Jump to content
Objectivism Online Forum

Does a high correlation ever warrant rule of law?

Rate this topic


psychotrope

Recommended Posts

Attacking someone with a knife can be easily seen as a rights violation because the victim is aware of the attack, with the obvious mental and emotional distress which results (as in assault.) The problem area for the rights-based approach is when the victim is completely unaware that someone is attempting to murder them. For instance, it is easy to imagine a situation in which the intended victim only learns of the plot after the would-be murder has been arrested, charged and is in jail.

If you think such attempts are rights violations you have to explain what right they violate and in what manner.

Vladimir, I think your question is great. I don't see why anyone would have a problem understanding what you are asking. You are not confused, as David Odden said, you are just asking smart questions (isn't it annoying when you ask good questions and then people tell you that you are just confused?).

I don't have an answer, but I want to state the principle involved in your question:

How does one measure or learn of a violation of right? Is it by the influence it has on the victim, or according to the intent behind the actions of the aggressor (or their potential outcome)?

Is it possible to violate somebody's rights without it having any apparent influence on their life?

To apply it here: As long as a person does not know of the attempt to kill him, his life were unaffected by it. If his life were unaffected by it, then the only way this would be a violation of right is if it is measured according to the actions of the aggressor, regardless of the outcome.

If someone tries to kill you but fails, you then say that they violated your right to life (according to the second measurement), even though they were unsuccessful.

(See? this is why I started that thread about Guiding principles for quantifying punishments).

Edit to fix link

Edited by ifatart
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't see why anyone would have a problem understanding what you are asking.
Then perhaps you have an answer to the central question. Do you claim that the initiation of force is a violation of a person's rights, or do you deny that it is? The discussion cannot possibly procede rationally without understanding the proper purpose of law. Discussion of inchoate crimes is pointless unless you have a firm grasp on what law is for.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

You are not confused, as David Odden said, you are just asking smart questions (isn't it annoying when you ask good questions and then people tell you that you are just confused?

Yes, he is apparently confused (as indicated by his lack of understanding of "rights" and "initiation of force") and David's question is right on the mark. Also, his question can be good and he could still be confused, so you present a false alternative in your parenthetical. In fact, one of the hallmarks of a good question is one that is an honest query based on either confusion or a lack of knowledge.

A right's violation is not determined by the luck or competence of the assailant, it's determined by the intent and action of the assailant regardless of success. It's not necessary for the victim to know at the time that a person has started an unprovoked action with the intent to injure him. And it is a mockery of the concept of "rights" to think that actual harm must result from that action for a violation to have occurred. That line of thinking allows for the assailant to keep trying until he's successful.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Then perhaps you have an answer to the central question. Do you claim that the initiation of force is a violation of a person's rights, or do you deny that it is?

Well, before Vladimir asked his question, I held that a violation of rights is an initiation of force, but that it also has some visible influence over the one who's rights are violated. It was only when he posted his question that I realized there is a gap in my concept of rights.

So now to answer this question for me, I need to go deeper into the source of rights, and ask how is it possible for a right to be violated without any interference with the life of the person who's rights were violated.

It is not a matter of definition, I can't just say, well let's define a right violation as X and get on with the discussion. If I misidentify what constitutes a violation of rights I end up restricting freedom. So I have to go back to the roots of the concept to answer Vladimir's question.

Yes, he is apparently confused (as indicated by his lack of understanding of "rights" and "initiation of force") and David's question is right on the mark. Also, his question can be good and he could still be confused, so you present a false alternative in your parenthetical. In fact, one of the hallmarks of a good question is one that is an honest query based on either confusion or a lack of knowledge.

Confusion means a state of mind in which one is disoriented and is unable to think well. When someone says "your question indicates confusion" I interpret it as "you have no idea what you are saying, you make no sense".

I see Vladimir's question to be, perhaps, resulting from lack of knowledge, but not from mental confusion.

A rights violation is not determined by the luck or competence of the assailant, it's determined by the intent and action of the assailant regardless of success. It's not necessary for the victim to know at the time that a person has started an unprovoked action with the intent to injure him. And it is a mockery of the concept of "rights" to think that actual harm must result from that action for a violation to have occurred. That line of thinking allows for the assailant to keep trying until he's successful.

