Do you believe in punishment?

[Manfred Belheim]

Ironically, this reasoning is what doesn't work well. This isn't really about reason anyway but about an emotional response.

It's reasoning about what typical emotional responses would be.

 

[Rashiminos]

My hesitancy to answer the poll has more to do with questions of how virtuous/vicious attempts at behavorial modifications are rather than whether particular punishments are more virtuous than others.

Evil has every incentive to adjust people's behaviors. I'm not sure virtue can wholly operate in the same framework by choosing different results to achieve by behavioral modification.

 

[Lexicus]

It's reasoning about what typical emotional responses would be.

Well good luck with that.

 

[Akka]

My hesitancy to answer the poll has more to do with questions of how virtuous/vicious attempts at behavorial modifications are rather than whether particular punishments are more virtuous than others.

Well, the question is about the very concept of punishment, it doesn't address the KIND of punishment, especially as it's countless forms.

Evil has every incentive to adjust people's behaviors. I'm not sure virtue can wholly operate in the same framework by choosing different results to achieve by behavioral modification.

Thing is, every behaviour is adjusted by learning through social interaction. "pure" behaviour is just instinct, and except in newborn you're unlikely to see it. Every single of our act is a mixture of our instinctual impulses adjusted by our past experience and conditioning - which is constructed by the rewards and punishments we received under a form or another (and this is not just about getting a cookie or a slap, but also smiles or frown or being mocked or laughs or prison or getting a job and so on) during our whole life.

 

[Rashiminos]

Well, the question is about the very concept of punishment, it doesn't address the KIND of punishment, especially as it's countless forms.

Just and unjust punishments are KINDS of punishments. Evil finds value in churning the waters on what "just" and "injust" means.

Thing is, every behaviour is adjusted by learning through social interaction. "pure" behaviour is just instinct, and except in newborn you're unlikely to see it. Every single of our act is a mixture of our instinctual impulses adjusted by our past experience and conditioning - which is constructed by the rewards and punishments we received under a form or another (and this is not just about getting a cookie or a slap, but also smiles or frown or being mocked or laughs or prison or getting a job and so on) during our whole life.

I disagree. In my view, instinct is base behavior, preceding just from the interactions the self has with the world (and not from the impact the world has on the self). Conditioning is when people respond to stimuli (and later learn that choosing other stimuli can affect how other people react). Pure "behavior" I would describe as acts of will, whereupon one can attempt to rewrite one's own conditioning, void instinctual impulses, and generally become less reactive to stimuli in favor of choice (behavior becomes less deterministic relative to social input).

I could also rephrase that: Behavior becomes resistant with respect to rewards and punishments.

 

[Farm Boy]

Blest be the tie that binds, our hearts in love of love, the fellowship of kindred minds, is like to that above?

We, generally, are social beasts. To some not insignificant extent as I socialize my dog in certain ways, he trains me back. Dogs are social beasts too.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Well good luck with that.

I don't think it's particularly taxing in this case...

 

[Narz]

No, but it is a shift. Assuming (s)he has a solid relationship with her/his immediate family, the spouse is signing up to be spending a lot of time with them and a lot of interaction. Plus, they probably know the spouse-to-be better, and probably at their worst, than the marriageable partner does. It's less "permission" and more "checking in." Having in-laws that get along with my family, since my wife and I sort of signed them up to be in each other's company semi-frequently, has been a major life boon. Keeping communication open in symbolic ways that make sense, like speaking with them before major life decisions, help(ed)s.

Getting along w in-laws is certainly important and optimal.

 

[rah]

Yes, I was blessed with great in-laws. I always heard all those evil mother-in-law stories and was pleasantly surprised when mine treated me as well as her own sons. May she RIP.

 

[Zardnaar]

My in laws are great see then more than my own family.

Some girls/cultures are very conservative about dating. Tinder and booze doesn't cut it.

