Compatibilism and Prepunishment

I would be very interested to see some Garden discussion of Saul Smilansky's very interesting recent article, "Determinism and prepunishment: The radical nature of compatibilism", which is in the most recent issue of Analysis.  It's a quick read, so you should really read the original piece, but here's the basics:

Suppose compatibilism is true.  Now consider a deterministic world where agents are free and responsible.  In principle, we could come to know that someone is going to commit a crime, even before the person commits the crime.  But there seems to be no relevant moral difference betweeen knowing that someone has committed a crime and knowing that someone will commit a crime.  So compatibilists cannot in principle object to prepunishment (punishing someone for a crime that he has not yet, but will, commit) on moral grounds.

I wonder in particular what responses compatibilists might give to this line of reasoning.  A first thought is that a compatibilist might draw the distinction between moral responsibility, on the one hand, and whether blame and punishment are justified, on the other.  Strictly speaking all the compatibilist is committed to is the compatibility of determinism and morally responsible agency, and perhaps something else is needed in order to justify blame and punishment, something else which would entail that prepunishment is unacceptable.  Other ideas? 

Comments

[Neil]

We have talked about this before...

http://gfp.typepad.com/the_garden_of_forking_pat/2004/12/time_and_the_co.html

[Neil]

That should be

http://gfp.typepad.com/the_garden_of_forking_pat/2004/12/time_and_the_co.html

[Neil]

Aargh! The link won't post. Someone gave me a tutorial on embedding links, obviously to no avail. I will try once more; after that you're on your own (the post dates from Dec 2004, and was called "Time and the compatibilist"; google will find it. Google is cleverer than me.

p>http://gfp.typepad.com/the_garden_of_forking_pat/2004/12/time_and_the_co.html

[Drake]

BTW, if you don't have access to Analysis, you can find the article on Prof. Smilansky's page here.

[Drake]

The page Neil wanted to link to was here.

[Tamler Sommers]

My first reaction is in line with Neal's in the first post. Bite the bullet, embrace the reductio. If complete predictability is given, the permissability prepunishment is one of a whole series of weird counterintuitive implications that might follow. I will say, although I'm not a compatibilist, that it's the complete predictability that's doing the work here more than the determinism. So maybe Smilansky is wrong to say that determinism and compatibilism are what makes prepunishment permissible. After all, some people think that divine foreknowledge and libertarian free will are compatible, right? If that's true, then it would still be permissible (for God) to punish someone before they choose of their libertarian free will to commit a crime. So again, it's not determinism that's making prepunishment permissible, it's the foreknowledge.

[Neal Tognazzini]

Neil,

Thanks for pointing me to that previous discussion. Upon looking at that thread, I had the odd sensation of confronting the opinion of one of my previous selves with which I'm not sure I agree anymore. Or, at least, I was rather surprised to find that I had already weighed in on this issue three years ago. I guess I'm not psychologically connected to that person.

[Steve Howland]

I'm seeing an inherent problem in that we are inside the equation in which we supposedly know what is going to happen.

If we can tell "beyond reasonable doubt" that someone is going to commit a crime, and then we interfere, then by the ideas of determinism wasn't it always "determined" that the person would not commit the crime? (assuming the person is prepunished and therefore not permitted to commit the crime) And if so, then on what grounds can the person be punished?

The idea is reminiscent of Minority Report in which we need to find out to what extent we are responsible for things that are "going" to happen... and if we know everything to that level of predictability is there not a way to influence the person who is about to commit the crime and somehow change his choice?

[Joe Campbell]

I think that Steve's point is an interesting one. For it and other reasons, I'm inclined to think that complete foreknowledge is not possible. In any event, I don't see that determinism entails complete foreknowledge. That is how I would get out of it.

[Mark Smeltzer]

I can think of at least one distinction that might make all the difference...

If compatibilism is true and agents deserve to be treated according to their moral characters, we know that at time T in the future agent S has (tenseless) character C and deserves (tenseless) treatment R.

The question is whether the those tenseless predicates have relevance now because the following two statements are not equal:

1. At time T in the future agent S will have (tensed) character C and will (tensed) deserve treatment R
2. Agent S has (present) character C and deserves (present) treatment R

It is not clear to see how we can conflate either the tenseless ethical statements or ethical statements about the future with ethical statements about the present. That would require some sort of argument -- one that does not readily jump to mind.

