Epistemology In Short

Elliot,

We should use defensive force against criminals and no more. Any more for punishment purposes, not defense, is aggression.

But can you offer a positive proof of the truth of that conclusion?

:-)

Seriously, though. You just made a positive statement about the way that things should be. I like it. I think that's cool. I think it is important -- perhaps critical to our very lives -- to be thinking about the way that things ought to be. I'm all for it. But I'm curious as to how you arrived at the conclusion. I know how it is that I arrive at conclusions like that, but I don't know how it is that you are able to do it. It is a concrete case, and that means that it is going to be illuminative as an example of your reasoning paradigm.

How do you know (how did you discover) that the punishment of criminals is aggression?

Ed

Post 21

Sunday, July 28, 2013 - 7:46pm

Ed, I arrived at it by guesses and criticism, as usual. I'm aware of a variety of ideas on the subject, and there is one which I don't have criticisms of, and the rest I do. So I accept the non-refuted one. (If a problem comes up, I may reconsider.)

Dean, do you agree or disagree with me?

"Perfect Justice: Equal market value reimbursement and 1/infinity expected loss of market value in disincentivement." -- 1 divided by infinity, if it means anything, is 0. There's some kind of misconception here.

Post 22

Sunday, July 28, 2013 - 8:41pm

Elliot,

Ed, I arrived at it by guesses and criticism, as usual.

Can you be more specific? One of the criticisms of trolls is that they speak in generalities without ever being specific -- and they avoid concrete examples like the plague. The reason that trolls do that is because they know that if they get pinned down to actually having to defend ideas then their ideas will get ripped to shreds.

Now, one possible conjecture of mine might be that perhaps you are a troll. If so, if you were a troll, then that would explain your behavior here in this forum. However, this conjecture of mine should be subjected to refutation. The best refutation that I can think of would be for you to answer the following question in detail and in substance (instead of using just vague generalities):

How do you know (how did you discover) that the punishment of criminals is aggression?

Ed

p.s., Elliot, here is a comical -- but analogical -- instructional example of what is being asked of you:

Girl: Mommy, I just saw a ghost.

Mom: How do you know that?

Girl: I saw a flash of light go by my bedroom window, and ...

Mom: And ... are you making the assumption that all flashes of light are ghosts, instead of being, say, the headlights of cars driving by, or a flash of lightning from off in the distance?

Girl: Yes. When I see a flash of light in the window, then I integrate that with my assumption that all flashes of light are de facto demonstrations of ghost activity. I totally discount the possibility that flashes of light could be something else. This affords me with the knowledge that the flashes of light are indeed ghosts.

Mom: Thank you for telling me, in detail (by a combination of a very specific perception that was integrated with a very specific assumption), how it is that you know that just saw a ghost.

Girl: You're welcome. I'm not trying to hide anything, Mommy. I'm not like ... like some kind of a troll or anything (and I'm willing to prove it by being straight-up about my beliefs and answering questions in a straight-forward manner).

Mommy: You make me proud, Pumpkin.

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 7/28, 8:43pm)

Post 23

Sunday, July 28, 2013 - 8:44pm

"Can you be more specific?"

I've posted at some length about the epistemology of guesses and criticism. Popper and Deutsch have written books about it. Could you be more specific about which part(s) you don't understand and why? I don't know which issues to elaborate on and clarify for you. Which part(s) are you getting stuck on?

Post 24

Monday, July 29, 2013 - 12:33pm

Elliot wrote,

Punishing criminals is the use of non-defensive force. We should use defensive force against criminals and no more. Any more for punishment purposes, not defense, is aggression.

Punishing criminals is defensive in the following two ways:

1) By keeping criminals in jail, it protects others from similar crimes by the criminal himself while he is still incarcerated.

2) Punishing criminals acts as a deterrent to future crimes not only by the criminal after he is released from prison, but also by others who but for the threat of such punishment would resort to similar crimes themselves.