That was a good answer (or a beginning of one) to Vladimir's question. But to clarify this issue for good, can you provide an explanation that builds from morality to explain why the nature of right is the actions+intent and not the action+outcome?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am honestly not quite sure what Odden is after in his line of replies. In discussing these kinds of issues it simply isn't productive to ask loaded, ambiguous questions and then demand "yes or no" answers. The first step is to define the problem and define your terms. I think we have a fair handle on what the problem is, but the terms being used have still not been defined. For instance, before I can answer Odden's question I need him to define what he means by "initiation." That term is so packed with ambiguity that as it stands his question is essentially circular.

Perhaps an example of the problem will help people to understand the nature of the problem, as well. Look at this chain of hypotheticals for instance:

A thinks "I really don't like B, perhaps I should kill him?"

A thinks "I am positive I want to kill B."

A thinks " I am going to buy a gun, wait outside his house and shoot B tomorrow."

A writes the previous thought down on paper.

A tells C his plan to kill B.

A buys a gun.

A parks outside B's house but B doesn't notice him.

A takes aim at B.

A shoots and misses, but B thinks the noise was just a firecracker going off.

A shoots and misses, but this time B realized he is being shot at.

A shoots and hits B.

The challenge of philosophers in this situation is to first define which if any of B's rights are at issue and at what link in the chain they are violated. THe challenge of legal scholars is to find the best point in the chain to establish legal culpability to best protect B's rights while still being sure A isn't being unfairly punished for innocent or coincidental actions.

As I said before, the current state of the law is that B's rights are violated ONLY once some action harm occurs to him (the last two links in the chain.) The fact that B can be found guilty of attempt further up in the chain doesn't result from him violating B's rights, it results from his proven intention to do so.

Thus for objectivists like Odden and Rationalbiker who wish to say that the acts or intention itself violates rights they have to show what types of acts or intentions they are talking about. They also have to show what rights these things violate. The fact that the crime of attempt is useful to deter the crime of murder is entirely irrevelent to this. Everyone would agree that that is the case, but it doesn't have any bearing on whether attempt is a crime which itself violates any rights.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, before Vladimir asked his question, I held that a violation of rights is an initiation of force, but that it also has some visible influence over the one who's rights are violated.
I am not saying that his question is completely useless, I'm saying that it's important to directly answer the question that I asked, because I think it will reveal something about the source of confusion. Now what you seem to be saying is that you at least previously made the notion "initiation of force" be dependent on the notion of "violation of rights", so that you can't know if force has been initiated without knowing if someone's rights have been violated. This is a language thing, so I need to belabor the point further. Saying "A violation of rights is an initiation of force" is not the same as saying "An initiation of force is a violation of rights".

I think it is a very good thing to dig deep into the source of rights. Here are some passages from VOS that are quite relevant.

  • p. 36: "The basic political principle of the Objectivist ethics is: no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. No man—or group or society or government—has the right to assume the role of a criminal and initiate the use of physical compulsion against any man ...The only proper, moral purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence—to protect his right to his own life, to his own liberty, to his own property and to the pursuit of his own happiness."
  • p. 108: "'Rights' are a moral concept—the concept that provides a logical transition from the principles guiding an individual's actions to the principles guiding his relationship with others—the concept that preserves and protects individual morality in a social context—the link between the moral code of a man and the legal code of a society, between ethics and politics. Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law."
  • p 109: "The principle of man's individual rights represented the extension of morality into the social system—as a limitation on the power of the state, as man's protection against the brute force of the collective, as the subordination of might to right."
  • p. 110: "A 'right' is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man's right to his own life....The concept of a 'right' pertains only to action—specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men. Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive—of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations on them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights"
  • p. 111 and AS "The source of man's rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A—and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man's nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational."

