Should people still be regarded as criminals under these circumstances?

[Philosophy Explorer]

Phil,

If it were possible to edit life/lives as you suggest, living would cease to have meaning. The finite-ness of living, and the irrevocability of the past, makes for the meaningful striving in the here and and now, with a mind to shape the future. Easy editing or revision of the past, easy resurrection, these terminate the need to strive, to impart meaning, to hope.

There'd be no need to punish, no need to self-direct or -defend, no need to 'try'.

Absolute power, in this circumstance, doesn't corrupt, but enforces stasis by way of unlimited malleability.

I agree with most of this HQ. I think though that life would still have meaning, but in a more limited sense.

PhilX

[Dalek Prime]

Anyways, I'm trying to figure out why you would dismiss a well considered thought experiment. Would you explain?

Just the opposite Dalek. I don't know where you got that impression from.

PhilX

I misread your meaning from this exchange:

Somebody will have to break it you, Phil. Dead people cannot come back to life except in the confused minds of people like Immanuel Can.

Pretend it can happen just like the thought experiments of Albert Einstein.

PhilX

It sounded like you considered Einstein's thought experiments to be fantastical.

[Philosophy Explorer]

Anyways, I'm trying to figure out why you would dismiss a well considered thought experiment. Would you explain?

Just the opposite Dalek. I don't know where you got that impression from.

PhilX

I misread your meaning from this exchange:

Somebody will have to break it you, Phil. Dead people cannot come back to life except in the confused minds of people like Immanuel Can.

Pretend it can happen just like the thought experiments of Albert Einstein.

PhilX

It sounded like you considered Einstein's thought experiments to be fantastical.

Not at all. He's an inspiration.

PhilX

[Dalek Prime]

Cool. I agree.

[Lawrence Crocker]

There is a large divide in punishment theory over whether justice requires and the state is obligated to punish those who perform prohibited acts. Call those who say yes "mandatory retirbutivists." For them, the murderer must be punished even were we to gain no crime control (and future safety) benefit from that punishment. So the only issue for the mandatory retributivist is whether the perpetrator, after reprogramming, is sufficiently the "same person" as to deserve the punishment. This could take us deep into issues of the intersection of personal identity theory and desert theory.

I, however, have never been satisfied by any arguments supporting mandatory retributivism, Kant's not excluded.

So I would want to punish these murderers only if we get a consequential advantage from doing so, after considering the negatives for the punished. Here there might possibly be a general deterrence value in punishing the murderers, even though they themselves are no longer a threat. The burden would be on those who purport to have good evidence that there is a deterrence effect and that it outweighs the cost.

[Obvious Leo]

The notion of deterrence is an absurdity in a country which privatises its criminal justice system. Once prisons become enmeshed within the overarching network of business and commerce then the incentive of such corporate entities is to get MORE people into them, not LESS. Crime and punishment then becomes a business like any other and it will be encouraged to prosper. Treating a quarter of the population like shit is usually enough to keep such businesses flourishing.

[Dalek Prime]

The notion of deterrence is an absurdity in a country which privatises its criminal justice system. Once prisons become enmeshed within the overarching network of business and commerce then the incentive of such corporate entities is to get MORE people into them, not LESS. Crime and punishment then becomes a business like any other and it will be encouraged to prosper. Treating a quarter of the population like shit is usually enough to keep such businesses flourishing.

Scary and true, Leo. It's a horrifying thing to see so many locked away for not being connected to power.

[Obvious Leo]

The notion of deterrence is an absurdity in a country which privatises its criminal justice system. Once prisons become enmeshed within the overarching network of business and commerce then the incentive of such corporate entities is to get MORE people into them, not LESS. Crime and punishment then becomes a business like any other and it will be encouraged to prosper. Treating a quarter of the population like shit is usually enough to keep such businesses flourishing.

Scary and true, Leo. It's a horrifying thing to see so many locked away for not being connected to power.