(Edited by William Dwyer on 7/29, 12:35pm)

Post 25

Monday, July 29, 2013 - 1:05pm

you're not listening. to the extent an action defends people -- such as keeping someone in jail preventing them from committing a second murder -- it's defense not punishment.

Post 26

Monday, July 29, 2013 - 4:47pm

Elliot,

Bill also said that punishment can have a deterrent effect. Are you saying that anything that is effective as a deterrent is, ipso facto, not a punishment because it might defend against a future act?

And, how can you say that keeping a person locked up works to defend? Defense presumes the existence of an existing, specific, concrete act which one is defending against - not some possibility that may or may not happen at some unspecified future time.
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Prevention is the word you want when talking about a life sentence for a murderer preventing him from committing a second murder. That's not the same as defense.
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And retaliation is what you call the other non-punishment aspect of incarceration or confiscation that was a response to the conviction of a crime. After all, when that murderer was arrested, convicted, and jailed it was not "defense" because the victim was already dead.

Law enforcement very rarely acts with defensive force - only in those cases where an officer is able to stop a crime at the time it is starting to unfold. The vast majority of the cases are retaliatory force following the conviction of a crime that is past and can no longer be prevented or stopped by an active defense.
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Punishment levied on a convicted criminal would be aggression only if the criminal had not violated the victims rights. That violation was when the criminal volunteered, by his act, to relinquish his individual rights. That step is how the state acquired the right to retaliate. Punishment needs to be measured for its appropriateness to the offense and judged for its effectiveness in deterrence.

It is also hard to describe exactly what constitutes punishment since it can be anything that a person is fiercely opposed to enduring. That's a very subjective thing. For example, some people are going to be more harshly punished by a two year sentence than other people because of their subjective, psychological reaction to imprisonment.

Post 27

Monday, July 29, 2013 - 9:59pm

Elliot,

"Can you be more specific?"

I've posted at some length about the epistemology of guesses and criticism. Popper and Deutsch have written books about it. Could you be more specific about which part(s) you don't understand and why?

Yeah, sure, it's the part about knowing that the punishment of criminals is aggression. Could you please say a little more about that? That's why I gave you an analogy about knowledge of ghosts outside the window. After reading the analogy, there can be no doubt about how the little girl knows what she does. This is because she laid out her thinking process like it was a blueprint, step-for-step.

If necessary, I could possibly attempt to do this job for you: Postulating which specific kinds of conjectures need to be weighed in order to arrive at knowledge of punishment as aggression, and then contrasted against what specific kinds of refutations will have become epistemologically necessary to weed-out the bad conjectures -- leaving one conjecture (i.e., your conclusion) remaining.

All I'm saying is that it would look a hell of a lot better if you do what is requested of you, rather than me stepping in and then walking you -- with baby steps -- through the in's and out's of your own philosophy.

Ed

p.s., Yikes! That last part sounded harsh! Please forgive me. Sometimes when I write I have little focus on refraining from more offensive than the situation calls for.

Post 28

Monday, July 29, 2013 - 10:11pm

Are you saying that you, as a matter of policy, do not do any editing, rewriting or backtracking in your posts?

Or is it just a joke of some sort?

" it's the part about knowing that the punishment of criminals is aggression"

You mean: how can i know anything? by making some guesses to address a problem, criticizing them, making another round of improved guesses, criticizing more, repeating until the problem is solved by a single remaining non-refuted guess. that's how i know.

Post 29

Wednesday, July 31, 2013 - 8:29pm

Elliot,

It seems like you are playing games.

I said:

It is a concrete case, and that means that it is going to be illuminative as an example of your reasoning paradigm.

How do you know (how did you discover) that the punishment of criminals is aggression?

Then you said:

Ed, I arrived at it by guesses and criticism, as usual. I'm aware of a variety of ideas on the subject, and there is one which I don't have criticisms of, and the rest I do. So I accept the non-refuted one.

Then I said:

Can you be more specific? One of the criticisms of trolls is that they speak in generalities without ever being specific -- and they avoid concrete examples like the plague.

