George Sher’s version of the expected-consequence account of desert says that properly understood and specified, we deserve the expected consequences of our actions. His version of retributivism says that wrongdoing involves the taking of more than one’s share of liberty, such that the wrongdoer deserves punishment by way of redressing the imbalance caused by that act. One thing that falls between the cracks of both accounts is an aggressor’s deserving the harmful consequences of a justified act of self-defense against his aggression.
Continue readingAuthor Archives: Irfan Khawaja
Retributivism, Its Discontents, and Some Malcontents
Chapter 5 of Sher’s Desert, “Deserved Punishment,” is a desert-based defense of retributive punishment intended to defend the claim that “persons who have acted wrongly…deserve to be punished.”
All of the participants in our Zoom discussion agreed that this was the weakest of the five chapters we’ve read so far, and all of us (I think) agreed that Sher’s argument failed to establish its intended conclusion. But as half of the group consisted of retributivists, and the other half of anti-retributivists, we ended up disagreeing about the exact nature of the failure, and then ended up disagreeing with one another about punishment itself. The retributivist-friendly participants were apt to say that Sher failed to establish a claim that happens to be true, or at least plausible; the anti-retributivists were apt to say that it was no surprise that he failed to establish a claim that happens to be unmotivated and false. We then ended up disagreeing about how to define retributivism, and about the plausibility of the motivation behind retributivism, however understood. The two camps divided in predictable ways.
Continue readingThe JBMDL Afghan Account
I was sitting in my cubicle mid-day when an email with an odd subject line tumbled into my inbox: “JBMDL Afghan.” It was from a bona fide sender, so I opened it and took a look. It turned out to be an email from the director of financial services at a major hospital system, making reference to a new medical services “payor,” as we spell it in the trade. It was, in other words, the Joint Base McGuire Fort Dix Lakehurst Afghan payor, i.e., the payor of medical services for Afghan refugees housed at McGuire Air Force Base/Fort Dix Army facility in Lakehurst, New Jersey. Otherwise known as the US military.
Continue readingDesert and Diligence
Chapter 4 of Sher’s Desert, “Desert and Diligence,” explores the thesis that diligence, or conscientious effort, is a fundamental basis of desert claims:
Whatever else we think, most of us agree that persons deserve things for sheer hard work. We believe that conscientious students deserve to get good grades, that athletes who practice regularly deserve to do well, and that businessmen who work long hours deserve to make money (Sher, Desert, p. 53).
That seems plausible enough, at least at first glance, but on reflection it raises two difficult questions:
(1) What determines what specific hard workers in fact deserve? and
(2) What does it mean say that they ought to have those things?
Question (1) seems difficult to answer precisely because effort is common to such a variety of activities with such a variety of aims. Why does the effortful student deserve grades rather than money, or the industrious businessperson deserve money rather than grades? A default answer might be that “what any hard worker deserves is just the outcome he has striven to produce” (Sher, p. 54). The (prototypical) student is striving after a grade, the (prototypical) businessperson, after money. So our provisional answer to (1) is that the deserving person deserves what she aims at in virtue of the diligent or conscientious effort she puts forth to that end.
That leads us to question (2), at least in a somewhat weak sense of “ought.” As noted in an earlier post, Sher’s inquiry into desert acknowledges that there is a gap between some claims of desert claims and the obligations assumed by any particular person. Smith can deserve something, X, without its being the case that any individual person is obligated to give Smith X. But there has to be some normative connection between what we deserve and what is desirable. Claims to desert can’t plausibly be entirely inert, normatively speaking. They have to be embody some (at least weak) claim to value.
Continue readingHe’s Immune to Parody, Too
Jason’s Brennan’s self-parodic idea of a parody, titled “I Am Immune to Criticism” (my italics):
Continue readingI’ve decided to copy-cat a style of argumentation which is prominent among democrats and socialists in the philosophy literature. This move will now render me and my work immune from criticism.
By epistocracy, I henceforth mean not only a system that gives greater weight to the wise during voting, but which actually makes substantively wise decisions! Thus, any time a seemingly epistocratic decision-system makes a bad choice–such as a choice that runs afoul of the demographic objection–it wasn’t *true* or *real* epistocracy! Epistocracy by definition always makes the wisest choices. Therefore, to oppose epistocracy is to oppose good choices and favor bad ones.
Albert Pelham, RIP
I’m deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Albert Pelham, President of the Montclair, New Jersey chapter of the NAACP, and Executive Director of the Montclair Neighborhood Development Corporation. This article just below nicely summarizes his many achievements as a civil rights activist and “social justice warrior.”
Cancel Culture: A Recantation
In previous posts here, I’ve argued that “cancel culture” is fake news–an ideological confabulation devised by the Right to discredit the Left, which is usually “credited” with having created it. I now realize that I’ve been deeply wrong, and wish to recant. Cancel culture certainly does exist, just not in the way its usual ideological adversaries would have you believe.
Think of any event that requires scheduling, e.g., an appointment, a work schedule, business hours, a conference, a travel itinerary, a date. Think of how ubiquitous such events are, and how complex and expensive the infrastructure required to keep them going–to keep the slots filled, to keep the workflow efficient, to make sure everything runs on time. Consider how much reliance the various parties place on the others in the scheduling process. If A schedules with B, A relies on B to be there, and B relies on A to show up. If A doesn’t show up, the failure (whether culpable or not) adversely affects both B and any third parties who would have used A’s slot but couldn’t, given A’s (let’s say) sudden absence. If B doesn’t show up, the absence affects A as well as a set of third parties.
Continue readingWho Deserves Afghanistan?
The expected consequence conception of desert says that, pro tanto, we deserve the expected consequences of our actions. A recent line of argument inspired by the Taliban seizure of Afghanistan both employs this conception, and unwittingly illustrates the problems with it.
Continue readingAfghanistan: So Worth It
Frederick Kagan in The New York Times, on the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban:
Reasonable people can disagree about the wisdom of keeping American military forces in Afghanistan indefinitely, even at very low numbers. I and others have argued that the investment, including the risk to American personnel, is worth it to prevent militant groups from once again overrunning the country.
Maybe, after Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, it’s time to ask what it means when people say “it’s worth it” to fight wars. What’s worth what, to whom, how and why? Anyone who wants to go and fight for Kabul or Kandahar is free to go and give it another 20 years of their life, on the model of the Lincoln Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. But that doesn’t mean it’s worth another 20 years of ours.
Continue readingLethal Prescience
I think it may be time to take down the paywall on this article from Foreign Affairs:
Policy of Truth 