In my opinion, the fundamental concept that has to be accepted, in order to really understand the Objectivist ethics and politics, is that one must live according to principles. Couple that with the fact that man is not omniscient nor does he automatically apply reason to his knowledge to derive conclusions, and you will (presumably) see that man needs a principled legal system to survive qua man, and that the principle cannot just be the post hoc question "was the victim actually damaged by the assault". If we had to wait for the actual body damage, armed robbery would not be a crime, and you could not rightfully defend yourself against an armed robber. You'd need to wait until they actually shot you for refusing to hand over your wallet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

With your last post I am not really sure what you point was in this argument in the first place. My original point was that the law DOES recognize that injuries (such as murder) violate the rights of individuals and that in an attempt to deter such injuries, the law penalizes the proven wrong intentions of individuals who seek to cause them.

This is much more reasonable argument than saying that wrong intentions themselves violate someone's rights. I have yet to see you or any other person in this thread explain how they do, in fact, if such a thing is even possible.

What you have essentially done in your last point is voice your agreement with the current rationale behind the current law. Obviously there needs to be a penalty for inchoate offenses simply as a means of detering the "parent" crimes. The question is thus not should we have inchoate offenses but what types of inchoate offenses should we have and what is the rationale for them? And as it stands, you have no disagreement with the current offenses or rationale.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

With your last post I am not really sure what you point was in this argument in the first place.
Attempted murder is an instance of the initiation of force, which violates a person's rights. I have gotten the impression that you don't want to say this, though I really cannot see what part of this equation would cause you to not say "Yes, of course". I have had three different lingering suspicions: one is that you want to separate the realization of force from having a bad intent, i.e. you reject "initiation of force" as having any legal value (this remains my favorite theory of your position); or, you can't separate the (non-trivial) evidentiary issues regarding attempted rights violations so you want to see "attempted X" as being a matter of evidence and not ethics; or for professional reasons, you consider the concept of an "inchoate crime" to be of some unitary significance.
This is much more reasonable argument than saying that wrong intentions themselves violate someone's rights. I have yet to see you or any other person in this thread explain how they do, in fact, if such a thing is even possible.
I can't help you there, because I don't support the concept of "thought crimes". I don't care what kind of intentions the road to Hell is paved with. I do say that a person should be judged and sentenced according to what his actions, without strictly limiting consideration to just the damage actually realized on the victim.
And as it stands, you have no disagreement with the current offenses or rationale.
I don't know what the current offenses actually are (i.e. I am not aware of all of the statutes addressing so-called "inchoate" crimes). You can probably predict that if I say that a law against X is proper then a law against attempted X is proper, and if a law against X is improper then a law against attempted X is improper. I can't imagine a situation where doing X is rightfully prohibited by law but attempting to X wouldn't be (or vice versa). If you have an counterexample in mind, do tell.

I don't understand your statement about the rationale behind laws against attempted X, that "there needs to be a penalty for inchoate offenses simply as a means of detering the 'parent' crimes". Equally, there needs to be a penalty for the offense itself, as a means of deterring the offense described as the crime. So are you simply saying that laws against X are there simply to deter people from doing X? That is wrong: laws against X are there to state clearly and objectively what actions constitute the initiation of force and will not be tolerated in civilized society, and what the consequences of those actions will be.

My objection is that, as far as I can see, The Law does not actually take into consideration whether a person's rights have been violated, and that the underlying offense is really "disruption of the public order", i.e. a crime is an offense against society. The existence of vast numbers of crimes which do not involve rights violations is, IMO, sufficient proof of that fact. Since The Law does not criminalize attempted murder because it is itself a violation of a man's rights (and The Law seeks other bases), then I disagree with the rationale.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Again, you need to explain why attempted murder constitutes an "initiation of force" and in a broader sense, what "initiation of force" even means. You say that the purpose of the law is to spell out what manner of "initiation of force" will not be tolerated by society, but that simply brings us back to the question of what the law should be. Since you are obviously not a legal positivist you can't mean that the written law determines what constitutes a violation of a person's rights, thus there has to be some extra-legal rationale for how you define "initiation of force" and at what stage legal culpability should result.

For instance, you state you don't support the idea of "thought crimes" but based on your argument it is hard so see why not. After all, if you think the "initiation" part is key, the obvious initiating cause of an attempted murder is the person's thought, their intent to murder. As seen in my example above everything else follows from the thought.

