I feel like this depends on whether or not you value retribution as an end in itself - in the abstract we probably don't, we're all good consequentialists here in the abstract real of ideas, but think seriously about whether your "retribution is wrong" attitude would change if one of those people had tortured someone you care about personally.
I have an admittedly cynical view that one of the goals of the criminal justice system is satisfying the desire for vengeance such that the majority of people feels no need to take the law into their own hands, because that is absolutely the kind of thing people do when they don't feel like the legal system is able to do it for them. To placate these people, the legal system probably ends up harsher than it might otherwise be if left purely to the wisdom of the ruling class or even the preferences of the average person. Which isn't to say that we can't have a less punitive criminal justice system, it's just that I can't see a completely non-punitive system working without a significant change to society.
The example doesn't seem to be doing anything more than just restating the premise. Effectively its just assuming "in a situation where a punishment had no non-retributive value but nonzero costs, you wouldn't apply it" which is the exact thing you're trying to prove.
(Perhaps there's also a slight element of haggling over the cost, or perhaps a hint of the dust-specks-vs-torture argument, but both of these would just be distractions from the point you're trying to make)
Here's an alternative version that (at least to me) points in the opposite direction:
You have the magical ability to make people step in dog poo.
Last week somebody stole your bike. You clearly saw the person who did it.
Today you see them again. You're 99.99% certain it's the same person.
Stepping in poo would have no deterrent value - nobody would associate it with the theft. (You don't want to make your ability public because otherwise you'd be subjected to all sorts of uncomfortable scientific testing.) It wouldn't keep them away from stealing other bikes. And there's no way it would rehabilitate them into the sort of person that doesn't steal.
Do they end up with sticky smelly shoes? If so why is the situation different from the one in the post?
I agree insomuch as there's a sense in which all arguments from moral intuition are circular, in that they essentially amount to saying "you wouldn't want to apply this principle in this case, right?" which
A lot of this might be about moral intuition divergence. I don't really share your intuition about the dog poop case (although I can see what you're getting at) but I have a very strong intuition punishment would be utterly wrong in the cases I describe, in a way that it wouldn't be wrong if 100% of the people were guilty.
> Would you punish one innocent person to punish 9999 guilty persons -just for the sake of punishment?
>
> I submit that, no, you wouldn’t. If there were utilitarian reasons why the one innocent person needed to be punished, you might accept it as a grim necessity- but for the sake of punishment qua punishment? Goodness no.
Intuitively I don't support retribution anyway. With some effort I can get into a headspace where retribution makes sense to me: i.e. if Jack's misdeeds cause 5 years of moderate trouble to Harry, then 5 years of moderate trouble seems like an appropriate default scale of punishment, to be adjusted up or down based on the other factors (incapacitation, rehabilitation, restitution, deterrence). But once I successfully get into that headspace the thought experiment doesn't work for me. It's relying on an intuition that isn't spelled out, and I don't know what it is.
Instead, I'm inclined to imagine: How much unjust punishment would this innocent be willing to undergo to bring retributive justice to the 9999 guilty? And then (I imagine) I'd assign that much.
The intuition is that even if retribution for retribution's sake makes sense, it makes sense in a way which is conditional on not a single innocent person being affected. When I put myself in the retribution headspace, that intuition does make sense to me, that I admit, maybe that's because I only ever weakly held the retribution intuition to begin with.- you raise a reasonable point I would be interested to hear what retributivists make of it.
"If there were utilitarian reasons why the one innocent person needed to be punished, you might accept it as a grim necessity- but for the sake of punishment qua punishment? Goodness no."
Hmm, maybe I don't understand the thought experiment. Let's say retribution was just called R, and let's say R had some utility Ru conditional on whether the person was innocent or not. And furthermore, let's say -Ru would be the utility if the person is innocent and +Ru if the person is guilty. Then 999 Ru > Ru.
I'm a little confused because I don't think people who endorse punishment for punishment's sake view it as a form of *utility* although they do see it is as a form of *goodness*.
