What do We Mean by "Deserve"?

A recent exchange between Tom and Kip reminded me that I’m getting increasingly confused about desert, about what the concept means to most people. Narrowing down this question a little, it seems like there are a number of possible ways to interpret a claim like ‘Joe deserves punishment.’ Here are my contenders.

(1) Joe is a fair and appropriate target of punishment.
(2) Independent of any consequentialist considerations, Joe ought to be punished.
(3) All things being equal, it would be wrong for Joe not to be punished.
(4) Joe is an appropriate object of resentment or moral anger.
(5) Joe has done something that warrants punishment.
(6) Joe has done something that makes him a fair and appropriate target of punishment.
(7) Joe has done something wrong, and it is his fault; so (independent of consequentialist considerations) he ought to be punished [or it would be wrong for him not to be punished]
(8) Joe has done something wrong out of his own free will, and so he ought to be punished.
(9) Joe has done something wrong, and he is causa sui [or is the true source of what he has done] and so, independent of consequentialist considerations, he ought to be punished.

Do any of these (overlapping) interpretations capture the concept of desert, at least with regards to punishment? Is there a better way to describe it? One thing I’m interested in is whether the conceptual space allows for people to deserve punishment without having done anything—or done anything of their own free will. Another is whether anyone (incompatibilists most likely) thinks the concept has incompatibilist notions built into it. Finally, I wonder if ‘desert’ when applied to blame rather than punishment might mean something slightly different. To be clear, I’m not asking under what conditions our assignments of desert are justified. I just want to figure out what the word means to most people. Any ideas?

Comments

[KT]

Gees, Joe, what did you do this time? :)

[James Gibson]

Hi Tamler. I believe that under both "Joe deserves punishment" and "Joe deserves blame," the verb does not mean the *doing* of something wrong. It seems plausible to me that one could distinguish between the concept of desert itself, which is articulated in something like (1)-(4), and the conditions under which one would be deserving of blame or punishment. One of those conditions may be the doing of something wrong; I say "may" because I want to leave open that groups can be responsible for an act for which most members of the group were not the perpetrators of the act and yet the individuals of the group are blameworthy or even subject to punishment.

I also tend to think that (3) is not plausible since Joe may be deserving of punishment or blame, and yet it is not wrong of some other person (in a position relationally-appropriate-to-Joe to give Joe his due) to withhold those and be merciful instead.

Finally, although I am less clear about this, (1) and (4) may turn out to not be that different after analysis of the terms is complete. It may be that the deserving of "moral anger" or "resentment" manifests itself in the form of punishment. Here, "punishment" does not have to refer to physical affliction of some kind. It may refer to shaming Joe or disassociation with Joe. Those may be punishments suited for Joe, expressions of moral anger. So while punishment may be the expression or manifestation of moral anger, the word "deserves" in (1) and (4) turns out to mean the same thing in both instances, I think. I hope that this was all on target to your questions.

[Richard]

I agree with James' comment. As further evidence, consider religious claims that Joe deserves divine punishment, simply in virtue of what he is (human, thus "sinner"), not anything in particular that he *did*. Silly claims, perhaps, but not obviously conceptually incoherent.

(To be clear: I do think that the concept of desert requires a desert base - that in virtue of which Joe deserves punishment - but the basis need not be an action. At least, there seems conceptual room for the basis to be a vicious character trait, or some such aspect of one's sheer "being".)

It does seem plausible that desert is purely backward-looking though, so something like the "independent of any consequentialist considerations" proviso seems fitting.

[James Gibson]

I want to follow up with what Richard said because I had some of the things he brought up in mind when I wrote my post. Richard noted that some religious claims may be that Joe deserves (divine) blame or punishment not in virtue of anything he *did*, but in virtue of what he is. The most obvious doctrine illustrating this is original sin. Never mind for the moment how silly or rotten one considers the doctrine to be (since the truth of that particular view isn't under discussion here but is merely illustrious of a more general position), one prominent theological tradition says that a person may be born deserving punishment for the sin of *Adam*. Obviously, not all proponents of original sin think this is correct. But following Richard's parenthetical comment, that tradition then attempts to lay out a *desert base* that grounds the desert attribution to others following Adam. Oliver Crisp, for instance, attempts to do this following Jonathan Edwards by appealing to temporal parts (Chisholm discusses Edwards' view in Person and Object). But part of the desert base for a view like this, I think, is that *someone* did an action, but the others that are blameworthy have to bear some suitable relation to that person.