The law doesn't like the idea of thought crimes as I said because it is largely an evidentiary matter. The requirement of an overt act in an inchoate offense is largely just a procedural and evidentiary safeguard against convicting somebody who in truth, didn't have a real intent/thought to murder. The rationale is that only a person with a true intent would do such acts, thus they had a strong possibility of following their intentions to their murderous conclusion.

You reject this evidentiary purpose but substitute nothing in its place except your dislike of "thought crimes." If you think an overt act is a violation of rights, why isn't a fully-formed murderous intent? Neither actually harms the potential victim. Both can lead to an actual murder.

Turning to the current law, you seem to ignore the fact that the law is at root primarily concerned with the violation of people's rights. The reason we have laws against attempted crimes is because as a society we feel that the parent crimes infringe on the rights of the individual in such a serious way that we wish to penalize people who even attempt such a violation. We want to punish people who have the intention of violating the rights of another regardless of whether or not they actually reach that objective.

This is because in our legal system we recognize that what matters is the voluntary, intentional choices of individuals for good or evil. We want to punish those who act with bad intentions, attempting to violate the rights of others. Our system isn't primarily concerned with effects although they matter too. This is why the mere fact that one man killed another doesn't mean that it was murder. He may have acted with an insufficient mental state for intentional murder (such as negligence or recklessness) or perhaps even had no culpable mental state at all. In such a system it makes perfect sense to have inchoate offenses because they directly punish people's intentions to violate the rights of others rather than simply punish those who commit the consumated crimes. As the Model Penal Code explains for instance, the mental state in each instance is the same and thus the severity of the crime should be the same.

Edited by Vladimir Berkov
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Again, you need to explain why attempted murder constitutes an "initiation of force" and in a broader sense, what "initiation of force" even means.

To begin or originate an action to cause physical harm to another person, against their will, when such action is not retaliation for a similar such action. In this regard, a thought does not constitute an action as a thought alone can do no harm to another. That is my own rough definition, and it needn't be any more complex than that. Murder fits well into that category. As I said before, it is a mockery of the idea of "rights" to suggest that the only protection against such violations requires success on the part of the assailant. There would be NO protection of a person's right to life if the law allowed people to keep trying until they got it right. The very nature of "rights" REQUIRES the ability to pre-emptively avert the effort to violate "rights" with retaliatory force for the meaning of "rights" to have any validity. To say otherwise would be to say you have no actual right to your life, you merely have to right to seek compensation from the offender (if you don't die) or punishment for the offender once he has successfully harmed or killed you.

You reject this evidentiary purpose but substitute nothing in its place except your dislike of "thought crimes." If you think an overt act is a violation of rights, why isn't a fully-formed murderous intent?

Your first sentence simply is untrue, at least for me. I offered the difference. Thoughts alone cannot, and I would offer never will, harm anyone (besides perhaps the thinker). It takes thought AND action do someone harm. That is why thinking ALONE is different from an action initiated in conjunction with a thought regardless of the success of said action. Personally, I find it incredible that that distinction is not blatantly obvious.

Edited by RationalBiker
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Your first sentence simply is untrue, at least for me. I offered the difference. Thoughts alone cannot, and I would offer never will, harm anyone (besides perhaps the thinker). It takes thought AND action do someone harm. That is why thinking ALONE is different from an action initiated in conjunction with a thought regardless of the success of said action. Personally, I find it incredible that that distinction is not blatantly obvious.

You have no need to try to convince me of the necessity of having laws against attempted murder and other inchoate offenses. I wholeheartedly agree with them. The problem we are dealing with here is whether any actual rights are violated during the attempt, not whether the crime of attempt is necessary to protect rights which would be violated in the actual murder.

Saying that "initiation of force" includes originating an action to cause physical harm to another person simply shoves the burden of proving your argument back on Ayn Rand who is not alive to debate the point. It is of course easy to define "initiation of force" to include anything you wish, from the mere thoughtful intention to murder to the actual pulling of the trigger or anything in between these two extremes. We need a reasoned basis for deciding at what point any rights are violated here, not a mere semantic reshuffling.