The best refutation that I can think of would be for you to answer the following question in detail and in substance (instead of using just vague generalities):

How do you know (how did you discover) that the punishment of criminals is aggression?

p.s., Elliot, here is a comical -- but analogical -- instructional example of what is being asked of you:

Then you said:

Could you be more specific about which part(s) you don't understand and why? I don't know which issues to elaborate on and clarify for you. Which part(s) are you getting stuck on?

Then I said:

Yeah, sure, it's the part about knowing that the punishment of criminals is aggression. Could you please say a little more about that?

That's why I gave you an analogy about knowledge of ghosts outside the window. After reading the analogy, there can be no doubt about how the little girl knows what she does. This is because she laid out her thinking process like it was a blueprint, step-for-step.

Then you said:

" it's the part about knowing that the punishment of criminals is aggression"

You mean: how can i know anything? by making some guesses to address a problem, criticizing them, making another round of improved guesses, criticizing more, repeating until the problem is solved by a single remaining non-refuted guess. that's how i know.

Here's a recap:

Ed:
Elliot, can you give me the specifics details about X?

Elliot:
Ed, here are the general details.

Ed:
Okay Elliot, but can you give me the specifics, like this [followed by an example of how to go about answering my question]

Elliot:
[Ignores example] Ed, here are the general details. Now, what are you requesting?

Ed:
The specific details, Elliot, like in the example I gave you.

Elliot:
I don't know what all of the fuss is about. I already gave you the general details.

???

Ed

Post 30

Thursday, August 1, 2013 - 12:35am

i am not intentionally playing games.

you want example guesses like "non-defensive force against people is good if they are black", "non-defensive force against people is good if they are criminals", "defensive force against people is good in general", etc? and criticisms of them, like the first is racist, the second legitimizes aggression...?

it's a terrible example because first of all i learned stuff about this from Godwin who you aren't familiar with, and second i no longer remember many of the�specific original guesses and criticisms involved. and it's basically a trivial topic for an Objectivist so my example guesses besides the right one look dumb and pointless to consider (and indeed they are artificial).

the important thing is i have the guess that initiation of force is bad, defense is good, and no criticisms of it and no rival guesses.

i still have pretty much no idea what kind of specific details you want, and don't believe you have provided any substantive information about which part of epistemology you want more information about.

This would be no big deal -- Popper/etc is *hard*, of course you won't get it right away -- except that you're getting frustrated, accusing me of discussing in bad faith, etc, instead of continuing to patiently work on it and be glad of every little bit of progress.
(Edited by Elliot Temple on 8/01, 12:37am)

Post 31

Thursday, August 1, 2013 - 5:54pm

Elliot wrote,

Punishing criminals is the use of non-defensive force. We should use defensive force against criminals and no more. Any more for punishment purposes, not defense, is aggression.

I replied,

Punishing criminals is defensive in the following two ways:

1) By keeping criminals in jail, it protects others from similar crimes by the criminal himself while he is still incarcerated.

2) Punishing criminals acts as a deterrent to future crimes not only by the criminal after he is released from prison, but also by others who but for the threat of such punishment would resort to similar crimes themselves.

Elliot replied,

you're not listening. to the extent an action defends people -- such as keeping someone in jail preventing them from committing a second murder -- it's defense not punishment.

In Singapore, people are caned for acts of vandalism. So if caning someone prevents him from committing a second act of vandalism out of fear of a similar punishment, caning does not qualify as punishment? Seriously?

I'm not defending caning for vandalism as an acceptable deterrent. I think it crosses the line of appropriate sanctions, because it is not proportionate to the seriousness of the offense. But I do think that some punishments are appropriate. For example, I don't think that removing someone from society by confining him to a luxurious tropical resort with a lavish lifestyle populated by other prisoners is appropriate even if it does prevent him from victimizing other innocent human beings. He deserves a harsher form of deprivation than that. Punishment is not by its nature an act of aggression. A person who violates the rights of others forfeits any rights against being punished. The only requirement is that the punishment should fit the crime.

