Yes, but I also think that provided that the mental behavior is the same (that part is crucial), the degree of immorality would be the same. The law does not seem to reflect that, for a number of reasons, perhaps related to social peace, limited resources and stuff like that.
Yes, we could say that if it is immoral to do it, it should be as immoral even if there are no actual adverse consequences in a particular case, and we might even say that if we are going to punish, the punishment should be the same. But as you say, it doesn't seem to work like that. It may be because of the things you suggest. Personally I would think that what's happening is that laws treat actual and potential consequences (in this case actual and potential damage or harm) differently. When there is actual damage or harm resulting from a particular act, this is seen to be worthy of more severe punishment. In some ways, the distinction makes sense. And in the end it's all consequence-based (whether actual or potential consequences).
But if you prefer another term, how about 'just retribution'?
Possibly, I'm not sure. The prefix seems to imply that that sort of retribution is necessarily just, which is the claim we are disagreeing about. If we say 'just retribution is just' it's merely a tautology. So because I think it might be confusing, I'm going to use the term retribution. I understand that there could be both just and unjust types. I'm not sure what word I would prefer for the type you are calling 'just'. Perhaps 'accurate retribution', in that it punishes the person who did the act in question, not someone else? We could also bring in whether it's proportionate or not but I think that's slightly secondary, albeit related.
I think I'm ok with saying 'retributive justice' instead of 'justice' because that doesn't seem to imply that the justice is in fact just. Or maybe it does. I'm a bit confused. You could even merely say 'justice' so long as we both know you mean what it claims to be rather than what it necessarily is. In the main, our justice system is retributive (or has that component) so it's understandable to colloquially equate the two, but bear in mind that our system is not necessarily the best one possible, though I am not claiming it does not work well, only that it might hypothetically work better, perhaps. Iow, ours might be too retributive.
..... the lack of just retribution per se is a bad thing. It's a form of injustice.
It would be, if what I called accurate retribution were always just, in the sense of being the right thing. In the case of a particular just retribution it would be a tautology.
ruby sparks said:
It's based on consequences.
That's extremely ambiguous 'based on'.
I don't see how it's ambiguous at all, given everything I said about it. Our morality, an evolved trait/capacity, is based on, exists because of, consequences.
Consequentialisms (there are several) says we have an obligation to maximize happiness or the good, or minimize suffering, things like that (or minimum) X, where X is something like happiness, or even good, or (suffering). I do not believe we have that obligation in general. I do think sometimes we have obligations to prevent bad things or to bring about good ones, depending on the case. In particular, while I think just retribution is a good, we often do not have an obligation to inflict it on others we don't have an obligation not to, either, and sometimes we have an obligation not to because it would (based on the info available to use) bring about very bad things.
It slightly baffles me why you can't just say non-retribution (eg forgiveness), as an alternative to retribution, can sometimes be a good thing. I think it's because you are assuming something about what I called accurate retribution.
I'm not sure I need to get into things like maximising or minimising good. Isn't that more like Utilitarianism?
Imagine the king's son raped a poor woman, for fun. The father has a chance to get close enough to beat him up in retaliation. But he knows based on previous events that if he does that, his family will be round up and burned alive. Sure, it would be immoral on his part to bring about just retribution in that context. But what makes his action - or rather his decisions, but they are intertwined with the actions in most cases - immoral is that he is acting despite the terrible consequences for innocent people. The fact that it is an act of retribution does not make it wrong - since it is just retribution.
I'm not sure I'm following that. It seems to be a scenario in which even the king himself feels that retribution would be the morally right thing to do. So it's merely not acting on a moral judgement (for whatever reasons) rather than not making the judgement regarding the essential rightness of retribution.
I offered a scenario in which a starving person steals some food. Would retribution or forgiveness be right in that case?
I also mentioned Gordon Wilson, the man who, apparently immediately, forgave the terrorists who killed his daughter. He even used the term 'dirty words' to describe what he was eschewing (retibution). There are other cases of forgiveness like that. It is as if those doing the forgiving believe it is a virtue, a good and right thing to do, of itself.
Now, maybe they are deceiving themselves. I think they are, in the end. Because as with punishment, I am bound to say that forgiveness is merely a tool in an evolved/learned toolbox, and neither right nor wrong, of itself, and in the end, consequence-based (in the way I am talking about). I think I would have to say that, in order to be consistent.
ruby sparks said:
I don't think I am. What I am saying is that when you make any individual moral judgement, the antecedent (in evolutionary terms for example but also just historical) actual consequences (consequences that actually happened, in the past, to your ancestors, and possibly even to you) are effectively actively in play (in your brain, one way or another, often by being 'encoded information that is called upon') each time, and therefore matter, each time. How could that be something that doesn't matter in any given instance?
