I think this depends almost entirely on how often you expect the busybodies to be wrong when they override people’s judgement.
I don’t think classifying adult humans in the same category as infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals is always an unreasonable decision. I refer to myself with this sentiment as well.
See, my problem with the Lewis quote is that it consists largely of a set of bare, unsupported assertions. Now, being unsupported doesn’t mean they aren’t true, but it does mean that they’re not very convincing. Speaking as someone who really is neutral/undecided on this topic, the quote doesn’t sway me one way or the other. So if, as you say, the only possible way you could expand on this claim is by “repeating [it] in more words”, I don’t find your position very well-supported.
Well, here’s some more from Lewis, as interpreted by me. But any piece of writing can be read as “a set of bare, unsupported assertions”, as the tortoise said to Achilles. The reader always has to work out for himself how the things fit together to make a machine that goes, especially with an isolated quote.
The quote is from an essay called “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment”. (You can google up the full text.) The eponymous theory, which he opposes, is that the sole functions of punishment are deterrence and reform. This implies (he says) that the sole standard by which to judge the laws prescribing punishments for crimes is the matter of fact: whether those aims are achieved. Are potential criminals deterred, and are actual criminals reformed. Justice is irrelevant. There is no such thing as justice, only welfare, collectively assessed. This implies the view of people expressed in the quote: to treat them no better than children, animals, or imbeciles. No individual matters to the advocate of this view, any more than a single cow matters to a farmer, who will slaughter it at once if it has picked up an infectious disease. The good of society as a whole is all that matters to this sort of humanitarian; which means, as Lewis is not the only one to observe, the good of the people on top, the would-be tyrants for whom, as I remark in another comment on this thread, a view of how people should live is necessarily a view about how people should be made to live.
I think Lewis’s contention in that essay is wrong, because he confuses two claims.
That the sole functions of punishment are deterrence and reform.
That nothing other than deterrence and reform should be considered when contemplating punishment.
The second of these may well lead to the conclusions he deplores (e.g., that there’s no such thing as too harsh a punishment, if it has the effect of deterring and/or reforming). The first doesn’t, because there can be other constraints on punishment. (E.g., it seems to me perfectly consistent to hold that what punishment is for is deterrence and reform, but that it is wrong to inflict any punishment more severe than some limit derived from the severity of the offence being punished.)
I think (some) people believe that the sole functions of punishment are deterrence and reform in the same way as they believe that the sole function of cancer surgery is to remove tumours; that doesn’t commit them to accepting limitlessly harsh punishment in the pursuit of reform, any more than it commits them to having cancer surgeons remove so much non-cancerous tissue that they kill their patients.
The first doesn’t, because there can be other constraints on punishment.
There can be, but but the theory he is opposing knows only these two, constrained only by their production of collective welfare, just as the cancer surgeon cuts out tumours as required for the patient’s health. A metaphor that excellently conveys Lewis’ horror at what he calls the humanitarian theory. The committers of bad deeds are a cancer to be cut out. Their status as people does not weigh in the scales. The collective is all.
Lewis is arguing that while these two things matter, they are not the only thing, and that when desert (i.e. what one deserves) is missing, one ends up with the moral consequences he describes.
Lewis is less than perfectly clear about what theory it is he is opposing, but whatever it is he claims it is “almost universal among my fellow-countrymen”. I do not find it plausible that almost all Englishmen[1] in 1949 believed that there should be no constraints on how criminals are treated other than the overall interests of “the collective”; do you, really?
[1] “Englishmen” should here be interpreted with exactly whatever degree of assumed maleness Lewis employed when he wrote “countrymen”.
The nearest thing Lewis gets to a clear statement of “the Humanitarian theory” (as he calls what he’s arguing against) is, I think, this:
According to the Humanitarian theory, to punish a man because he deserves it, and as much as he deserves, is mere revenge, and, therefore, barbarous and immoral. It is maintained that the only legitimate motives for punishing are the desire to deter others by example or to mend the criminal. When this theory is combined, as frequently happens, with the belief that crime is more or less pathological, the idea of mending tails off into that of healing or curing and punishment becomes therapeutic.
Now, as it happens, I believe (at least as a first approximation) that the only legitimate motives for punishing are the desire to deter others by example or to mend the criminal. I don’t quite think that “crime is more or less pathological”, and nor for that matter do I believe that even a majority of 1949 Englishmen thought so, but I don’t think this makes an essential difference here. But I do not hold that there are, or should be, no other constraints on punishment, nor do I hold that the only appropriate constraint is the welfare of the collective[2]. I am pretty sure that these are not in any useful sense implied by the belief that the only legitimate motives for punishing are, etc.; nor do I see any other reason to think that someone who thinks the only legitimate motives for punishing are, etc., should think there are no other constraints on punishment.