You say that it requires thought plus action to do someone harm yet that is beside the point, as we are talking about inchoate offenses in which by definition the acts of the perpetrator didn't actually cause the harm intended.

I am beginning to think that in actuality none of the objectivists here have a rational basis for saying that inchoate offenses themselves violate rights. I am seeing plenty of utilitarian reasons for having inchoate offenses (which I agree are important.) I am also seeing plenty of mere unfounded declarations.

So I will ask again. What right does the perparatory overt act of an inchoate offense violate? How does it violate it? And why doesn't a fully-formed intent without an overt act also violate the same right?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am beginning to think that in actuality none of the objectivists here have a rational basis for saying that inchoate offenses themselves violate rights. I am seeing plenty of utilitarian reasons for having inchoate offenses (which I agree are important.) I am also seeing plenty of mere unfounded declarations.

My argument is neither semantic nor irrational. That you cannot see that is not my problem but you are free to think what you want.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Again, you need to explain why attempted murder constitutes an "initiation of force" and in a broader sense, what "initiation of force" even means.
And again, I find myself puzzled that you could ask this question. This is a simple phrase in English, and it doesn't have any special meaning. "Initiation" + "force" = "Initiation of force". If you start to murder a person, you have initiated murder, and if you agree that murder constitutes force, I cannot see how you can avoid the conclusion that you have therefore initiated force. This is not an Objectivist argument, it is simple logic and knowledge of English word meanings. You might correctly conclude that the position that murder is a form of force is an Objectivist philosophical conclusion and then you might decide that you reject that position, but this is why I want to understand your dogged refusal to grasp the fact that attempted murder is an initiation of force. Your response to Vern doesn't provide me any useable clues as to why you reject the conclusion. If we could progress past this one particular question, then there are a raft of other problems to take on, such as "rights" and how "rights" have a relationship to "force".

Actually, though, I have a new clue. Your malaise arises from problems with the concept "force". Let me restate the fundamental political principle from VOS: "The basic political principle of the Objectivist ethics is: no man may initiate the use of physical force against others." You can accept this or reject it. Do you reject this principle?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't mean to put the cart before the horse here, but I'm going to point this out because I think it should be addressed after more preliminary issues are resolved. The merger doctrine.

Attempt and solicitation are said to merge into the completed offense. For example, if you commit murder, you can not be charged with attempted murder of that same person. The attempt crime "merges" once the crime you were attempting is completed. Same for solicitation.

Conspiracy, however, does NOT merge. You can be convicted of both conspiring to murder a person AND actually doing it. What do Objectivist principles suggest about this approach?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Conspiracy, however, does NOT merge. You can be convicted of both conspiring to murder a person AND actually doing it. What do Objectivist principles suggest about this approach?
So interestingly, the Ohio attempt statute ORC 2923.02 ( C ) states "No person who is convicted of committing a specific offense, of complicity in the commission of an offense, or of conspiracy to commit an offense shall be convicted of an attempt to commit the same offense in violation of this section", and 2923.01 ( G ) states "When a person is convicted of committing or attempting to commit a specific offense or of complicity in the commission of or attempt to commit the specific offense, the person shall not be convicted of conspiracy involving the same offense". A plain reading of the latter says that you have to first go for the conspiracy conviction and then the actual offense charge, and similarly if you get a conviction for attempt, nothing precludes later prosecution for the actual offense (since those offenses don't contain "attempted merger" language).

I cannot see how this could be justified under Objectivist principles, thus it would be like prosecuting a person six times for stealing a sixpack. It would not be at all difficult to subdivide offenses so that you have separate laws for being on somebody's property for the purpose of comitting a crime, touching their stuff in the commission of a crime, picking up their stuff in the commission of a crime, leaving the premises, and failing to return when told to stop. It's one act of theft.

