Do you believe in punishment?

[Hygro]

Do you believe in the justice of some kind of hurt or harm being inflicted upon someone in response to a misdeed? Is it virtuous?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Don't have a high degree of confidence in this one. I also struggle to differentiate between the 2nd and 3rd options, as it's not clear what else would make it necessary.

 

[Farm Boy]

Atonement leads to the possibility of genuine forgiveness. And we're perpetually short on forgiveness and longer on "universal" memory than ever before. Punishment can be a virtue. It often is not.

 

[Zelig]

No, and people who believe otherwise are sadists. People's misdeeds are properties of emergent systems, and should be treated as such, rather than focusing on the individual.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Yaay! I'm a poll option!

 

[Farm Boy]

You using a weird definition of punishment Z? Time out is "punishment" when you don't want a time out. Incapacitation is "punishment" when you really want to pound your cousin for accidentally breaking your toy and it's not allowed. Picking up the mess you made because you were mad is "punishment" even as it instills concepts of fairness and communal responsibility.

Ooooh, I get my jollies on hurting kids! Saaaadist. Maybe it's just super meta-failure. All of it is indicative of fail in the greater picture.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Isn't option 2 implicit in option 3? If punishment - a sort of harm - shall only be used to prevent even more harm, than this fits the definition of a necessary evil to me.
Option 1 is more distinct. Still, I'd also like to view it as a mere aspect of option 3. Because to actually transfer number 3 into practice will probably require some less than ideal but very human concepts like virtue. Moral rationals are rarely watertight or any kind of exact science - that is only the unreachable ideal. To get close to it in a way that works, you will need to come up with something people can easily communicate about, gather behind and most of all believe in. Virtue. Values. Justice, This kind of stuff.

 

[Birdjaguar]

It all depends....

• Who
• Did what
• Why (Motivation)
• What happened (Outcomes)
• Where (in family, in office, in town, etc)

"One size does not fit all." Jean Valjean

 

[Narz]

Not really. I don't believe in free will.

Some people are effed up. Punishment isn't really gonna change that. Just improve society so it's harder to harm people.

I'm not against consequences but punishment for the sake of punishment isn't effective. Prison is a prime example of that. US has more prisons per capita and also much higher crime rate than most 1st world countries.

 

[Snerk]

Depends, hard do define misdeed but if I just go with it I'd say that some misdeeds should face a reaction of sorts, and it's inevitable that some will interpret that reaction as punishment. But harm reduction should be a higher goal.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

No, and people who believe otherwise are sadists. People's misdeeds are properties of emergent systems, and should be treated as such, rather than focusing on the individual.

I agree with this. I am also a sadist. I don't support punishment in any way, and it has been proven time and time again to be just about the most ineffective treatment there is, especially in fighting crime. punishment is also very grey as a term, I don't think it is necessarily harmful to take your kids smartphone away for a few hours, but some may call that punishment. when I'm talking punishment it's capital Punishment, not policing, correcting, controlling or penalizing. Those are all meaningfully different.

You using a weird definition of punishment Z? Time out is "punishment" when you don't want a time out. Incapacitation is "punishment" when you really want to pound your cousin for accidentally breaking your toy and it's not allowed. Picking up the mess you made because you were mad is "punishment" even as it instills concepts of fairness and communal responsibility.

Ooooh, I get my jollies on hurting kids! Saaaadist. Maybe it's just super meta-failure. All of it is indicative of fail in the greater picture.

actually, you're the one using a very broad definition that makes any discussion impossible. if every reaction to a transgression is automatically punishment, then I think almost everyone universally would agree that punishment can be justified. there'd be little reason to discuss then.

who would oppose the execution of the leading heads behind the holocaust, or of a serial rapist. who would oppose a parent turning off the router when their son is playing World of Warcraft for 20 hours per day? someone subjectively feeling punished shouldn't really be our metric. and we also need to distinguish punishment from atonement, penalizing, correcting, repentance and so forth.

 

[Berzerker]

Part of me thinks forgiveness is good for both the victim and perpetrator, and part of me wants people who do evil things removed from society and I dont care much how. They can sit in a cage and contemplate what they've done or we can expedite their inevitable demise. The first will spare the lives of the innocent mistakenly punished and the second has a 0 rate of recidivism.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Not sure exactly what my answer would be, but reading the poll options they all felt somehow wrong to me. But "yes" basically.

 

[Farm Boy]

Punishment is subjective. Both to the enforcer and the recipient. Barring TV for a night from one kid to the next is not at all equitable. Some wouldn't care. Some would be crushed. Some would depend on the context. If we limit "punishment" to fit our definitions of "doing painful stuff in reaction that I disagree with" it's just w/e. A principle-less article of dogma, I think I'd call it. Well in tune with our times.

 

[Dachs]

Is there a meaningful distinction, for the purposes of this discussion, between punishment and discipline?

 

[BornInCantaloup]

"Some other take that’s meaningfully different without pedantry."
Do you mean pendantry is a form of punishment itself and, therefore, cannot be morally distinguished from the normative constructs we categorize as a punishment ? Are all forms of punishment pendent ? Is pendantry a necessary evil at best or could it be a just punishment ? If pendantry is unjust in essence, by nature and by destination, and itself a punishment, could any form of punishment ever be more than a necessity of evil ?

 

[Zelig]

You using a weird definition of punishment Z? Time out is "punishment" when you don't want a time out. Incapacitation is "punishment" when you really want to pound your cousin for accidentally breaking your toy and it's not allowed. Picking up the mess you made because you were mad is "punishment" even as it instills concepts of fairness and communal responsibility.

Yes, I read into the question a bit. Deterrence, rehabilitation, incapacitation, and restitution are legitimate reasons for punishment. Retribution is not.

 

[Farm Boy]

Is there a meaningful distinction, for the purposes of this discussion, between punishment and discipline?

I've seen it argued, the foster classes spent three hours attempting to hew one out. For thier purposes it was punishment they allow (discipline) and punishment they don't allow (punishment). It was definitional and tailored to a specific umbrella of interactions. Not sure if that's valuable here past an implication of "I use a different word for it when I think it works for what I want it to do."

Maybe could argue one is for classical conditioning of the recipient and the other is for resocialization among the community? That's my best take, but they'd both still be punishment.

 

[schlaufuchs]

Is there a meaningful distinction, for the purposes of this discussion, between punishment and discipline?

A wild Postmodernist has appeared!

 

[MaryKB]

Is there a meaningful distinction, for the purposes of this discussion, between punishment and discipline?

My feeling would be that discipline is for trying to correct behavior or teach a lesson, while punishment serves no purpose other than to make your victim suffer (and take some kind of perverse pleasure in that) I feel punishment in such a context is horrendously cruel and serves no good, I believe all discipline/correction should be aimed for rehabilitation.

I am also a sadist.

I'm a masochist, you and I should get together sometime.