[2] I might endorse a sufficiently careful claim that the only appropriate constraint is some sort of global utility, but note that “sufficiently careful” includes, e.g., taking into account the fact that treating some individuals very badly “for the general good” is likely to have all kinds of second-order side effects, mostly very bad ones.
Lewis does not (at least, not as I read him) regard the claim that there are no other constraints on punishment as part of the Humanitarian Theory; he suggests that it follows from that theory, but he is wrong. Specifically, his argument goes like this: (1) The HT, unlike the older “Retributive Theory”, is not concerned with desert. (2) The question “is it just?” is specifically a question about desert; it doesn’t make sense to ask “is this a just deterrent?”, only “will it in fact deter?”, and similarly for curing. (3) Therefore, “when we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether”.
But note what he’s done in step 3. “When we cease to consider what the criminal deserves”. He is conflating two notions of desert. (a) What punishment does the criminal deserve, on account of the wickedness of his conduct or the harm it has caused? (b) What treatment does the criminal deserve, according to whatever general principles govern how we treat people? The “Humanitarian” theory of punishment indeed declines to make question (a) central, but that doesn’t mean it forbids you to ask question (b). And if you refuse to ask question (b) then you are on the road to totalitarianism quite independently of any questions about punishment.
Lewis goes on to say (purporting to describe the opinions of adherents of the “Humanitarian theory”) that ”
the only two questions we may now ask about a punishment are whether it deters and whether it cures”. But, again, this does not follow from the HT, nor is there any other reason why an adherent of the HT should endorse it.
If you prefer to read Lewis not as saying that this follows from the HT, but as saying that it is part of the HT, then my objection is different: so far as I know, scarcely anyone has ever endorsed this “extended Humanitarian theory”, and his arguments are not relevant to anyone who endorses merely the “unextended HT” that simply says that the only legitimate motives for punishing are the desire to deter and the desire to mend.
* * * *
Now, Lewis does write this:
The immediate starting point of this article was a letter [...] The author was pleading that a certain sin, now treated by our Laws as a crime, should henceforward be treated as a disease. And he complained that under the present system the offender, after a term in gaol, was simply let out to return to his original environment where he would probably relapse.
Of course we don’t have the original letter; we don’t even know that Lewis didn’t make it up, or misunderstand it. (Though I would guess that, being generally both honest and intelligent, he did neither.) So it’s hard to tell very much about what its author actually thought. But maybe Lewis did in fact encounter an adherent of what I’ve called the “extended Humanitarian theory”. If so, fair enough; let us agree that the EHT is unpleasant and conducive to totalitarianism. But let us not pretend, as unfortunately Lewis does, that the EHT is either the same thing as, or a necessary consequence of, the idea that punishment should be for deterrence and reform rather than for retribution.
I do not find it plausible that almost all Englishmen[1] in 1949 believed that there should be no constraints on how criminals are treated other than the overall interests of “the collective”; do you, really?
He might hope that they do not, when this consequence of their views is argued to them.
But note what he’s done in step 3. “When we cease to consider what the criminal deserves”. He is conflating two notions of desert. (a) What punishment does the criminal deserve, on account of the wickedness of his conduct or the harm it has caused? (b) What treatment does the criminal deserve, according to whatever general principles govern how we treat people?
I don’t think so. By desert he refers to (a) alone. You have extended it to (b).
The point is that (a) is what he correctly says the “Humanitarian theory” isn’t concerned with, but the conclusions he draws rely on a commitment to not caring about (b) either.
I do not find it plausible that almost all Englishmen[1] in 1949 believed that there should be no constraints on how criminals are treated other than the overall interests of “the collective”; do you, really?
He might hope that they do not, when this consequence of their expressed views is argued to them.
Well, here’s some more from Lewis, as interpreted by me. But any piece of writing can be read as “a set of bare, unsupported assertions”, as the tortoise said to Achilles. The reader has to work out for himself how the things fit together to make a machine that goes, especially with an isolated quote.
The quote is from an essay called “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment”. (You can google up the full text.) The eponymous theory, which he opposes, is that the sole functions of punishment are deterrence and reform. This implies (he says) that the sole standard by which to judge the laws prescribing punishments for crimes is the matter of fact: whether those aims are achieved. Are potential criminals deterred, and are actual criminals reformed. Justice is irrelevant. This implies the view of people expressed in the quote: to treat them no better than children, animals, or imbeciles. No individual matters to the advocate of this view, any more than a single cow matters to a farmer, who will slaughter it at once if it has picked up an infectious disease. The good of society as a whole is all that matters to this sort of humanitarian; which means, as Lewis is not the only one to observe, the good of the people on top, the would-be tyrants for whom, as I remark in another comment on this thread, a view of how people should live is necessarily a view about how people should be made to live.
