Because Somebody's Gotta Bring It Up

Just out of curiosity (and I'm especially interested to hear what skeptics have to say):

1) Does either this or this count as an instance of holding responsible (or, perhaps, blaming)?

2) If not, why not?

3) If so, is it justified (in the sense relevant to discussions about moral responsibility, whatever that sense is)?

4) If not, why not?

To focus discussion, perhaps it would be good to make two assumptions: (a) both incidents did actually involve some sort of (admittedly mild) norm-violation, and also (b) subsequent reactions were not motivated by the desire to influence subsequent conduct.

Comments

[tnadelhoffer]

Neal,

Why should we assume (b)? Perhaps you are simply suggesting that the responses to their respective behaviors were not driven by *special* deterrence. But I don't see why we should assume that *general* deterrence was not one of the key motives beyond the negative reactions to Wilson and West's behavior.

Setting that aside, I think these are both instances where the individuals in question had the requisite amount of awareness and control to make them apt targets for community reprobation. There are social norms that govern how people must behave during Presidential speeches and award ceremonies. The people who attend are expected to act in accordance with the norms. As such, when people who are are neither cognitively or volitionally impaired nevertheless flout the rules, they open themselves up to the kinds of negative reactions you have highlighted. If you want to call this "holding responsible," that's fine by me. But, as I have stated many times on this blog before, I don't think this thin kind of "apt target for reprobation for forward-looking reasons" ought to be conflated with the markedly more robust "desert-based responsibility for purely backward looking reasons."

In short, I think that while these may both be cases of justified "holding responsible"--depending on how you cash out "responsible"--they are not instances of justified "desert dispensation."

[Paul Torek]

To 1 and 3, yes. But these seem like less than paradigmatic examples of holding responsible, since there are no actual consequences beyond the verbal and attitudinal response.

I think (b) should be revised to say that the reactions' motivations are not exhausted by the desire to influence subsequent conduct. In that formulation I'd say (b) is just blatantly obvious. But then, I've never thought that consequentialism held any hope as a descriptive theory of human motivation.

[Eddy Nahmias]

Presumably, what Neal meant (or should have said?) is: "(b) subsequent reactions were not motivated *solely* by the desire to influence subsequent conduct." At a minimum, people don't seem to be *thinking* solely in terms of influencing future behavior of the miscreants or others. So, maybe people's seemingly backwards-looking (I hate that language!), or retributive, or desert-based reactions are actually motivated by forward-looking goals and they don't realize it. Or maybe people are mistaken to have the desert-based reactions because Joe and Kanye are not really (robustly) morally responsible, blameworthy, etc.

But (Thomas) as I and others have wondered on this blog, why should we think of the sort of blame and desert being invoked in these sorts of cases as "thin" or "non-robust" even though they clearly don't involve severe punishment (and certainly not heaven-and-hell type desert)? And, as I've said regarding the more serious case of Madoff as well, why should we think these people do not have the sort of freedom and control that justifies holding them responsible in the way people are holding them responsible? They apparently had "the requisite amount of awareness and control to make them apt targets for community reprobation." Why isn't that nice quote just what it means to have free will of the sort that justifies deserving blame, being morally responsible, etc.?

Neal, how come you didn't follow the rest of the media and lump Serena in with Joe and Kanye?

(Another question we might pursue is the nature of apologies (see, lost art of) and what they indicate about reactive attitudes and MR.)

[Sofia Jeppsson]

Okay, so apparently sceptics (well, not all sceptics of course, but at least some) and compatibilists can agree that blame in these kinds of situations can be justified. The only difference in opinion would be on what the right kind of justification is. A compatibilist thinks it can be justified at least in part by saying that those people deserved to be blamed for what they had done, while a sceptic would say that it can only be justified on consequentialist grounds.

If one is a sceptic, and this is what one thinks, that means that the question of free will and moral responsibility becomes uninteresting for how to treat people. It just makes a difference for the justification of that treatment, if the justification is to be solely consequentialist or not.

[Sofia Jeppsson]

One more question that needs to be cleared up, and seems relevant for this discussion:

Claim 1: Since A humiliated that girl in public, it just serves him right if he feels bad about it and if someone else humiliated HIM afterwards.

Claim 2: Since A kidnapped and murdered a little girl, it just serves him right to suffer all imaginable torments and then be put to death.