When I made the comment about the responsibility of groups, I was thinking of things that Larry May says in his book, Sharing Responsibility. May associates a view like his own to some of the existentialist writers. I happen to think that some of the arguments that May gives for his view are incompatible with a position taken by Oliver. In any case, there are nevertheless various traditions, religious and otherwise, that attempt to defend a position similar to one another.

[Tamler Sommers]

James and Richard,

Thanks! This is just what I looking for (and hoping to hear). The religious claims about deserving punishment just for being human (or for being related to Adam)--do you have a direct quote or reference? Is the desert concept used explicitly?

I'm very interested in this because I think the same idea might apply in other contexts--collective punishment, for example, where someone deserves punishment just in virtue of their relationship (familial, tribal) to the offender.

[john a]

Tamler
Given that you ask "about what the concept means to most people" you might consider setting up an experiment to test the various interpretations that you and others have suggested against what an unbiased sample group of non-philosophers might think.
John A.

[KT]

Mike Rea has a paper on the metaphysics of original sin that might be interesting with respect to the religious issues that James and Richard mention.

[Matthew]

Tamler,

The common scriptural references are: Psalms 51:5, Romans 5:12, Romans 5:19, and Ephesians 2:3. Just to get you started, you might look into Augustine's _On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants_, and Aquinas' question 87 on "The Debt of Punishment" in _Summa Theologica_.

[Randy Clarke]

Can there be a case in which S deserves punishment, but all things considered it would be wrong to punish S? If so, then desert is at most a pro tanto justification for punishment.

[Tamler Sommers]

Matthew and Kevin--thanks, very helpful.

Randy. I can certainly imagine cases where all things considered someone deserves punishment but it would be wrong to punish him (Imagine a criminal who agrees to help bring down a particular vicious mob in exchange for having his own charges dropped.) So yes, desert is at best a pro tanto or prima facie justification for punishment--and maybe that covers everything about desert when applied to punishment.

But I can't think of cases where it would wrong to punish someone who deserves it, all things BEING EQUAL. I guess cases of forgiveness are possible counterexamples, but you might see those as not being equal. In those cases, the moral virtue of forgiveness trumps the moral wrongness of not giving someone what he or she deserves.

[Alan]

To follow up on Randy's (if I may be so familiar) question, I think our criminal justice system recognizes such a distinction in at least some sense. In so-called 1st-phase or criminal action trials, desert is assignable on the basis of actions. (Almost all criminal trials are of this type--OJ for example--and are about the issue of whether the defendant X did criminal act Y.) "Guilty" as a verdict here certainly carries punitive implications of desert. But since the justice system (in general) still centrally recognizes the role of mens rea in assigning responsibility, someone found guilty in the 1st-phase sense still can be found not guilty in a 2nd-phase or responsibility trial (these are much rarer). John Hinckley, for example, is an excellent example: he attempted to kill Reagan, and permanently disabled James Brady, and we know that he did it, and so in the 1st-phase sense he deserves punishment (ask the Brady family today whether he does). But his 2nd-phase trial removed any doubt about his mens rea--he shot people in an insane attempt to impress Jody Foster--and so in what is taken to be a more ultimate sense, he doesn't deserve punishment, or, it would be unjust to punish him. I have used this distinction between the goals of the two different phases to illustrate a classic-compatibilist sense of responsibility (1st-phase) with an incompatibilist libertarian sense (2nd-phase; though of course modern compatibilists could lay claim to a 2nd-phase sense as well).

The justice system thus tends to show that we juggle different senses of desert, sometimes focused on action, sometimes on qualities of mind. No doubt our collective influences such as world-views, perspective gained from life-experience, emotions, and the like play on us as to which we find to be more prominent in a given case.

[Dan Speak]

I was thinking that Randy might have in mind cases in which someone deserves a certain punishment in virtue of his actions but also in which no one is in the proper position to execute the punishment. So, for example, some people think that there are crimes that make the agent deserving of death but who also think that none of us would be morally within our rights to distribute it (say, because only a being like God could rightly distribute it).

