Necessity, contingency, and punishment

Abstract

IN THIS discussion we wish to examine a commonly held view of moral responsibility which might be called the Punishment Theory.' According to the Punishment Theory one is morally responsible for an action if and only if one is modifiable by punishment. A wrongdoer is morally responsible for his action if punishment will influence him to avoid such actions in the future or if it would have affected his choice to do wrong. This view has two advantages. It enables one to maintain that determinism and moral responsibility are compatible notions, for the fact that a person was determined does not itself negate the possibility of his alteration by punishment. Furthermore, on this view the question of a man's responsibility is settled by ordinary empirical procedures. No vague questions arise about his metaphysical contra-causal powers. Unfortunately, the view is untenable. Rather than suggesting counterexamples to this position as a critic such as C. A. Campbell does,2 we propose to consider the basic confusion which makes it possible to generate counter-examples. It is generally conceded that a necessary condition for moral responsibility is that a person who did wrong could have done otherwise, although, of course, the analysis of this phrase is problematic. Proponents of the Punishment Theory do not usually discuss in detail the relation of this requirement to the issue of punishment, though none of them deny that it is a requirement for moral responsibility. If the theory is to be satisfactory, however, it must give some account of the connection between punishment and the condition that an individual could have done otherwise. The basic difficulty is this. The connection between the fact that a certain person can be (or could have been) affected by punishment and the fact that he could have done otherwise is a contingent one. It may be granted that the connection in fact is often present. Individuals who we feel clearly could not have done otherwise, e.g., compulsives, and whom we thereby excuse from moral responsibility are also persons whose behavior does not seem to be affected by punishment. Thus, the fact that punishing a certain type of offender has no effect on his behavior is sometimes good evidence of the compulsive character of his crime, i.e., that he couldn't help doing it. But however reliable an indicator the fact that a man won't be