Abstract
This paper examines Derk Pereboom’s argument against punishment on deterrent grounds in his recent book Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life. It suggests that Pereboom’s argument against basic desert has not been shown to extend to the view that those who act wrongly lose rights against punishment for deterrent reasons. It further supports the view that those who act wrongly, if they fulfil compatibilist conditions of responsibility, do lose rights to avert threats they pose. And this, it is argued, supports punishment on deterrent grounds, at least in some limited cases.
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Notes
Pereboom Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life (Oxford: OUP, 2014).
Pereboom Living Without Free Will (Cambridge: CUP, 2001).
This view plays a larger or smaller view in different retributivist views, and the idea is nuanced in different ways by different retributivists. See, for example, M Moore Placing Blame: A Theory of the Criminal Law (Oxford: OUP, 1997); M Berman ‘Punishment and Justification’ (2008) 118 Ethics 258; L Zaibert Punishment and Retribution (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006).
See, further, V Tadros The Ends of Harm: The Moral Foundations of Criminal Law (Oxford: OUP, 2011) Chapter 4; ‘Responses’ (2013) 32 Law and Philosophy 241, 251–282.
Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life, 167.
See, for example, J Gardner and F Tanguay-Renaud ‘Desert and Avoidability in Self-Defence’ (2011) 122 Ethics 111.
For an influential discussion, which contrasts desert and loss of rights, see J McMahan Killing in War (Oxford: OUP, 2009) 7–15.
Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life.
Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life, 167.
See, for example, M Otsuka ‘Killing the Innocent in Self-Defense’ (1994) 23 Philosophy & Public Affairs 74; J McMahan ‘Self-Defense and the Problem of the Innocent Attacker’ (1994) 104 Ethics 252.
See, for example, JJ Thomson ‘Self-Defense’ (1991) 20 Philosophy & Public Affairs 283; F M Kamm Creation and Abortion (Oxford: OUP, 1992); Tadros The Ends of Harm Chapter 11.
See, especially, ‘The Justification of Deterrent Violence’ (1990) 100 Ethics 301.
For discussion of this limitation, see Tadros The Ends of Harm, 272–273.
Discussion of this contrast originates in W Quinn ‘Actions, Intentions and Consequences: The Doctrine of Double Effect’ in Morality and Action (Cambridge: CUP, 1993). For further discussion, see, for example, McMahan Killing in War; J Quong ‘Killing in Self-Defense’ (2009) 119 Ethics 507; Tadros The Ends of Harm Chapter 11.
See McMahan Killing in War.
For more on this desiderata, see Tadros The Ends of Harm 275–276.
See, for more discussion, Tadros The Ends of Harm Chapter 6 and ‘Wrongful Intentions Without Closeness.’
See, Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life, 2.
Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life, 2.
Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life Chapter 4.
I discuss Pereboom’s argument in detail in Tadros Wrongs and Crimes (Oxford: OUP, forthcoming).
These are the compatibilist conditions of responsibility that Pereboom considers in his Case 1 in his manipulation argument. See Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life 77.
Pereboom rejects the idea that we have duties in the conventional sense, on the grounds that ought implies can do otherwise, and we lack the free will necessary to be able to do otherwise. See Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life 138–46. But these reasons for rejecting duties does not rule out the idea that the reasons that people have to avert harm depends on their involvement in the threat of harm. Even if they do not have duties in the conventional sense, they may have powerful reasons to avert harm that could figure in an equivalent of the argument that I offer here. For the sake of brevity, I will not spell the equivalent argument out in detail.
I develop these arguments in Tadros Wrongs and Crimes.
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Tadros, V. Doing Without Desert. Criminal Law, Philosophy 11, 605–616 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11572-016-9398-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11572-016-9398-1