PHIL 103 Final

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Race, gender, class

Demographic variables that affect prison sentences

The New Jim Crow

Thesis: The mass incarceration system in America that began in late 1960s is not a racially neutral response to crime. It’s chiefly a tool for maintaing white control and domination over Black Americans, a “color blind” replacement for Jim Crow

Utilitarian Theory of Punishment

\-Punishment is a necessary evil for creating the greater good for society

\-Deterrence = main justification for criminal justice system

Objections to Utilitarian Theory

1. Punishing the innocent objection
2. Not punishing the guilty objection

The Desert Thesis

It’s a good thing for people to get what they deserve, for the virtuous to be rewarded, and for wrongdoers to suffer

Retributivism

\[Kant & Ross\] Only theory of punishment which says it’s GOOD for people to suffer

Negative Retributivism

It’s wrong to punish people who don’t deserve it, or to punish people more than they deserve

Positive Retributivism

It’s good/obligatory to punish people who do deserve it

Justifying Punishment Objection

Objection to retributivism; making wrongdoers suffer isn’t a strong enough justification for incarceration system

Theory of Pure Restitution

Boonin’s Theory:

* Believes we should abolish punishment
* Instead offenders should be made to make amends for the harm they’ve caused, restoring victims to their prior level of well-being

Secondary Victims

Under theory of pure restitution: people who are harmed indirectly by a crime-- Boonin thinks they’re also entitled to restitution

Nature of restitution

Boonin postulates that restitution, in some cases, might go beynd financial compensation to include monitoring or incarceration

Theory of Pure Resitution Objections

1. Rich offender objection
2. Poor offender objection
3. Deterrence objection (if you don’t incarcerate lots of people, the theory will provide inadequate deterrence; if you do incarcerate lots of people, just looks like punishment w/a different name)

Deontological Theory

Tadros’ theory that committing a crime generates an obligation for you to prevent other crimes of the same type from occurring

Elements of Deontological Theory

* Utilitarian Theory - main justification for punishment = deterrence
* Retributivism - emphasis on the distinctin between guilt and innocence
* ToPR - focus on making amends for the harm you’ve caused

Tadros’ cases

* Double hit man (human shield)
* Two assassins

Deontological Theory Objections

1. Rich offender objection
2. Proportionality objection - no guarantee that a sentence needed to deter others from committing crimes will seem proportional to us (e.g. 12 yrs. for arson, 6 yrs. for murder)

Singer’s Strong Principle

If it’s in your power to stop something bad from happening without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance, we ought, morally, to do it

Drowning Child Case

If you walk past a pond and see a child drowning, should you wade in and pull the child out, even if it ruins your clothes and makes you late to your first class?

→ Failing to donate to famine relief to save children who are dying due to starvation is morally analogous to not saving the drowning child.

Singer’s Weak Principle

If it’s in our power to prevent something very bad from happening withut sacrificing anything morally significant, we ought, morally, to do it

Thomson Abortion Thesis

Even if we assume that the fetus has a right to life, abortion will still be permissible in some cases because the mother’s right to bodily autonomy outweighs the fetus’ right to life

World-Famous Violinist

* Verdict: No obligation to remain plugged in
* Because you didn’t consent to allow the violinist to be plugged into your body, you have no responsibility to keep him alive, and it’s permissible to unplug
* Pregnancy in cases of rape

Rapidly Growing Child

* Verdict: Permissible to kill the child to save your own life
* If your life is endangered you have a right to defend yourself and kill the person to save yourself
* When the mother’s life is in danger

People-Seeds

* Verdict: No obligation to take care of the people-seed
* If you’ve taken every reasonable precaution to prevent life from being created, you have no responsibility to take care of it
* Perfect use of birth control

Objections to Thomson

* Her cases involve strangers rather than kin
* She ignores the distinction between killing and letting die
* Her cases don’t extend to the most common types of abortion
* There are other cases (e.g. blizzard, hemophiliac case) where the child’s right to life seems to take precedence

Rachel’s Pain Argument

1. It is wrong to cause sentient creatures pain without adequate justification.
2. Eating factory-farmed meat causes livestock an enormous amount of pain. 
3. The small amount of additional joy we get from eating meat is not sufficient justification for this pain. 