Because that is not what makes the behavior of the person we are judging morally wrong, morally praiseworthy, or whatever it is.
I think it
is what makes it morally right or wrong. I don't accept that there is an independent truth of the matter. There is only our evolved sense of what is right and wrong, and that is based on consequences that have actually happened in evolutionary history and possibly to some extent personal history. How could it be otherwise?
With gustatory taste for example. That's an analogy to morality. I'm not saying it's not a good analogy, it might be, but I don't know.
No, actually, I say that our moral sense is not like that based on observations of how people behave and make moral judgments.
I'm not following. Sometimes people forgive. Are you not observing that?
Consequentialism - in any form that makes predictions - is falsified by testing it against our intuitive moral sense.
How so? I'm not seeing that at all. Or are you merely discounting forgiveness from being an intuitive moral sense?
I think I'm on the brink of calling myself a type of consequentialist. I'd be willing to be the subject of an attempt to falsify that.
That's the conflation I'm talking about.
I don't think it's a conflation. I'm making a distinction. There are the actual consequences that result in any one case and there are (or rather were) the actual consequences that formed the morality. As regards a particular moral judgement, the latter are encoded (whether perceived consciously or not) as 'potential consequences' that the system (your brain) factors in during its processes. Your moral sense is the output of those brain processes.
The consequences of long past judgments only matters in the sense that that - together with a number of other factors - contributed causally to our having the moral sense we have.
Exactly. And the moral senses we have are effectively the moral judgements, so they are the result of actual consequences that happened.
On the other hand, nothing that happened millions of years ago is a factor when assessing whether McConnell behaved immorally
I disagree, the assessment of whether M acted immorally is in the brain of the assessor(s) of M, and the way their brains work in that regard is a physical manifestation of the outcome of all the consequences that happened in evolutionary terms, and possibly to some extent personal history terms. Now, a caveat might be that M also has a brain, so that brain is also making judgements (assessing itself) by the same processes.
The factors are all mental properties of McConnell.
I agree that M is probably judging his own actions, but to say that all the relevant factors are in his head seems very odd.
ruby sparks said:
Well, now I know your motivation (even though I think I already knew it). You, Angra, seek retribution for its own sake or because you believe it is good, of itself. I'm not sure all humans do, always. Some seem to think that forgiveness is good instead, in certain situations. I would guess that nearly everyone thinks that at least some of the time, depending on the situation. In fact, it's often regarded as a virtue, something admirable to aspire to.
I did not say all humans do, always. My position is that all humans do, sometimes, unless something is wrong with some part of their brains.
All ('non-defective') humans do what sometimes? Seek retribution for it's own sake, because they feel it is good of itself? Sure. It's probably fair to say that all humans do that, sometimes. Other times, they seem to forgive instead. That would leave us with the claim that retribution is (or is deemed, which would be a lesser claim, and probably more correct, imo) good/right of itself except when it isn't.
As for forgiveness, it depends on the circumstances, but sure, an act of forgiveness can be good overall due to such-and-such results, though I do not think it is good on its own - of course, we are talking about forgiving someone who deserves to be punished. But it's not the lack of just retribution that makes it good - in fact, that is a negative -, but other things that sometimes might outweigh that negative enough to justify the action.
I know you don't think forgiveness is a good on its own, and that you think (accurately-targeted) retribution is a good on its own, but at the moment, both of those just seems to be merely your personal claims, albeit shared by other people, but not all people in all circumstances.
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Let me sum up my claims. Human morality exists in the brains of humans. It consists of the moral judgements those brains make. As such they are things that are deemed (regarded or considered by human brains) to be, not things that have an independent existence. Those brains, and therefore the moral judgements they make, are the results of both evolutionary and personal history, which consisted (past tense) of actual outcomes (consequences) and consists (present tense) of the responses of physical brain structures to certain situations. The capacity to punish and the capacity to forgive are both capacities that have evolved and/or been learned, and are widespread (exist in all 'properly-functioning' humans, temporarily assuming there is such a thing*). They are two 'tools in our toolbox'. They will manifest at different times in different scenarios. One is as intrinsically as valid as the other, but there may be far fewer situations in which forgiveness is and has been the more useful tool. But it is likely that both are adaptive as part of complicated, nuanced strategies that either work well or don't work well. In the end, the relative success or failure of all strategies is subject to blind processes such as natural selection. There is no independent or non-naturalistic moral right or wrong beyond that.
* On which point, it may be interesting to note that there are gender differences in morality, it seems. In some situations, women are (at least somewhat) more prone to forgive rather than punish, and in some situations men are more prone to do that. This may throw up the issue of which gender has the 'properly functioning' brain in each type of situation.
That is one reason I am not sure about the term 'properly functioning brain'.