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| Thread: Justice and Revenge |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · «PREV |
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Corribus
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The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted April 05, 2014 10:43 PM |
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Edited by Corribus at 03:17, 06 Apr 2014.
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Since some people seem to be confused, we can remove the law entirely from the equation.
Let us consider the following.
Mary and Beth are two coworkers who know each other fairly well. Mary has a steady boyfriend, Mark. Beth has someone she is interested in at the office. His name is Bob. Mary comes up with the idea to go on a double date, with her, Mark, Beth and Bob. Mary tells Beth this will be a great way to break the ice so that she doesn't have to face a first date alone. Beth is nervous about going out on a date with Bob (he's such a handsome stud) but Mary pressures her into it.
At the dinner the four are having an amicable conversation, when Mary shares an embarrassing fact about Beth in front of everyone. Mary thinks it is innocuous and everyone else seems to think it is just a funny joke, and they all get a good laugh, but Beth is mortified and angry that Mary would make fun of her (as Beth views it) in front of Bob. After all, Beth knows Mary has a mean streak and she thinks that Mary is secretly jealous of her (Beth's) higher position at work. She believes Mary purposefully tried to make her look bad in front of Bob.
For a week Beth fumes about it and gets madder and madder. Then one afternoon she notices Mary flirting with another guy, Matthew, during lunch break. She's noticed this a lot. Remembering how Mary made her look like a fool the other night at dinner, and resenting the fact that her chances with Bob are ruined, she feels its only fair that she returns the favor.
As it happens, Beth, Mary, and Mark all go to the same health club, and Beth often runs into Mark there. The next time she does, she pulls Mark aside and tells him her suspicions about Matthew, how he and Mary are flirting all the time, and that she suspects that Mary is being unfaithful. Mark just smiles and kind of shrugs it off.
The next morning, Mary comes in late to work, and she has obviously been crying. Beth overhears someone asking Mary what is wrong, and Mary says that she and Mark had a terrible argument and they broke up. She is heartbroken, she says. Beth smiles, feeling vindicated.
So, some discussion:
Obviously no laws have been broken here, that's one thing.
Clearly revenge was the motivation for Beth's actions in spreading malicious gossip (true or false) in order to cause trouble between Mary and Mark. "Justice" and "justified" share common root and both have a underlying meaning of equality and balance. Beth feels her actions are justified and may feel she has gotten justice. The scales are now equal. However an external observer may feel otherwise. Did Mary go too far? Did she not go far enough? Were her actions justified? Has justice been served?
Individual answers to those questions will vary, and what is justified is subjective. Perceptions will also depend on the facts at hand. A lot of the details here are ambiguous. If the fact is that Mary intentionally invited Beth out to dinner in order to share an embarrassing fact about her, to make her look bad in front of Bob, the external observer is probably more likely to say that Beth's subsequent actions were justified. If the fact is that Mary's comment was completely innocuous and that she didn't mean anything by it - that Beth just overreacted - then the external observer is more likely to think that Beth went way overboard, that her treatment of Mary afterward wasn't justified at all - and in fact justice can only be reached by Mary being punished (not by a magistrate, obviously, but by "fate", perhaps). And what about the alleged affair between Mary and Matthew? Suppose it's true that Mary didn't mean to make fun of Beth, but that she is, in fact, sleeping around with Matthew behind Mark's back. There might be some who believe (in a karma kind of way) that even though Beth was out of line, justice has still been served because Mary got what she deserved - in a round about way. The ends justify the means. We might still yearn for some kind of punishment for Beth, who clearly isn't a very nice person, but many would still feel better about this turn of events than if Mary and Matthew were NOT screwing behind Mark's back and their flirtatious behavior was just innocent. Then we'd really be screaming of Beth's head on a pike.
