> Declaring that no one deserves anything does not entail that no one should be punished.
This depends on a consequentialist moral theory, of course. Your argument here is probably an attack on many non-consequentialist forms of theorizing, which is fair enough.
> If desert exists, what people deserve depends on what has happened in the past.
I would rephrase this as "desert exists, what people deserve depends on what they have done in their past", which eliminates some ambiguity over hypothetical time travellers. Of course, I don't think that time travel makes any sense at all, so I'm dubious of its use as a tool to analyze thinsg in the real world.
This amendment also makes sense if we grant time travel. Punishing someone under a theory of just deserts requires them to be culpable for acts. That can only happen if they've already done it, because if they haven't they have both the ability and duty to avoid doing such a bad act.
As Amended premise one seems reasonable. Though I again note my distate for your use of magic pills that cause total personality shifts.
> we can imagine a temporally scrambled life.
I'll admit. Imagining this is pretty difficult for me at least.
> The temporally scrambled version of Amos would live his years out of order—so he’d be born in the year 2000 as a 40-year-old man, with all the memories as if he had lived the previous years.
It seems reasonable to say that IF the time travel has somehow fixed his future (even though defining away free will moots the point of morality), then him being "born" at age 40 with all 40 years of memories is exactly the same as him travelling back in time. Indeed, by all relevant senses, he *has* comitted those murders from 2020-2030, and thus deserves to be punished.
If I'm interpreting this right, you;re trying to make a hypothetical situation where someone has the memories of comitting a crime that they haven't yet done but are guarenteed to do in the future. But for them the crime lies in their past, and this it can be punished.
I think that this view requires one to assume a strange view of personhood, where one can have memories and continuity with a certain event yet not be the same person. Perhas this is because utilitarians like yourself don't really recognize people as individuals at all, only a disconnected series of mental states at moments in time.
> To see this, suppose that the life is temporally scrambled so that one lives their first year as a 40-year-old man, and then lives the rest of their years in order. Well, by changing when their “40th year of life” one doesn’t affect what they deserve
This is a raw assertion of your ultimate conclusion. *Of course* it changes what they deserve for the years of their life before the 40th. After year 1, they appear to die, and then are born again in year 2. Until they commit the bad act after being born, they don't deserve anything bad.
> f time progressed the normal way, what they’d deserve when they were 40 would depend on what happened in previous years
Another critical difference is that the future is not fixed. Maybe tht's free will, maybe that's whacky stuff with the weak nuclear force. You can't equate the unknown with historical facts.
> When acts are taken doesn’t affect what one deserves for carrying out various acts.
Sure, but it changes when they deserve it. They deserve it after they do the bad thing.
> But temporal scrambling does not affect the acts one takes or their character.
I think that scrambing of someone's life is a patently obvious change to their character.
Now let's see how you answer this big point.
> On this account, what Amos deserves now depends on whether he is psychologically continuous with his future self.
The Psychological continuity only matters insofar as it means you are somehow the "same" person such that the wrongful acts can continue to be blamed on "you". If someone haad a scrambled life that was psychologically discontinious, there would probably actually be two different people.
> Whether he is, we may suppose, will depend on whether in the future, there will be lead in Amos’ water; if there is lead in his water, he’ll have a certain violent character which will happen to correspond with his current mental states.
This doesn't make sense. Let's say that 2000 amos is as evil as me (I am very evil). There are two scenarios. Amos has either killed someone senselessly, or has not.
If Amos has not killed someone, then he doesn't deserve punishment just for having a bad attitude.
If Amos has killed someone, then that killing is fixed. We know that sometime between 2030 and 2040 he killed someone and thus he deserves punishment.
Now let's take your further hypothetical. Let's say that this killing is dependant on the existence of lead in drinking water. If there is lead, then the states are psychologically consistent: He killed someone in part due to lead, and then emerged in the year 2000.
