Relationship between crime and ethics

[Borachio]

But this contains a paradox: if in attempting to protect a group of people from actions designed to promote the "greater good", then this attempt is itself an attempt to promote the "greater good" too.

It doesn't hold water logically, imo.

(But of course, I understand the point she was making about individuals and their families. And what is a family? A kind of miniature society?)

 

[Flying Pig]

But this contains a paradox: if in attempting to protect a group of people from actions designed to promote the "greater good" then this attempt is itself an attempt to promote the "greater good" too.

Yes, but it also promotes their own good - many people throughout history have justified repression as being 'in the national interest', 'for the greater good' and so on, and Thatcher was rejecting that.

 

[Borachio]

I can see she did. I wouldn't dream of suggesting she ever acted in the interests of the nation. I do believe she thought she did. At times.

 

[Traitorfish]

A social contract isn't really a Thing; it's an interpretation: whether it exists is immaterial to how things are, but it does provide something of a lens when considering how things should be. In effect, we say 'if government was a contract signed between the people and the State, then it should be run like this', and decide that since such a contract is a good starting-point for legitimate authority, then it makes sense to run it in that way.

That's true. But it's not obvious that we should take that starting point. I don't think that it's even predominant among political thinkers, at this point, let alone universal.

Well, true. But it doesn't mean he doesn't either.

"There's no such thing as society" cooed Thatcher. But the great British public, in one of their fleeting moments of sanity, decided she was wrong.

How are we jumping straight from "society" to "social contract"?

 

[Borachio]

I'm not sure. But clearly you couldn't have a social contract without a society. Would you agree?

And is it possible to have a society with no social contract? It would seem a fairly intuitive (though naturally hence unreliable) consequence, to me.

And if these two are valid assumptions, then a society is a necessary and sufficient condition of a social contract.

But in the end, I'm far too lazy-minded to be bothered over much by this sort of issue.

 

[Stapel]

I guess I can have a go at this forum after some time......

This question came up in the Smullyan's Paradox thread, and I thought it deserved it's own thread.

What is the relationship between crime and ethics?

My own opinion succinctly stated is that
Criminal law is society's method of enforcing it's agreed upon system of ethical obligation. This is a lower ethical standard than what a person should do or should be praised for doing.

Just a week ago, I argued against this in RL. There are many, many examples of society (or at least its majority) agreeing on ethical issues, whereas the same issues are not even near criminal law. It really varies from rather silly things like being too late for an appointment to cheating in a relationship.

For what action do you feel worse, has stuck with you for longer and makes you still think sometimes? The mars bar you stole from a supermarket to impress some childhood friends? Or how you treated your girlfriend a few years later?

I guess we can argue about that for a long time, during a proper discussion on ethics!! But it's quite simple the former is criminal and the latter is not.

 

[Traitorfish]

I'm not sure. But clearly you couldn't have a social contract without a society. Would you agree?

And is it possible to have a society with no social contract? It would seem a fairly intuitive (though naturally hence unreliable) consequence, to me.

And if these two are valid assumptions, then a society is a necessary and sufficient condition of a social contract.

But in the end, I'm far too lazy-minded to be bothered over much by this sort of issue.

What about the existence of society presupposes a social contract? That seems to rest on a certain assumption about the nature of society, namely, that it represents a aggregate of autonomous individuals with the ontological (if not necessarily practical) choice of existing outside of society. If we take a view of society which does not lend ontological primacy to the individual (which isn't necessarily say that it's lent to society, mind you), that doesn't suppose an individual as constituted ontologically prior to society, or perhaps doesn't even assume an individual at all (e.g. Prof. Grumpy), then it's not at all obvious that any sort of contract, however abstract or metaphorical, is necessary to explain the existence of that society.

 

[Borachio]

Yes. I can see the logic of that.

I just don't think it's the case.

Do you consider yourself to be an individual or not?

 

[Traitorfish]

Increasingly, no, I don't. A subject, certainly, but I don't know if we can truly say that the sort of discrete subjectivity supposed by the ontology individualism actually exists. It may seem to exist, but I'm not even sure that this is the straightforwardly empirical conclusion that we think it is, something that only with rigorous analysis turns out to be incorrect, and that we don't just believe that it seems to exist because our culture presupposes that this is so. (There's an anecdote in which a historian explains to an astronomer that pre-modern peoples thought that the sun went round the earth because that is how it appears from our vantage point. The astronomer considers this, and then asks "Tell me, what would it look like if the earth went round the sun?".)

 

[Borachio]

Righto. I'm inclined to agree that we aren't individuals. But probably for rather different reasons.

Nevertheless, it's an unpopular point of view at the moment. So I suspect the portability of this idea is negligible.

And, since most people will think in terms of individuals, I think it reasonable to talk to them in terms of the social contract.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Obvious follow-up - if he can't afford a loaf of bread, how will you make him pay for the loaf, the window pane, and the punitive charge?

If we are going by the Law of Moses (which does set the penalty for theft as paying back double in most cases, although if the thief stole livestock he may have to pay back 4 or 5 times as much and if he stole a human the punishment is death by decapitation), then the answer is to sell the man into slavery/indentured servitude until he has worked enough to pay back everything he owes.

Of course, if he still hasn't paid everything off by the Year of Jubilee (which comes every 50 years), then he is to be set free and have his debts all forgiven. If he is Jewish, he can go free after only 7 years. Whenever he is set free, he is to be given some property of his own on which to support himself. He forfeits this property if he tries to run away before he is supposed to be freed, but anyone who tries to force him back into slavery would be decapitated as punishment for kidnapping.