Tried explaining it to a workmates who was complaining about not being able to date nice girls but his social circle was erm a little rough. He didn't know any female doctors, nurses, scientists etc.

He grew up poor but didn't go to university or gave university friends to met them.

 

[Traitorfish]

That reasoning doesn't work well. Most people will simply assume/prefer to think that it happened to others because "they" gave their trust to the wrong person, but "I" am different.

Conservatives will, because conservatives need the world to run on moral logic first, and material logic only secondarily. This person was raped because they were in some way morally deficient, that is the assumption, the premise, and the whys of it- "they were careless", "they were too trusting", "they dressed like a slut"- can be filled in after the fact. The presence of moral hierarchies is taken as a given, and any apparent misfortune can, must, be located within them.

The conservative's first response to any sort of injustice is to fit them into their existing moral hierarchies, to maintain the metaphysical assumption of a rightly-ordered universe, that bad things happen to bad people. The only way to overcome this is to establish the violator as in some way abominable, as an exception to rather than agent of the innate moral logic of the universe. In America, this is traditionally established by identifying the violator as black, but there are other options. Identifying them as Muslims is quite a big one nowadays, which Mouthwash has cannilly exploited by specifically conceding the existence of over-patriarchal men with a reference to "sheikhs".

Conservatives don't understand that not everyone does this, just as a lot of liberals don't understand that conservatives do. You'll sometimes hear people try to counter conservative attacks on rape-victims by comparing it to theft: you might say that a person who gets mugged made some bad choices which lead to that outcome, but you wouldn't blame them for it, you wouldn't say it was their fault, that they deserved to get mugged. But conservatives would absolutely say that, and expect everyone in their hearing to agree. As we are seeing in this tread.

 

[Mouthwash]

Conservatives will, because conservatives need the world to run on moral logic first, and material logic only secondarily. This person was raped because they were in some way morally deficient, that is the assumption, the premise, and the whys of it- "they were careless", "they were too trusting", "they dressed like a slut"- can be filled in after the fact. The presence of moral hierarchies is taken as a given, and any apparent misfortune can, must, be located within them.

This is a bias that comes with having any moral standards at all beyond "no harm ppl". It may not always be accurate, but it's a good guide to actually not getting raped (assuming you live in a Judeo-Christian society).

The conservative's first response to any sort of injustice is to fit them into their existing moral hierarchies, to maintain the metaphysical assumption of a rightly-ordered universe, that bad things happen to bad people.

I'm pretty sure that this is not what the people who talk about a 'fallen world' or 'total depravity' have in mind.

The only way to overcome this is to establish the violator as in some way abominable, as an exception to rather than agent of the innate moral logic of the universe.

As it turns out, you actually are better off holding yourself to a code of ethics.

In America, this is traditionally established by identifying the violator as black, but there are other options. Identifying them as Muslims is quite a big one nowadays, which Mouthwash has cannilly exploited by specifically conceding the existence of over-patriarchal men with a reference to "sheikhs".

American Muslims probably have higher moral standards than the average American Christian. Over here, on the other hand... well, Hamas is known for being quite liberal on social issues.

Conservatives don't understand that not everyone does this, just as a lot of liberals don't understand that conservatives do. You'll sometimes hear people try to counter conservative attacks on rape-victims by comparing it to theft: you might say that a person who gets mugged made some bad choices which lead to that outcome, but you wouldn't blame them for it, you wouldn't say it was their fault, that they deserved to get mugged. But conservatives would absolutely say that, and expect everyone in their hearing to agree. As we are seeing in this tread.

No one to the left of a Salafi sheikh would say that. Apparently, doing something about the millions of women suffering mutilation, forced marriages, beatings, and rape takes second fiddle to making sure that immigrants don't feel even the slightest bit out of place over in Glasgow.

 

[Lexicus]

This is a bias that comes with having any moral standards at all beyond "no harm ppl". It may not always be accurate, but it's a good guide to actually not getting raped (assuming you live in a Judeo-Christian society).

