ruby sparks said:
I agree it's an interesting question. Yes, they do seem equally guilty, and yet in most cases the punishment is more severe if the actual consequences are more harmful.
But here's a thing. We might say there is what you have called 'massive background agreement' that adverse consequences deserve greater punishment. Why are you then not bound by your own approach to treat that as a fact?
By 'massive background agreement' I mean that on the vast majority if issues, there is nearly (human) universal agreement on whether something is wrong, very wrong, etc. This is an argument against the claim that disagreement is so prevalent. It is not an argument supporting the idea that the majority got it right. It is easy to find examples of majorities getting some moral facts wrong (as evidenced by the fact that majorities in different places and/or times sometimes have mutually incompatible moral beliefs), though of course, those are a tiny minority of moral facts.
That aside, when it comes to moral assessments, our assessments are intuitive (we use our moral sense), but that does not mean our intuitions after considering the matter carefully will be the same as the immediate ones. I don't think the majority of the people who have considered scenarios such as the one I presented, believe that greater consequences deserve greater punishment.
ruby sparks said:
If I were to say 'accurately-targeted (properly attributed) and proportionate' it would still say nothing about whether, in a certain situation, the retribution was the right thing. To me there is no objective or independent right thing, of itself, other than what is deemed to be the right thing, and there is disagreement about that. I am offering forgiveness as an alternative to retribution. Of course, that would not be the objective or independent right thing either.
But then, what do you mean by "proportionate"? If it's something like 'in proportion to the consequences', then no, I definitely do not want to be seen as saying that that is a good thing in general.
I'm afraid I do not have a term to describe my view other than saying that just retribution is a good thing in an of itself - though an act that involves just retribution might be wrong because of other factors; I provided examples.
ruby sparks said:
And there we have it. That is what you believe. Others believe differently. Who is right?
I am.
The thing is, any moral theory needs to be tested against moral intuitions - how else would you go about testing it? And those theories do not pass the test, even by the very intuitions of the people supporting them. So, they amend them, or say that some particular subset of our moral intuitions is faulty, etc., but I think it's pretty much debunked (I'm thinking of addressing the matter in the other thread, though time is limited).
ruby sparks said:
I offered you a scenario and a binary choice (forgive or punish). How can it be 'probably neither'? Are you merely reluctant to acknowledge that forgiveness can be as valid a response as retribution?
No, the choice was not binary. You asked " Would retribution or forgiveness be right in that case?". A proper response is: neither of them would be right. Let me give you an example. I offer the following scenario: "Joe's son Adam has consensual sex with Bob". Would retribution or forgiveness be right in that case? Neither of them, because there was no wrongful behavior involved.
But I say 'probably', because the scenario is under determined.
ruby sparks said:
Forgiveness is not that unusual, so the idea that it happens because of a mental defect is not a strong claim.
Forgiveneess
for the evil murderers that murdered his son is, I'm pretty sure, very unusual. But in a population of billions, no doubt you will find cases.
ruby sparks said:
In our opinion and in the opinion of most, in that case, yes. In other cases, not so much.
It's the correct opinion. As for other cases, which ones? (I was considering your example).
ruby sparks said:
Yes, in that case it's something else that happens. But in many cases it is the only thing that happens, for example wrongs that are forgiven and not reported to authorities, such as theft of my food by a starving person. And in many other cases where one person eschews retribution for a harm and forgives the other person instead.
If the person truly is starving, I do not think that that is a wrong, at least as long as the person had no good reason to suspect it would inflict significant hardship on you, and as long as it is a nonviolent theft.
But sure, there is plenty of cases of forgiveness. What is your point? I think the perpetrators still deserve punishment, unless the forgiveness happens after the perpetrators have changed significantly (no longer the same guilty mind). But I'm not saying people generally have an obligation to punish, just as I am not saying that we generally have an obligation to maximize good things, including just retribution.
ruby sparks said:
The evolutionary facts are, I am saying, what causes us to label something wrong (or a person evil).
That is true, but then again, some other evolutionary facts are also what causes us to label something 'ill' (those facts among other causes one can pick).
ruby sparks said:
As to an analogy with illness, it could be that there are facts about that but not about morality. That is what we are debating.
You are missing my point, which is that
your argument against moral facts apply to illness just as much as it does to morality. Why then, do you keep accepting the fact that there are illness facts, but not moral ones? Do you have an argument that works against moral but not illness facts?
ruby sparks said:
My point was that you observe retribution and you observe forgiveness. How are they not both equally morally valid options?
Morally valid? What is that, morally permissible? Well, it depends on the case. Sometimes both are permissible. Sometimes, only one. Sometimes, neither. It's a matter to be assessed on a case by case basis, as always. That is not a problem for my position. I hold that just retribution is a good in an of itself, but not that we have an obligation always to bring about that good. Not even that it is always permissible. I've given examples of all of this already.
ruby sparks said:
It's very debatable whether at least in many cases there is a difference between having a moral sense about something and making a moral judgement about it. When it comes to instincts and intuitions, they are effectively the same thing.