To me, revenge is a certain human motivation for action, much like hunger but psychological rather than physical. Justice is, in a psychological sense, related to a perception of equality of state. If someone does something bad to someone else, then something bad must be done to them to even the scales. In that sense, revenge is personal but justice is not. I may not have a stake in what happens to Mary or Beth, but I can still feel vindication when the scales are balance and justice has been reached. If John murders Jack, and society puts Jack to death for it, we feel justice has been served (maybe) but the State doesn't do it out of vengeance - at least not today's State. I may seek criminals to be punished, but unless I am personally the one who has been harmed by the criminal, I don't seek punishment out of vengeance but out of justice.
Oh, and;
Stevie said:
Yes it is.
Going back to kindergarten.
Yes, kindergarten is where you belong, if your behavior and treatment of others is any indication. It is possible to disagree with someone and respect them at the same time. All I ever see from you is peevishness, derision, and a tendency toward unjustified (see what I did there?) mockery, and the only reason I can see that you do it is because, like many would-be-bullies, it makes you feel good about yourself to make other people feel stupid. And make no mistake, there are as many psychological and intellectual bullies out there as physical ones, and the internet has a habit of drawing the former out like cockroaches.
There's nothing wrong with artu's topic, and in fact it's this kind of conversation that the OSM is missing now for a while. The fact that you can't see value is dissecting the meaning of commonly used ideas says more about yourself and your appreciation for the history of philosophy than it does about anyone in this thread. But if you don't like the thread's topic or think its beneath your overinflated opinion of your own intellect, you may certainly feel free to not insert yourself where you and your surly attitude aren't wanted.
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Stevie
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posted April 06, 2014 01:45 AM |
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artu said:
So, basically what you're saying is the only real morality is your morality because YOU believe it is God's will. Ironically, it is your God who is very unclear about the lines between revenge and justice, since in the Old Testament, he wipes out entire cities with women and children in them, just to punish disobedience of some individuals. But I wont be sucked in to your mythology, it will only do the one thing it's good for: stoop down the level of debates.
I'm saying that morality is that "unwritten law" of God that each and everyone of us is born with. There is no other definition. If the transcendent source of morality is removed, then whatever the immanent decides goes. And in the problem of Justice and Revenge this is very important, because it's the decisive factor that differentiates them.
That's why I said that one is lawful and one is not. The "end" is the same but the "means" are different.
And about God, He even flooded the entire earth once, leaving none alive but 8 people. Of course, this is just myth for you, so just putting this out here as bible trivia.
artu said:
Maybe, he doesn't bother when it comes to you, since you are in the habit of saying quite shallow things and presenting blatant logical fallacies with a strong but naive conviction that they are incredibly intelligent arguments.
What if what appears to you as shallow, blatantly false and unintelligent is actually the truth?
And then it's this:
Corribus said:
Yes, kindergarten is where you belong, if your behavior and treatment of others is any indication. It is possible to disagree with someone and respect them at the same time. All I ever see from you is peevishness, derision, and a tendency toward unjustified (see what I did there?) mockery, and the only reason I can see that you do it is because, like many would-be-bullies, it makes you feel good about yourself to make other people feel stupid. And make no mistake, there are as many psychological and intellectual bullies out there as physical ones, and the internet has a habit of drawing the former out like cockroaches.
There's nothing wrong with artu's topic, and in fact it's this kind of conversation that the OSM is missing now for a while. The fact that you can't see value is dissecting the meaning of commonly used ideas says more about yourself and your appreciation for the history of philosophy than it does about anyone in this thread. But if you don't like the thread's topic or think its beneath your overinflated opinion of your own intellect, you may certainly feel free to not insert yourself where you and your surly attitude aren't wanted.