P.S. Something else occurred to me. You think that keeping someone in jail is defensive force, but observe that it's force that occurs long after the initial act of aggression by the criminal. So keeping him incarcerated no longer constitutes defending the victim against the crime he is being punished for. The only sense in which it could be considered defensive is in protecting future potential victims against a similar act of aggression. But punishment does the same thing as incarceration (if you want to consider incarceration different from punishment) by deterring the criminal from committing similar crimes in the future. So I don't see how you can consider punishment to be aggressive, but incarceration defensive.

(Edited by William Dwyer on 8/01, 8:15pm)

Post 32

Thursday, August 1, 2013 - 6:27pm

Bill,

I doubt that you'll get an intelligible response... I made a reply about punishment similar to yours and got no reply at all.

Post 33

Thursday, August 1, 2013 - 8:37pm

Bill,

I sanctioned your post but our old (rights vs. exercise of rights) quibble came up inside of it:

A person who violates the rights of others forfeits any rights against being punished. The only requirement is that the punishment should fit the crime.

I agree that punishments should fit the crime -- rather than fitting the criminal (reform), fitting some unspecified other criminals (deterrent), or fitting the financial cost of the crime (restitution). But humans do not start out with any rights against being punished for violating others' rights. Not having the right to violate rights with impunity, they don't actually forfeit any rights when they commit a crime -- and punishment, if just, does not violate their rights.

Ed

Post 34

Thursday, August 1, 2013 - 10:30pm

Ed,

...humans do not start out with any rights against being punished for violating others' rights.

Humans start out with the right to go where they wish as long as it doesn't constitute trespass. They have the freedom of movement. Locking someone up would be a violation of that freedom of movement, unless they had done something that changed their relationship to the rights they once had. On January 1, 2013, John Doe had the right to travel from his home in San Diego to Mexico City. On February 1, he is caught in the act of cashing a check he knows to be bad and confesses. By June 1, 2013, he has been convicted and locked up. He now has no right to go to Mexico City.

We have the rights against the initiation of force, the threat of initiated force, fraud and theft... at the start of our life. It will take force to keep John Doe in jail. The force is NOT an example of self-defense because his bad act started and ended on January 1 and force is still be used to keep him in jail even though it is now August - yet he started out with the right of free movement. If that right, for him, is not seen as no longer there, then it would be wrong to use force against him.

I have the right to start a business of a certain kind. But, someone already in that kind of business can come along and offer me enough money to get an agreement from me that I won't start up my own business - a non-compete agreement. No one can take away my right to take that kind of action, but I can voluntarily surrender it. It would be immoral to use force to stop me from starting that business, in the beginning, but once I give up that right, I no longer have a right to be free of force used to stop me from that act. It makes no sense to say that I did not start out with any rights to resist force that is used to honor agreements where I gave up a right... unless you are agreeing that a person can voluntarily step away from a right - which kind of kills the heart of your argument where you've said that we always have the rights we start out with.

When you use the word "punishment" it presumes a chain of events that are understood with a logical chain of thought. The presumption is that a person acts as to violate another's moral right, that there is a law against that act based on that moral right, and that the violator is caught, tried, convicted and sentenced... otherwise the issue of punishment could not come to pass. Punishment will described as a range of possible actions that are carried out by the legal arm of society and are going to be in the range that is deemed culturally acceptable. The acts of punishment can be examined to see if they are logically appropriate to the violation of the right that started this, but they will still have a great deal of cultural relativism in their makeup. What is strict but appropriate in this day and place will not match what was seen as strict but appropriate in other times or other cultures. I mention this so that you can see that "punishment" may be subject to moral judgement, but is not fundamental enough to be in the definition of moral rights. It is a legal concept.

