or that the Law of Excluded Middle is false (the last of these is a denial of a law of logic—how much worse can one get than that?). Yet those holding racist beliefs are criticized in a special way, with the criticism not just having to do with the evidential weakness of their views. This suggests that there is something other than mere epistemic failure that is at issue. There is something immoral about coming to racist beliefs in an epistemically deficient way.[note 1]

And in fact I can say a bit about that immorality. We have a special moral obligation—surely not an epistemic one—not to form false beliefs about matters that are socially important, and particularly in cases where having such false beliefs is likely to result in prejudiced unjust behavior. Thus, Maurice should have been particularly careful epistemically in forming the belief R. And this "should have" is a moral "should have".

[Edited: The one time "C" occurred in the original post, it should have been "R".]