But let's say that there is no lead, and he doesn't kill anyone. In that case Mr. Law Abiding Amos can't show up in the year 2000 having killed someone. Maybe it's someone who shares some similarities to him, but there's a clear break that renders the two different people.
In such a case the 2000 Amos might maybe possibly deserve some punishment for killing someone in memory, but certainly not to the same degree as actually killing someone. This 2000 amos never actually existed prior to the spontanoious appearence in 2000.
> Notably, we may suppose that Amos’ current memories and dispositions will not change regardless of whether or not his future self will be violent
But you have already said that what looks like Amos' future self to us is in fact Amos' past self to him. Thus Amos' future character dfirectly impacts his character in the year 2000.
> rather than mere psychological continuity, whether one’s psychology connects up in the right way to their future self.
I'm not sure what the differnece between "psychological connection" and "psychological continuity" is...What is a continuity without connection?
> To illustrate the difference, I might be psychologically continuous with myself of 40 years in the sense that I have all my memories and psychological states the same, but I might not be causally dependent on them in that my psychology would not be changed by my 40-year-old self being different.
???
If x is "the same" as y, then y changing means that either x changes too, or that x is no longer "the same" as y. You can't do both! That's cheating!
> If in the year 2000, I’m born as a 40-year-old man, with memories of what I’ll do in 2039, when I live as a 39-year-old man, it’s wildly implausible that the causal connection between my current psychology and my future psychology determines what I deserve. This causal connection doesn’t affect my current viciousness, what immoral things I’ll do, or anything of the sort.
It doesn't affect what you *will do*, it effects when you *have already done*. If someone is truly continious with some other temporal iteration of themselves, they are the *same* person living life (from their point of view) one step at a time.
An illustration: Say that I live happily for 25 years, and then spontaniously appear in the year 2000 in a freak time travel incident. I think that based on this situation it would be reasonable to say I am the same person that was just in 2048, now in a different time.
The scrambled lives scenario you propose is *identical* to a scenario. Someone is living their life up to 39, and then *poof*, they appear in the year 2000.
> It is implausible that what I’d deserve in this case would depend on whether there is a causal connection between my current psychology and future self or whether there is merely a non-causal counterfactual dependence.
I don't that the casual element is necessary here, only the fact that something is in fact psychologically continious, as it is in this example. And even then it all really comes down to what we define as a person's continuing self over time.
I also don't think that your example removes casuality. One's future psychology would still be determined by their current one, just with a predictor intermediary.
> it’s not plausible that, if desert exists, Jeffrey Dahmer could avoid desert by having a 10-second jump in his psychology.
I agree that this is implausible, but this is just an argument over what it means to be the same person over time. Perhaps a more serious discontinuity is needed to sever personhood. Or perhaps you could argue for obliteration of the Self.
Let's see your response. I would note however that an argument which requires first proving (or perhaps disproving) a certain theory of personal identity is already significent weakened.
> Suppose that the left side of my brain goes into one skull and the right side goes into a different skull. Both are causally dependent on, and psychologically continuous, with me, but they can’t both be me
Is it not reasonable to say that there are now two people that were once one person. That's certainly odd, but we are talking about splitting brains in two. Both halves "inherit" your bad acts!
> Suppose that Jeffrey Dahmer and I trade the left side of our brains with the other, so that his left brain is in my skull and mine is in his.
Well, again. Something as extraordinary as you switching left brains with Jeffery Dahmer would seem to continunce a usually odd but in this case plausible conclusion: You take some sort of average/mix of what you and Jeff deserved.
Is it really reasonable to take fanciful scenarios and say that a theoretical response to those is implausible? You're the one who introduced the implausibility...
Dessert as in just desserts?
Yes.
Thanks for the Article. As usual it's nonsense. Luckily it's not as bad as your other articles, so I don't have to send you a 14 page response.
This is what I thought as I read your article. Critical, yes, but not really an argument as you can see.