I can think of many apparent counterexamples to the operative transfer principle: the truth value of the statement "I will own a Ferrari in twenty years" does not entail the truth value of "If I will own a Ferrari in twenty years, I ought to purchase a Ferrari now".

Does Saul address any issues similar to this one in his paper? I will have to check it out when I get a chance.

[Neil]

I don't see the problem. There is absolutely no paradox involved in asserting the claim: If I do not X, then E will occur.

[Neil]

Clarification: my post was meant as a response to Joe.

[Mark Smeltzer]

p.s. I too think that the discussion about belief/knowledge/foreknowledge trumps the discussion about determinism as far as practical ethics are concerned (i.e. ethics behind the "veil" of what we actually know and what we believe we know). My comment above is meant to be directed at the determinism side of the discussion by assuming a realist perspective of the moral facts in question and an abstract, non-personal sense of ethics beyond the "veil" (although I'm not entirely sure that picture is coherent, which is probably the motivation of the worry I raised).

[Cihan Baran]

I kind of feel that this is a knock-down argument for showing that compatibilism doesn't mesh with our ordinary moral intuitions. So much for trying to show that compatibilism is intuitive!

But maybe I am too easily won over.

Joe, you say you would get out of it by arguing that determinism doesn't entail foreknowledge - or some such thing. But suppose that in a certain deterministic world, people could tell what you were going to do in your entire life based on the data they gather when you are 4-years old. Would it be permissible to punish 4 year olds? I mean, even if our world isn't like, if it were like that, would it be okay?

And thanks for linking to the earlier post. I wasn't even aware of the free will debate back in December 2004! I'll check it out - along with Smilansky's paper.

[Jonathan Farrell]

I haven't read Smilansky's piece, but here's my response to the situation Neal describes.

First, given how the situation is set up, pre-punishment _can't_ result in our criminal not committing the crime. Given the way things are when we discover they will commit the crime (and the laws of nature), it follows that they will commit the crime. Likewise, it is determined that we either pre-punish them or don't. (So we might be in the strange situation in which our pre-punishing them causes (in part) their committing the crime.)

So Steve's problem doesn't arise: although we may be free and responsible in the world described, since we know (because it is the case) that, whatever we do, the crime will take place, we're not free to make it that our criminal avoids committing this crime.

But the issue isn't whether or not we pre-punish him (or whether he commits the crime), but whether we have moral grounds to objecting to pre-punishment. I think this is going to depend on how we justify punishing people in general.

I have my doubts about whether compatibilists (or even soft libertarians) can justify retributive punishment, so I won't consider that approach. (Perhaps by 'punishment' Neal means only to talk about retribution. But then, as I've indicated, I'm not sure if compatibilists can justify even post-punishment. Anyway, if this is what 'punishment' means here, ignore the rest of this comment!)

But we might think that pre-punishment is as justified as post-punishment when it comes to deterrence/rehabilitation. Certainly, pre-punishing the criminal won't deter him from committing _this_ crime. But it might deter him from committing similar (or even not-so-similar) crimes in the future. And it seems that 'making an example' of our criminal before the fact will be just as effective (other things being equal) at deterring others from committing crimes as doing so after the fact.

So if punishment includes privations (or luxuries - whatever gets the intended consequences) inflicted for consequentialist reasons, then, although the notion of pre-punishment might sound a bit odd, I don't even think there is a bullet here for the compatibilist to bite.

[Randy Clarke]

Suppose that it is certain now that S will make a certain promise in the future. Does S now have an obligation to perform the not-yet-promised deed? Arguably not. Can a compatibilist hold that a right to punish is similarly unaffected by certainty about the impending crime?

[John Alexander]

Do we not sometimes prepunish people regardless of our beliefs regarding free-will and determinism. What I have in mind is the parental practice of forbidding a child to do x and placing that child in a situation where they cannot do x. Being placed in that situation by the parent is a punishment to the child because she would rather be doing x and would be, or would likely be doing x if she were not being punished.

[Randy Clarke]

Lots of unwanted treatment isn't punishment. Quarantine, for example. I'm not suggesting we can rule out pre-punishment by definition. But we can't count every treatment that an agent dislikes as punishment.

[Joe Campbell]

Let me respond to some comments in an attempt to clarify what I said above.