Another sort of case: Manuel and I are stuck on the Island with Giligan and the crew. We conspire to kill all the castaways. Afterward, we are struck by the wrongness of our actions and recognize that we deserve punishment. Still, in virtue of our mutual guilt, neither of us may be in the moral position to distribute the relevant punishment... and there's no one else around to distribute it.

[Randy Clarke]

Perhaps this kind of case: someone is guilty of grave wrongdoing, but has himself suffered so much since the misdeed that we ought not punish him. Perhaps the punishment is still deserved, even if overall not justified.

[Kip Werking]

Tamler,

When I think of desert, I like to distinguish between:

A. Punishing Average Joe Murderer
B. An innocent bystander "punished" for the greater good

Desert, I think, was supposed to capture the moral difference between A and B: we're willing to punish both Joe Murderer, and Innocent Bystander, in order to protect society. For example, we may lock up someone who comes home and finds his wife in bed with another man, and kills them both. We might also give in to a crazy terrorist's demands to kill an innocent bystander in order to prevent a bomb from going off in a crowded area. The idea of desert is that Joe Murderer somehow deserves this punishment, but Innocent Bystander does not.

For example, in explaining why we punish Joe, we can refer to things internal to Joe: his capacity for self-control was sufficiently weak that, in a certain environment, he killed people. The reasons for which we punish Joe are *about* Joe. But, in the case of the innocent bystander, the reasons for which we "punish" that person have much less to do with Innocent Bystander, and much more to do with the contingencies of the environment ("you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time").

I don't think this distinction can do all of the work that free willists want it to do for them, in part because I think that cognitive biases combine to create the illusion that people are more responsible, and self-creating, than they really are. What I want to say is: there is no relevant moral difference between Joe and Bystander. They're *both* in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is easy to see in Bystander's case but, with respect to Joe, we can see it if we reflect upon Joe's heredity and childhood environment: the wrong genes and the wrong family at the wrong time. So there is no desert, ever (or so I like to think).

In reflecting upon desert, I am always moved by the words of John Bradford: "there, but for the grace of God , goes John Bradford."

[James Gibson]

Hi Kip. I have one question of clarification about the distinction of (A) and (B), and then about this comment:

'But, in the case of the innocent bystander, the reasons for which we "punish" that person have much less to do with Innocent Bystander, and much more to do with the contingencies of the environment ("you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time").'

Regarding (B), if an innocent bystander - let's use "Sam" for short - is thrown in jail and terminated, indeed even if Sam is thought to be a person of no offense such as by the one(s) who brings forth the claim that Sam should be thrown in jail and terminated and the one(s) that throw him in jail and terminate him, in what sense is Sam *punished*? I ask this question because it seems implausible to me that every action that harms another should be understood as a form of punishment. So if Sam is treated by a group who believes he is not due any action worthy of jail or termination, say, why shouldn't we just drop the idea that Sam is being *punished* or continuing to talk that way with quotation, and just be clear that Sam is being *harmed* for reasons none of which are the result of Sam's agency (let's stick just with punishment for individuals and bracket the issues surrounding group blame and punishment)?

The second question refers to your quote. Here is the question: can you give me a case in which a person is punished *for the reason that* the person was in the wrong place at the wrong time? Since you are in law (I think), perhaps you know of a case. I would have thought that for persons that are punished, the reason they are punished is *not* that they were just in the wrong local, but that they were in the wrong local AND failed to live up to some relevant obligation - a punishment which is to be suitably handled by the courts (or any person, group, or institution in a suitable position to punish another). So, for instance, the careful driver who runs over a child after a ball into the street shouldn't be punished if the evidence in the case includes things like this: the driver has a good record; the child ran out quickly behind a car and the driver could not have responded in time; the driver was driving at or below the speed limit. If the evidence includes that the driver was speeding at a rate too high to brake in time and given the presence of children in that residential zone at 3pm (and add that the driver was text messaging on the cell phone while driving), thus evincing the driver was being irresponsible, then who would say that the mere fact that the driver was in a place with things outside of her control (e.g., the child dashing out into the street) and the driver's hitting the child are together *sufficient* to punish the driver, ignoring the other relevant evidence - the idea being that the driver was *just* in the wrong place at the wrong time and suitably punished? I think this is especially implausible and so I believe I am probably misunderstanding you. OK. Thanks.

