ruby sparks
Contributor
Claim: forgiveness can be as valid and right and just an option as the alternative, retribution, in response to what is deemed a wrong, depending on circumstances.
Crucially, it can be part of a mixed strategy, and also be adaptive (help to maximise reproductive success).
So what is forgiveness?
I bet it's complicated. First of all, does a pure version ever exist? I think so. I think we can fully and truly forgive. At which point, I am suggesting, when there's a binary choice, retribution is off the table, no longer relevant. There is no point in saying 'retribution would have been the right response', even if it was deemed and agreed that there was an initial wrong, because forgiveness was deemed right instead. Someone might say, 'well I think retribution would have been the right thing and as such there remains an injustice that deserves retribution' but that's just them, and if they were not party to the actions, it is arguably not necessarily morally up to them, except where moral laws in a society dictate retribution and the thing that was deemed wrong is reported to or discovered by the authorities, which is not always the case, since there are very many cases where both the action and the response remain personal and private to the parties directly involved.
I doubt that forgiveness is often pure of itself though, or always freely given. First, I think it's mostly conditional, in one way or another. Second, I think that it will generally only be partial. As such, we may partly forgive and partly feel that there was nonetheless something that deserved retribution.
It has been said, by neuroscience, that forgiveness, as a brain process, acts (literally biochemically) to inhibit retributive urges. That would suggest that we are in the first instance predisposed towards retribution. If that were true (I don't think anyone is certain) then retributivists might then say that retribution is 'the more natural response'. And I might say, so what? It would only be (or only be more often) the natural first response. Forgiveness would still also be a response, and natural.
Oh, perhaps I should offer a definition of forgiveness:
"To forgive is to either not blame or not be angry with someone for something that person has done, and as a result, not punish or want to punish them for that thing."
I'm not saying that is the correct or only definition. Forgiveness is a slippery concept. It seems easier to say what it is not.
In a nutshell I am saying that one thing it is not is retribution. So, I might simply say:
"Forgiveness is an alternative to retribution."
'Absolve' might be a closely-related word. Also, 'pardon' except that in some legal usages that is not quite the same.
Forgiveness might literally require forgetting (there is the phrase, 'forgive and forget') but not the forgetting that the action happened, only perhaps the actual forgetting of the initial urge (if there was one) to punish that might have been associated with the action or the memory of it. Were that not to be completely forgotten, retributivists might be right in saying there could still be a case for a lingering injustice, or at least the sense of it, I think.
For that to happen, it would seem that the bio/electro-chemical processes involved in the forgiveness would have to have fully 'reversed or erased' the initial retributive ones, if they were there. I think that may be a big ask, of a brain. It would involve the latter not being encoded in memory.
Crucially, it can be part of a mixed strategy, and also be adaptive (help to maximise reproductive success).
So what is forgiveness?
I bet it's complicated. First of all, does a pure version ever exist? I think so. I think we can fully and truly forgive. At which point, I am suggesting, when there's a binary choice, retribution is off the table, no longer relevant. There is no point in saying 'retribution would have been the right response', even if it was deemed and agreed that there was an initial wrong, because forgiveness was deemed right instead. Someone might say, 'well I think retribution would have been the right thing and as such there remains an injustice that deserves retribution' but that's just them, and if they were not party to the actions, it is arguably not necessarily morally up to them, except where moral laws in a society dictate retribution and the thing that was deemed wrong is reported to or discovered by the authorities, which is not always the case, since there are very many cases where both the action and the response remain personal and private to the parties directly involved.
I doubt that forgiveness is often pure of itself though, or always freely given. First, I think it's mostly conditional, in one way or another. Second, I think that it will generally only be partial. As such, we may partly forgive and partly feel that there was nonetheless something that deserved retribution.
It has been said, by neuroscience, that forgiveness, as a brain process, acts (literally biochemically) to inhibit retributive urges. That would suggest that we are in the first instance predisposed towards retribution. If that were true (I don't think anyone is certain) then retributivists might then say that retribution is 'the more natural response'. And I might say, so what? It would only be (or only be more often) the natural first response. Forgiveness would still also be a response, and natural.
Oh, perhaps I should offer a definition of forgiveness:
"To forgive is to either not blame or not be angry with someone for something that person has done, and as a result, not punish or want to punish them for that thing."
I'm not saying that is the correct or only definition. Forgiveness is a slippery concept. It seems easier to say what it is not.
In a nutshell I am saying that one thing it is not is retribution. So, I might simply say:
"Forgiveness is an alternative to retribution."
'Absolve' might be a closely-related word. Also, 'pardon' except that in some legal usages that is not quite the same.
Forgiveness might literally require forgetting (there is the phrase, 'forgive and forget') but not the forgetting that the action happened, only perhaps the actual forgetting of the initial urge (if there was one) to punish that might have been associated with the action or the memory of it. Were that not to be completely forgotten, retributivists might be right in saying there could still be a case for a lingering injustice, or at least the sense of it, I think.
For that to happen, it would seem that the bio/electro-chemical processes involved in the forgiveness would have to have fully 'reversed or erased' the initial retributive ones, if they were there. I think that may be a big ask, of a brain. It would involve the latter not being encoded in memory.
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