>>18366954
And, if capital-M Murder isn’t galling enough to tickle your retributivist intuitions, imagine additionally the murderer in question is the serial philanderer Harry Sisson.

Now imagine we know that in a billion years (but not before), Mr. Sisson will repent of his crimes and delete Snapchat. Those whom he wronged not just his murder victim but also his real victims: the women whose hearts he shattered by having a “roster” will find closure by then and heal.

Importantly, all this will happen whether or not Mr. Sisson is retributively punished. Whether he’s punished or not, in other words, things will work out the same.

Now imagine that over the course of a billion years you can cause Mr. Sisson to feel the slight pain of a small pinprick for a single second once a day. Over the course of a billion years, we can suppose, the aggregate pain will sum up to at least the badness of whatever finite punishment we think Mr. Sisson deserved. (If a billion years is too short or too long a timeframe, adjust the number as needed.)

Suppose, additionally, that Mr. Sisson wouldn’t know why the pricks were being imposed he’d just feel a slight pain, wince, and get back to tweeting things like “HAHA. Perfect! @The Democrats just #destroyed @The Republicans.” Nor would any of his victims find out, so there’d be no schadenfreude on their end.

Question: would it be intrinsically good to impose these pinpricks on Sisson?

>>18366957
I am inclined to say “no”. At the end of the day, it might be that various theoretical commitments force me to say “yes”; but my intuition about the case is that there’s nothing desirable or worthwhile or choiceworthy about imposing the pinpricks.

You might wonder why the case is constructed so weirdly. (Tiny pinpricks? A billion years?) The reason is that I’m trying to get at whether imposing N amount of pain on wrongdoers with bad characters is intrinsically good, while decoupling our judgements as far as possible from the assumed instrumental effects of said pain.

After all, according to anti-retributivists, the retributivist intuition is just a case of a good heuristic gone bad. Usually, imposing suffering on wrongdoers with bad characters is instrumentally good, in that it generally has some positive instrumental effects vis-à-vis prompting character change, bringing closure to victims, enforcing norms that deter future wrongdoing, etc. As a result, we’ve formed a heuristic linking pain caused to wrongdoers with bad characters to a positive moral appraisal; unfortunately, the story goes, this heuristic is so ingrained that we have trouble decoupling pain from the instrumental effects of pain, even when it’s abstractly stipulated that none of the positive instrumental effects of pain inflicted on wrongdoers obtain in a given example.

Of course, this is only a just so story, and hearing it by itself shouldn’t disabuse anyone of anything. It might be true, but if we accept that things usually are the way they seem, then we’ll need some positive reason to think the retributivist intuition is a case of a misfiring heuristic and not a veridical moral judgement.

>>18366959
The example we’re considering is supposed to supply a positive reason along those lines. When we suppose that the amount of pain N that Mr. Sisson would deserve were retributivism true is administered in miniscule, spread-out doses over the course of a billion years, it’s much easier to decouple the pain itself from any instrumental benefits that might be contingently correlated with pain. And when we do that, seems plausible to me, at least that there’s nothing worthwhile in inflicting it.


The argument is eminently resistible. There is a widespread intuition that, for example, no of slight pain caused by dust specks in eyes can aggregate to the same level of badness as one person being tortured. I think this intuition is in error, https://benthams.substack.com/p/a-real-spectrum-from-torture-to-dust but people certainly have it; as a result, my argument faces a dilemma: either the intuition that no amount of dust specks in eyes (or slight pinpricks to the skin) sums up the badness of one torture is correct, or it isn’t. If the intuition is correct, then it implies that no number of pinpricks can ever sum up to the badness of whatever more intense pain Mr. Sisson deserves for his crimes. If the intuition is incorrect, then we’re going to want to supply a debunking account a story about why, in this case, we’d expect our intuitions to misfire and deliver a verdict that isn’t truth-tracking. Whatever that story is (and, presumably, it will be something to do with scope insensitivity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_neglect the well-documented failure of human psychology to cope with large numbers, like, e.g., 365,000,000,000 pinpricks), presumably it will apply to the case I’ve raised against retributivism.

