Alan H. Goldman

Toward a new theory of punishment

Criteria for a successful theory of punishment include first, that it specify a reasonable limit to punishments in particular cases, and second, that it allow benefits to outweigh costs in a penal institution.It is argued that traditional utilitarian and retributive theories fail to satisfy both criteria, and that they cannot be coherently combined so as to do so. Retributivism specifies a reasonable limit in its demand that punishment equal crime, but this limit fails to allow benefits to outweigh costs of punishing. Utilitarians demand the latter but cannot guarantee the former. Combinations continue to violate one requirement or the other.The most vulnerable element of the traditional theories is the retributive limit. An alternative is suggested according to a new but similar model of reciprocal social rights and obligations. The rights of a citizen in the moral community are considered as a package, which reverts temporarily to the community in trusteeship when the citizen seriously violates the rights of others. The community must exercise the least restraint necessary to protect others until the full package of rights can be restored to the individual.Problems for this new theory and advantages over alternative models are discussed in the final section.

The Justification of Equal Opportunity

As a preliminary to the justification of equal opportunity, we require a few words on the concept. An opportunity is a chance to attain some goal or obtain some benefit. More precisely, it is the lack of some obstacle or obstacles to the attainment of some goal(s) or benefit(s). Opportunities are equal in some specified or understood sense when persons face roughly the same obstacles or obstacles of roughly the same difficulty of some specified or understood sort. In different contexts we might have different sorts of benefits or obstacles in mind. But in the current social context, and in the context of this discussion, we refer to educational and occupational opportunities, chances to attain the benefits of higher education and of socially and economically desirable positions, benefits assumed to be desired by many or most individuals, other things being equal. And we generally divide obstacles into two broad classes: those imposed by the social system or by other persons in the society, for example, the hardships of life in the lower economic classes or barriers from prejudices based on race, sex, or ethnic background; and those imposed by natural disabilities, for example, low intelligence or lack of talents. The initial question is whether a moral society is obligated to create equality in opportunities in the senses just defined. I shall assume here initially that there is some such obligation on the part of society or the state, although I shall specify its nature and limits more precisely below. With the exception of certain libertarians, almost everyone, liberal and conservative alike, agrees in this assumption.

Huckleberry Finn and Moral Motivation

Huckleberry Finn is not irrational in being unmotivated to follow his explicit judgments of rightness and wrongness. Philosophers have previously judged Huck to be irrational, subject to weakness of will, in being unable to act on his moral judgment. But their interpretation rests on incorrect analyses of weak will and of the emotions on which Huck does act. I also argue that such emotion based motivation is not of the kind that could be rationally required. The character of Huckleberry Finn therefore implies that rational agents need not be morally motivated.

The Rationality of Complying with Rules: Paradox Resolved*

We rationally impose rules on ourselves when the collective outcome of doing so is better than the outcome in which all act on independent judgment. Some rules, those which solve pure coordination problems, help us to achieve both individually and collectively optimal outcomes. The rule to drive on the right produces an outcome that is both a Nash equilibrium (no one can do better, given the actions of others) and a coordination equilibrium (no one does better by others acting differently). Such rules generate no interesting problem of compliance, although, given the extreme circumstances in which deviation is justified, there may be other borderline cases in which justification for deviance is controversial. More interesting problems arise for rules that represent second-best strategies. These produce outcomes that are solutions to many-person prisoners’ dilemmas. Here each can do better for herself by deviating from the rule, but the outcome that results from many or all doing so is worse than that which results from all following the rule. The best conceivable outcome in such cases is usually that in which a certain percentage of agents deviates from the rule, but, when typically that outcome is not practically available, the compliance of all with the rule is the best that can be collectively achieved. In the standard textbook prisoners’ dilemma case, each does better in terms of personal self-interest by deviating from the rule (defecting), but all do worse when all deviate than when none do (all cooperate). Deviation or defection is the dominant strategy, but it is Pareto inferior to outcomes in which many or all follow the rule or cooperate. Con-

Desire, Depression, and Rationality

Internalists hold that all reasons derive from existing motivations. They also hold that agents act irrationally when they fail to act on the strongest reasons they have. Emotions can make one act irrationally. But depression as an emotion tends to remove the motivation to act at the same time as it causes irrational inaction. If depression can cause irrationality, then the reasons to act must remain. Hence the internalist must explain how reasons can remain if depression removes motivation. This paper does so by arguing that the cognitive, evaluative aspect of motivation remains when the dispositional and affective aspects are removed.

Rules and Moral Reasoning

The goal of this paper is to determine when rules are required for moral reasoning and when they are not, when, indeed, they are better dispensed with. This will require a preliminary classification of different types of rules in the first section. I shall then consider the broadest justifications for the use of rules in the next two sections: first, the claim that they capture our ordinary perceptions of moral demands, and second, the idea that they represent second best strategies (which are nevertheless widely needed) for maximizing the satisfaction of moral demands. After dismissing these claims, I will offer in the final section a narrower justification for using rules in particular contexts, which in turn will require a modification in the original classification of rule types. My position thus differs both from particularism, which dismisses altogether the need for rules to guide practical reasoning and action, and from rule based moral theories, which see the need for rules as the norm in practical reflection.

BonJour’s Coherentism

In The Structure of Empirical Knowledge, Laurence BonJour defends a coherence theory of justification as part of a standard analysis of knowledge as justified true belief. Justification attaches first to systems of beliefs, in so far as they are internally coherent, as viewed from the perspective of the subject whose beliefs they are. Particular beliefs are justified if and only if they are part of a coherent system of beliefs (and to the degree to which the system of which they are a part is coherent). Coherence is measured not simply in terms of consistency, but in terms of inductive, probabilistic, and explanatory connections among members of the set.

What We Learn About Rules from The Cider House Rules

The Cider House Rules, through the attitudes and fates of its characters, teaches us general truths about the proper uses of rules in practical and moral reasoning. By reflecting on the narrative, we can see that rules must reflect proper distributions of authority in order to be effective, that when they do, they can solve collective action problems, that legitimate rules must sometimes be disobeyed, but also must sometimes supplant personal judgments about best courses of action. Novels can motivate us to reflect on and follow such moral lessons. Their use in teaching ethics is not limited to improving our perceptions of complex particular morally charged situations, as others have claimed.

The Aesthetic Value of Representation in Painting

The philosophy of art was born with Platos challenge to demonstrate the value of representational art. Two and a half millenia later it is questionable at best whether aestheticians have met that challenge. This article will contain a brief review of some attempts to do so and the suggestion of a different direction from which to approach the problem. Pictorial representation is of a less and more common variety, the first being symbolism and the second depiction. I shall touch on the value of pictorial symbolism at the end of this discussion, but our main concern is with depiction or picturing proper. Plato himself suggested a criterion for a paintings being a depiction, as well as a criterion for its depicting a particular object, when he held that painters imitate the appearances of objects. I The suggested criterion is that a painted surface represents an object when it realizes the intention of the painter to make the perceptual experience of it resemble the appearance of the object. The problem of specifying the value of such representations results from this conception of what it is to pictorially represent or depict. If a depiction is a mere imitation of an appearance, if it is intended to produce experience that resembles only the way an object looks, then how can it have any value not possessed in greater degree by the object itself or the experience of it?