Of course, the Law of Moses also defended Gleaners' Rights, so there wouldn't have been much need to steal to feed his family in the first place. Stealing a loaf of bread that someone has already baked would be considered theft, but a farmer's property rights were contingent on allowing the poor to come and take whatever they want from 10% of his field plus anything that was dropped while harvesting the rest of it. The tithes were also supposed to be distributed to the landless, not only the Levites but even poor gentiles sojourning in the land.

 

[lovett]

Increasingly, no, I don't. A subject, certainly, but I don't know if we can truly say that the sort of discrete subjectivity supposed by the ontology individualism actually exists.

What sort of ontological individualism are you talking about here?

I.e. what do you mean by the claim 'individuals might not exist'?

 

[timtofly]

There is no reason for there to be existence?

 

[Traitorfish]

Righto. I'm inclined to agree that we aren't individuals. But probably for rather different reasons.

Nevertheless, it's an unpopular point of view at the moment. So I suspect the portability of this idea is negligible.

And, since most people will think in terms of individuals, I think it reasonable to talk to them in terms of the social contract.

I think that depends on what you're hoping to get out of the exchange. If you're going for mass appeal, "Save the bush-tailed subway marmot!" or whatever, then, yeah, it makes sense to bend yourself to their terms.

What sort of ontological individualism are you talking about here?

I.e. what do you mean by the claim 'individuals might not exist'?

I'm taking "individual" here to mean the conception of as subject as a self-sufficient atom, constituted prior to her existence as a member of society. It's a necessary presupposition of a contractarian theory of society, because if contract is the basis of society, there must necessarily be some set of individuals who are (ontologically, if not chronologically) prior to society to engage in that contract. You can't have a contract between non-existent parties.

A non-individualist ontology, then, would be one in which society comes first, the individual second- or perhaps not at all. In such an ontology, we, at least insofar as we're any "we" that we'd recognise, are inseparable from our lives as social beings, as participants in social practice. That doesn't mean that the individual (or, if we're dumping the individual, "the human", to borrow Guy Halsall's usage) is reduced to a function of the over-arching structure. But it does mean that a contractarian theory of society becomes impossible, because there is not even in principle any set of pre-social individuals capable of giving rise to it.

 

[Borachio]

Hmm. Yes. You make a strong case. All things considered.

 

[lovett]

I'm taking "individual" here to mean the conception of as subject as a self-sufficient atom, constituted prior to her existence as a member of society. It's a necessary presupposition of a contractarian theory of society, because if contract is the basis of society, there must necessarily be some set of individuals who are (ontologically, if not chronologically) prior to society to engage in that contract. You can't have a contract between non-existent parties.

A non-individualist ontology, then, would be one in which society comes first, the individual second- or perhaps not at all. In such an ontology, we, at least insofar as we're any "we" that we'd recognise, are inseparable from our lives as social beings, as participants in social practice. That doesn't mean that the individual (or, if we're dumping the individual, "the human", to borrow Guy Halsall's usage) is reduced to a function of the over-arching structure. But it does mean that a contractarian theory of society becomes impossible, because there is not even in principle any set of pre-social individuals capable of giving rise to it.

I'm still not quite sure how to interpret what you're saying.

You say that our individual lives are 'inseparable from our lives as social beings'. But you can't mean here that we would stop living if we were plucked from society. It is possible for us -fully formed as we are- to exist (notwishstanding issues of sustenance) without society. If I woke up tomorrow and found everyone to have disappeared I wouldn't simply disappear; I would still be there. Or, if I found a portal to another planet, wandered through and started living on my own; this wouldn't destroy me. So I don't think you are making this strong modal claim.

But I also doubt your making a very weak modal claim; a claim like 'society is prior to the individual in that, as a matter of fact, all individuals have become the individuals they are through societal pressure'. This is just a claim about our upbringing; it is a claim that to become the people we are (and, perhaps, persons at all) we need have been brought up as a social animal. I doubt your making this claim because it is utterly uncontroversial, and I take you to be suggesting something you think possibly controversial. This claim also won't support any ontological modification; for lamps to become lamps they need factories, but that doesn't mean lamps don't exist. They do exist; both they and factories exist.


So I am somewhat at a loss as regards what it would be for individuals not to exist.

 

[timtofly]

So we give up individualism (personal responsbility) and trust that society itself will solve all our issues?

 

[ParkCungHee]

But this contains a paradox: if in attempting to protect a group of people from actions designed to promote the "greater good", then this attempt is itself an attempt to promote the "greater good" too.

It doesn't hold water logically, imo.

The point is that frequently people allow an intellectual abstraction to take the place of the material reality it is supposed to represent.

It's probably one of the most frequent problems in politics.

 

[Borachio]

I think that depends on what you're hoping to get out of the exchange. If you're going for mass appeal, "Save the bush-tailed subway marmot!" or whatever, then, yeah, it makes sense to bend yourself to their terms.

A non-individualist ontology, then, would be one in which society comes first, the individual second- or perhaps not at all. In such an ontology, we, at least insofar as we're any "we" that we'd recognise, are inseparable from our lives as social beings, as participants in social practice. That doesn't mean that the individual (or, if we're dumping the individual, "the human", to borrow Guy Halsall's usage) is reduced to a function of the over-arching structure. But it does mean that a contractarian theory of society becomes impossible, because there is not even in principle any set of pre-social individuals capable of giving rise to it.

So. You're saying rather than argue about the individual and society and the possible relationships between the two, it would be better to approach this thing at the source? Dissolve people's sense of their individuality - or their egos (?) - and all these notions like property rights and power structures just disappear?

That would be nice, eh? Perhaps.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Or not so nice, maybe. That's a pretty good run down of the Fascist conception of the self.