John Doe had the right to go to Mexico City and now he doesn't. That right went away. It went away when he stepped away from the concept of right by choosing to violate the rights of another. The degree to which he gave up his rights depends upon the degree to which he violated the rights of others. This relationship is the one that lets us judge a given culture's choice of punishment for a given act. If this was Saudi Arabia and they decided that punishment should be chopping off both hands, how would we argue against the punishment, how would we say that there is a logical root to what is appropriate if we don't see that rights are lost BUT ONLY in proportion to rights being violated? If what you say is that the check casher did not start out with a right to be free of punishment from violating the rights of others you haven't done that. Why? Because the Saudi Justice system could just say, "He was not born with the right to keep his hands when he violated the rights of others." It is an arbitrary answer and that is what happens when you don't have rights being lost proportional to rights being violated.

Criminal laws, when properly designed, are but descriptions of the acts that violate individual rights. And punishments should follow the same logic. They should be measured reflections of the intensity and nature of the rights that were violated. Rights and their violations occur in the moral world - even if far out to sea, or deep in outer space, where no law exists. Laws describing criminal acts, and laws proscribing punishments are legal entities. The law has no moral stature to use force against someone who still possesses the moral right to be free of force.

I appreciate how fine and minute the difference is between your way of formulating this and the concept that rights are voluntarily ceded by acts that violate rights, and I don't think it would ever cause a big problem, but I think it is less accurate.

Post 35

Friday, August 2, 2013 - 9:08am

Without the principle of Superior Violence (force used in response to the first use of force), the first barbarian who walks into town takes over the world.

There is no workable plan for civilization that includes anything like a unilateral repeal of violence.

Even Ghandi recognized the need for and accepted the concept of Superior Violence.

The name 'Superior Violence' does not mean that violence is superior to anything; it does not mean "to hit back harder." It is a qualifier only on the justification for the 'violence.' A knee jerk reaction is "there is never a justification for violence." That is incomplete; there is never a justification for the first use of violence; that is what justifies the response to the first use of violence with Superior violence. That justification is what makes Superior violence "Superior." Courts that take away freedom, heated jails, cops, and the military are all manifestations of the concept 'Superior Violence.'

An absolute unilateral ban on all forms of 'violence' means, by necessity, a world without courts, jails, cops, and the military. IOW, open season on civilization. This is more physics than philosophy; the cold universe has an existing condition that force moves and deforms matter, and no matter what else men are, they are also matter.

regards,
Fred

Post 36

Friday, August 2, 2013 - 1:03pm

Many punishments do not functionally prevent any future crimes.

The word "punishment" is used ambiguously, both to refer to actions which defend against future dangers and actions which do not.

A good example of non-functional punishment is most things done to children. For example, grounding children or sending them to detention is notoriously ineffective at preventing them from staying out late again, being late to class again, or whatever. These things are done to hurt the child, not really to deal with the future danger. (Not that being late to class is a real danger, but the punisher sees it as one.)

Prisons functionally deal with dangers and risks from letting dangerous people go free. This only applies to some of the people there. For some�prisoners, there is no serious argument that they are any more dangerous than the next guy who isn't in jail. For others, they are not at all repentant, repeat offenders, very dangerous, and jail is genuine defense.

To reform prisons and related institutions they need to become more principled. They need to make more of an effort to differentiate between actions which are defending against dangers (such as jailing someone who openly intends to commit further murders if he's free), and actions which are not defensive. And once these categories are separated, people can and should start thinking a bit more carefully about what justifies what non-defensive actions.

One of the underlying principles that should inform these reforms is not to be cruel. Cruelty is immoral. Defense is moral. They are very different. We should all recognize as immoral any kind of intentional cruelty -- hurting people for the sake of hurting them -- such as for "revenge" or "punishment" with no claims to defensive purposes. Currently because of the confusion on the topic, even blatant cases of non-defensive aggressive cruelty are often not differentiated very well from clear cut defense.

None of this should be controversial with Objectivists. No one has a right to use force against anyone else for any reason other than defense. That does include defense against genuine risks (you don't have to wait until AFTER he shoots you to defend), and does not allow using force in any other cases.