>>18366961
On the first horn of the dilemma, I agree that if no amount of pinpricks could equal the badness of one torture, then whatever N amount of suffering Sisson deserves it might be that no arbitrarily large number of pinpricks will harm him sufficiently. Still, I’d think that for the case to have bite, the badness of the pinpricks doesn’t have to equal the badness of whatever pain Mr. Sisson would deserve on retributivism; presumably, on retributivism an insufficient punishment will still be good, even if a proportionate punishment would be better. Like, if Ted Bundy deserves the chair, surely it’s not bad for the right person to give him a slap.

On the second horn of the dilemma, the one which tried to debunk the intuition in general: I think this is what retributivists who share my intuition about the case should say. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that the argument has something going for it. Having been brainwashed by moral theory, I’ve lost many of my anti-aggregationist intuitions of yesteryear. Nowadays, it just strikes me as obvious that some arbitrarily large number of dust specks in eyes will sum up to the badness of one torture. Even still, when I reflect on the case of Mr. Sisson, I find it hard to believe that a billion, barely noticeable pinpricks would be good from the point of view of the universe.

https://wollenblog.substack.com/p/no-one-deserves-to-suffer?utm_source=post-banner&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&triedRedirect=true

Original article

Why shouldn’t the aggrieved seek justice?

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>>18367306
I’m not saying get rid of all prisons I understand deterrence and stuff I’m just steel manning the position that retribution is bad in principle, that it isn’t an intrinsic good

If there’s two universes in which the world and everyone in it (idk if you believe in an afterlife or not perhaps answer this question twice assuming an afterlife exists in the first hypothetical and an afterlife doesn’t exist in the second) is going to end in 5 minutes why should a victim kill or torture their abuser in the last few minutes of their and everyone else’s lives? Why is the universe in which the abuser (who has both made many bad choices and has very bad character) is tortured and or killed by their victim better than the universe in which the abuser is not killed or tortured by their victim?

Not gonna read all that shit but I'm happy for you, or sorry that happened.

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Love everyone including your enemies

> No one deserves to suffer
Wrong
Enjoy burning
/thread

>>18368084
What about universalism and annihilationism ? Do you believe this burning will be temporary or eternal?

https://benthams.substack.com/p/universalism-a-comprehensive-defense

Me:
>does something that particularly triggers you
What now?

>>18368129
I never said retribution is a bad idea in the real world. This thread is about is it a necessary evil , intrinsic good or something else

What we're seeing now from the release of the Epstein files? It's worse than I could have ever imagined. With the most recent batch of files being released last week, we are coming to understand just how deep these heinous crimes go. Within these files are not just accusations of the sexual abuse of children under the age of 10, arguably the worst thing a human being could do.

They reveal the trafficking of, request for, and absolute cavalier approach to human life by the world's richest and most powerful men. What it reveals is that these actions were not isolated events perpetrated by only a few bad people. This was an organized, widely spread conspiracy involving hundreds and hundreds of the most influential people in the world committing heinous crimes and covering for each other to ensure that they never faced consequences.

Powerful men are using their power to dehumanize and abuse the most vulnerable in our world. I have to say, it has been a few weeks of really gut-wrenching prayer for me. I start every day with an hour of prayer and meditation, and I have just struggled to talk with God.

What the actual f- I found myself this week routinely enraged, sickened to my core, left feeling completely powerless. I haven't blamed God as much as I have just vented my rage to him. We're talking about issues that are well beyond my ability to fix.

>>18368143
We're talking about a world order that appears to be evil to its core, pulling the strings of society to ensure that they maintain their power and riches while others suffer, using their power and wealth to dehumanize people just because they can. Really, what we're talking about here is a level of evil that rivals the biblical stories of greed and abuse. How God's anger flared up at the people who sold their neighbors for a pair of shoes.