We do not have a moral sense "about something", just as we do not have a color vision-visual processing system "about something", or a probabilistic sense "about something". We have systems with which we make assessments about morality, color, probability, etc.
ruby sparks said:
But what is immoral is what we deem to be immoral, so it's not a different matter.
No, we can be mistaken, so conceptually they are different. Moreover, what we deemed to be immoral is also not what happened millions of years ago (or thousands, or just years, whatever).
ruby sparks said:
Possibly less, I don't know. But we are a social species of learning machines. Morality has demonstrably changed over time and across cultures and zeitgeists. That is evidence that morality is relative. Rape seems a good example. Until very recently, marital rape was not considered a wrong, and still isn't, in many cultures. Slavery might be another example. Perhaps also sodomy. And that's only to do with humans. On such things as animal rights (by which we mean other animals) there is still much disagreement. That said, I know you are only doing human morality about humans. I'm not sure why.
Well, again, I disagree about the degree of disagreement. You say marital rape was not considered a wrong. Well, was it not considered a wrong by whom? By the women getting raped? I'm pretty sure it was considered a wrong by most of them. But to the extent it was not considered a wrong, why was it? If you take a look at the arguments, what they had was:
1. Disagreement about nonmoral facts. You would not say that there is a difference in people's color vision because one sees red and the other green if the latter looked 1 second later when the light had changed. That's because their visual systems got different inputs (different light, in this case). Disagreement about nonmoral facts often results in disagreements about morality but that's not because of differences in the moral senses, but because of different inputs.
2. Improper instrument. Instead of their moral sense, they use religion, at least in part, or some ideology, etc. We already know that these things are not conducive to truth - we can see that in nonmoral matters too -, but additionally, their moral senses can be damaged through indoctrination from childhood in many cases.
ruby sparks said:
Those are things that would make him responsible, they are not necessarily things that would make the act immoral, or more to the point make retribution the right thing.
Yes, those are the things that would make the act immoral, and the proper retribution a good. Whether the retributive act is the right thing is another matter. Sometimes it is not right to bring about a good (e.g., when it is predictable a much bigger bad will come alongside it).
ruby sparks said:
The starving man who stole my food might have been responsible, let's say, but forgiveness rather than retribution could still be the right response.
I need more information, but I think forgiveness is the wrong response, as it assumes there is something to forgive in the first place, but there isn't if, by hypothesis, he was starving - with some caveats.
ruby sparks said:
People can see a transgression and still forgive it.
Sure, but it is unrealistic that a human never seeks retribution, barring incapacitating illness.
ruby sparks said:
The king did not forgive.
The king was not explicitly mentioned and had nothing to forgive. I'm not getting your point. The king may well be as evil as his son.
ruby sparks said:
Again, whether there is a moral fact just as there are facts about other things, such as fruit flies, is what we are debating. Analogies with things where there are facts does not necessarily advance the case that there is a moral fact about something.
The analogies show that your argument
apply as much to moral facts as they do to the other things. What they do is debunk your arguments against moral facts.
ruby sparks said:
In the first instance I would not say it is in fact easy in many cases to be able to say that someone who is in a mental institution is in fact mentally ill or not. Sanity is a slippery concept.
Okay, so sometimes, the facts of the matter are difficult to figure. However, in other cases, they are pretty easy to figure: there are examples of people in mental institutions who are very, very obviously mentally ill. And the fact remains that there is a fact of the matter about those things.
ruby sparks said:
But let's say there are clearly mentally ill people (they see things which are not there), again whether mental illness is a good analogy for morality is up for debate.
What I'm doing is presenting analogies to show that your arguments do not apply to morality any more than they would apply to cases where you accept that there are facts of the matter. My goal is to get you to stop making those arguments (if you realize they are not good), or at least get readers to realize they're not good.
ruby sparks said:
I don't understand what you are saying there. Yes, it would be a difference about the judgements about deserts. Is that not what we are mainly talking about?
Would there be? I do not know about that. What is your evidence? That some want to punish, other forgive? But do the latter not believe that punishment is deserved? Again, what is your evidence?
But if there is a difference about the preliminary judgments, what of it?
Those are not the judgments after considering the matter.
ruby sparks said:
So, that there are gender differences about moral judgements would mean that under your explanation, one gender has defects in certain situations. That seems dubious.
Assuming the results exist (about what they deserve, not about whether to punish or forgive, which is a very different matter), it
might mean that in some cases, the moral sense of people of one sex is on average more accurate than the moral sense of the people of the other sex when it comes to making fast judgments with no time to think about the situation. Moreover, it might be that females are better at fast judgments overall in some cases, and males in some other cases. It does not tell us of course that judgments would not converge after pondering the matter.
But what of it? There are differences between the brains of females and those of males. It might be that, on average, females are better at verbal communication, and males better at spacial reasoning. It might be - though, again, I would like to see your evidence, as this is suspect given how you seem to be interpreting the evidence - that females are on average better at making fast moral judgments about some situations, and males about others. While I am skeptical without seeing the evidence and given that you seem to be misinterpreting it, this certainly would be much less dubious than
the entire species having a sense that is completely faulty, and does nothing but lead us to false beliefs all the time . That is the really extraordinary claim here.