With this post you're doing the exact same thing that you're accusing me of. Your opining on my person is first of all full of untruths, secondly insulting and thirdly unwelcome since it leads this thread off topic. I'm amazed that you have the nerve to even dare say "It is possible to disagree with someone and respect them at the same time" just so that you can accuse me of cyber-bullying (lol wut?) and compare me to cockroaches a while later, in the same paragraph. While criticizing you certainly crossed my mind I restrained myself out of respect, but I will seize this moment just to tell you that out of the entire mod squad you're the one that I appreciate the least, and that's putting it euphemistically. If you want to grasp how much I really dislike you then picture this: I'd rather have Ghost as a mod than you. At least his posts are unintelligible.
That aside, I will apologize for my behavior which I indeed recognize as inciting to posting replies as seen above. It really seems that when a question is asked on a thread the most unwanted answer is the truth. I'll leave you guys with your philosophies and opinions and excuse myself out of here.
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artu
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posted April 06, 2014 04:40 AM |
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Quote:
What if what appears to you as shallow, blatantly false and unintelligent is actually the truth?
It is culturally too local, cosmologically too anthropomorphic, philosophically too binary, and morally too childish to be the truth. But if by some miracle it turns out to be, then I will be tortured for all eternity because of my opinions and your (God's) idea of justice would be fulfilled. Unfortunately for you, we have some Muslims here who thinks exactly the same way about your "faithlessness" so the same bet is also on you.
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Tsar-Ivor
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posted April 06, 2014 11:47 AM |
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Quote:
Did Mary go too far? Did she not go far enough? Were her actions justified? Has justice been served?
It is subjective from our point of view as to what would've been the right method for the vendetta, or the correct proportions. The whole point of the process of revenge is that it need only be satisfactory from the 'doers' point of view, hence one only needs to vindicate what one has done to themselves, not to others.
Quote:
Individual answers to those questions will vary, and what is justified is subjective. Perceptions will also depend on the facts at hand. A lot of the details here are ambiguous. If the fact is that Mary intentionally invited Beth out to dinner in order to share an embarrassing fact about her, to make her look bad in front of Bob, the external observer is probably more likely to say that Beth's subsequent actions were justified. If the fact is that Mary's comment was completely innocuous and that she didn't mean anything by it - that Beth just overreacted - then the external observer is more likely to think that Beth went way overboard, that her treatment of Mary afterward wasn't justified at all - and in fact justice can only be reached by Mary being punished (not by a magistrate, obviously, but by "fate", perhaps). And what about the alleged affair between Mary and Matthew? Suppose it's true that Mary didn't mean to make fun of Beth, but that she is, in fact, sleeping around with Matthew behind Mark's back. There might be some who believe (in a karma kind of way) that even though Beth was out of line, justice has still been served because Mary got what she deserved - in a round about way. The ends justify the means. We might still yearn for some kind of punishment for Beth, who clearly isn't a very nice person, but many would still feel better about this turn of events than if Mary and Matthew were NOT screwing behind Mark's back and their flirtatious behavior was just innocent.
Here you talk about whether Mary had intention to ruin Beth's possible relationship, and how that might impact on the justifiability of the vendetta, in this regard one might argue that recklessness was sufficient. The facts are, that Beth was seen by Mary as the cause for her ruined relationship prospects, regardless of direct intention. So, in the end of the day, a vendetta's exact proportion is determined by the 'doer' (Mary for example) and the circumstances, and justice to themselves comes before justification to others.
But you're right, we all have different measurements when it comes to justice, and at what point we feel justified, or whether it is justice at all. But do note that a vendetta is not necessarily intended to be deemed justifiable to ANYONE except the 'doer', refer to the short-story I posted, especially to the last line.
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artu
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posted April 06, 2014 01:58 PM |
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I think vendetta would be too strong a word for the kind of revenge Corribus mentions. I mean, I've heard it used as a figure of speech in some situations but come on, literally vendetta is this.
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Corribus
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The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted April 06, 2014 05:13 PM |
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Edited by Corribus at 17:15, 06 Apr 2014.
