I rarely take myself to know that someone is culpable for some particular wrongdoing. There are three main groups of exception:
my own wrongdoings, so many of which I know by introspection to be culpable
cases where others give me insight into their culpability through their testimony, their expressions of repentance, etc.
cases where divine revelation affirms or implies culpability (e.g., Adam and David).
In type 2 cases, I am also not all that confident, because unless I know a lot about the person, I will worry that they are being unfair to themselves.
I am amazed that a number of people have great confidence that various infamous malefactors are culpable for their grave injustices. Maybe they are, but it seems easier to believe in culpability in the case of more minor offenses than greater ones. For the greater the offense, the further the departure from rationality, and hence the more reason there is to worry about something like temporary or permanent insanity or just crazy beliefs.
I don’t doubt that most people culpably do many bad things, and even that most people on some occasion culpably do something really bad. But I am sceptical of my ability to know which of the really bad things people do they are culpable for.
The difficulty with all this is how it intersects with the penal system. Is there maybe a shallower kind of culpability that is easier to determine and that is sufficient for punishment? I don’t know.
14 comments:
I also wonder how these intuitions of yours would coincide with church discipline. If the Corinthians shared your views, would Paul be astonished that they were going along with the sexually immoral man (1 Cor. 5)?
Hi Alex:
I don't think there is a weaker type of culpability, or that it is permissible to act with punitive intent without having evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that a person is guilty. I don't find the argument for skepticism persuasive, though. But assuming it is, it's not only about the penal system. People punish each other all the time, e.g., in school, or when an employee engages in misconduct, or people who get fined (not a crime but an infraction), or a variety of social punishments like showing that one is offended, etc. All of those behaviors would be, in my view, impermissible.
With regard to the penal system (and more), it seems to me that if the argument were accepted, it would have to be rebuilt and no longer be punitive. There might still be reasons to put someone in prison, for example preventing them from hurting others, if it is likely that they would, and their previous actions would provide evidence of that. But I think this is a bad solution.
Angra
I completely agree with you on this, except that I do find the argument for skepticism persuasive. In fact, I am not even convinced that Alex knows by introspection that he is culpable. It seems possible that Alex (and everybody else) is being unfair to himself by convincing himself that he is culpable, while in fact he isn't.
Mr. Lunn:
The purpose of church discipline is healing not punishment (Paul is clear in 1 Cor. 5 that the discipline is aimed at the health of that man's soul). A sinner, whether culpable or not, is in need of healing.
Angra:
Maybe, but I am not sure. Suppose that an employer has a monetary award--i.e., temporary salary increase--for the most productive employee, and suppose that Kowalska is the most productive employee by a reasonable measure of productivity. But suppose that it turns out that Kowalska is a workaholic and her productivity is the result of a psychological compulsion. It seems perfectly just to give the award to her, notwithstanding her lack of responsibility. Further, even apart from psychological compulsion, the differences in the productivity of the finalists for the productivity award could be due to genetic factors rather than anything they are responsible for.
Similarly, it would not seem unjust (though it might be imprudent or uncharitable) for an employer to have a fine--i.e., temporary salary reduction--for the least productive employee (as long as the fine doesn't bring down the salary to an unjustly low level). Again, it doesn't seem like it needs to matter for this whether the lack of productivity is due to vice, genetics, or some other factor.
Well, stealing from the employer is also a form of unproductivity. It seems perfectly reasonable for an employer to offer disincentives to theft, regardless of questions of responsibility, as long as the disincentives are reasonably sizes. By signing up to work for this employer, one is contracting to accept such disincentives.
Social punishments vary in type and magnitude. When someone has acted wrongly, regardless of culpability, it is appropriate to show disapproval of the action. But if one is actually being punitive, then I have serious due-process worries.
Alex,
That is an interesting scenario, but I think punitive intent (I was thinking about punitive intent in a moral sense; I see that was not clear) would not be okay, that is.
By the way, there is a way of implementing the system you propose that reduces the risks of punitive intent, and I think the employer would prefer it: the basic salary is X. Anyone who gets more than the minimum level of productivity among the employees, gets a productivity bonus Y, and whoever gets top productivity gets a further reward of Z. However, I think the system still looks rather unfair, and it might not be permissible. It's better if the salary is just linked to a fixed productivity system.
That said, I think your argument raises legitimate worries, here's an improvement:
It is impermissible to intend to punish a person for immoral behavior without having conclusive evidence that the person in question did behave immorally.
Still, this might not have much of a punch because you hold that there is such thing as immoral behavior that is not blameworthy. It's a bit difficult for me to think under that assumption (i.e., the possibility of behavior that is immoral but not blameworthy), but here's an alternative that you might (or might not) agree with:
P1: It is impermissible to intend to punish a person because of a behavior one judges blameworthy without having conclusive evidence (i.e., beyond a reasonable doubt) that their behavior is blameworthy,
and
P2: It is impermissible to act punitively and motivated by feelings of moral condemnation against a person without having conclusive evidence that the person in question is blameworthy.