I'd say both are claims about desert and just punishment, but they're very different in degree. Would someone else claim that they're qualitatively different too?

[Tamler Sommers]

Eddy, you wrote:

"Presumably, what Neal meant (or should have said?) is: "(b) subsequent reactions were not motivated *solely* by the desire to influence subsequent conduct." At a minimum, people don't seem to be *thinking* solely in terms of influencing future behavior of the miscreants or others. So, maybe people's seemingly backwards-looking (I hate that language!), or retributive, or desert-based reactions are actually motivated by forward-looking goals and they don't realize it."

YOU LIE!

[Eddy Nahmias]

Tamler, I'm gonna shove this f-ing blog down your throat.

And I'm sorry but Beyonce had one of the best comments of the year, so get off the stage.

[tnadelhoffer]

Eddy,

First of all, don't ever use one of my "nice quotes" to motivate your neurotic compatibilistic views again! :)

Second, you suggest that people's backward looking/desert-based/retributive reactions are motivated by forward looking consequentialist considerations. From an evolutionary point of view, I think this is clearly the case. We have the reactive attitudes we do because (a) individuals who have them are better at detecting cheaters (i.e., people who flout the social norms needed for communal success), and (b) groups that contain individuals who have punitive responses to cheating have more success than those who don't. In short, the punitive impulse was an adaptive solution to the free-rider problem. This impulse to punish those who step out of line is found in most (if not all) highly social species. Moreover, as Fehr, Gachter, and others have shown, punishment seems to be necessary for many forms of social cooperation. As such, it is unsurprising that the punitive impulse--which was selected for forward-looking reasons--is so widespread amongst a highly social creatures.

But in the case of humans, we later went on to use our big brains to invent the backward-looking notion of desert in an effort to explain/justify our punitive impulses. Ironically, I think the case can be made that the fiction of retributivistic desert--when taken to extremes--can actually render the otherwise adatpive forward-looking punitive impulse maladaptive. But that is a story for another day. For now, I just wanted to say that I think you're right. I also wanted to suggest that if you agree with this account, you are a skeptic in compatibilist clothing. As I have said before, if compatibilism can't deliver the goods when it comes to desert, it really is a "word-jugglery" even if it's not a "wretched subterfuge"!

[Sofia Jeppsson]

Tnadelhoffer, you wrote to Eddy:

"...you suggest that people's backward looking/desert-based/retributive reactions are motivated by forward looking consequentialist considerations."

Where does he say that? I thought he just mentioned it as a logical possibility, albeit an unlikely one. It seems way more probable that most people think about desert in an a mostly backward-looking way.

Second, you wrote: " As I have said before, if compatibilism can't deliver the goods when it comes to desert, it really is a "word-jugglery" even if it's not a "wretched subterfuge"!"

Well, as I suggested in posts earlier in the thread, I think that compatibilism vs scepticism is at least sometimes just fighting over how to use various words. I just have the feeling that it's the sceptic who's doing most of the word-jugglery here. The sceptic makes words like "desert" and "responsibility" refer to something that is so weird that it can't even be explained what it is.

[tnadelhoffer]

Sofia,

First, I do not think Eddy meant to merely suggest it was a logical possibility since no one would deny such an obvious modal claim. Instead, I took him to be suggesting that this is a live possibility that may explain why people have the backward-looking intuitions they do. But I admittedly should nevertheless have said "Eddy, You suggest that *perhaps*..." Would that have sufficed?

Second, I don't think you actually understood the point I took Eddy to be making. I took the claim to be that perhaps people mistakenly think their desert-based intuitions are driven by backward-looking considerations when in fact they are driven instead by forward-looking considerations. If that's the right interpretation of what Eddy said--and I would prefer to let let him be the judge of that--then your suggestion that "people think about desert in an a mostly backward-looking way" misses the point. On my reading of his remarks, the issue is not how people consciously think about desert. The issue is whether forward-looking considerations *tacitly* motivate people's desert-based notion of responsibility.

Finally, I do not think you adequately portray the state of affairs when it comes to the compatibilist vs. skeptic debate about desert. So, here is one gloss:

First, libertarians claim that we have a very robust kind of free will (involving either agent or event causation) and a very robust kind of desert-based moral responsibility. Importantly, both of these claims are compatible with the traditional Christian/Muslim belief in (a) the dualistic/ immaterial soul (b) heaven and hell kind of responsibility. I do not think it is either unfair or inaccurate to say that one of the main worries in the traditional free will debate was whether we could have robust agency and responsibility in a deterministic world.