[Kip Werking]

Hi James,

Thank you very much for your thoughtful response to my comment.

In reply, I will say: I am not sure what the precise definition of "punish" is. Perhaps I am naive, but it seems to me that the definition is broad enough to include cases of just severe harm. Dictionary.com defines punish this way:

1. to subject to pain, loss, confinement, death, etc., as a penalty for some offense, transgression, or fault: to punish a criminal.
2. to inflict a penalty for (an offense, fault, etc.): to punish theft.
3. to handle severely or roughly, as in a fight.

So, if we take Sam and handle him severely or roughly, we might "punish" him---at least in the third sense of the word as listed in the dictionary. I suspect you will agree with this much (but, if you don't, please see below).

However, it is probably still important to distinguish between the first two senses of punishments and the third. Let's call the first two (bunched together) "retributive punishment" (RP), because the definitions seem decidedly backward looking. Let's call the third definition "simple punishment" (SP).

If by "punishment", in this thread, you are (quite reasonably) referring exclusively to RP, then I agree with you: Sam is not being punished. Furthermore, I cannot give you case a case where someone was RPed for "being in the wrong place at the wrong time", because "being in the wrong place at the wrong time" is (almost by definition) not an "offense" requiring RP.

Instead, you might be asking for any case whether the legal system SPes, or harms, an individual for being in the wrong place in the wrong time. Off the top of my head, I cannot think of any (but I was not the best law student). Here are some thoughts:

1. It is not clear that, by harming negligent actors who fail to live up to some duty of care, that the law is not also harming them for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It often seems to me that attribution of negligence serves more a cost-allocating, than blame-assigning, function, because sometimes slight negligence results in catastrophic damages.
2. In the military context, the government (if not the legal system) readily SPes or harms people for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
3. Another case might be quarantines (the example that Derk Pereboom discusses in Living Without Free Will): recently the CDC placed Andrew Speaker under involuntary isolation. Speaker was quarantined, not because he had done anything wrong or acted negligently, but because he contains a dangerous disease through no fault of his own---he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

There is a great history of quarantine here:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/typhoid/quarantine.html

Now, two obvious points:

1. The lack of any current legal example does not mean that a government could not, and/or should not, SP or harm people who were just "in the wrong place in the wrong time". The quarantine examples show that a government might be justified in doing so.
2. Outside of the legal or governmental context, people are uncontroversially SPed or harmed, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, all too often.

So, in answer to your question, I'm more than happy to drop the label RP, or even the label "punishment" altogether, if you like. What matters to me is the attitudes and practices we have towards Sam, and not what we label them. If the definition of punishment, or RP, is so narrow as to make it non-sensical to "punish" an innocent bystander, then I agree: we are not "punishing" Sam. We're doing something strikingly similar but semantically distinct. If you like, you can follow John Rawls in calling it "tellishment" instead.

Tellishment is discussed in this GFP thread.

[Tamler Sommers]

Here a non-biblical but suggestive example of desert being applied to people who had nothing to do with the original offense. Days after the Virginia Tech shootings a reporter from the NPR program “Day to Day,” set out to interview Koreans living in Los Angeles about the massacre. At first she had trouble finding anyone willing to answer questions— Finally, one agreed to be interviewed and claimed to be deeply ashamed about the incident. "But you had nothing to do with it--you were three thousand miles away!" the reported exclaimed. The reply: "I know--but he was Korean." He went to say that he did not fear a backlash from Americans, he just felt ashamed.

That same day, Rev. Dong Sun Lim, founder of the Oriental Mission Church in Koreatown, released this statement: “All Koreans in South Korea – as well as here – must bow their heads and apologize to the people of America.”

The idea seems to be analogous to Original Sin. You can deserve blame or punishment just in virtue of your association with a wrongdoer. Does that seem right?

[Randy Clarke]

Of course, there's a difference between shame and guilt. Perhaps shame is sometimes appropriate when guilt isn't. But, arguably, one must be guilty (whether one feels so or not) if one is to deserve punishment.