I see the wisdom in considering such questions in terms of determining the punishment, so conspiracy + theft is premeditated theft, and premeditated offenses should be treated more severely than sudden-outburst offenses. But that's generally missing (except for murder), and our conspiracy statute leaves out obvious candidates like assault and fraud. Getting this result by offense-multiplication just leads to epistemological chaos. It's really quite simple, I think. Punishments should be proportional to the wrong -- fines for murder and execution for shoplifting would be quite unjust. Punishment, in a just legal system, also requires mens rea: conspiracy or any other kind of premeditation is then evidence of a mens that is more profoundly rea. But leaving aside the question of how to compute the punishment, the idea of considering the same immoral act from umpteen perspectives and then calling each a "separate offense" is itself a philosophical offense.

And don't even get me started on RICO.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And again, I find myself puzzled that you could ask this question. This is a simple phrase in English, and it doesn't have any special meaning. "Initiation" + "force" = "Initiation of force". If you start to murder a person, you have initiated murder, and if you agree that murder constitutes force, I cannot see how you can avoid the conclusion that you have therefore initiated force.

The problem is that you are looking at the issue from the wrong direction, essentially resulting in begging the question. Your argument, boiled down, is actually just, "Rights are violated when rights are violated." You keep relying on the phrase "initiation of force" but what I am asking is really where initation of force actually occurs and WHEN rights are first violated.

The intellectual challenge here is not making a blanket assertion that initiation of force is immoral but rather defining and explaining what types of thoughts or actions constitute an initiation of force and WHY they are immoral. For instance, why is the intent to commit murder not an initiation of force in your opinion? Yet how is a mere preperatory act which could never result in harm to the potential victim an initiation of force?

Simply repeating that attempted murder is an "initiation of force" and thus wrong gets us nowhere as the question is actually what constitutes "initiation of force" and why should the line be drawn where it is. I have given you the rationale behind the current law but I have yet to see any rationale behind your purportedly objectivist position.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

what I am asking is really where initation of force actually occurs and WHEN rights are first violated.

Initiation of force occurs when someone initiates the use of physical force. It actually occurs when you act attempting to kill, expropriate or compel a person to act other than they would if left free of physical interference on your part.

For instance, why is the intent to commit murder not an initiation of force in your opinion? Yet how is a mere preperatory act which could never result in harm to the potential victim an initiation of force?

A thought cannot be "force" by any reasonable definition of the word. Force implies action - physical force (and Ayn Rand frequently uses the qualifier) belongs to the realm of actions not of intentions. A mere preparatory act, on the other hand, is acting with the purpose of killing, stealing or compelling and as such you have initiated the use of force even if you have not landed the blow yet.

Rights are violated when you take an action for which the goal is to deprive someone of life, property or freedom. A violation of rights therefore necessitates intent and action.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The problem is that you are looking at the issue from the wrong direction, essentially resulting in begging the question.
See Mrocktor's post. I just don't know how to help you if you don't get this. My argument is only about the concepts of force and initiation, and reference to rights-violation has been secondary. That's why I've tried to get you to focus on that very first principle. If you were to accept or at least say that you comprehend but reject the fundamental principle, then I would have a clue how to address the remainder of your confusion.

The real intellectual challenge is to understand how morality and law are connected -- it's not trivial. Suicide is, generally, immoral, but you don't see me ever arguing that there should be laws against suicide. How in the world could you possible think that the immoral should be coterminous with the illegal?? No forms of thought constitute the initiation of force, and I absolutely and categorically deny that I have ever in my entire life even obscurely suggested that I have entertained the possibility that "thought" can be the initiation of force. Not even as a goddamn YAFer did I ever suggest such an obscenity. Now, btw, about the question of whether a "mere preperatory act which could never result in harm to the potential victim" can be an initiation of force, what fact in the real world are you referring to that suggests that I am so utterly ignorant of the concept "attempt" that I would claim such a thing? Please consult the definition of "attempt" in the Ohio statutes, which as far as I know is reasonably on the mark as far as "attempt" goes. If it is not, I'll accept the correction and revise my understanding of what an "attempt" is.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wanted to add the following: the original poster gave the example of meth-related crimes. The term "meth-related crimes" can mean many things, so one has to understand what the term is being used to describe. For instance, if Al Capone kills a rival bootlegger, is that an "alcohol-related death"?

If one goes to causation, one might find that (say) 50% of the "meth-related deaths" were deaths that could medically be traced back to being caused by meth, in the sense that other medical factors were absent and so on. So, for instance, a doctor might say: "He died of an overdose" or "He died because he was using this drug too long". That need not be correlation.

