Re: Morality and Happiness
Punishment is another topic entirely. So far the only way it has been justified in the sense you're talking about is through some call to an essentially divine "justice," but I believe such justifications tend to be inherently irrational. It's definitely hard to logically justify punishment on those grounds, regardless of whether you accept supernatural versions of morality and choice. As Hume pointed out, choice may actually make it harder to justify punishment.
Once again I'll issue my challenge - let's assume people make choices that go against an objective morality. Based on that, can you rationally support the claim that they should be punished? Please, I'd love for someone to step up to the plate on this. But I think your whole idea of punishment is irrational from the start.
So, no. This doesn't make the idea of punishment completely ludicrous. It was ludicrous from the start, this just brings that to your attention. As far as I can tell, if punishment makes sense with (supernatural) choice, it also makes sense without (supernatural) choice. And if punishment doesn't make sense with choice, it also doesn't make sense without choice.
My view is that, because our cultural beliefs include a very strong dogma that we must cause pain to anyone who does something "bad," most people believe in punishment. However, this belief is based on unexamined cultural assumptions. When the subject of choice is brought up, it leads people to examine their conditioning and identify punishment as the inherently fallacious construct it is. But only with respect to choice - they typically continue to avoid any such examination in a "normal" context, that is they take the idea that doesn't gel with their upbringing or conditioning and try to reject it, rather than evaluating it and the conditioning in order to determine which has a stronger rational basis.
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12-12-2006, 12:39 PM
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