Does justice exist?

[Terxpahseyton]

We all know and on some basic level understand the concept of justice. Fundamentally, it means that you get what you deserve. What goes around comes back around. You do good. You receive good. You do bad, you receive bad. Justice stipulates a balance in the world, an equal share based on what you have done to deserve it.
There was an experiment with apes where they received a cucumber or a grapefruit. Like humans, apes would favor a grapefruit for its sugar. When both apes received cucumber, they were happy eating it. When one got cucumber and the other the grape, the cucumber ape would "revolt" by not eating the cucumber and showing other signs of discontent.
But looking at it from an evolutionary point of view: What is the point of this impulse? The answer which shoots straight to my head is of course competition. You compete with your surrounding for survival. Most immediately, with your social peers. To not want to be disadvantaged is in this light a basic instinct to maintain yourself against this competition.

So not about what it right, but about what benefits you. That is not the whole story, given. As advanced social animals, we have the capability of empathy (as apes). We can feel this same emotion of entitlement for others.

But how does this relate to what someone deserves? Does everyone deserve the same share? How is it determined what someone deserves?

Neuroscience teaches us, that we can decide what we do. But that we can not decide what we want. Which means, that in every instance of what we do, every individual faces different initial settings in how to get there. Apparent injustice one could say. It comes down to hormones, thought patterns, brains that show large divergences in how exactly they are developed and genes of course.
Which means that we all operate form inherently different positions, which influence us way beyond what we can decide. How can this enable any kind of actual, real justice. How can we even talk about deserving something under such conditions?

What is justice, if it does not take into account our different positions from which we are able to operate to begin with? What is the difference between having a broken family, or a bad school, or to be discrimanted against based on race and simly having a brain which puts you at a disadvantage? Appalling injustice? And if yes, what is left of what we call justice? Survival instincts? Be it self-centered or social?

So is justice just an euphemism? A buzz word to enforce an order we are willing to accept, never mind its actual injustice? Is justice an obvious lie? Merely an ideology? An ideology which does the world make a better place, I don't want to argue that. But does it so by enforcing actual justice? Or just by having very practical gains, which don't actually have much resemblance with justice?

Do we call it justice to believe in it, while in the end for very unidealogical gains?

Do you believe justice exists in any meaningful way? A way which does not rule out unjust factors of defining importance?

 

[Bootstoots]

I think there are a bunch of vaguely-defined but useful concepts that we humans have created to help our societies function. Justice is one of those concepts.

 

[LucyDuke]

Sorry, gotta bust out some dictionary for this.

justice, noun
1
a : the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments
b : judge
c : the administration of law; especially : the establishment or determination of rights according to the rules of law or equity
2
a : the quality of being just, impartial, or fair
b (1) : the principle or ideal of just dealing or right action (2) : conformity to this principle or ideal : righteousness
c : the quality of conforming to law
3
: conformity to truth, fact, or reason : correctness

just, adv
1
a : having a basis in or conforming to fact or reason : reasonable <a just but not a generous decision>
b archaic : faithful to an original
c : conforming to a standard of correctness : proper <just proportions>
2
a (1) : acting or being in conformity with what is morally upright or good : righteous <a just war> (2) : being what is merited : deserved <a just punishment>
b : legally correct : lawful <just title to an estate>

I guess the legal sense is not important to this question because it's very easy to define and understand and it isn't interesting, it's just the application of law.

Behind that is the assignment of merited rewards and punishments, and being in conformity with what is morally upright or good.

I think the concept obviously exists, but we can probably never achieve perfect justice. The first bar is that we're not omniscient and can't take all relevant factors into account, the second is that we don't even agree on what constitutes "morally good" or what merits reward or punishment.

I don't think it's about competition, and I'm surprised you didn't use the word "fair". It's about fairness. If we both just pushed the same button, it's not fair that you got the grapefruit and I got a dumb cucumber. Your lucky break reward makes me feel like my unlucky break cucumber was a punishment.

(We have this really bad habit of seeing meaning where there isn't any. It drives me mad to hear complaints that progressive taxation "punishes" the highly-paid, as though the tax rates are designed to be punitive measures to discourage people from being highly-paid. It's not that any more than the low-paid are being rewarded. That intention is missing.)