It's a slave labour force, Dalek, pure and simple, and the conditions in which prisoners are kept in US jails is hardly conducive to encouraging the guests to respect either the law or the society which enforces it. It's just a vicious circle driven by corporate greed and abetted by a community too stupid to see that they're shitting in their own nest.

[Dalek Prime]

The notion of deterrence is an absurdity in a country which privatises its criminal justice system. Once prisons become enmeshed within the overarching network of business and commerce then the incentive of such corporate entities is to get MORE people into them, not LESS. Crime and punishment then becomes a business like any other and it will be encouraged to prosper. Treating a quarter of the population like shit is usually enough to keep such businesses flourishing.

Scary and true, Leo. It's a horrifying thing to see so many locked away for not being connected to power.

It's a slave labour force, Dalek, pure and simple, and the conditions in which prisoners are kept in US jails is hardly conducive to encouraging the guests to respect either the law or the society which enforces it. It's just a vicious circle driven by corporate greed and abetted by a community too stupid to see that they're shitting in their own nest.

Former PM Harper here in Canada wasted money on super jails, when the crime rate was less than in previous years, extended sentences, tried(?) to privatise the prison system, ala the USA, and planned to make it a slave labour force.

[Obvious Leo]

"Getting tough on crime" is a well-worn shibboleth used by some politicians and is a sure sign of an inferior mind bereft of ideas. It appeals to the ignorance of the lowest common denominator in dysfunctional societies who seem to think that societal ills can be addressed by tackling the effects of economic and educational inequality rather than the causes of it. The US is clearly a world leader in this sort of stupidity but it is by no means alone amongst the community of nations who continue to marginalise the disadvantaged. We reap what we sow.

[Dalek Prime]

I had to look up shibboleth. New word of the day lol!

[Obvious Leo]

I had to look up shibboleth. New word of the day lol!

There's nothing a wordsmith loves better than trawling through his mental lexicon for a word which might keep the punters guessing. It makes us feel relevant even though it rarely adds much to the discussion. I could just as easily have used the term "meaningless phrase" but in the circumstances I felt that this alternative lacked literary frisson.

[Dalek Prime]

I had to look up shibboleth. New word of the day lol!

There's nothing a wordsmith loves better than trawling through his mental lexicon for a word which might keep the punters guessing. It makes us feel relevant even though it rarely adds much to the discussion. I could just as easily have used the term "meaningless phrase" but in the circumstances I felt that this alternative lacked literary frisson.

No problem. I learned something.

[Hobbes' Choice]

"Getting tough on crime" is a well-worn shibboleth used by some politicians and is a sure sign of an inferior mind bereft of ideas. It appeals to the ignorance of the lowest common denominator in dysfunctional societies who seem to think that societal ills can be addressed by tackling the effects of economic and educational inequality rather than the causes of it. The US is clearly a world leader in this sort of stupidity but it is by no means alone amongst the community of nations who continue to marginalise the disadvantaged. We reap what we sow.

It's not really a shibboleth, though is it?
It's a platitude, its a slogan; is a mindless vote attractor, it's a lot of other things.
A shibboleth is a phrase with an obscure or occult meanings devised to sort the "in-group", from the "out-group". It's use is designed to separate and divide.

If I asked you if you were on the square, and you reacted in a way you knew what I was saying then I'd know you were a mason, otherwise I'd know you were a faker.

[Obvious Leo]

A shibboleth is a phrase with an obscure or occult meanings devised to sort the "in-group", from the "out-group". It's use is designed to separate and divide.

Yes. It was in the sense of separating and dividing the community that I intended the usage of the word. "WE are ordinary god-fearing hard-working Christian folks doing the right thing by our fellow man and THEY are shitheads hell-bent on destroying our righteous way of life and for this they must be punished. It has an easy appeal for those who don't take the trouble to think things through very carefully but in the long run a society is based on co-operation and trust so this mode of thinking eventually erodes our very biological foundation as a social species. It can't possibly work.