This document contains part of my A Level Philosophy Revision Booklet, namely, notes on Applied Ethics. The topics covered include the topics: Stealing, stimulated killing, eating animals, and telling lies.
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Applied ethics
Crime and Punishment
Punishment is not revenge. Punishment, in the context of breaking the law, is
administered by someone impartial who represents a legal authority.
But like revenge, punishment involved depriving someone of some good, such
as freedom, money or respect.
But punishment requires justification. How and whether we can justify
punishment is reliant on what we think punishment aims to achieve.
Utilitarian View
Bentham said that ‘all punishment in itself is evil’. This is because punishment
involves depriving someone of something goof like freedom and making them
less happy.
Punishment can only be justified is the increase in unhappiness is outweighed
by an increase in happiness.
Utilitarian’s have identified 3 beneficial effects of punishment:
1. Deterrence: ‘Internal’ deterrence prevents them from committing the crime
again, while ‘external’ deterrence prevents others from committing crimes.
2. Social Protection: Punishment that stops the criminal from harming anyone
else.
3. Rehabilitation: Helps the criminals to change their desire to commit crime.
Objections
If the rationale for punishment is to prevent crime, then we would be justified in
punishing someone before they have committed a crime if we think there is
a good chance that they will.
Or we could punish someone who hadn’t committed a crime to prevent some
other bad thing happening.
Or we might give extremely severe punishments out, if this deters people
more effectively.
Response:
Rule utilitarianism solves this problem by claiming that we have a system of
rights, and a system of punishment that promotes general happiness in the
long run.
Only punishing the guilty and proportionate to the crime, is a rule that will
create more happiness than one that allows us to punish the innocent or punish
people disproportionately.
Mills Secondary Principles- punishment is a matter of justice, justice being a
secondary principle. Secondary principles are rules which in the long run
promote general happiness.
Retribution and Justice- Kant and Mill’s perspective
Kant and Aristotle agree that punishment is a matter of justice. They both hold that
criminals deserve to be punished.
Aristotle on Justice
, Principle that each person receives what they are ‘due’.
Justice is a matter of setting right what is unjustly unequal. Since the
wrongdoer has inflicted suffering and avoided it themselves.
Justice requires us to balance the scales by removing this unfair advantage.
Objections
Not possible to balance the scale for all crimes or remove the
disadvantage. E.g., someone murders someone out of hatred and receives life
imprisonment, does the sentence rebalance the scales? Or does the criminal just get
to live life without the hated individual around.
Aristotle ignores the victim. It’s almost as if the scales of justice have been
mistreated rather than the particular human being.
Kant on Justice
– Kant critics Utilitarian justifications from punishment as violating the categorical
imperative, by treating people as a means to an end (less crime) and not
and end in themselves.
– He argues that people, including criminals, have dignity and autonomy, and
the right to decide for themselves how to live.
– To be just, punishment needs to treat individuals as ends in themselves. To
treat someone as a rational being we must hold them responsible for their
actions.
– In particular, rational beings are answerable to the categorical imperative. So
when someone commits a crime they are willing that maxim to be
universalised. In punishing them we are treating them as they have chosen to
be treated.
– This can be literally understood to mean that murder deserves the death
penalty, however this seems to become counter intuitive when it comes to other
crimes like theft, since a fine doesn’t come with a psychological state of
insecurity like the victim would have felt.
– So, retribution works at a slightly more abstract level. Depriving someone of
a freedom such as theft, deserves being deprived of one’s own freedom,
namely prison.
Objections
– Utilitarian’s object that adding the harm of punishment to the harm of the crime
needs some good outcome to justify it.
– They argue that if punishment neither produces any good or an efficient way
of preventing crime, then there is no point to the punishment at all.
War
Resorting to War
Kant
– Must be a just cause.
– A just cause may be self-defence for example.
– The war must be declared by a legitimate state. This means that the state
must not violate the rights of other states, it must respect the rights of its own
citizens.
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