Cihan writes: "Joe, you say you would get out of it by arguing that determinism doesn't entail foreknowledge - or some such thing. But suppose that in a certain deterministic world, people could tell what you were going to do in your entire life based on the data they gather when you are 4-years old. Would it be permissible to punish 4 year olds? I mean, even if our world isn't like, if it were like that, would it be okay?"

I can wrap my head around the truth of determinism. I can't wrap my head around the truth of complete predictability of the sort that you and Saul are talking about -- being able to predict with certainty the actions of someone based on facts about him when he was 4-years old. I do not think that predictability of this sort is possible. More to the point, I don’t see why it follows given mere determinism. That it does follow strikes me as a myth and a misunderstanding of determinism.

Determinism entails that such facts exist. It does not entail that we can ever know those facts -- nor should it because such knowledge would lead to a slew of paradoxes, one of which is noted by Steve above -- the Minority Report Paradox.

Suppose we know that S will do X, where X is the morally blameworthy murder of another individual. We decide to prepunish S. Thus, S does not do X. For what exactly is S blameworthy? Or are we supposed to imagine that S does X even though he has been prepunished -- that what we know is that S will do X whether or not he is prepunished; that in the future we punish people and then release them, so that the punishment is justified because there is a morally blameworthy act. In this case it seems that people’s actions are compelled in a way that goes beyond mere determinism. I refuse to acknowledge that everyone who murders would murder regardless of whether they are prepunished or not, merely given the truth of determinism. That sounds absurd!

Again, determinism is not fatalism; it is not the thesis that future events will happen no matter what. To the extent that we have 'certain' foreknowledge of future events that allow us to alter those future events, we no longer have determinism! The 'foreseen' event that we prevent could not have been determined in the first place since it didn't in fact happen!

In order for Saul's objection to hold, he has to give me a reason to believe that determinism entails complete predictability (I said complete foreknowledge above but I should have said complete predictability). Since I believe the latter is impossible -- it leads to paradoxes -- yet I think that determinism is possible, I don't think that the entailment can be shown.

Neil writes: "I don't see the problem. There is absolutely no paradox involved in asserting the claim: If I do not X, then E will occur."

The paradox comes in, if I understand your point, when we put this claim into the context of the kinds of thought experiments that we are considering. That is, when we suppose that E is foreseen to be the result of S's doing X. I don't question that an event -- a murder, say -- might take place even if S does not perform the murder. But then for what, exactly, is S responsible? Suppose you have reason to think that I might steal something but confront me before I perform the act and I decide not to steal. Am I guilty of anything? I don't see how.

In sum, what I need to see are examples in which someone is both prepunished AND performs the act for which he is punished. Then I need to see a reason why I should believe that such scenarios are a consequence of mere determinism – if mere determinism were true, such scenarios would be prevalent. I don’t see either.

Lastly, it is likely that compatibilism is already unintuitive. The fact that it has an unintuitive consequences should not be surprising. As I indicated above, I don't think that it has these particular consequences. But even if it did, why should that surprise us?

[Mike Iarrobino]

I don't think Smilansky needs to show that determinism *entails* complete predictability. All he needs to show is that predictability and determinism are consistent (of course, this depends on whether complete predictability is coherent in the first place). If they are consistent then there are possible worlds where determinism and complete predictability hold; these are the worlds in which compatibilists might have to endorse pre-punishment.

[Joe Campbell]

Might have to endorse prepunishment? Why?

And this doesn't show that there is a problem for compatibilism any more than some fanciful story about the possibility of indeterminism and pre-punishment shows that there is a problem for libertarianism.

To get the pre-punishment possibility you don't NEED determinism. You could get it with eternalism and a foreknowing god who communicates with precogs. (If such a thing is possible; frankly it seems as absurd as thought experiments noted above.) There is nothing in the Minority Report, for instance, that necessitates the truth of determinism. Hence, if there are any problems they have to general problems for any theory of free will. Or so it seems to me.

[Tamler Sommers]

If that's true, then I think Smilansky also needs to show that libertarian free will is incompatible with complete predictability (even by God). Otherwise, there's nothing especially unintuitive about the (logically possible) implications of compatibilism. Incompatiblism would have the same logically possible counterintuitive result. And while I'm no believer in an omniscient God, it's equally (if not more) incredible to think that there can be omniscient humans or computers, even if determinism is true.