The libertarians and skeptics both say "No." The compatibilist, on the other hand, is less clear. Early so-called soft-determinists (e.g., Stace and Ayer) said that "free will" just is acting without external compulsion. Subsequent compatibilists have tried to develop positive accounts of what free will is rather than merely providing an account of what it is not. But in their attempts to provide this positive account, they are not always clear when it comes to whether the philosophical goods they are trying to deliver within a deterministic framework are the *same goods* that interest their libertarian and skeptic counter-parts. Indeed, it is often the case that instead of showing that we can have these more robust forms of agency and responsibility, they try to show that even if we we can't, we can nevertheless have all of the agency and responsibility "worth wanting." So, they define "free will" and "moral responsibility" in such a way that each can be rendered consistent with the truth of determinism. But a common reply to what I take to be the compatibilist bate and switch, is that they have simply *redefined* "free will" and "responsibility" and shown these revisions are compatible with determinism--hence, Kant's "word-jugglery." The charge of "word-jugglery" becomes even more pressing if the only kind of so-called desert that a compatibilist can render consistent with determinism is motivated by non-retributivist concerns!

As for the skeptics, I don't see how we have engaged in any definitional summersaults at all. Galen Strawson, for instance, uses the heaven and hell paradigm to motivate his skeptical concerns. Surely, you don't think that is an uncommon notion of desert-based responsibility! In America, at least, I would say it is the dominant view! But in the event that you don't like Strawson's theistic way of getting at the notion of deep desert, there are obviously secular versions as well. For instance, here is what I take "P is desert-based responsible for x-ing" to mean: P deserves to suffer not because making P suffer will produce some pro-social benefits, but because, and only because, P x-ed. Another way of putting it would be: Making P suffer for x-ing would be intrinsically valuable. Now, you say this is "so weird," but I would bet dollars to donuts that if you ran a real world murder case by Christians and Muslims, many of them would have no problem whatsoever navigating the way I just defined desert-based responsibility. That you find it weird actually bolsters my point that the versions of free will and responsibility that compatibilists put forward are pared down versions of the more robust kinds of free will and responsibility that really are incompatible with determinism. That's fine as far as it goes. But then don't be put off when the "word-jugglery" shoe fits. If nothing else, just opt for something along Manuel's revisionism lines--which would enable you to wear the shoe proudly.

p.s. Needless to say, I entirely agree with Matt King's recent suggestion that desert is one of the clearest fault lines in the contemporary free will debate. In the years ahead, I think it will not be enough for compatibilists to show that some kind of moral responsibility is compatible with determinism (or developments in the sciences of the mind). They will need to show that desert and determinism can co-exist without redefining desert in such a way that it no longer captures what we have traditionally had in mind.

[Neal Tognazzini]

A few thoughts:

1) The reason I thought it would be good to make assumption (b) was to preclude a forward-looking answer to the question of whether the reactions are justified. Not because I think there isn't such an answer, but simply because I know people like Thomas think (and I tend to agree) that if that's the best we can do to justify holding people responsible, it's not that good. So I was wondering whether people think that the reactions were appropriate even from a "backward-looking" perspective.

2) The other assumption -- that some norms have been violated -- probably should have been stated in bolder language because I doubt that the wrong involved (at least in Kanye's case) is merely a breach of social etiquette, as Thomas suggests. It seems to me that Kanye did something as wrong as does the young healthy man who fails to get up on a city bus and offer his seat to a boarding passenger who clearly would have trouble standing while the bus is moving. I was trying, in short, to block off the very answer that Thomas gave, which was that the reactions are justified but only from a social etiquette, forward-looking perspective.

3) I'm willing to grant, of course, that whatever wrong is involved in Kanye's case is a much less serious wrong than many other ordinary cases of moral responsibility, but I don't see why that should lead us to believe either that this isn't a genuine case of holding responsible or that it isn't justified in exactly the same way (for backward-looking reasons of whatever sort).

