Outcome-based justice argues that we should give up playing the blame game, because neuroscience keeps finding more and more proofs that things are “not our fault”. Instead, we should write laws that deter crime.
That strikes me as confused. Blame just is an aspect of our already-existing, inborn deterrent system. Saying we shouldn’t blame and instead deter, is like saying we shouldn’t deter and instead deter. It doesn’t make sense. Maybe what you want to say is that we should deter better. Okay, I can buy that. But it’s just confusing to put it in a way that essentially reads, instead of deterring, let’s deter.
But the more we learn about psychology and neuroscience, the further responsibility recedes into the distance.
My deep suspicion about this is that psychology and neuroscience really say no such thing. It is, rather, the interpretation of psychology and neuroscience by free will incompatibilists which says such a thing. Now that is perfectly predictable. Can anyone doubt that those who believe free will is incompatible with determinism will, as science uncovers more and more of the causal structure of behavior, conclude that there is less and less scope for free will and therefore less and less basis for moral blame?
The Wrath of Kahneman describes a study which asked whether people punish others in order to deter crime, and concluded, No. People are doing something else.
I have my doubts about such a conclusion. Let’s take a look at the quoted paragraph.
Previous research suggests that people’s judgments about punitive damage awards are a reflection of outrage at the defendant’s actions rather than of deterrence.
I’m not entirely sure what to make of that. It’s a bit like saying, people put gas in their cars in order to fill up the tank rather than in order to travel long distances. The function of the car is to travel long distances, and the biological function of outrage is (presumably) to deter.
I think they would be on much firmer ground if they said something like, outrage (i.e. our intuitive reaction to crime) is not well adapted to the modern society, and so it leads to suboptimal deterrence which for example does not take into account ease of detection. That would not be very surprising, as outrage presumably evolved in close knit communities with essentially little problem with detection, etc.
Or maybe what they mean is that people do not consciously attempt to optimize crime deterrence. That’s no surprise. Similarly, animals do not consciously attempt to produce offspring. We have psychological mechanisms such as outrage and lust which cause these things to happen anyway. But the fact that we do not consciously attempt to optimize crime deterrence is not all that tightly related to the fact that we do not optimize well. It’s entirely possible for someone to consciously try to do something and do it badly. Conversely, we might do well something that we do not consciously intend—for example, having babies, which most animals do well enough without consciously intending to.
Blame just is an aspect of our already-existing, inborn deterrent system. Saying we shouldn’t blame and instead deter, is like saying we shouldn’t deter and instead deter.
I suppose he wanted to say that we should make deterrence our ultimate goal and use blame instrumentally, instead of having blame as our terminal value with deterrence being only a consequence thereof, which is the way it basically works now.
That strikes me as confused. Blame just is an aspect of our already-existing, inborn deterrent system. Saying we shouldn’t blame and instead deter, is like saying we shouldn’t deter and instead deter. It doesn’t make sense.
Exactly, and I should mention that this confusion about blame occurs in other areas. For example, in praising Coase’s famous theorem, some people think they’ve identified a brilliant reason to discard the concept of blame in favor of a Pareto-superior method of social rules. When you point out that a system of pure Coasean bargaining would require, e.g. that women have to buy out potential rapists (rather than “blame” the rapist for causing the rape as if it’s not supposed to happen at all), they say, “oh, no, of course we need to have good baseline rights, such as …” and then go on to specify a classifier that works exactly like the existing blame concept!
See the linked discussion, starting from that point.
That strikes me as confused. Blame just is an aspect of our already-existing, inborn deterrent system. Saying we shouldn’t blame and instead deter, is like saying we shouldn’t deter and instead deter. It doesn’t make sense. Maybe what you want to say is that we should deter better. Okay, I can buy that. But it’s just confusing to put it in a way that essentially reads, instead of deterring, let’s deter.
My deep suspicion about this is that psychology and neuroscience really say no such thing. It is, rather, the interpretation of psychology and neuroscience by free will incompatibilists which says such a thing. Now that is perfectly predictable. Can anyone doubt that those who believe free will is incompatible with determinism will, as science uncovers more and more of the causal structure of behavior, conclude that there is less and less scope for free will and therefore less and less basis for moral blame?
I have my doubts about such a conclusion. Let’s take a look at the quoted paragraph.
I’m not entirely sure what to make of that. It’s a bit like saying, people put gas in their cars in order to fill up the tank rather than in order to travel long distances. The function of the car is to travel long distances, and the biological function of outrage is (presumably) to deter.
I think they would be on much firmer ground if they said something like, outrage (i.e. our intuitive reaction to crime) is not well adapted to the modern society, and so it leads to suboptimal deterrence which for example does not take into account ease of detection. That would not be very surprising, as outrage presumably evolved in close knit communities with essentially little problem with detection, etc.
Or maybe what they mean is that people do not consciously attempt to optimize crime deterrence. That’s no surprise. Similarly, animals do not consciously attempt to produce offspring. We have psychological mechanisms such as outrage and lust which cause these things to happen anyway. But the fact that we do not consciously attempt to optimize crime deterrence is not all that tightly related to the fact that we do not optimize well. It’s entirely possible for someone to consciously try to do something and do it badly. Conversely, we might do well something that we do not consciously intend—for example, having babies, which most animals do well enough without consciously intending to.
I suppose he wanted to say that we should make deterrence our ultimate goal and use blame instrumentally, instead of having blame as our terminal value with deterrence being only a consequence thereof, which is the way it basically works now.
Exactly, and I should mention that this confusion about blame occurs in other areas. For example, in praising Coase’s famous theorem, some people think they’ve identified a brilliant reason to discard the concept of blame in favor of a Pareto-superior method of social rules. When you point out that a system of pure Coasean bargaining would require, e.g. that women have to buy out potential rapists (rather than “blame” the rapist for causing the rape as if it’s not supposed to happen at all), they say, “oh, no, of course we need to have good baseline rights, such as …” and then go on to specify a classifier that works exactly like the existing blame concept!
See the linked discussion, starting from that point.