I guess unless you're a victim of spousal rape which apparently "decent people" in this type of society don't care about too much...

 

[Mouthwash]

It and liberal societies are the only ones that care about it at all.

 

[Patine]

This is a bias that comes with having any moral standards at all beyond "no harm ppl". It may not always be accurate, but it's a good guide to actually not getting raped (assuming you live in a Judeo-Christian society).



I'm pretty sure that this is not what the people who talk about a 'fallen world' or 'total depravity' have in mind.



As it turns out, you actually are better off holding yourself to a code of ethics.



American Muslims probably have higher moral standards than the average American Christian. Over here, on the other hand... well, Hamas is known for being quite liberal on social issues.



No one to the left of a Salafi sheikh would say that. Apparently, doing something about the millions of women suffering mutilation, forced marriages, beatings, and rape takes second fiddle to making sure that immigrants don't feel even the slightest bit out of place over in Glasgow.

It and liberal societies are the only ones that care about it at all.

Well, given you too have absolutely no moral high ground, are NOT really quoting tradition or Monotheist Scripture at all, but just toxic and deceptive revisionism meant to justify evil and get it past naïve and gullible who may believe it has traditional and religious backing, and belong to a movement that is just as rife with hypocrisy, corruption, self-serving rhetoric, and lies as the worst of "modern Liberalism," you are in no position at all to speak as you in the vast majority of your posts and expect to be entitled to be treated with any respect or credence - or seriously, or as not being outright insulting to any GOOD person's intelligence and sensibilities.

 

[Akka]

Conservatives will, because conservatives need the world to run on moral logic first, and material logic only secondarily. This person was raped because they were in some way morally deficient, that is the assumption, the premise, and the whys of it- "they were careless", "they were too trusting", "they dressed like a slut"- can be filled in after the fact. The presence of moral hierarchies is taken as a given, and any apparent misfortune can, must, be located within them.

You do realize you are doing exactly the same here ? (assuming the morality of someone based on how you appreciate their opinion)

The conservative's first response to any sort of injustice is to fit them into their existing moral hierarchies, to maintain the metaphysical assumption of a rightly-ordered universe, that bad things happen to bad people.

That's nothing specific to "conservative", it's a universal human behavior.

 

[Perfection]

Punishment believes in me, I guess I should reciprocate.

 

[Traitorfish]

You do realize you are doing exactly the same here ? (assuming the morality of someone based on how you appreciate their opinion)

I don't really know how you got this from post.

That's nothing specific to "conservative", it's a universal human behavior.

I don't actually disagree. It seems, for want of a better word, natural that human s But that doesn't mean it true. It's a kind of magical thinking, a conviction that because the world should be ordered in a certain way, it must be; that because certain actions should produce certain outcomes, they must produce certain outcomes. In practice, this collapses almost immediately, and anyone over the age of maybe eight or nine will notice this, so to preserve the framework of a rightly-ordered universe, we start taking the outcomes and explaining their causes retroactively. "Good girls don't get rape" is an offensive nonsense, but we can preserve it by insisting that victims of rape are "bad girls", leveraging whatever slander and rationalisation we can bring to hand. Whether or not we can prove it is unimportant so long as we feel that we have proved it, because this whole framework privileges the gut far above the brain.

This works so long as we continue to live in a world haunted by spooks and spirits, when the relationship between cause and effective is mediated by symbolic relationships as much as material ones, but it begins to break down in the light of modern, materialistic understanding. In the face of, you might say, Enlightenment. The fundamental divide between conservatives and progressives (the latter used in the broad sense, really covering anyone from classical liberals through to anarchist-communists) is whether they're prepared to accept this shift in thought. And the longer conservatives hold out, the more inconsistent, the more thoroughly senile, their politics become.

