Abstract
Harming other people is prima facie wrong. Unless we can be very certain that doing so is justified under the circumstances, we ought not to do it. In this paper, I argue that we ought to dismantle harsh retributivist criminal justice systems for this reason; we cannot be sufficiently certain that the harm is justified. Gregg Caruso, Ben Vilhauer and others have previously argued for the same conclusion; however, my own version sidesteps certain controversial premises of theirs. Harsh retributivist criminal justice can only be morally right if the following three propositions are true: Moral responsibility exists, retributivism is right, and we can find out how much punishment offenders deserve for their crimes. Suppose that we initially assign a high credence to each of the three propositions; I assume for the sake of argument that there are good arguments in support of each. Nevertheless, these arguments ultimately depend on intuitions. Since we have philosophical peers whose intuitions differ from ours, we ought to downgrade our credence in each. However, even slightly less credence in each proposition means far less credence in a conjunction of all three. Since the stakes are high and there are morally safer options for a criminal justice system, we ought to dismantle harsh retributivist ones.
Highlights
Harming other people is prima facie wrong
Caruso slides from an epistemic argument into standard skepticism, whereas Vilhauer relies on a controversial premise
The primary purpose of this paper is to develop an epistemic argument against Harsh Retributivism that rests neither on the assumption that compatibilist and libertarian arguments are weak, nor on the premise that the moral responsibility debate makes progress towards better and better arguments and theories
Summary
Retributivism is the view that the criminal justice system ought to give offenders the punishment that they deserve. When Caruso elaborates on it, he first shows (by way of quotes) that certain prominent scholars in the American criminal justice debate have more doubts about the existence of moral responsibility than their self-applied compatibilist label would suggest This is interesting, but does not show that Harsh Retributivism is unjustified. The primary purpose of this paper is to develop an epistemic argument against Harsh Retributivism that rests neither on the assumption that compatibilist and libertarian arguments are weak, nor on the premise that the moral responsibility debate makes progress towards better and better arguments and theories. There is an interesting sense in which this agent really ought to do X in case her beliefs (desires, values and so on) imply it With this ‘subjective ought’ analysis in place, let us picture a group of people in position to influence the criminal justice system, in a nation which currently has Harsh Retributivism. The influencers need more than compatibilism to justify a continued support of Harsh Retributivism
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