RoR: Forum

Thanks, Joseph! That was a cogent assessment of a complicated and subtle problem. With 80,000 innocent people sitting in prison right now, it is important that anyone who sits on a jury have a clear understanding of the philosophical issues involved.

When the ARI does announces record-breaking sales for the the works of Ayn Rand, they never mention Introduction to the Objectivist Epistemology. It is a difficult subject and we get no special training in it. At best, perhaps, the average educated person might get the scientific method a couple of times in school, but with no wider understanding of its application as a mode of discovery and inference.

The modern jury system has no metaphysical reality - unlike, say, rights. It just evolved over centuries and came to us today from totally different traditions that all sort of just merged with America.

The consequence is that we (in general, all of us) have (at best) a weak understanding of how to operate in a poorly-constructed institution.

Post 1

Saturday, October 12, 2013 - 7:40am

Joe,

If the measure of justice and injustice is based on an omniscient view of the facts, there's no different between someone acting well on faulty information and someone acting poorly on good information. Both are viewed as unjust.

This harkens back to Rand's true dichotomy between "errors of knowledge" and "breaches of morality." In order to be convinced that someone deserves to be punished, you have to get convinced that they were in possession of some knowledge regarding what it is that they were doing. Here's a comic's view of that process:

Tweedly-Dee: What are you doing?

Tweedly-Dum: I'm just moving my body parts around with my eyes closed. There is nothing nefarious going on here.

Tweedly-Dee: No, you are not! You have an axe in your hand and you are swinging it around in the public square and you are lopping peoples' heads off! Just look at all of the dead bodies on the floor already! Stop doing that!

Tweedly-Dum: Oh crap! I was unaware that the actions I was taking were having the consequences that you just informed me about! I was operating under an error of knowledge.

Tweedly-Dee: You know, if you had had your eyes open -- if you could see what you were doing -- then you would be guilty of murder.

Tweedly-Dum: Yes, I know. Whew! I sure am glad that I had my eyes closed the whole time, or else I would go to jail for life for what I just did!

This comic interlude highlights the fact that not only is there a dichotomy between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality/justice, but there is also a reasonable expectation of the kinds of things that actors should know about the expected consequences of the kinds of actions that actors take. In other words, the defense: "Well, I just didn't know that there would be bad consequences!" is not necessarily an acceptable or sufficient defense. There are some things, some few things, that humans will be expected to know in the first place, which makes some actions, some rare actions, automatically guilt-entailing.

This last is not a disembodied justice, though -- because of a kind of universality among mankind -- it can accidentally appear to be disembodied.

Ed

Post 2

Saturday, October 12, 2013 - 11:16pm

Joe,

Could we say that the disembodied view of justice is what Objectivism might call the "intrinsic" view of justice?

Post 3

Monday, November 4, 2013 - 10:02pm

Thanks for the comments.

Bill, I might hesitate to call it the intrinsic view. When we talk about intrinsic values, we talk about a non-relational value. Something is supposed to be good on its own, without a relationship to a person or a goal. This view of justice isn't exactly like that. It could still be relational.

Instead, the issue is epistemological. Oh the topic of values, what if something would be in your interest but you don't know it. If someone were to say that it is still an objective value, and it is valuable in relation to a person for some end, all of that would be true. But you wouldn't say someone is immoral for not choosing the value, even if it would best serve their genuine interests. If they don't know it, it's not very meaningful.

Similarly disembodied justice could be relational, but ignores the epistemological requirement to know it. And if that is upheld as some moral goal, it turns justice into an impossible target.

Post 4

Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - 12:54am