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@Tsar
I guess my point was that if facts (or perceptions of them) determine whether justice has been served, then justice is fundamentally a subjective concept. Law is an attempt to standardize the concept of justice based on the morals and average notions of what constitutes "right", as determined by society, so that people aren't treated to the erratic whims of individuals. Nevertheless, justice is still a concept that exists beyond the law, and I believe both are human constructs.
An alternative possibility is that justice is an objective (but unknowable) ideal and our perceptions of justice are just that: various attempts to approach what we think that ideal is. This is not different from a more general kind of objective moral code. However I do not subscribe to this type of moral objectivity because it presumes an ideal exists. I see no reason to believe this should be the case. And either way it is our perceptions of the ideal that matter, and thus it seems to me that the objective and subjective viewpoints are practically indistinguishable from each other.
____________
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later. -Mitch Hedberg
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mvassilev
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posted April 06, 2014 07:26 PM |
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Being an objective ideal and a human construct are not mutually exclusive. For example, consider board games. Their rules are entirely human constructs, but we can talk about some board games being more appealing than others (let's say appeal is measured by sales or popularity), and therefore we can talk about the ideal board game, one that would have the greatest number of people like it more than any other board game. Then we have the objectively best rules for a board game, as measured by people finding it appealing - but the rules would still be a human construct.
Something similar is the case for morality and justice. It is a mistake to present human constructs and objective ideals as mutually exclusive.
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Corribus
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The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted April 06, 2014 07:46 PM |
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mvassilev said:
Being an objective ideal and a human construct are not mutually exclusive. For example, consider board games. Their rules are entirely human constructs, but we can talk about some board games being more appealing than others (let's say appeal is measured by sales or popularity), and therefore we can talk about the ideal board game, one that would have the greatest number of people like it more than any other board game. Then we have the objectively best rules for a board game, as measured by people finding it appealing - but the rules would still be a human construct.
Something similar is the case for morality and justice. It is a mistake to present human constructs and objective ideals as mutually exclusive.
This presumes that the ideal board game is the one that sells the best. Candyland sells well; I'm not sure I'd say it's the best, or even good. Different people have different ideals. It depends on whom you ask. Beyond that, having an objective ideal would mean a single set of criteria for what constitutes "best". I'd like to you see you establish what those criteria are, even for a board game (much less justice). I mean, I could create the coolest, most popular board game ever and give it away free - according to your criterion, it wouldn't be ideal, though, because it doesn't make a dime. Maybe the ideal game is the one the most people play. But then you're just talking averages, so clearly it can't be the ideal for everyone. How can a game be ideal if I don't like it? Certainly the ideal game for a 6 year old isn't the same as the ideal game for a 36 year old. That would seem to me to be an absurd conclusion.
Let me ask a question of you, since you've embraced this concept of an objective ideal. Supposing an ideal exists - for anything. Go with a board game if you like. Can it be knowable? As soon as you start to define it, do you not contaminate it with your own preferences? In which case, would it not any longer be an ideal? And if that's the case - if an objective ideal exists, but is unknowable, it is not just trivial then? What use does an unknowable ideal have?
I don't want to drag the topic too far away from justice/revenge and I certainly don't want to get into another tail-chasing argument about subjective and objective morality with you, so to make it specific - if an ideal for justice is unknowable, then what value does it have? It's the subjective interpretation of the ideal that makes a difference in our daily lives.
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JoonasTo
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posted April 06, 2014 07:54 PM |
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What is justice and what is revenge depends on if it is done for the wronged party or for general order.
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mvassilev
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posted April 06, 2014 08:28 PM |
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Corribus:
Sorry, I wasn't clear, I should've been more specific about what I meant by "ideal game". I meant that if a board game's quality is defined by some objective metric, such as sales (ideally best-selling) or how often it's played (ideally popular), there is some set of rules for a board game that would cause it to have the highest sales or be played the most often. Some games' rules cause them to be more popular than others, and there is some ideal game whose rules would cause it to be more popular than any other. That doesn't necessarily mean that it would be universally popular - the point of my example was merely to show that something can be both an ideal (the most popular game possible) and a human construct (the rules of such a game would be a human construct, as all rules of games are constructs).Quote:
Certainly the ideal game for a 6 year old isn't the same as the ideal game for a 36 year old.
