Abstract
Every criminal act ought to be matched by a corresponding punishment, or so we may suppose, and every punishment ought to reflect a criminal act. We know how to count punishments. But how do we count crimes? In particular, how does our notion of a criminal action depend on whether the prohibited action is an activity, an accomplishment, an achievement, or a state?
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Notes
The puzzle is based on a (true) story reported in Ferraris (2004).
Compare: A dualist may insist that a thing and its matter are distinct while maintaining that when you buy a statue you ipso facto buy the clay, since the former is made of the latter.
See Metaphysics IX.6.
One may object that dependent achievements are temporally extended (albeit shortly so) rather than truly instantaneous, since we may report them using a gerundive form:
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(a)
John was reaching the top.
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(b)
John was crossing the line.
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(c)
John was touching the painting.
We would reply that such gerundives do not report achievements strictu sensu. Rather, they have the effect of shifting the object of discourse from the achievement itself – which as such is truly instantaneous – to the activity on which it depends, in particular to its last phase, right before the culmination. Thus, for example, (a) says that John was about to complete a certain activity (walking uphill) and to accomplish something (climbing the mountain). Likewise, (b) says that John was about to cross the line. Cases such as (c) are more complex, because of an underlying ambiguity. On one reading, again, John was about to touch the painting. On a different reading, he was holding his finger on the painting. But this alternative reading does not refer to an achievement; it refers to a monotonous activity, so our general point is not affected.
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(a)
See, for instance, Simons (1987: 139), who takes into account cases of partial and relative “dissectivity.”
If we counted the times we infringe the law by the times we end doing something, we would still have the very same problem, plus some further implausibility. It’s not just that cops do not wait us until we slow down in order to fine us; insofar as they ask us to stop, they would actually force us to breach the law. (There are exceptions, though: consider Keanu Reeves in the movie Speed.)
Sometimes such pragmatic considerations are explicitly formalized: check what your state law says about leaving your car parked when the money in the meter is finished.
See Dowty (1979: 133ff).
(Cext) is just an example. In some cases, the relevant units may be defined by reference to other criteria than the temporal length of the agent’s φings. For instance, if the prohibition concern the building of houses, then what matters is not the amount of time during which the agent engages in building a house but, rather, how much of a house the agent builds over time.
References
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Varzi, A.C., Torrengo, G. Crimes and Punishments. Philosophia 34, 395–404 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-006-9040-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-006-9040-x