[Tamler Sommers]

Randy,

"Arguably, one must be guilty (whether one feels so or not) if one is to deserve punishment"

Right, but doesn't that describe a possible condition for 'justified' desert rather than describe what the concept means?

[Mark]

Randy,

While demonstrable guilt is clearly necessary for the just administration of punishment, actual guilt seems to be wrapped up in the meaning of desert. In other words, "he is guilty and deserves punishment" is equally reducible to either "he is guilty" or "he deserves punishment". However, "he deserves punishment" is not equivalent to "he has been found guilty" and "he has been found guilty" is not equivalent to "he ought to be punished".

[Joe Campbell]

Contrary to Mark, I do NOT think that "he is guilty and deserves punishment" is equally reducible to either "he is guilty" or "he deserves punishment." Nor do I think that ‘he is guilty’ means ‘he deserves punishment.’

My son takes a bite of my cookie. He is guilty. Should I punish him? I might look at him sternly or I might just laugh. Do either of these count as punishment? I think that someone who is guilty deserves blame but not necessarily punishment. Thus, I don’t think that ‘Joe deserves punishment’ means ‘Joe is an appropriate object of resentment or moral anger.’

Tamler writes: "But I can't think of cases where it would wrong to punish someone who deserves it, all things BEING EQUAL." What does the ‘it’ refer to? Punishment in general or a particular type of punishment, e.g., the type that it would not be wrong to inflict? Certainly capital punishment would be wrong for someone who, say, steals a loaf of bread. The thief deserves punishment but not that kind.

Punishment comes in degrees and guilt comes in degrees but the degrees do not line up in the right way. A thief and a murderer may be equally guilty yet it is doubtful that they deserve to be punished to the same degree. As my cookie example suggests, one might be guilty yet not deserve punishment at all – and not merely because of extenuating circumstances like those noted by Randy.

The kind of desert involved in desert-entailing moral responsibility is not essentially connected to punishment, IMO.

[Tamler Sommers]

Joe,

"The kind of desert involved in desert-entailing moral responsibility is not essentially connected to punishment, IMO."

I didn't mean to suggest that it was. My specific question in the post is what desert means when applied to punishment. Towards the end of the post I ask whether desert might mean something slightly different when applied to blame rather than punishment.

[Tom Clark]

Originally, Tamler wrote:

"One thing I’m interested in is whether the conceptual space allows for people to deserve punishment without having done anything—or done anything of their own free will. Another is whether anyone (incompatibilists most likely) thinks the concept has incompatibilist notions built into it. Finally, I wonder if ‘desert’ when applied to blame rather than punishment might mean something slightly different."

Seems to me a common meaning of desert related to punishment in the West involves the notion that if the agent has acted in such a way, with such and such capacities, then she should be treated in such and such a way, such as being harmed or burdened in some way, e.g., put to death. So, re your first question I don't think there's conceptual space for desert without action and capacities being present, at least in our culture. But as you’ve noted there's cultural variation on this, for instance regarding how desert is tied (or not) to the actions of the agent being harmed.

Re your second question, there will of course be differences of opinion about what specific capacities and characteristics of agents need to be present for desert to be present, which is where the incompatibilist/compatibilist debate comes in. Beliefs about particular instances of desert might also be influenced by one’s demographic profile, a kind of within-culture variation. A front page article in the New York Times today quotes a researcher about those willing to impose capital punishment, and who therefore might think that agents who act in certain ways deserve to die: “They tend to be white,” she said. “They tend to be male. They tend to be moderately well-educated — high school or maybe a little college. They tend to be politically conservative — Republican. They tend to be Christian — Catholic or Protestant. They tend to be middle socioeconomic status — maybe $30,000 or $40,000” in annual income.” See http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/09/us/09death.html . I wonder whether these folks tend toward any particular notion of the agential capacities and characteristics necessary for desert.

Re your third question, seems to me to blame *is* a kind of punishment – or at least the readiness to punish or sanction (even if it’s just verbally), or to think these are appropriate in the absence of countervailing considerations. So I don’t see the meaning of desert changing much when we say that someone deserves blame vs. someone deserves punishment.