That's true, but my point stands in a modified form - there is an ideal game for a 6-year-old, and a (presumably different) ideal game for a 36-year-old, but there is an ideal game for each of them, and the fact that such a game would be ideal for them would be objective, i.e. if such a game were to be invented such that 6-year-olds or 36-year-olds would find it more appealing than any other game, and someone would come along and say something like, "No, they don't like it", they would be objectively wrong.Quote:
if an ideal for justice is unknowable, then what value does it have?
I don't think ideal justice is unknowable. Even if we may be unsure about some of its specifics, we do know (or can find out) about most other aspects of it - just like you don't know exactly how many hairs there are on your head, but you do know that there are more than 1 (unless you're bald) and fewer than a billion. You assume that justice can be "contaminated" by one's own preferences, but that is to mistake the nature of ideal justice - justice itself is fundamentally based on agreement derived from people's preferences. The argument is broadly Hobbesian - I don't want to be killed, neither do you, nor does our neighbor, so all three of us agree not to kill each other. No actual agreement needs to be made, it needs only be the case that all involved would like such an agreement to exist. Similar agreements are beneficial in other areas as well - in addition to agreeing not to murder, people find it advantageous to agree not to do other things to each other in exchange for others agreeing the same. These desirable agreements are what determine the content of justice. Justice is not some freely floating ideal independent of our preferences and desires, but a structure formed by agreements that we would want to make because of our preferences and desires. So, justice is a human construct, but it isn't arbitrary because agreements can be of varying quality.
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artu
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posted April 06, 2014 08:33 PM |
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Edited by artu at 20:41, 06 Apr 2014.
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JoonasTo said:
What is justice and what is revenge depends on if it is done for the wronged party or for general order.
Pretty much everyone agrees on that part, there is a higher level of abstraction in justice and it is applied for the sake of the society. (Of course, this does not mean it is objective in anyway because the norms of societies are not objective or ideal. And while on that, congrats mvass, you have defined objective as popular.) But the thing is... Ok, I'll give Nietzsche as an example, here. Now, before him, when you look at the ace guys (Plato, Descartes, Kant...), you have usually a dualistic understanding of the human condition, they are different in many subjects but one thing they all put on the table quite similar is, there is the rational part in humans, acts of wisdom and virtue comes from that. And then, there is the irrational part of desire, greed and lust etc etc... They all suggest to expand knowledge and hence let the rational part control the irrational part, be virtuous and all that. Then, Nietzsche drops as a mortar right in the middle of this by objecting that the rational part is in fact under the command of desire, we use knowledge to bend things to our will and control more. So, coming back to the topic at hand, think of the capital punishment for example, is it really for social order and balancing things out, or is it just revenge in disguise? The question is not specific to death penalty but it is an exceptionally good example because the motivation of rehabilitation is none in death penalty. It has to have a pragmatic effect on crime rates to make sense but no such thing is proven. So if it is to even things out not for your personal pleasure but for the sake of society, why does one want such a thing in the first place? As I said, the differences between justice and revenge are not what concerns me here, the fact that one of them is being idealized while the other is being demonized still seems like an interesting phenomenon, because I see them very related in terms of motivation and origin.
Quote:
So, justice is a human construct, but it isn't arbitrary because agreements can be of varying quality.
Not being arbitrary does not mean there exists an ideal form of justice that fits for every human society in every age. Our conceptualization of right and wrong develops under the conditions we live in and according to the problems we deal with. In a world of constant famines for instance, consuming too much food will be considered unjust and punishable.