Objectivists may debate what constitutes defense. The main controversial case is deterrence. But they should be happy to do so in light of clear distinctions about defensive force vs non-defensive force, with the second one being agreed to be completely illegitimate. The issue should be how effective an action is for deterrence and what risks there were of further force that needs to be defended against. Not anything else like a desire to punish people, which is immoral cruelty that deviates from the Objectivist approach to force.

Post 37

Friday, August 2, 2013 - 1:09pm

Also: hurting someone to deter future crimes can only possibly be legitimate if you're deterring his own future crimes (which requires, among other things, an argument that there's a significantly�higher risk of him committing a future crime than a typical citizen doing so). (And also an argument the deterrence will be significantly effective. Otherwise it's just non-defensive force.) Using force against Bob to deter Joe, Sue and Peter from committing crimes is blatantly incompatible with individual rights and Objectivism.
(Edited by Elliot Temple on 8/02, 1:11pm)

Post 38

Friday, August 2, 2013 - 1:47pm

Elliot,

I was a licensed Marriage, Family and Child Therapist - head of a training unit and a case-carrying social worker for Los Angeles County children's protective service and I took a Master's degree in clinical psychology. Yet I don't recognize any truth in these statements of yours: "A good example of non-functional punishment is most things done to children. For example, grounding children or sending them to detention is notoriously ineffective at preventing them from staying out late again, being late to class again, or whatever." And I know for a fact that this statement is far more often wrong than right: "These things [grounding, detention] are done to hurt the child..." Very few parents or teachers try to hurt children.
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There is no moral justification for putting someone in prison to prevent them from committing a dangerous act in the future. It isn't "defense." The moral justification for imprisonment is that the person lost their right to be free when they violated the rights of someone else. The worse their act, the more of their freedom they lost the right to. And I say it isn't a "defense" to lock them up, because "defense" is action taken to interfere with a specific, known act. Otherwise the government could lock up anyone that they claim MIGHT harm someone in the future. Get in a fight on the school yard when you were ten years old? If that is called a propensity for violence, then maybe you should be locked up for life as an absolute "defense" against some future violence that MIGHT result in a death. When government acts to imprison a convicted person it is "retaliation" or "punishment" or both.
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No one has a right to use force against anyone else for any reason other than defense. That does include defense against genuine risks (you don't have to wait until AFTER he shoots you to defend), and does not allow using force in any other cases.

That is almost right. Defense does include acting before the person pulls the trigger. But there must be reason to believe that the person might pull the trigger and that the danger is imminent. You can't harm someone, and then claim self-defense saying they might have a gun or that they could go buy a gun and then use it. So, there is a distinct kind of time limit before a possible act of violence that can't be exceeded. And there is a distinct end to the threat AFTER it is over. By the time the case gets to court (not a self-defense case like Zimmerman) but say an assault or murder case, it is no longer about the government intervening in defense, but rather engaging in retaliation - and a conviction is the legal affirmation that the individual lost the right to their freedom in that specific case and to that specific degree.
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Not anything else like a desire to punish people, which is immoral cruelty that deviates from the Objectivist approach to force.

If Hitler hadn't killed himself, would people be immoral and cruel for wanting to see him punished? I don't think so. I think that there is a sense of justice that calls for a kind of punishment that appropriately addresses the crime.
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Using force against Bob to deter Joe, Sue and Peter from committing crimes is blatantly incompatible with individual rights and Objectivism.

Agreed. But using force to retaliate against those who violate individual rights, and no one else, and doing so in a swift and appropriate fashion, never a harsher sentence or a lighter sentence than is appropriate to the crime, will create and maintain an environment of justice and of Liberty - that will encourage Joe, Sue, Peter and others to participate in society in good ways and reduce their inclination to commit crimes... even if deterrence of bad acts by others was no part of the reason for Bob's sentence.

Post 39

Friday, August 2, 2013 - 3:10pm