4) I find Thomas's explication of "P is desert-based responsible for X-ing" curious. Even if I grant that some people may well deserve to suffer, why should I think that there are no other legitimate ways of holding someone responsible? (And by 'legitimate' I mean equally desert-based, equally backward-looking, and all that.)

[Kip]

One comment:

I think it's important to question the following premise:

P: there's a reason to hold agent X responsible, therefore X is morally responsible and acted with free will.

P is false. Or at least, some anti-realists about free will believe it's false. For example, you might have a strong consequentialist streak, like me and Tom Clark. In that case, you'd be willing to hold someone responsible, even if they weren't responsible, if that's the lesser evil. You would do that just because it brings about the greatest good (according to the consequentialist metric of your choice).

So it would be a mistake to watch the anti-realist hold someone responsible, and then say "Gotcha! You held him responsible, therefore you must believe he is morally responsible and acted with free will. At best, you're inconsistent and your actions speak louder than words." Not so. Consequentialists are willing to hold the innocent responsible if the numbers work out just right. We're willing to do all sorts of horrible things, if they're less horrible than the alternatives.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Tom,

Regarding your explanation of what "P is desert-based responsible for X-ing" means, what if we take your suggested line and add a distinction between:

1. "P deserves to suffer not because making P suffer will produce some pro-social benefits, but because, and only because, P x-ed" (which is what you suggested), and
2. "P deserves to be treated as an X-er not because this would necessarily entail pro-social benefits, but because, and only because, P is an X-er" (which is along the lines of what I have suggested here before)

If we accept this distinction, it seems that the question of "how does an X-er deserve to be treated?" can be properly placed within the domain of ethical inquiry. After all, consequentialism is an ethical thesis.

If we accept this distinction, it turns out that even a consequentialist can accept retributivist desert, because the distinction entails that the answer to the ethical question is severable from the responsibility question.

If this is correct, then anyone who prefers rule consequentialism may turn out to be nearly indistinguishable from traditional retributivists. Even act consequentialists will have reason to take desert seriously: supposing there is no rule about how a known pedophile should be treated, will the act consequentialist let the known pedophile babysit his children? Hard to imagine that they would do so -- and why not? Certainly for forward looking reasons, but it also satisfies the notion of retributivist desert: you simply will not consent to allow the pedophile to babysit your children, period.

[Philoponus]

I’ve been thinking about Congressman’s Wilson outburst and his subsequent explanation & apology. I wonder whether other people see self-control issues as complicating whatever degree of responsibility we might be inclined to ascribe here. The Congressman’s apology concedes he spoke inappropriately in that venue, but he goes on to explain that he was deeply shocked by what Obama said. He says he heard Obama tell what he considered an outrageous lie to the Congress and American people. The issue was one that Wilson was very passionate about, and then, he believes, the President came before the Congress and lied about it. In shock and anger he blurted out “you lie.”

If this is true, we have a lapse of control, not a deliberate act. A spontaneous outburst, not a studied insult to the President. And not an egregious lapse of control. Imagine if Wilson taken off his shoe and thrown it at Obama—and hit him!

When a loss of control is provoked, we sometimes excuse or find diminished responsibility. Lies can be considered provocation. The problem here is that several hundred of Wilson’s Republican colleagues were not provoked to hurt insults or more substantial objects at the President. “They controlled themselves, so he should have.”

Many of us don’t react well when we are surprised by people telling outrageous lies. Wilson’s “you lie” seems a rather mild outburst in the spectrum of possible reactions. The key to remaining calm & in control in the face of blatant mendacity seems to be preparing yourself: “I know he’s going to lie to me, but I will say nothing and stay calm.” But it is hard to steel yourself when you are taken by surprise, and Wilson was surprised by what Obama said. “But he should not have been surprised.” How do you answer that challenge?

Suppose at the next State of the Union Wilson has another lapse of control and starts singing “liar, liar, pants on fire,…” Then I think we would be confident in saying he should have prepared himself or just stayed away. Earlier this month Wilson committed a technical breach of order for which he could be reprimanded. But in fact breaches of order are not uncommon on the floor of the Congress, and most elicit no punishment, especially when it is clear that the speaker was reacting emotionally to what he sincerely took to be an insult or lie or such. “Nevertheless Wilson deserves to be reprimand.” I don’t get that comment if the facts are as we presented them. “Repimanding him will deter others.” I have the same problem with that claim.