Of course life isn't fair and I didn't get the grapefruit and Tom was born with no arms and oh well. We try to balance it but life isn't math either.

If you climbed the tree to get the grapefruit, you merit that reward, while lazy me stayed on the ground and grabbed the cucumber. Seems fair enough. Tom doesn't have arms, he can't climb the tree, but how do we know if he would have if he could have? Should someone else get him a grapefruit while they're up there because Tom didn't get a choice?

The fair thing, the just thing, if we want to really take it seriously, is try to get Tom some prosthetic arms. If we value fairness, we'll all be willing to cooperate and sacrifice a little for the sake of the Toms that need arms, because hey, could've been me. But then maybe we make really awesome prosthetic arms and it's super easy for Tom to climb trees and get grapefruits all day. I bet he'd be willing to share the extras, since we helped him with the arms.

Rather than drag that out... justice definitely exists, and it's something we should strive for, even if we can't pin down exactly how to account for our differences. I think striving for it requires that we try to get Tom some arms, since it's pretty repugnant to leave morality to lady fortune.

This is what my posts read like without review and edits!

 

[Ayn Rand]

I think the poll design is skewed towards the negative. Of course justice exists.

 

[Tee Kay]

I think there are a bunch of vaguely-defined but useful concepts that we humans have created to help our societies function. Justice is one of those concepts.

Indeed.

It's like "liberty" or "freedom" or "happiness". There's no one exact definition, but most of us knows injustice or sadness when we see it.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

"When we see it"? This phrase and your comparison to sadness suggests an intuitive knowing, not a rational. Do you find it likely that what our intuition tells us resembles actual justice?
Can we even "know" by intuition unless something plays by the rules of intuition? And are those rules just?

Will write more later.

 

[Tee Kay]

"When we see it"? This phrase and your comparison to sadness suggests an intuitive knowing, not a rational. Do you find it likely that what our intuition tells us resembles actual justice?

You're still looking for an absolute, as if justice can be defined in the way that temperature can be defined.

 

[eduhum]

When a burglar goes to your house, rob your computer, your books, rapes your daughter, kills your wife, and then puts it in fire you will do NOTHING and you will not be sad or angry because justice DOESN'T exist.

Seriously, what kind of question IS THIS?

And why is your poll so arbitrary??? Of course it exists!

 

[brennan]

Do you believe justice exists in any meaningful way?

Unless I can poke and prod it, no. It's a concept, an ideal. I do not think the word 'exists' applies to it.

 

[Kyriakos]

Seems closer to the nature of the term "Karma", which mysticists (among other believers) maintain exists.
I think that in a way karma exists, because i am of the view that man fundamentally is geared towards being something positive. So if man acts in a catastrophic way, this will feed into his psyche and create problems. Surely some people can adapt to twisted lifestyles, but this appears to be its own punishment.

 

[Ayn Rand]

When a burglar goes to your house, rob your computer, your books, rapes your daughter, kills your wife, and then puts it in fire you will do NOTHING and you will not be sad or angry because justice DOESN'T exist.

Seriously, what kind of question IS THIS?

And why is your poll so arbitrary??? Of course it exists!

Maybe SiLL is really asking whether perfect justice exists? I can't make sense of the question either.

 

[Monsterzuma]

I think there are a bunch of vaguely-defined but useful concepts that we humans have created to help our societies function. Justice is one of those concepts.

yes, but its hard to find any terms that don't fit this definition. even a "human" as we typically understand it is an abstract entity with no direct physical correlate: the cells in your body die and get replaced every n months. your body now and in few years hardly have any atoms in common.

so if this is a reason to say justice does not exists, then humans don't exist either. personally, i don't want to go down that road.

 

[Traitorfish]

It exists, but it does not exist objectively.

yes, but its hard to find any terms that don't fit this definition. even a "human" as we typically understand it is an abstract entity with no direct physical correlate: the cells in your body die and get replaced every n months. your body now and in few years hardly have any atoms in common.

so if this is a reason to say justice does not exists, then humans don't exist either. personally, i don't want to go down that road.

What have you got against existentialism?