> Against Desert
Already Lost. Desert exists as verifiable fact: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/minecraft_gamepedia/images/6/6d/Desert.png/revision/latest?cb=20220103192043
> Declaring that no one deserves anything does not entail that no one should be punished.
This depends on a consequentialist moral theory, of course. Your argument here is probably an attack on many non-consequentialist forms of theorizing, which is fair enough.
> If desert exists, what people deserve depends on what has happened in the past.
I would rephrase this as "desert exists, what people deserve depends on what they have done in their past", which eliminates some ambiguity over hypothetical time travellers. Of course, I don't think that time travel makes any sense at all, so I'm dubious of its use as a tool to analyze thinsg in the real world.
This amendment also makes sense if we grant time travel. Punishing someone under a theory of just deserts requires them to be culpable for acts. That can only happen if they've already done it, because if they haven't they have both the ability and duty to avoid doing such a bad act.
As Amended premise one seems reasonable. Though I again note my distate for your use of magic pills that cause total personality shifts.
> we can imagine a temporally scrambled life.
I'll admit. Imagining this is pretty difficult for me at least.
> The temporally scrambled version of Amos would live his years out of order—so he’d be born in the year 2000 as a 40-year-old man, with all the memories as if he had lived the previous years.
It seems reasonable to say that IF the time travel has somehow fixed his future (even though defining away free will moots the point of morality), then him being "born" at age 40 with all 40 years of memories is exactly the same as him travelling back in time. Indeed, by all relevant senses, he *has* comitted those murders from 2020-2030, and thus deserves to be punished.
If I'm interpreting this right, you;re trying to make a hypothetical situation where someone has the memories of comitting a crime that they haven't yet done but are guarenteed to do in the future. But for them the crime lies in their past, and this it can be punished.
I think that this view requires one to assume a strange view of personhood, where one can have memories and continuity with a certain event yet not be the same person. Perhas this is because utilitarians like yourself don't really recognize people as individuals at all, only a disconnected series of mental states at moments in time.
> To see this, suppose that the life is temporally scrambled so that one lives their first year as a 40-year-old man, and then lives the rest of their years in order. Well, by changing when their “40th year of life” one doesn’t affect what they deserve
This is a raw assertion of your ultimate conclusion. *Of course* it changes what they deserve for the years of their life before the 40th. After year 1, they appear to die, and then are born again in year 2. Until they commit the bad act after being born, they don't deserve anything bad.
> f time progressed the normal way, what they’d deserve when they were 40 would depend on what happened in previous years
Another critical difference is that the future is not fixed. Maybe tht's free will, maybe that's whacky stuff with the weak nuclear force. You can't equate the unknown with historical facts.
> When acts are taken doesn’t affect what one deserves for carrying out various acts.
Sure, but it changes when they deserve it. They deserve it after they do the bad thing.
> But temporal scrambling does not affect the acts one takes or their character.
I think that scrambing of someone's life is a patently obvious change to their character.
Now let's see how you answer this big point.
> On this account, what Amos deserves now depends on whether he is psychologically continuous with his future self.
The Psychological continuity only matters insofar as it means you are somehow the "same" person such that the wrongful acts can continue to be blamed on "you". If someone haad a scrambled life that was psychologically discontinious, there would probably actually be two different people.
> Whether he is, we may suppose, will depend on whether in the future, there will be lead in Amos’ water; if there is lead in his water, he’ll have a certain violent character which will happen to correspond with his current mental states.
This doesn't make sense. Let's say that 2000 amos is as evil as me (I am very evil). There are two scenarios. Amos has either killed someone senselessly, or has not.
If Amos has not killed someone, then he doesn't deserve punishment just for having a bad attitude.
If Amos has killed someone, then that killing is fixed. We know that sometime between 2030 and 2040 he killed someone and thus he deserves punishment.