[Paul Torek]

Sofia,

Right on! Certainly we don't want to bar everyone who view torture as unjustified (much less eternal torture) from using the concepts of desert and responsibility. It's been said, heaven and hell responsibility is just supposed to be an illustrative example - but, of what? Here we get to the "something that is so weird that it can't even be explained what it is", as you say.

Thomas,

We need to distinguish between the reactive attitudes' serving an evolutionary purpose, on the one hand, and saying that reactions are motivated by forward looking consequentialist considerations, on the other. The former doesn't imply the latter. Psychological tendencies may be functional in an evolutionary way without thereby being goal-directed toward corresponding goals. Luckily, we are free to (and usually do) despise evolution's "goals".

For example, we love our children, and this serves the evolutionary function of ensuring that our genes are well-represented in future generations. But we are free to ignore the "goal" of reproductive success, which in the modern context would indicate that we "should" have lots and lots of children and care for each one barely adequately. Instead, we can have a few and provide for them very well. Our motivation (here, love) most decidedly does not point us toward its evolutionary "purpose".

[Tamler Sommers]

This is probably my biggest pet peeve in the free will debate. There is a willful, stubborn refusal to interpret Strawson's heaven and hell story charitably. I'm not sure what accounts for this phenomenon, I just know that it's widespread. Latest example: Paul writes,

"Right on! Certainly we don't want to bar everyone who view torture as unjustified (much less eternal torture) from using the concepts of desert and responsibility. It's been said, heaven and hell responsibility is just supposed to be an illustrative example - but, of what? Here we get to the "something that is so weird that it can't even be explained what it is", as you say."

The "but of what?" is stated rhetorically as if it's obvious that no one could give a reasonable answer. But there is a reasonable answer, one that Strawson himself has explicitly given, see below, and one that I have (without any success) tried to lay out many times on this site.

Heaven and hell responsibility is illustrative of--here it comes--the idea that praise, blame, punishment and reward can be warranted, independent of consequentialist considerations. It's that simple, and it doesn't seem weird at all. It has nothing to do with eternal torture or eternal bliss.
Strawson employs the heaven and hell story (unfortunately, in my view, given how common Paul and Sofia's reaction is) to illustrate the non-consequentialist aspect of responsibility and desert. That's all.

If you don't believe me, here is Strawson in his own words:

The [heaven and hell] story is useful because it illustrates the kind of absolute or ultimate responsibility that many have supposed - and do suppose - themselves to have. (Another way to characterize it is to say that it exists if punishment and reward can be fair without having any pragmatic - or indeed aesthetic - justification.) (from "Luck Swallows Everything.")

To repeat: another way (other than heaven and hell) to characterize this form of responsibility is to say that punishment and reward can be fair apart from pragmatic or aesthetic justification. Nothing about torture. Nothing about eternal torture. Just a way of getting at non-consequentialist desert.

It seems to me that this should put the whole issue to rest, but I'm sure it won't.

I apologize that this a bit of a rant--as I said, this is a pet peeve.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Tamler,

What if we conceive of the heaven or hell type of responsibility as both forward looking and retributive?

Here's what I have in mind: S deserves to go to heaven/hell, by this we also mean that S is best suited for heaven/hell (according to the type of person that S is).

I guess my wonder is why the heaven/hell scenario cannot satisfy both retributivist concerns and consequential concerns.

[Tamler Sommers]

Mark,

Maybe we could--my only point here is that Strawson's use of the story is not focused on the eternal torment/reward aspects of heaven and hell. That said, what's forward-looking about your interpretation? Is it that a certain type of person will be happier in hell?

[Mark Smeltzer]

Tamler,

Suppose the heaven/hell story is about separating people into groups based upon their fundamental values. Suppose there are two sides (to fit with the binary nature of the story) that are fundamentally at odds, and each side demonizes the other. Suppose one side brands their vision of the ideal community as "heaven" and the other's ideal as "hell". We could even insert God(s) into this story and say that there is a divine mandate(s) to back up the distinction.

At the end of the day, this story is still about what type of community people are best suited to live in, and by reasonable extension would find themselves most at home in. This may be identifiable with happiness, and it may not be.

What matters is that one could be a consequentialist and maintain this view. That means this version of the heaven/hell story is compatible with consequentialism, even though it has such absolutist consequences.