But of course there’s no canonical meaning of desert out there, just a range of uses of the term (or kindred terms) that function to describe how people think agents (and sometimes their kin) should be treated under various conditions.

[Mark]

Joe,

We use the word guilt to juxtapose a negative action against a normative framework. Absent such a framework, the concepts of guilt and punishment both lose the depth of their meaning. Knowning this, we often use invoke these concepts in otherwise awkward situations to create humor. For instance, she might ask, "Did you buy these chocolates for me?", to which he might reply, "Guilty. So, are you going to punish me now?"

Punishment and reward are perspectives on the way someone is treated by a group. Desert is the concept that someone ought to be treated a certain way by a group. Whether that treament counts as punishment or reward is a matter of perspective: it is entirely possible for a group to view their treatment of an individual as punishment and the individual to view it as reward. Guilt is simply a reference to the negative perspective on desert.

You reject my locution of "guilt" and "deserves punishment" by mentioning a case where it does not seem appropriate to punish despite obvious guilt. However, my location already came with the disclaimer that neither "he is guilty" nor "he deserves punishment" necessarily entail that "I/we ought to punish him." Assuming we can make the distinction between descriptive desert claims and normative desert claims, it should be easy enough to address the worry you raise.

Finally, if your wife had told your son not to eat any more cookies, even though you may inclined to laugh when he sneaks one, your wife just might be inclined to give him a healthy dose of her moral anger if she catches him.

[Joe Campbell]

Thanks, Mark! Respectfully, I disagree!

To me, 'guilt' means something like 'countable on one's moral record.' If I were to ask, "Who took a bite out of my cookie?" the answer would be clear: My son did the deed! But it was a rather small deed, so punishment seems inappropriate.

I think that there can be some acts that, though immoral, are not worthy of punishment. We might disagree about which acts fall in this category -- you seem to think that stealing a cookie does and that my wife might understand this even if I don't (I’m just continuing the joke!). I admit that I've yelled at my son for something as silly as stealing a bite of a cookie and that such a thing has, on occasion, made my wife angry. Yet was either the yelling or the anger appropriate for such a minor infraction? That is not clear.

Maybe you're correct and that one or the other form of punishment is appropriate for stealing a bite of a cookie. Let's change the example then. If, as I noted before, degrees of punishment vary, then it might vary to the point of being altogether inappropriate on at least some occasions, given the insignificance of the deed. That was my main point. Guilt has to do with accountability (together with wrongfulness) whereas punishment has to do with more than that.

Tamler: I wasn't sure if my comments were relevant to your original post and, given what you say, perhaps they were not!

[Mark]

Joe,

While I agree with your assessment of guilt, bear in mind that my claim is simply that guilt equals "deserves punishment."

Thus far the examples you've asked me to consider consist of cases that either 1) lack a normative framework or 2) lack sufficient reason to motivate us to harm or injure the guilty party. However, both of these kinds fold into one when the root cause is distinguished: which involves a consideration of the moral significance of the agent's action.

I suppose my equivocation would not seem as unappealing if it were to include a qualifier, such as follows: "guilt" means the same thing as "deserves appropriate punishment". In mind my that qualifier is entirely redundant, so I didn't bother to include it before, but perhaps it is a significant addition.

So, the question I'm interested in is: what is the moral significance of sneaking a cookie? The answer to that question will depend entirely upon the situation and the individuals involved. We could easily conjure up cases where sneaking the cookie would be a most heinous evil, cases where it is just good clean fun, and inverse cases where what seems like clean fun to the observer is really heinous evil or what seems like heinous evil is really just clean fun.

All of this fits nicely with my view that desert is foremost about treating someone as they ought to be treated, and thus it is about knowing what persons are like (from a moral perspective) and knowing how persons of certain qualities ought to be treated.

The second part of that project seems just as important as the former. For example, if "he deserves punishment" entails "we ought to punish him", then forgiveness is a sign of moral vice. However, if the claims "he deserves punishment" and "we ought not to punish him" are logically compatible, we can account for the virtue of forgiveness. Moreover, if they do come apart, it means that we have a high duty to ensure that we do not act rashly and deal unjustly with others who are guilty of wronging us (which would reduce us to the same level).