I'm pretty sure that this is not what the people who talk about a 'fallen world' or 'total depravity' have in mind.

Well, that's the funny thing about conservative magical thinker, the naturally-ordered world always hangs on the edge of crisis. They're incapable of imagining a world that is merely imperfect or unfair, because that would imply the absence of divine order (whether or not its described in so many words), and such an absence must be, if not total, then at least marked. God is with his people, or he is not; he can't be sorta with his people. He doesn't have weekend custody. We either live in the best of all possible worlds, or we live in a fallen world of suffering and sin, and the peculiar madness of "Moral Majority" conservativism emerges from the attempt to apply both these equally deranged convictions at the same time.

 

[Mouthwash]

I don't actually disagree. It seems, for want of a better word, natural that human s But that doesn't mean it true. It's a kind of magical thinking, a conviction that because the world should be ordered in a certain way, it must be; that because certain actions should produce certain outcomes, they must produce certain outcomes. In practice, this collapses almost immediately, and anyone over the age of maybe eight or nine will notice this, so to preserve the framework of a rightly-ordered universe, we start taking the outcomes and explaining their causes retroactively. "Good girls don't get rape" is an offensive nonsense, but we can preserve it by insisting that victims of rape are "bad girls", leveraging whatever slander and rationalisation we can bring to hand. Whether or not we can prove it is unimportant so long as we feel that we have proved it, because this whole framework privileges the gut far above the brain.

This works so long as we continue to live in a world haunted by spooks and spirits, when the relationship between cause and effective is mediated by symbolic relationships as much as material ones, but it begins to break down in the light of modern, materialistic understanding. In the face of, you might say, Enlightenment. The fundamental divide between conservatives and progressives (the latter used in the broad sense, really covering anyone from classical liberals through to anarchist-communists) is whether they're prepared to accept this shift in thought. And the longer conservatives hold out, the more inconsistent, the more thoroughly senile, their politics become.

Traitorfish, we attribute being raped to licentiousness for the same reason you attribute support for gun control to racism - both correlate to genuine realities that we want to forestall. Of course there's a such thing as losing sight of the human being for the ideal, but leftists are every bit as guilty here.

Well, that's the funny thing about conservative magical thinker, the naturally-ordered world always hangs on the edge of crisis. They're incapable of imagining a world that is merely imperfect or unfair, because that would imply the absence of divine order (whether or not its described in so many words), and such an absence must be, if not total, then at least marked. God is with his people, or he is not; he can't be sorta with his people. He doesn't have weekend custody. We either live in the best of all possible worlds, or we live in a fallen world of suffering and sin, and the peculiar madness of "Moral Majority" conservativism emerges from the attempt to apply both these equally deranged convictions at the same time.

I don't understand how any of this rambling is an answer to the fact that most Christians believe that this world is in rebellion against goodness itself and that its innocents do indeed suffer all the time.

 

[Traitorfish]

Traitorfish, we attribute being raped to licentiousness for the same reason you attribute support for gun control to racism - both correlate to genuine realities that we want to forestall. Of course there's a such thing as losing sight of the human being for the ideal, but leftists are every bit as guilty here.

I'm having a hard time parsing this. Are you just contesting that the perceived relationship between slatternliness and rape is empirically true?

I don't understand how any of this rambling is an answer to the fact that most Christians believe that this world is in rebellion against goodness itself and that its innocents do indeed suffer all the time.

Very few Christians sincerely believe this to be the case, not in the deep-down bit of themselves. Not historically, and certainly not today. Whether that's attributable to humanism or pragmatism, Christians have overwhelmingly prioritised putting the world in order to lamenting its disorderliness. The suffering-of-innocents stuff is a comfort and a salve, but it is rarely a worldview; something to croon sadly around the coffin, not something that informs how a society is organised. Outside of certain monastic communities, Christianity is as worldly in practice as Judaism or Islam, albeit somewhat less well-equipped in practically-oriented scripture.