[Kip]

Two more interjections:

1. I completely agree with Thomas N.'s September 19 response to Sofia: don't forget how religion influences, and enables, certain beliefs about freedom and responsibility. Perhaps compatibilists can only offer a watered-down version of freedom and responsibility that is incompatible with the robust freedom and responsibility that religious people believe they have (in virtue of God/souls, etc.).

One also wonders how the influence religion has on beliefs about free will and responsibility interacts with the the countless cognitive biases and "moral illusions" documented the social psychology literature.

2. I agree that Tamler that Galen Strawson appears to have used the Heaven and Hell analogy simply to criticize retributivism. But, even if it wasn't Strawson's original intention, I don't think anti-realists should shrink from that interpretation. As Thomas N. points out, and as I discussed above, many or most people in the world believe in religion, a creator God, souls, etc. It is not unreasonable (and I think it's likely) that these beliefs help enable people to further believe the following: that they have a categorical ability to do otherwise, a power of self-creation and immunity to the accidents of birth, and a robust responsibility for their actions, that are actually non-existent (at the very least, greatly exaggerated versions of what they do have).

In other words, even if Galen Strawson was just attacking retributivism, that doesn't mean that anti-realists can't, and shouldn't, understand the "free will" and "moral responsibility" to refer to the Heaven and Hell variety (in the religious sense).

[Tamler Sommers]

Kip,

I don't think that's wise for the anti-realist. Look at it this way: If the basic argument rules out desert in general, then obviously it rules out the deserving of eternal suffering and torment. But if all the basic argument rules out is the deserving of eternal suffering, then there still might be many less dramatic punishments that people can still deserve.

My impression is that this misinterpretation of the heaven-hell story allows opponents to side-step the force of the basic argument. Compatibilists can simply agree with Strawson that the type of moral responsibility that could justify the inflicting tortures of hell on someone is impossible. Seeing things this way frees them from directly addressing the basic argument's attack on more modest types of desert as well.

Note: I have no textual support whatsoever to back up this impression.

[Kip]

Tamler,

I completely acknowledge that danger. If we focus on the religious factor, we risk ignoring the Basic Argument's strength with respect to more modest fw and mr.

I just think there's a flip-side danger: the compatibilist position is arguably stronger with respect to more modest fw and mr. Speaking very crudely, it is plausible that compatibilists can put forth a much stronger case for modest, secular free will and mr, than they can for the religious Heaven and Hell variety.

So it's a double edged sword. If you limit the Basic Argument to the more modest variety, you run into stronger compatibilist opponents. My point is that I don't think it's necessary to handicap ourselves that way. It's plausible (and I think likely) that religion influences how people think about freedom and responsibility, in a way that grossly exaggerates how free and responsible they are. If that grossly exaggerated notion of freedom and responsibility is what most people have in their mind, and if it's an easier target to attack, then let's attack it. There's no need (at least no obvious need yet) to handicap ourselves by saying free will and moral responsibility don't have the robust Heaven-and-Hell connotations people (mis)interpret Strawson as claiming.

[Paul Torek]

Perhaps part of my perplexity comes from a less metaphysically-sensitive moral perspective. Even when I suppose that one could pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness, I don't see any way to justify Hell. So on the flip side, I don't see how I'm supposed to get any mileage from supposing that we don't have such extraordinary metaphysical powers.

Now if Heaven and Hell are just supposed to take away the future-directedness of consequentialism - because they're eternal - well, there are easier ways to do that. The easiest is just to ask, do you have non-consequential reasons for your responses to right- and wrong-doing? And the answer that many compatibilists have provided is Yes. Me included.

As I wrote before:
"I also want to explore the idea of 'punishment that need have no forward-looking, behavior-guiding purpose'. Suppose I made a commitment to others, in hopes of motivating certain behavior on their part. Suppose it turns out, through my blameless ignorance, that I don't get the behavior I wanted. Still, I feel that it is my obligation to carry through on my commitment. Am I, in carrying it through, acting on a 'forward-looking, behavior-guiding purpose'? Just taking the words at face value, I'd have to say no.

You can probably guess how this relates to desert ... "

Compatibilists have repeatedly pointed out that we're not all consequentialists - either in general, or about punishment in particular. Yet we are not even dignified with an outburst of "You lie!" - just passed over with the implication that we lie.