Principle of Equal Consideration of Interests

If two creatures, X and Y, have similar interests at stake, those interests should be given equal moral weight.

Frowe’s Main Thesis

It is permissible for soldiers fighting a just war to deliberately target enemy civilians when doing so serves a legitimate military purpose

Indirectness Objection

Objection to Frowe: Civilians aren’t liable to be killed, because their contribution to the war effort is too indirect

* Response: the contributions of many in the military are indirect (e.g. commanders at enemy HQ -→ indirectness doesn’t make you immune to defensive killing)

Small Contribution Objection

Objection to Frowe: Civilians aren’t liable to be killed, because their contribution to the war effort is so small

* If 10,000 people each contribute $1 to hire a hitman to kill you → even though each individual’s contribution to the threat is small, it would still be permissible to kill them, if necessary, to save your life (even small contributions to an unjust threat make you liable to defensive killing)

Metaethics

The study of the nature of moral language, moral facts and moral knowledge

Moral Realism

1. Moral claims make assertions of fact
2. Moral truths are objective or mind-independent
3. At least some moral claims are true

Argument for Moral Realism

* Torturing innocent children for fun is wrong
* We want to say that it’s a mind-independent fact that this claim is true
* Only realism will allow us to say this - every other metaethical view will be forced to say something implausible

Occult Properties Objection

Objection to Moral Realism:

* Moral facts and properties are totally unlike any other sort of fact in the universe
* They can’t be observed, scientifically tested, or verified
* They don’t seem to be made out of matter or located in physical space
* Moral facts seem occult or unnatural

Occult Faculties Objection

Objection to Moral Realism:

* Our moral beliefs seem to be produced by some mysterious faculty of moral intuition
* If moral facts are mind-independent, it’s not clear how our moral intuitins could give us reliable access to them

Relativity Objection

Objection to Moral Realism:

* The world contains a wide array of different cultures with different moral codes
* It seems arrogant or intolerant to think there’s one uniquely correct moral system
* But, if there’s no uniquely correct moral code, there can’t be objective facts about right and wrong

The Error Theory

Human beings think morality is real, but it’s not, so our moral beliefs are systematically mistaken. Morality is an evolved illusion, put into our heads by natural selection to make us better cooperators

Moral Relativism

* Agree with the realist that moral claims make assertions of fact and that some moral claims are true
* But assert that moral facts are subjective or mind dependent, created by human beings

Subjectivism

A moral claim is true for a persn, if and only if, it’s endoresed by the moral code she accepts

Cultural Relativism

A moral claim is true for a person if, and only if, it’s endorsed by the moral code her culture accepts

The Hitler Problem

Objection to moral relativism:

* Hitler’s actions were endorsed by the moral code of his society, so if CR is correct, Hitler’s actions would be morally right. But Hitler’s actions were evil, so CR must be mistaken.

The Moral Innovators Problem

Objection to moral relativism:

* CR implies that any new moral idea not yet accepted by society is automatically false. But new moral ideas often turn out to be true, so CR must be false.

The Moral Disagreement Problem

Objection to moral relativism:

* It seems as though people from different cultures often have deep moral disagreements. But CR says this is an illusion--when you seem to disagree with other culture, you’re actually both right. CR requires us to believe, implausibly, that moral disagreements between cultures are never real

Wong’s Pluralistic Relativism

There are some objective constraints on what moral codes we can adopt, but there are still many legitimate moral codes within those constraints:


1. Moral codes must be consistent with human nature
2. Moral codes must fulfill the central function of morality, promoting cooperation
3. Moral codes can’t be based on false factual beliefs

Non-Cognitivism

Moral claims don’t make assertions of fact, so they’re neither true nor false. Rather, should be understood as disguised expression of emotion (wrong = “boo!”, right = “yay!”

Frege-Geach Problem

Objection to Non-Cognitivism:

* NC struggles as an account of moral language, especially when moral claims are embedded in more complex grammatical structures (e.g. “we need to talk about whether bribery is wrong; if it’s wrong to break your promises, then it’s wrong for Charlie to break his promises”) → NC seems to misunderstand how moral language works