ruby sparks said:
We did this at great length before and you explained yourself many times, with many examples and in a lot of detail. I understand it, but I don't buy it, partly (a) because you go from is to ought, but also partly (b) because you are only looking at one instinct, instead of the more complicated overall picture.
You badly misrepresent what I said. And you tell me that you understand what I said. From that it follows that you are
deliberately misrepresenting what I said. But I do not believe that you are. I believe that you are not lying. Rather, you mistakenly believe that you understand what I said.
As to your substantive claims:
(a)
First, there is nothing wrong with going from 'is' to 'ought' in some cases. For example, from 'It is immoral for humans to rape people for fun' one can derive 'Humans ought not to rape people for fun', in the moral sense of 'ought', and using logic and the meaning of the words.
Second, in this thread, I have
not done the above, except in examples of that sort. If you believe that I have attempted to
logically derive a moral statement from non-moral ones, then
you are mistaken about what I said, and I would ask you to
quote me on the part or parts were you believe that I have done that, so that I can show in detail that I have not.
Third, I have used empirical evidence as evidence of some of the content of morality - so, yes, moral statements -, but that usage of empirical evidence as
evidence supporting a moral claim is not at all a fallacy.
(b) That is false. I am looking at the overall picture. So, again, you are mistaken about what I am doing. That provides further evidence that you are not deliberately misrepresenting my words. You are mistaken about them.
Now, I do focus on the retributive instinct because the motivation for just retribution is one of
moral outrage. In other words, this particular part of our evolved psychology is actually a part of the moral human faculty. Sure, humans also may well have some immoral evolutionary drives. Evolution is messy. But this particular one is part of our sense of morality. So, it makes perfect sense to use that as evidence that retribution is often just. It is what our human moral sense says. The people on the other side are committed to a
partial moral error theory (even if some of them do not realize that), as they would have it that human ordinary talk about just retribution is always false (that would result probably in a substantive moral error theory, but at least an epistemic one).
The burden is on the people trying to bring down part of our moral sense (i.e., without good arguments to back up their claims, they are on their face extremely improbable). But their arguments miss the mark completely - they do not even seem to understand what the mark is (for details, you can read my replies to them, or B20's posts, or both).
ruby sparks said:
Regarding (a), you yourself are inclined towards retribution. Many people are, probably by far the most, to at least some extent, including me. That doesn't make it right, ever. At best, it's intuitive or instinctual, universally (ie throughout the human race, more or less).
Okay, so let's focus on this part. Humans have many propensities. And of course, the fact that humans have a propensity to X does not logically entail that it is morally obligatory or even acceptable for humans to X. However, there are cases - it depends on the X - in which the fact that humans have a propensity to X provides very good evidence that it is morally acceptable or even obligatory to X, even though it does not logically entail it (yes, it would be an error to try to derive the moral conclusion from the non-moral premises in the sense of logical entailment; no, it is not an error to use non-moral information as evidence supporting moral conclusions).
What I am saying is: empirical evidence shows that humans have a propensity to mete out retribution
when they reckon that the target deserve that retribution. That is a
moral judgment combined with a moral motivation - in this case, a motivation to take revenge on those who deserve it. Of course, the strength of the motivation of a person varies a lot depending on whether she was targeted or someone else was targeted. But that's not the issue. The point is that it is a case in which the very human moral sense is saying it is just, and that they do deserve punishment.
Whether it is right is another matter, because there might be superseding considerations (e.g., if A knows that punishing a perpetrator will result millions of innocent fatalities, it is not acceptable to punish him in order to do justice, even though he still deserves it), but at any rate,
we use our own human moral sense to assess what is right.
So, those who claim that it is wrong to engage in retributory punishment need to use something to make that assessment, but what is that something? Their own human moral sense? Well, if so, well it's their moral sense vs. mine...and that of the vast majority of humans. Why would anyone believe theirs is right? But it is worse than that, because the obvious errors in their argumentation shows in a different manner (i.e., different from just counting the number of people on each side, which is evidence but far from conclusive) that something is wrong with their assessments.
ruby sparks said:
On (b), while it's part of our evolved nature, our nature is neither static nor simple. It's made up of a lot of different things and the balance of emphasis on this or that one to whatever degree, is often to do with situation, culture and zeitgeist. Most importantly though, even if retribution exists to some extent in every culture, there are also non-retributive alternatives in every culture. Forgiveness for example.
That is not it. Sure, people can choose to forgive those who deserve punishment. Sometimes that is acceptable. Sometimes, it is not. As always, one has to assess the matter on a case by case basis. But that is not what is happening here. Here, people are not just saying that it is better for some reason or another (which of course also would have to be assessed using our human moral sense) to let perpetrators who deserve punishment to get away with it. They are saying or implying that they do not deserve the punishment in the first place.
ruby sparks said:
That's another functional component of our contradictory (in some ways dual) nature. You could not show that retribution is of itself better than forgiveness before, and you can't do it now, no matter how many examples of humans and other apes being retributive you cite (even bonobos), because you're only looking at one side of the multi-faceted coin.
You are missing the point. The question is not just whether retribution is better than forgiveness (which of course depends on the case). Rather, they deny that retribution is ever just.
ruby sparks said:
Forgiveness is a fly in the ointment of your retribution theory. If I recall correctly, you had a bit of trouble accepting that people also actually do genuinely forgive, but they do, it happens regularly.
No, you do not recall correctly. Or rather, you do remember correctly what you believed was happening, but that was not happening.