How they stole from the homeless. How they ate sumptuous meals while their countrymen starved to death. Yeah, I'm starting to see how God's anger flared up because my anger has been pretty high lately.

I sit in prayer, I go to God, and I feel myself fuming. Within me is a righteous anger that wants to flip tables and burn cities down. And it is because I take this to prayer, because I bring these feelings to God, something is revealed to me.

What I'm expressing is partially righteous anger, but there is a good dose of hatred in there as well. I've come to realize that I am not just angry at the injustice that has occurred, I am not just angry at the people who have committed these acts. There is a part of me, I realize, that hates, that wants people to suffer for what they've done.

There is a part of me that is growing in resentment, clinging to self-defeating anger that does nothing to make the world better, it just consumes us from the inside. It is in these moments that I have heard the words of Jesus repeated back to me. Love your enemies.

Pray for those who persecute you. Do good to those who hurt you. I am reminded of how Jesus prayed for his executioners while he was literally dying on the cross, how even though he was completely innocent and would have been justified in hating those who rejected him, he didn't.

>>18368145
Why? Because what they did really wasn't that bad? Because they didn't deserve to be hated? Absolutely not. He loved them because that is what it means to be God, to love what he has created not because of what it is, but because of who he is as God. Jesus tells his disciples to love even the worst of the world not because they have earned it, but precisely because love is that which cannot be earned.

If you love only those who are nice to you and offer your life benefit, that is not love, that is a transaction. Love is self-sacrificing. It is unrestricted.

In many ways, it has nothing to do with the object of one's love and everything to do with the one who is doing the loving. As Christians, we love others not because of who they are, but because of who we are and who has loved us first. Concepts, I have to admit, were really easy to preach about in the abstract a few weeks ago, but they're being put to the test in me as we're talking about men so rich and powerful that they think they can literally abuse the weak and the vulnerable without repercussions.

Yeah, I'll admit it. It is putting my faith to the test. It is challenging me in a way I don't want to be challenged to see if I actually love as Jesus does.

Can I actually love Jeffrey Epstein? Can I love the people in this world that hurt and abuse the weak and the vulnerable? I surely hope so. But it does raise a critical question of what do we actually mean by love? Especially around this time of Valentine's Day, when love is in the air, most of our culture has the tendency to equate love with passion, romance, and feelings of tremendous affection. To love someone is to want to be with them, to find joy in their presence.

>>18368146
And while that is sometimes the case, this is not the sense of love that we're talking about as Christians. This is not what Jesus meant when he said, love your enemies. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, the truest definition of love for a Christian is to will the good of the other.
To will the good of the other. What we mean by this is that we desire the other to flourish, to have their basic needs and intentions met, to be pleasing in the eyes of God. It means that we want for others what we ultimately want for ourselves, to live happy, healthy, virtuous lives that lead one day to heaven.

We want other people to have good things, truly good things. But this does not mean that we overlook sinful behavior or allow evil to persist. Quite the opposite.

Love is not a matter of letting people do whatever they want with impunity. Love is not just a nice feeling expressed only in kindness. Sometimes, to love one another, to will the good of the other, means holding them accountable for the evil they have done and facilitating their conversion.

This is that needle that is so difficult for our culture to thread. On the one hand, there are those who look upon those who do evil with what they believe to be mercy, overlooking evil and allowing it to persist, and on the other hand, those who act from what they believe to be justice, exerting nothing but punitive measures to cause harm in the evildoer. That is not mercy, it is not justice, and it most certainly is not love.

>>18368150
To act as God does, to act as Jesus calls us in loving our neighbor, we neither condone evil nor do we punish for our own gratification. We must always do what is best for the good of the other, what will ultimately lead to their conversion. This necessarily involves working to forgive them of their sins, but it may also involve removing them from power, forcing them to serve prison sentences, expecting reparative justice for the harm they have caused, and taking measures to ensure that they are no longer able to cause harm in the future.

Just because we cannot hate those who do evil does not mean that we must tolerate it either. Justice requires that action be taken to protect the weak and the vulnerable, and justice requires that actions be taken to protect the rich and the powerful. Yes, I did just say, protect the rich and the powerful.