[Cihan]

Tamler,

I'm confused. How can there be a modest form of 'desert'?

I take it that most people find Strawson's 'heaven-or-hell' type desert exaggerated because they accept an implicit premise about punishment, i.e. punishment ought to be proportional to the crime/offense committed - not because there are different types of 'desert'. (Of course, there are different types of 'dessert' but I hope you will agree, that's an entirely different matter.)

I take 'desert' to have the following properties:
* That it can't come in degrees - i.e. it's an all or nothing property
* That if there were desert, there would be brute/basic facts such that if the agent A deserved P for doing D, the explanation for this would be solely agent's character/choice in doing D and that you couldn't further explain away the choice/character
*That it can ground/justify backward-looking punishment.

Of course, this is likely to be controversial - maybe I'm just putting forward my pet concept of 'desert' - but anything that doesn't have these properties doesn't seem to be 'desert'.

[nothing's sacred]

There's a lot of muddled thinking here that guarantees that those who commit it will never achieve any sort accurate resolution of the problems they are addressing and will never make any significant contribution to human thought on these subjects. I no more hold them responsible for this than I hold a hurricane responsible for not having a concern for human life. I would express a judgment of responsibility if I thought such a communication would significantly improve their reasoning ability, but I'm not nearly clever enough to think of a way to present such a judgment that would have such an effect.

I will, however, point out that the treatment of Joe Wilson -- who as a matter of fact violated established protocols to which he is a party, including explicit rules laid down by the Republican Party in Congress for its members -- depends largely on both whether one is a member of his tribe and whether one thinks Obama did lie (it's a fact that he did not; also, it is ludicrous to think that Wilson was surprised by Obama's statement -- I certainly knew that Obama would make a statement of that sort), and thus it's a poor example for debates about moral judgment. And I will point out that likening what Kanye West did to not yielding a seat on a bus is bizarre. West's expression of his personal preference, while quite reasonable in many contexts, publicly humiliated the winner and denied -- inverted, in fact -- her an opportunity to feel joy, adulation, and high esteem. People are inclined to speak out about what they regard as morally wrongful behavior. The reasons they are so inclined are complex, but have a lot to do with evolution and social training. That they speak out does not tell us whether they hold the actor morally responsible unless they speak on that subject; rather, it is everything else that we know about people and their moral judgments that tells us that. Even if people had remained completely silent about Kanye West, we can reasonably state that most people (rightly or wrongly) hold him morally responsible for the hurt that his actions caused.

[Fritz Warfield]

Maybe it's time for the Garden to reconsider the issue of moderating posts?

[Mark Young]

Fritz Warfield wrote Maybe it's time for the Garden to reconsider the issue of moderating posts?

Or perhaps the Gardeners could make their norms of participation explicit, and hold people responsible for violating those norms -- maybe just a friendly pointer to the norms for first offenders, and escalating to a ban for those who will simply not moderate themselves.

If that were done, would you be doing it only to punish people for their violations, or would it (also?) be to raise the tone of discussion? If it were even in part to raise the tone of the discussion, would that mean that the people banished did not deserve to be banished?

[Mark Smeltzer]

Fritz,

For the record, if I am one of those you have in mind, please send me a private email. I tend to respond to the context of the comments more than the original post, and if that hurts the discussion, instead of commenting I can definitely start submitting new posts for the tangents that I find worth discussing.

Honestly though, I don't have a clue who you have in mind, so it may well be me!

Regards,

[Eddy Nahmias]

I assume Fritz was talking about "nothing's sacred" and his/her comment: "There's a lot of muddled thinking here that guarantees that those who commit it will never achieve any sort accurate resolution of the problems they are addressing and will never make any significant contribution to human thought on these subjects." Meanwhile, I'll continue to muddle about here.

[Tamler Sommers]

Actually Eddy, it's pretty clear that Fritz is referring to your frequent attempts to hijack and sabotage threads with an offensive blend of neurotic compatibilism and anti-Madoff rhetoric.

As for "Nothing's Sacred," I'd stay anonymous if I were you. You now have serious beef with GFP-Unit.

[Kip]

Obviously, troublesome posters should just be quarantined, instead of punished.

And we could just perform the Ludovico Technique on Nothing's Sacred.