I just don't know. I am pulled two ways on this. If I were to dig in my heals on the scepticism about blameworthiness, I would go for a non-retributivist account of human justice, and say that real, retributive justice is to be left to God. This is not compatible with the death penalty (which anyway I think should be abolished), but it is compatible with imprisonment.
p.s. Even bracketing the above questions, I would feel bad if a punitive action of mine were motivatived by *feelings* of moral condemnation rather than a *judgment* of moral condemnation.
Why do you think that a non-retributivist account of human justice is not compatible with the death penalty but it is with imprisonment? I don't see the incompatibility. It probably depends on how the account goes, it seems to me. Do you think it is compatible with other corporal punishments that do not cause death?
In re: "feelings", I did not mean that there would be no judgment that the behavior is immoral, though I don't think that the judgment that someone behaved immorally is, on its own, motivating - but it normally is to some extent, in humans. But I wanted to address frequent cases in which, say, people are morally outraged at the behavior of a politician, or a business person, etc., call for boycotts, etc. The motivation seems to be moral outrage (or sometimes a less strong feeling), even though it follows normally a judgment.
That said, normally the feelings follow the judgment, so while I think P1 and P2 are true, it is better to say:
P3: It is impermissible to act punitively and motivated by a judgment of moral condemnation against a person without having conclusive evidence that the person in question is blameworthy.
They're not mutually exclusive, though, so I think we have P1, P2 and P3.
Hi Alex. Would you express similar reservations in attributing the use of free agency to others as well? That is, reservations about which of the acts of agents around you are the result of their free choices? (So I am not asking if you can identify that others are free agents who can sometimes perform free actions, but rather about whether you can identify the acts that are free.) Abelard was skeptical about our ability to do this; so you wouldn't be the first to hold this if you do. The reason I think this question is important is that one of the popular lines in favor of libertarianism is that it is the "common sense view", and that sort of argument is usually bolstered by first person phenomenological evidence. But mostly neglected regarding this line of argument is the second or third-person evidence, of whether it seems we are engaging with other agents who are typically acting freely in their engagements with us.
Angra:
Good question about the death penalty. It seems to me that it is wrong to intentionally kill the innocent, except maybe (MAYBE) in direct defense of the innocent. So if the culpability of the criminal is seriously in question, it doesn't matter for purposes of killing the criminal if there would be good deterrent, or if the criminal would be likely brought to a change of heart, etc.
Mr Gibson:
I have no worries about free will. On my view every choice is free. So a scepticism about free will would be a scepticism about whether people are making choices. I see little reason for wide-spread scepticism. In fact, I expect that most actions are free.
How do I distinguish freedom from culpability in my scepticism?
First, not all choices of a wrong involve culpability. If one does not at the time of the choice see the chosen option to be wrong, one is not directly culpable. (One may be culpable for one's blindness, but that is a separate sin.) Second, there is a specific reason to be sceptical of culpability that is present in all cases of wrongdoing, namely that all wrongdoing is irrational.
On reflection, I overstated things. I should have said that rarely do I take myself to be in a position to know that a person is *significantly* culpable for a wrongdoing. I expect that most of the time when someone is doing something wrong, they are at least *slightly* culpable. My reason to think this comes from self-observation. I think sometimes I have done wrongs without being very culpable. But in very few, if any, of these cases is it plausible to me that I haven't been *at all* culpable.
One way to put the point is this. If someone does something that is gravely wrong--wrong enough to be a mortal sin--I now think I typically have reason to think that they are culpable at least to a venial degree. But I rarely have reason to think that they are culpable to a grave degree for that act.
Hmm. Perhaps that last qualification helps with punishment worries. For the spiritual writers say that even the least venial sin is something really terrible...
Alex:
In re: the death penalty, my impression is that it depends on the case, but I would agree that, usually, it is immoral to deliberately kill the innocent. Then again, I would say that usually, it is also immoral to imprison the innocent, though there are more frequent exceptions. Still, assuming you're correct about the morality of killing, here's an issue:
Imprisonment is only a relatively recent punishment, historically speaking (broad sense of "history", including all the time humans have existed), and that's for the most part due to lack of capability.
Granted, even in antiquity, criminals were jailed, say in Rome. But the jail was not the punishment, but a place to put them until they got punished in a harsher manner. Rome probably did not have the capability to build the require infrastructure to safely hold prisoners for so long. Moreover, even if Rome or China could do it, for most of history, most human groups have not had that capability. So, what should they have done?
I don't know. :-(
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