I feel like this depends on whether or not you value retribution as an end in itself - in the abstract we probably don't, we're all good consequentialists here in the abstract real of ideas, but think seriously about whether your "retribution is wrong" attitude would change if one of those people had tortured someone you care about personally.
I have an admittedly cynical view that one of the goals of the criminal justice system is satisfying the desire for vengeance such that the majority of people feels no need to take the law into their own hands, because that is absolutely the kind of thing people do when they don't feel like the legal system is able to do it for them. To placate these people, the legal system probably ends up harsher than it might otherwise be if left purely to the wisdom of the ruling class or even the preferences of the average person. Which isn't to say that we can't have a less punitive criminal justice system, it's just that I can't see a completely non-punitive system working without a significant change to society.
The example doesn't seem to be doing anything more than just restating the premise. Effectively its just assuming "in a situation where a punishment had no non-retributive value but nonzero costs, you wouldn't apply it" which is the exact thing you're trying to prove.
(Perhaps there's also a slight element of haggling over the cost, or perhaps a hint of the dust-specks-vs-torture argument, but both of these would just be distractions from the point you're trying to make)
Here's an alternative version that (at least to me) points in the opposite direction:
You have the magical ability to make people step in dog poo.
Last week somebody stole your bike. You clearly saw the person who did it.
Today you see them again. You're 99.99% certain it's the same person.
Stepping in poo would have no deterrent value - nobody would associate it with the theft. (You don't want to make your ability public because otherwise you'd be subjected to all sorts of uncomfortable scientific testing.) It wouldn't keep them away from stealing other bikes. And there's no way it would rehabilitate them into the sort of person that doesn't steal.
Do they end up with sticky smelly shoes? If so why is the situation different from the one in the post?
I agree insomuch as there's a sense in which all arguments from moral intuition are circular, in that they essentially amount to saying "you wouldn't want to apply this principle in this case, right?" which
A lot of this might be about moral intuition divergence. I don't really share your intuition about the dog poop case (although I can see what you're getting at) but I have a very strong intuition punishment would be utterly wrong in the cases I describe, in a way that it wouldn't be wrong if 100% of the people were guilty.
Okay, I see what you're saying
> Would you punish one innocent person to punish 9999 guilty persons -just for the sake of punishment?
>
> I submit that, no, you wouldn’t. If there were utilitarian reasons why the one innocent person needed to be punished, you might accept it as a grim necessity- but for the sake of punishment qua punishment? Goodness no.
Intuitively I don't support retribution anyway. With some effort I can get into a headspace where retribution makes sense to me: i.e. if Jack's misdeeds cause 5 years of moderate trouble to Harry, then 5 years of moderate trouble seems like an appropriate default scale of punishment, to be adjusted up or down based on the other factors (incapacitation, rehabilitation, restitution, deterrence). But once I successfully get into that headspace the thought experiment doesn't work for me. It's relying on an intuition that isn't spelled out, and I don't know what it is.
Instead, I'm inclined to imagine: How much unjust punishment would this innocent be willing to undergo to bring retributive justice to the 9999 guilty? And then (I imagine) I'd assign that much.
The intuition is that even if retribution for retribution's sake makes sense, it makes sense in a way which is conditional on not a single innocent person being affected. When I put myself in the retribution headspace, that intuition does make sense to me, that I admit, maybe that's because I only ever weakly held the retribution intuition to begin with.- you raise a reasonable point I would be interested to hear what retributivists make of it.
Is this the same as saying retribution has no utility?
No I don't think so. In what way did you see it as suggesting that?
"If there were utilitarian reasons why the one innocent person needed to be punished, you might accept it as a grim necessity- but for the sake of punishment qua punishment? Goodness no."
Hmm, maybe I don't understand the thought experiment. Let's say retribution was just called R, and let's say R had some utility Ru conditional on whether the person was innocent or not. And furthermore, let's say -Ru would be the utility if the person is innocent and +Ru if the person is guilty. Then 999 Ru > Ru.
I'm a little confused because I don't think people who endorse punishment for punishment's sake view it as a form of *utility* although they do see it is as a form of *goodness*.