tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3647180678398772674.post2671975872314717859..comments2024-03-29T04:40:00.922-07:00Comments on Six Foot Turkey: Violence and ResponsibilityJoshua Leachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04786588059362202964noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3647180678398772674.post-90557976567954265442014-12-31T09:31:15.690-08:002014-12-31T09:31:15.690-08:00Hi Ajay-- thanks for the response. I don't thi...Hi Ajay-- thanks for the response. I don't think this meets all the points of your response, and we can talk about it more on the phone at some point, but I think the "cycle of violence" and "moral agency" arguments were more distinct from one another than your reading suggests. Granted, I don't outline these posts in advance, so the logical structure is not always ideal, but here’s how I understand it in retrospect:<br /><br />The cycle of violence theory was meant primarily to suggest:<br />1) That we should have compassion on people who perpetrate crimes, because they have often been victims themselves in the past;<br />2) The response of using more violence (in the form of punishment) to try to reduce crime is totally counterproductive and cruel, in light of the cycle of violence theory.<br /><br />The Midge Decter/moral agency point was mostly just meant to suggest the outward limits of what I was saying. I wanted to make clear that I did not entirely repudiate the notion of moral agency, and that the cycle of violence theory should not be read as such a total repudiation.<br /><br />But then I went on to make the points that:<br />1) Granting moral agency does not tell us anything about the validity of punishment, necessarily -- does not refute the cycle of violence theory, etc. — a point you also make in your response.<br />and:<br />2) the cycle of violence theory, while it does not totally negate moral agency, DOES imply that we have to change some of our familiar notions about what is happening with people psychologically when they commit violent acts. I wanted to suggest especially that there IS a sense in which sincere people can look back on terrible things they’ve done in the past and feel that “I couldn’t help it” — usually because choices do not present themselves to us as between good and evil options in many cases. What we recognize to be evil we can generally prevent ourselves from doing. Oftentimes, we do terrible things for deludedly conscientious reasons. This does not excuse these acts, but it should make us regard the people who commit them more compassionately. <br /><br />I think, for instance, of something we were told about clerical sexual misconduct in div school. The professor told us that the people who commit this misconduct generally are not motivated by “lust,” which we can recognize in ourselves for what it is and refuse to act on. They usually commit it because they become (wrongly) convinced that this sexual misconduct is going to “help” the other person somehow, etc. None of this suggests that in the truest sense of the words, people who commit misconduct had “no choice” at the time. But it does suggest that people who do hurtful things should not be written off as evil people whose motives are utterly incomprehensible and alien to us.<br /><br />As I say, I’m not sure that addresses all the points you raise, but hopefully it clarifies the overall argument.Joshua Leachhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04786588059362202964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3647180678398772674.post-85481593679212880122014-12-24T20:31:26.193-08:002014-12-24T20:31:26.193-08:00(continued from previous comment) Also, I don'...(continued from previous comment) Also, I don't think the retributivist argument in question has to rely on the simplistic conception of agency you challenge. It seems to me that this conception is flawed at least in large part because it presents the motivation to commit grave wrongs as (1) an alien eruption into the basically good self rather than deeply part of a self that is, like all selves, a mixture of good and evil at the most fundamental level and (2) wholly and irredeemably bad when it's actually often linked to real goods like self-respect that the wrongdoer pursues in the wrong way. I'm not sure how the fact that the wrongdoer typically acts on these much more complex, human motives has any bearing on how responsible he/she is for the wrongs he/she commits.<br /><br />All that being said, I do think your point about the origins of violent crime must have some bearing on the sense in which criminals are responsible for their crimes and the truth of respect-based retributivism. It seems intuitively like you achieve an important form of respect for someone by coming to understand his gravely wrongful actions from his own perspective and realizing that you could very well have done the same were you in his shoes, and that you can't understand this and hold him responsible for his actions in exactly the same way you do with others. Perhaps I'm missing it, but I don't see how your post gets from these intuitively appealing ideas to an argument against respect-based retributivism (or maybe that isn't the main point). My hope is that by pointing out the problems with your existing account, I'll inspire you to write a still better post in which you pinpoint the precise nature of the connections among past suffering and trauma, violent crime, responsibility, respect, and retribution :) Merry Christmas!<br />Ajayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16863145396520268530noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3647180678398772674.post-61109639949464116392014-12-24T20:30:54.057-08:002014-12-24T20:30:54.057-08:00(Note: you may notice that I use "I think&quo...(Note: you may notice that I use "I think" and similar terms somewhat less than usual here. This is because I'm trying to make my writing and speech less tentative and redundant in general and not at all because I think this post is flawed in an unusually obvious or horrific way [I think this will become clear later on but wanted to lead with this point just in case.])<br /><br />Obviously I have a lot of sympathy for the general thrust of this post, but you don't offer your sophisticated conservative an adequate response. I didn't read the Decter essay, but I don't think the line of thought you have in mind draws its appeal solely or even primarily from the thought that humans are generally capable of moral transformation over time. To the extent that the respect (for criminals) based defense of retribution appeals to moral transformation, it does so derivatively. <br /><br />The primary appeal of the line of argument you have in mind is supposed to be, I think, that each of us thinks of him/herself as having enough agency to not only be capable of changing our characters over time, but also of controlling our actions at any given moment and so of being, and being properly held, morally responsible for those actions; this also implies that we're capable of moral transformation, but that isn't the main point. The respect-based retributivist thinks your view fails to respect criminals' agency because it implies that the criminal, unlike most people, can't control his or her actions at the time he or she commits his or her crime. And, of course, he or she thinks that the simple fact that criminals are morally responsible for their crimes means that inflicting suffering on them is justified, either because of the strong intuition that the suffering of serious wrongdoers is an intrinsic good or the related intuition that part of what it means to take a wrong seriously is to want the wrongdoer to suffer. (Obviously, retributivism could still be false even if the retributivist is right about agency, since it might be true that criminals have agency and so are blameworthy but false that the suffering of blameworthy people is intrinsically good or a necessary element of the proper response to wrongdoing, but that's not the point you're making here.)<br /><br />I don't see how the (obviously quite plausible and appealing) thought that simply inflicting suffering on the typical violent criminal is unlikely to reform him/her, in light of the motivations behind most violent crimes and the histories of abuse and torment that produce those motivations, responds to this concern. Either the histories of abuse and torment mean that violent criminals usually lack sufficient agency to be morally responsible, in which case you're making precisely the claim the respect-based retributivist rejects as demeaning, or they don't, and your point is insightful and important but not responsive to the retributivist argument you claim to be addressing.<br />Ajayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16863145396520268530noreply@blogger.com