On the scale of evil, it does not rank with marching dissidents off to reeducation camps to be purified of their delusions through daily toil for the greater collective utility of the people. Does that answer your question?
I think this depends almost entirely on how often you expect the busybodies to be wrong when they override people’s judgement.
I don’t think classifying adult humans in the same category as infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals is always an unreasonable decision. I refer to myself with this sentiment as well.
“Always” is a good place to start.
Could you expand on this?
Only by repeating the same thought in more words, but the original quote from Lewis does that.
See, my problem with the Lewis quote is that it consists largely of a set of bare, unsupported assertions. Now, being unsupported doesn’t mean they aren’t true, but it does mean that they’re not very convincing. Speaking as someone who really is neutral/undecided on this topic, the quote doesn’t sway me one way or the other. So if, as you say, the only possible way you could expand on this claim is by “repeating [it] in more words”, I don’t find your position very well-supported.
Well, here’s some more from Lewis, as interpreted by me. But any piece of writing can be read as “a set of bare, unsupported assertions”, as the tortoise said to Achilles. The reader always has to work out for himself how the things fit together to make a machine that goes, especially with an isolated quote.
The quote is from an essay called “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment”. (You can google up the full text.) The eponymous theory, which he opposes, is that the sole functions of punishment are deterrence and reform. This implies (he says) that the sole standard by which to judge the laws prescribing punishments for crimes is the matter of fact: whether those aims are achieved. Are potential criminals deterred, and are actual criminals reformed. Justice is irrelevant. There is no such thing as justice, only welfare, collectively assessed. This implies the view of people expressed in the quote: to treat them no better than children, animals, or imbeciles. No individual matters to the advocate of this view, any more than a single cow matters to a farmer, who will slaughter it at once if it has picked up an infectious disease. The good of society as a whole is all that matters to this sort of humanitarian; which means, as Lewis is not the only one to observe, the good of the people on top, the would-be tyrants for whom, as I remark in another comment on this thread, a view of how people should live is necessarily a view about how people should be made to live.
I think Lewis’s contention in that essay is wrong, because he confuses two claims.
That the sole functions of punishment are deterrence and reform.
That nothing other than deterrence and reform should be considered when contemplating punishment.
The second of these may well lead to the conclusions he deplores (e.g., that there’s no such thing as too harsh a punishment, if it has the effect of deterring and/or reforming). The first doesn’t, because there can be other constraints on punishment. (E.g., it seems to me perfectly consistent to hold that what punishment is for is deterrence and reform, but that it is wrong to inflict any punishment more severe than some limit derived from the severity of the offence being punished.)
I think (some) people believe that the sole functions of punishment are deterrence and reform in the same way as they believe that the sole function of cancer surgery is to remove tumours; that doesn’t commit them to accepting limitlessly harsh punishment in the pursuit of reform, any more than it commits them to having cancer surgeons remove so much non-cancerous tissue that they kill their patients.
There can be, but but the theory he is opposing knows only these two, constrained only by their production of collective welfare, just as the cancer surgeon cuts out tumours as required for the patient’s health. A metaphor that excellently conveys Lewis’ horror at what he calls the humanitarian theory. The committers of bad deeds are a cancer to be cut out. Their status as people does not weigh in the scales. The collective is all.
Lewis is arguing that while these two things matter, they are not the only thing, and that when desert (i.e. what one deserves) is missing, one ends up with the moral consequences he describes.
Lewis is less than perfectly clear about what theory it is he is opposing, but whatever it is he claims it is “almost universal among my fellow-countrymen”. I do not find it plausible that almost all Englishmen[1] in 1949 believed that there should be no constraints on how criminals are treated other than the overall interests of “the collective”; do you, really?
[1] “Englishmen” should here be interpreted with exactly whatever degree of assumed maleness Lewis employed when he wrote “countrymen”.
The nearest thing Lewis gets to a clear statement of “the Humanitarian theory” (as he calls what he’s arguing against) is, I think, this:
Now, as it happens, I believe (at least as a first approximation) that the only legitimate motives for punishing are the desire to deter others by example or to mend the criminal. I don’t quite think that “crime is more or less pathological”, and nor for that matter do I believe that even a majority of 1949 Englishmen thought so, but I don’t think this makes an essential difference here. But I do not hold that there are, or should be, no other constraints on punishment, nor do I hold that the only appropriate constraint is the welfare of the collective[2]. I am pretty sure that these are not in any useful sense implied by the belief that the only legitimate motives for punishing are, etc.; nor do I see any other reason to think that someone who thinks the only legitimate motives for punishing are, etc., should think there are no other constraints on punishment.