 

[Monsterzuma]

What have you got against existentialism?

uhh i like existentialism. i consider Nietzsche the ultimate philosopher. why are you asking questions that have nothing to do with the thing you quoted?

 

[Traitorfish]

uhh i like existentialism. i consider Nietzsche the ultimate philosopher. why are you asking questions that have nothing to do with the thing you quoted?

The existentialists, and above all Nietzsche, rejected the idea of an enduring subject.

 

[Monsterzuma]

The existentialists, and above all Nietzsche, rejected the idea of an enduring subject.

actually Nietzsche would reject the context of the discussion in its entirety and on a gut level I do that like him. but within the context of this mere "language game" this is of little relevance. I don't think the issue relates to the semantics of the term "human" quite in the way you think it does. Nietzsche would condone the use of "useful concepts" as bootstoots describes them in as far as this contributes to the transformation of man into superman.

 

[eduhum]

Perfect justice can only be fully understood with God, as God is infinite justice (and infinite love)

I think even atheists can understand this simple and logical conclusion (even if they don't believe in him)

 

[Terxpahseyton]

@LucyDuke
To explain justice with fairness lends itself. you are right. But then again, this explanation seems quit circular to me. When fairness is the concept of equal opportunity and justice is based on equal opportunity (be it postively by getting the same chance or be it negatively by punishing someone who derives someone else off this chance), then justice and fairness are the same terms for the same basic concept, just that justice carries an imperative of action with it to correct for the unfairness of the world based on the reasoning that causing unfairness is immoral and causing fairness moral.
So even though there is a difference between fairness and justice regarding the contexts those words are used, they seem to be essentially the same thing. Which makes it impossible to truly explain one with the other.

It will not tell you what justice really, objectively means in this world. What its actual roots are, what its actual nature is and what it means in practice.

For that, we need to find grounds beyond the subjective perception of things and there I thought evolution lends itself. Which is why I argued with survival instincts. And which leads me to the question, if the concept of justice actually is about justice, or about other things.

The bolded is what this thread is about. If justice does not exist, what we call justice would be concerned with an illusion. Which would raise the question, what lies behind this illusion. What justice really is.

It exists, but it does not exist objectively.

That sums it up very good.

You're still looking for an absolute, as if justice can be defined in the way that temperature can be defined.

What is this supposed to mean? That you can't have an objective look at something which roots in the subjective?

When a burglar goes to your house, rob your computer, your books, rapes your daughter, kills your wife, and then puts it in fire you will do NOTHING and you will not be sad or angry because justice DOESN'T exist.

Seriously, what kind of question IS THIS?

And why is your poll so arbitrary??? Of course it exists!

As Traitorfish correctly stated: on the subjective level, yes. But on the subjective level, ghosts, wizards and dragons can also exist. So a merely subjective existence is actually no existence at all, but merely the believe that something exists.
Do you want to argue that justice also exists objectively?

Perfect justice can only be fully understood with God, as God is infinite justice (and infinite love)

I think even atheists can understand this simple and logical conclusion (even if they don't believe in him)

Atheists understand that when one just makes up assumptions, everything can be logical.

 

[innonimatu]

And which leads me to the question, if the concept of justice actually is about justice, or about other things.

The bolded is what this thread is about. If justice does not exist, what we call justice would be concerned with an illusion. Which would raise the question, what lies behind this illusion. What justice really is.

There are two apparently different ideas of justice. The judicial one has always been about logic and predictability. Crime and punishment, cause and effect... Oh, and it has always been also conservative. Even when we look back at past judicial systems and pronounce them illogical by our standards, we guess that they were logical to the people who had them, within their system of values.

And I think that this gives us some very strong clues about the other idea, the moral idea of justice: logic and predictability are big in that too. That's the reason why the moral dilemmas turn into big judicial dilemmas, often causing laws to be changed. When contradictory laws (or laws and customs) lock people into tragic circumstances justice of the laws becomes an issue...

So, if you want an attempt at a definition, I'd try this: justice is the logical and predictable application of a shared and acknowledged system of values by a community.
It demands nothing more about what that system can be.

 

[madviking]

Justice doesn't exist since we're animals inhabiting an apathetic universe.