[Tamler Sommers]

Whoops, I was responding to Mike's post--Joe's wasn't up yet--making roughly the same point as Joe.

[Saul Smilansky]

Thanks, Neal (T.) for pointing to my paper. I don't remember reading Neil (Levy's) post of three years ago, but I might well have done so. In any case clearly his time travel into the past scenario brought up (if in a different way) issues I consider in my paper. If I re-publish my piece in the future I will refer to Neil's Garden post. [I am glad that Neal T. also forgot the post or at least he forgot that he made comments in response; this makes me feel better.]

My point is simple. It might be easiest to explain it "historically". In 1992 Christopher New proposed (In Analysis) that we might preupunish people, when we can know beyond a reasonable doubt that the person is going to commit the crime, since "beyond a reasonable doubt" is our common standard anyway. He tells the story of a reliable guy who is about to commit an offence and offers to be punished in advance, when we know that we won't be able to punish him after he commits the crime. My reply defended the commonsense view (and yes, it was odd to find myself in that role), and said that for reasons of respect for persons we mustn't pre-punish this person, because we must allow the still innocent to change their minds, maintain their moral goodness and not be punished. Hence pre-punishment differs from post-punishment. In my recent paper I reverse the direction, and say that since this commonsense consideration is not available to the (determinist) compatibilist, compatibilism is fundamentally at odds with our moral commonsense.

A few comments in clarification and response:

1. This discussion is interesting only if we accept some measure of deontology. Pre-punishment might well be effective in certain circumstances, but the question is whether it is just (or something like that). The compatibilist need not believe that there is something good about the punishment of people in itself irrespective of the good the institution of punishment does, but she should e.g. think that it is wrong to punish the (compatibilistically) innocent, even if doing so would enhance social utility. I think that most compatibilists would think so.

2. Joe - I don't think that doubts about predictability will get you far here. The question is whether compatibilism has any philosophical resources to resist in principle pre-punishment. Taking New's example, I don't think that it does. But in any case, compatibilism can be confronted by the question even if there is never enough predictability. By analogy, if I claim that your moral theory does not give me any reason not to kill people whenever they are rich and I won't be caught, it would not be a strong reply for you to say that one can never be certain that one will not be caught.

3. Character - I don't think that this will work. If I commit a crime which is out of character, then you should still want to punish me for it, just as typically ungenerous people who act with generosity ought to be thanked, even if their act was out of character. Being out of character might even make my bad actions morally worse, or my good ones morally better. In a more general way, we punish for acts, and character comes in primarily as a side (e.g. mitigating) factor. The question, again, is whether compatibilism has the resources to resist pre-punishment, as our moral commonsense requires.

4. Randy - if the reason why we think that we are not permitted to pre-punish is that we must allow the person to change her mind, and then we learn that it is determined that she will not change her mind, then it seems to me that determinism took away the moral reason for not pre-punishing.

5. Nothing in what I have said shows that compatibilism is mistaken. Perhaps the compatibilist should bite the bullet, like radical utilitarians such as Smart, and say that the resistance to pre-punishment is just an ancient prejudice lacking principled grounding. But what the compatibilist cannot do is to take that line, and at the same time claim that determinism does not make a difference, morally, that he can affirm our commonsense beliefs, and that hence there is nothing to worry about.

6. Honest disclosure requires me to say that I like this issue in part because it helps my case for free will Illusionism.

[Tamler Sommers]

Saul, if I'm wrong to keep pressing this point, please tell me. But this issue can only help your case for free will illusionism if it shows that ONLY compatibilism has this counterintuitive implication. If the belief in libertarian free will has the same implication, then the illusion (belief in LFW) would be of no help at all.

What if God could tell us that someone was going to choose of their own libertarian free will to murder 10 children. And we were absolutely certain that God is never wrong about these matters. We can't understand HOW he knows that an undetermined event is going to happen, but there's a lot we don't understand about omniscience. Wouldn't prepunishment be permissible in that case? Maybe you think this case is too unbelievable to take seriously, but then so are cases involving complete predictibility given the truth of determinism.

It seems like you're making compatibilism suffer for an implication of a literally incredible (but logically possible) scenario, while the belief in LFW, which has the same logically possible implication gets off scot free.