Now let's take your further hypothetical. Let's say that this killing is dependant on the existence of lead in drinking water. If there is lead, then the states are psychologically consistent: He killed someone in part due to lead, and then emerged in the year 2000.
But let's say that there is no lead, and he doesn't kill anyone. In that case Mr. Law Abiding Amos can't show up in the year 2000 having killed someone. Maybe it's someone who shares some similarities to him, but there's a clear break that renders the two different people.
In such a case the 2000 Amos might maybe possibly deserve some punishment for killing someone in memory, but certainly not to the same degree as actually killing someone. This 2000 amos never actually existed prior to the spontanoious appearence in 2000.
> Notably, we may suppose that Amos’ current memories and dispositions will not change regardless of whether or not his future self will be violent
But you have already said that what looks like Amos' future self to us is in fact Amos' past self to him. Thus Amos' future character dfirectly impacts his character in the year 2000.
Let's see what your response to this is.
> rather than mere psychological continuity, whether one’s psychology connects up in the right way to their future self.
I'm not sure what the differnece between "psychological connection" and "psychological continuity" is...What is a continuity without connection?
> To illustrate the difference, I might be psychologically continuous with myself of 40 years in the sense that I have all my memories and psychological states the same, but I might not be causally dependent on them in that my psychology would not be changed by my 40-year-old self being different.
???
If x is "the same" as y, then y changing means that either x changes too, or that x is no longer "the same" as y. You can't do both! That's cheating!
> If in the year 2000, I’m born as a 40-year-old man, with memories of what I’ll do in 2039, when I live as a 39-year-old man, it’s wildly implausible that the causal connection between my current psychology and my future psychology determines what I deserve. This causal connection doesn’t affect my current viciousness, what immoral things I’ll do, or anything of the sort.
It doesn't affect what you *will do*, it effects when you *have already done*. If someone is truly continious with some other temporal iteration of themselves, they are the *same* person living life (from their point of view) one step at a time.
An illustration: Say that I live happily for 25 years, and then spontaniously appear in the year 2000 in a freak time travel incident. I think that based on this situation it would be reasonable to say I am the same person that was just in 2048, now in a different time.
The scrambled lives scenario you propose is *identical* to a scenario. Someone is living their life up to 39, and then *poof*, they appear in the year 2000.
> It is implausible that what I’d deserve in this case would depend on whether there is a causal connection between my current psychology and future self or whether there is merely a non-causal counterfactual dependence.
I don't that the casual element is necessary here, only the fact that something is in fact psychologically continious, as it is in this example. And even then it all really comes down to what we define as a person's continuing self over time.
I also don't think that your example removes casuality. One's future psychology would still be determined by their current one, just with a predictor intermediary.
> it’s not plausible that, if desert exists, Jeffrey Dahmer could avoid desert by having a 10-second jump in his psychology.
I agree that this is implausible, but this is just an argument over what it means to be the same person over time. Perhaps a more serious discontinuity is needed to sever personhood. Or perhaps you could argue for obliteration of the Self.
Let's see your response. I would note however that an argument which requires first proving (or perhaps disproving) a certain theory of personal identity is already significent weakened.
> Suppose that the left side of my brain goes into one skull and the right side goes into a different skull. Both are causally dependent on, and psychologically continuous, with me, but they can’t both be me
Is it not reasonable to say that there are now two people that were once one person. That's certainly odd, but we are talking about splitting brains in two. Both halves "inherit" your bad acts!
> Suppose that Jeffrey Dahmer and I trade the left side of our brains with the other, so that his left brain is in my skull and mine is in his.
Well, again. Something as extraordinary as you switching left brains with Jeffery Dahmer would seem to continunce a usually odd but in this case plausible conclusion: You take some sort of average/mix of what you and Jeff deserved.
Is it really reasonable to take fanciful scenarios and say that a theoretical response to those is implausible? You're the one who introduced the implausibility...
I'll read more into this interesting link ;).
Thanks for the interesting writing.