[2] I might endorse a sufficiently careful claim that the only appropriate constraint is some sort of global utility, but note that “sufficiently careful” includes, e.g., taking into account the fact that treating some individuals very badly “for the general good” is likely to have all kinds of second-order side effects, mostly very bad ones.
Lewis does not (at least, not as I read him) regard the claim that there are no other constraints on punishment as part of the Humanitarian Theory; he suggests that it follows from that theory, but he is wrong. Specifically, his argument goes like this: (1) The HT, unlike the older “Retributive Theory”, is not concerned with desert. (2) The question “is it just?” is specifically a question about desert; it doesn’t make sense to ask “is this a just deterrent?”, only “will it in fact deter?”, and similarly for curing. (3) Therefore, “when we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether”.
But note what he’s done in step 3. “When we cease to consider what the criminal deserves”. He is conflating two notions of desert. (a) What punishment does the criminal deserve, on account of the wickedness of his conduct or the harm it has caused? (b) What treatment does the criminal deserve, according to whatever general principles govern how we treat people? The “Humanitarian” theory of punishment indeed declines to make question (a) central, but that doesn’t mean it forbids you to ask question (b). And if you refuse to ask question (b) then you are on the road to totalitarianism quite independently of any questions about punishment.
Lewis goes on to say (purporting to describe the opinions of adherents of the “Humanitarian theory”) that ” the only two questions we may now ask about a punishment are whether it deters and whether it cures”. But, again, this does not follow from the HT, nor is there any other reason why an adherent of the HT should endorse it.
If you prefer to read Lewis not as saying that this follows from the HT, but as saying that it is part of the HT, then my objection is different: so far as I know, scarcely anyone has ever endorsed this “extended Humanitarian theory”, and his arguments are not relevant to anyone who endorses merely the “unextended HT” that simply says that the only legitimate motives for punishing are the desire to deter and the desire to mend.
* * * *
Now, Lewis does write this:
Of course we don’t have the original letter; we don’t even know that Lewis didn’t make it up, or misunderstand it. (Though I would guess that, being generally both honest and intelligent, he did neither.) So it’s hard to tell very much about what its author actually thought. But maybe Lewis did in fact encounter an adherent of what I’ve called the “extended Humanitarian theory”. If so, fair enough; let us agree that the EHT is unpleasant and conducive to totalitarianism. But let us not pretend, as unfortunately Lewis does, that the EHT is either the same thing as, or a necessary consequence of, the idea that punishment should be for deterrence and reform rather than for retribution.
He might hope that they do not, when this consequence of their views is argued to them.
I don’t think so. By desert he refers to (a) alone. You have extended it to (b).
The point is that (a) is what he correctly says the “Humanitarian theory” isn’t concerned with, but the conclusions he draws rely on a commitment to not caring about (b) either.
He might hope that they do not, when this consequence of their expressed views is argued to them.
He might. But, as I explained, I don’t think it is a consequence of their expressed views.
Well, here’s some more from Lewis, as interpreted by me. But any piece of writing can be read as “a set of bare, unsupported assertions”, as the tortoise said to Achilles. The reader has to work out for himself how the things fit together to make a machine that goes, especially with an isolated quote.
The quote is from an essay called “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment”. (You can google up the full text.) The eponymous theory, which he opposes, is that the sole functions of punishment are deterrence and reform. This implies (he says) that the sole standard by which to judge the laws prescribing punishments for crimes is the matter of fact: whether those aims are achieved. Are potential criminals deterred, and are actual criminals reformed. Justice is irrelevant. This implies the view of people expressed in the quote: to treat them no better than children, animals, or imbeciles. No individual matters to the advocate of this view, any more than a single cow matters to a farmer, who will slaughter it at once if it has picked up an infectious disease. The good of society as a whole is all that matters to this sort of humanitarian; which means, as Lewis is not the only one to observe, the good of the people on top, the would-be tyrants for whom, as I remark in another comment on this thread, a view of how people should live is necessarily a view about how people should be made to live.
Would you object to behavioral nudges a la Thaler?
Would that count as “behavioral nudges a la Thaler”?
On the scale of evil, it does not rank with marching dissidents off to reeducation camps to be purified of their delusions through daily toil for the greater collective utility of the people. Does that answer your question?