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mvassilev
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posted April 06, 2014 08:41 PM |
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artu said:
Then, Nietzsche drops as a mortar right in the middle of this by objecting that the rational part is in fact under the command of desire, we use knowledge to bend things to our will and control more.
Wasn't that Hume?Quote:
Our conceptualization of right and wrong develops under the conditions we live in and according to the problems we deal with. In a world of constant famines for instance, consuming too much food will be considered unjust and punishable.
People an be wrong about what's right and wrong just like they can be wrong about other aspects of reality, such as physics. People are wrong in different ways depending on the conditions in which they live. Whether something is considered wrong is only potentially related to whether it's actually wrong.
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artu
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posted April 06, 2014 08:49 PM |
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Edited by artu at 20:59, 06 Apr 2014.
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Nope. Hume says something simpler, he says desire (the irrational) is in control. Nietzsche is taking it further, he says we construct our rational perspective according to our will. That seems much more relevant since a judge in a court has no specific desire about the case he is dealing with.
Quote:
People an be wrong about what's right and wrong just like they can be wrong about other aspects of reality, such as physics. People are wrong in different ways depending on the conditions in which they live. Whether something is considered wrong is only potentially related to whether it's actually wrong.
We've been through that. There is no normative ideal that is independent of historical context and that is certainly not because people can be mistaken (although they can), that is because the historical context shapes the norms itself. When you say "these kids like this game" it is not a normative statement about the quality of the game itself, (as in "this game is very good"), it is an empirical observation about the kids. You can not evaluate hunters gatherers and a 20th century citizen with the same normative set of rights and wrongs. It wouldn't make sense to begin with. You can make observations about why they had their rights and wrongs and which conditions shaped it.
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mvassilev
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posted April 06, 2014 09:07 PM |
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The statement about the quality of a game can be formulated as a statement about the kids (how much they like it), but it can also be formulated as a statement about the game (how much it is liked by the kids). But even if we formulate it as a statement about the kids, we can still say that there is a game that they'd like more than any other game. It's not normative because liking something isn't normative, though.
You can evaluate hunter-gatherers and 21st-century people using the same justice-determining process that I summarized in my response to Corribus. Right and wrong aren't determined by societal norms but by agreements following from the preferences of individuals.
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artu
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posted April 06, 2014 09:13 PM |
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And what makes you think preferences of individuals are absolutely independent of the society they are born and shaped in? Do you seriously believe you could have been the individualist you are, had you been in 3th Century B.C. China? You can disagree with the majority on certain subjects, sure, but you can not think in ever correct norms that is beyond time and basics of your civilization, in a broader sense.
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mvassilev
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posted April 06, 2014 09:57 PM |
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The preferences of individuals don't have to be independent of society. I suppose I should clarify that the norms of society don't define right and wrong except to the extent that they shape individuals' preferences. There is no direct connection between societal norms and right and wrong. People's preferences are in part innate, in part shaped by what they happen to encounter by chance, in part shaped by the general norms of where they live, and in part shaped by applying deliberative processes (reason) to make their preferences more consistent.
My point is, individuals' preferences, whatever they are and wherever they come from, through the process I described, determine the content of morality.
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artu
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posted April 07, 2014 04:04 AM |
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Okay, now you dont sound as wrong as you usually do  What do you mean by partly innate?
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mvassilev
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posted April 07, 2014 04:10 AM |
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The innate preferences include things that range from self-preservation to how food tastes to you.
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artu
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posted April 07, 2014 04:35 AM |
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Hmm, very basic things, that has biological origins... Although most of our preferences about taste come from habit, that's why people have to educate their sense of taste when they come upon a cuisine that is radically different from theirs. Almost all Middle-Easterns react very bad to the type of Chinese meat that has sugar in it, you know, like "eeeiiirgh" level. Salty drinks such as ayran (yogurt with water) makes the Westerners mop their face while we drink them feeling refreshed. Anyway, that would be quite off-topic.
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