"iwpoe" wrote:

They can't sort out property, self-denial, delay of gratification, and they express negative feelings in extreme sometimes even frightening ways.

It's not their fault. Self-denial requires a well-developed prefrontal cortex, and that is the very last region of the brain to develop. In fact, it doesn't even finish developing until you're 26.

"iwpoe" wrote:

what exactly are centaurs?

Humans are the unique rational animal up to isomorphism, so centaurs, if they existed, would be humans but with different bodily features, not unlike the difference between, say, a Greek and a Chinese person.

While we're on the subject of psychedelics, it should be stated that, pharmacologically speaking, the class of drugs popularly referred to as "psychedelics" are really Serotonergic psychedelics, and it appears that serotonergic functioning is intimately tied up with both feelings of empathy and "spiritual awakenings."

The question of deserts is more complex than I can handle at the moment, but I do want to respond to one valid objection.

brian_g wrote:

There was a time when I didn't care for the notion of retributive justice.  It seems to me that criminal justice should be about protecting society and rehabilitating the criminal.  Here is what convinced me otherwise.  If we punish someone, not because they deserve it, but because it would benefit society, then it isn't really necessary that the person be guilty.  It's conceivable that punishing an innocent person might actually benefit and protect society.  (Check out the movie Minority Report)  It's also conceivable that we could rehabilitate people before they committed crimes and that would be a benefit to society.  So, if we only punish people not because they deserve it, but because there is some good consequences, we could justify punishing innocent people, which is absurd.  By contrast, if someone already deserves to be punished, it would not be wrong to use that punishment to protect society, to deter other criminals, and to rehabilitate the criminal.

(1) "To benefit society" is a nebulous, vague goal. "To prevent future injustice" isn't. 

(2) The whole point is that I'm trying to do away with retribution, so to assume my idea of justice but then to reintroduce "punishment" through a backdoor is to not have my idea lead to a reductio.

(3) If we assume that the question of what to do with the perpetrator is a matter of preventing future injustice, then how is preventing a murderer from committing his crime different from our modern program of suicide prevention? We calculate if some person is likely to commit suicide, intervene by putting him under psychological care and, if necessary, giving him drugs, and let him go when the risk is gone. And guess what? The general consensus is that both the attempted suicide victim and society are better off for the intervention.

Let's go back to the [i]Mino

I also admit that the way you mimicked my final line and linked to "fetishized" made me laugh really hard. You clearly are a good analyst.

"Timocrates" wrote:

Reparation justice can and does justify slavery of human beings. Because if a human being's life is interchangeable with a finite good, then any extra finite good overrides that one finite good. Someone could kill someone you love and replace it in principle and satisfy it in justice with goods. This is - as universal human intuition knows - impossible. It's just easier to see this in the case of people whom we love.

This is not what I mean by restorative justice. The only proper way to do justice for the wrong that was done when a life is killed is to bring the person back from the dead. This is impossible. So justice cannot be actualized in this life. This is philosophically speaking not a problem, because there is no philosophical obligation for us to have a definition of justice that can be actualized. More importantly, justice, under my definition, would have nothing whatsoever to do with the perpetrator of the crime. What to do with the criminal is purely a matter of preventing future injustice.

I suspect that retribution has become such a popular definition of justice not because of any rigorous reasoning showing that retribution is good, but because of displacement we become extremely angry when justice cannot be meted out and seek to displace our frustration upon the perpetrator. This explains how retribution can both be psychologically satisfying yet unsound.