Protect them from the unjust mob that would inflict retribution upon them for its own gratification, and protect them from themselves. As it is clear that many of these men are not capable of taking care of their own souls, not capable of wielding power and wealth justly. Left to their own devices, they will not only hurt others, but will forfeit their own souls to eternal damnation.

Love cannot allow this. Love seeks something greater. Not because they deserve it, not because they've earned it, but because we were loved in our sin and saved from ourselves, and so we must do the same for others.

My prayer for anyone still watching, the ultimate reason I made this video is to protect your soul from the temptation to hate. There are so many people out there who have done heinous things. There is evil all around us, and these things should raise our anger to seek justice.

>>18368153
We should not stand idly by while the rich and powerful use their power to abuse the weak and the vulnerable. But don't lose your soul in the process. Don't let yourself be consumed by hate, taken over by resentment, eaten alive by the antithesis of who God is.

If God is love, if God is self-sacrificial favor to even those who do not deserve it, and we turn around and act with hate, seeking the punishment of sinners and attempting to inflict pain upon them for our own satisfaction, are we not acting completely contrary to the nature of God? Are we not denying who God is and what he asks of us? Horrible things are all around us. Don't let them get inside us as well. Protect your soul.

Love your enemy. Love those who persecute you. Do good for those who hurt you.

Will the good of the other, just as God does for you.

>>18368126
The bible says it will be eternal.

>>18368343
Does the bible say that? Or does your man made translation of the bible say that?

Bump

>>18368355
No, that’s what the bible teaches.

>>18368812
Even Catholics are allowed to be hopeful universalists.

>>18368867
Catholics aren’t Christian

>>18366954
I don’t believe in torture, but I do believe in swiftly removing, permanently, bad actors.

bump

Wtf is this thread? Someone pasting multiple post spanning essays about how rapists and murderers don't deserve to be punished?

>>18369664
Most people are rapists and murderers.
The average meat eater pays for murder and rape. Also like 1 in 5 women has had an abortion

Bump

>>18366954
Nice broad

Anyways

Physical punishment exist for those to which karma is unable to fulfill.

>>18369952
>The average meat eater pays for murder and rape
Die of AIDS more quietly, vegan

Bunp

In general, wrongdoers deserve to suffer.

To me, that’s as plain as the nose on my face. But for some, this claim smacks of a cold, barbaric retributivism. Derek Parfit perhaps the greatest moral philosopher of all time found the view that wrongdoers deserve to suffer morally incomprehensible. After watching Hitler do a happy jig after successfully storming Paris, he said, without a shred of irony, “at least something good came out of the German victory.”

Here’s a snappy argument that wrongdoers deserve to suffer, which I get from a paper by Douglas Portmore. It’s short, and maybe a little cheeky.

Wrongdoers deserve to feel guilty. But guilt a negative emotion necessarily involves suffering. When you wallow in guilt, you suffer in it. Thus, in one sense, wrongdoers deserve to suffer.

Imagine a fellow named Trish. Trish kills a toddler in cold blood. (The reason: that toddler was ugly as hell!) Plausibly, Trish deserves to feel guilty. This seems to be the case even if no bad consequences would, or would be expected to, come of things if Trish took a guilt-free, blasé attitude towards his act of infanticide. (Perhaps he’s set to die in five minutes, and so won’t be around to kill again.)

All else equal, a world where Trish feels guiltless about what he did seems worse than a world where he feels the appropriate guilt.

But guilt, of course, involves suffering. As Portmore puts it, when one wallows in guilt for past actions, one wallows in the “unpleasantness of appreciating one’s culpability”. This is a type of suffering, just as envy, heartache, or back pain are types of suffering.

So, wrongdoers deserve to suffer.

It doesn’t follow, of course, that wrongdoers deserve to suffer in other types of ways. Retributive punishment might still be off the menu. Even so, Hitler should’ve felt bad.