One might also find that the other (fictitious) 50% are deaths of gang-members trying to protect their meth business. Here too, a cop might say: "He died protecting his meth business", and that need not be a correlation.

Adding up these two numbers and creating the beginnings of a new concept "meth-related deaths" is wrong because it lumps completely different things together. While much less obvious, this is like forming a concept of "grey animals", grouping elephants, rhinos and the grey rat as it's referents, and then using the concept to think about something other than greyness, ending up with some unhelpful idea that "most grey animals" weigh a few tonnes.

From the very brief searches (see link above) I have found that most "meth-related" deaths are better described as "meth-prohibition related" deaths.

Added: In addition, if we examine the details of these two types of deaths, we would find that one is mostly murder and the other is mostly suicide. So, what we have are two set of referents:

  • meth-induced (quick and long drawn out) suicides
  • meth-prohibition related murders

This lets us re-frame the original question in the following way: We see that the use of meth leads a few people to kill themselves, while the prohibition of meth leads to many meth-crime murders? So, is it a good idea to continue the prohibition?

While such a question still does not get to essentials of politics etc., it at least gets rid of the underlying concept/-formulation problem that was caused by using a faulty term.

BTW: Would "meth-related" be an example of what Objectivists call a "package deal"?

Edited by softwareNerd
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Confusion means a state of mind in which one is disoriented and is unable to think well.

That is one definition. Another is "to mistake" (or "to be mistaken"). Being "confused" in the context you defined typically indicates mental illness which was clearly not the manner in which the word was used.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 15 years later...

Sorry for digging this up so many years later.

But found most posts related to my current interests in this thread.

First of all, I gather that retribution, for Objectivism, is the main point of justice. But when looking at https://www.ontheissues.org/celeb/Ayn_Rand_Crime.htm, retribution "in order to make him bear the painful consequences of his action (or their equivalent) which he inflicted on his victims" seems very much like the "no harm no foul" approach. That would mean punishing only the success, not the attempt. Which is contrary to what @DavidOdden seems to hold.

What I also read a lot on the net in various papers is a "conflict between the subjectivist versus objectivist approach to justice", where both approaches are held to be unsatisfying: Shooting at someone with an empty gun: Punishable by Subjectivism, because: "Was trying to kill.". Not punishable by Objectivism, because: "Couldn't possibly kill.". Not sure if this "Objectivism" and Ayn Rand's Objectivism are the same?

Also struck me that there seems to be a lot of dispute about what "initiation of force" means. But nobody considered talking about "an attempt to initiate force"? I'm also aware that "initiation of force" is usually used to distinguish from retaliation, rather than from the actual harm inflicted (which I'd rather call synonymous with "initiation of force").

Anyway, Western jurisdictions typically also don't start with just any action beyond mental processes as the definition of an attempt, of something to be punished. There's the decision, preparation, starting, and finally completion of the attempt, where decision and preparations remain free from punishment, and only the starting of the attempt is punished, and the successful completion usually harsher. While even the attempt allows for a draw-back, an abortion out of free will due to moral concerns, before any harm is inflicted. In which case the attempt also remains free from punishment.

Been thinking about this. Already would find it quite odd punishing someone by the sentence of attempted murder or manslaughter right at the point of taking just preparatory action. Thinking of someone spontaneously deciding to hit some pedestrian with his car on his way to somewhere, while already driving: Just slowing down a little to make out some target (an "action"??). Then noticing that all the targets at the pavement are not reachable due to too many obstacles in the way. Then not finding any other targets for the rest of the way. While also beginning to have moral concerns of "what the hell am I doing??", and aborting the goal. So a life sentence or years of imprisonment, just for having slowed down the car a little while driving, not actually having gotten anywhere near even approaching the goal, and what is more, ultimately having abandoned the entire goal for internal reasons? Very very odd to me, regardless of any initial "intent acted on".

Anyway, just my thoughts. I'm sure that's a lot to digest at once, the many points I'm raising, but take your time 😉

Edited by DiscoveryJoy
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...