My Review of "Just Deserts" by Daniel Dennett and Gregg Caruso

3/23/2021

I was very excited to receive my pre-ordered copy of Just Deserts in early 2021. Dan Dennett is an obvious influence and inspiration to all philosophers with an evolutionary view, and I was lucky enough to meet Gregg Caruso a few years ago when he came to Newcastle to debate free will with Christian List. As I raced through JD, I was offered the opportunity to write a review of it, which was subsequently published at 3 Quarks Daily. This book and review really helped me clarify my own position on this metaphysical issue, and I consider it a major accomplishment that both authors have said it was a fine review. Please check it out and let me know what you think in the comments below.

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“Just Deserts: Debating Free Will” By Daniel Dennett And Gregg Caruso

Just Deserts is a surprisingly slim book, only 206 pages long, which could almost be a chapter for one of its authors, let alone a full book from two. It has a whimsical title that hints it might simply be the sweet ending of a multi-course meal cooked up and eaten elsewhere. But don’t be fooled! Just Deserts holds a titanic discussion concerning two huge cracks in the foundations of human thought. The first is the stated crack about the well-known problems of free will, moral responsibility, and social justice. The second crack is an unstated one that only reveals itself in a meta consideration of the styles of the two authors. That shows us there’s a very deep question underneath it all concerning how we should even do philosophy to properly think about these topics.

<<Click here to read the rest of the review at 3 Quarks Daily>>

32 Comments

Matt Schmidt

3/23/2021 10:45:29 pm

Great job, Ed! I enjoy your website and blogs very much.

Ed Gibney link

3/24/2021 06:31:12 am

Thanks Matt! I really appreciate you taking the time to say so.

JT Velikovsky link

3/24/2021 09:46:31 pm

Great informative review Ed, & good use of Tinbergen's Qs, to explain! I've added it (JD) to my `To Read' list :)
(..I also found this useful: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/desert/)

Astronomer Eric

8/9/2021 02:32:03 am

Hi Ed! I love how you applied a Tinbergen analysis to this question of free will. The chart you made in your most recent post in this series really brings a ton of ideas into very clear relationships with each other. More on these various relationships later, but since this first post in the series is about the review of Just Deserts, I’d like to go through what was discussed in there a bit.

The first idea that pops up for me is comes from this quote in your review:

“That leaves both men accepting general determinism in the universe, which simply means that all events and behaviors have prior causes…Any hope that humans can generate an uncaused action is deemed a “non-starter” by Gregg (JD p.41) and “panicky metaphysics” by Dan (JD p.53). Nonetheless, both agree that “determinism does not prevent you from making choices”…”

I feel as though I fully align with this deterministic sentiment, and I come away from it thinking that after a human processes all of the Affect, Intention, Prediction, Awareness, and Abstraction hierarchies of consciousness via reflexes, memories, future models, a wider view of their self, and any abstract influences that pertain to their current situation (using the Tinbergen chart you created), they will only have one option available to them. The “choice” comes from processing all those things, but in a deterministic universe, all of those things add up to one unique output at any moment in time. I find myself using a computer programming analogy to illustrate the idea to myself. I’ll lay out the analogy and perhaps you can comment on how appropriate you feel the analogy is for human free will.

In a program, one can use a series of If-Then statements to allow for the ability to choose from various outcomes based off of the inputs that were entered into the program. But after going through each If-Then statement in the program, there will only ever be one final output at a time according to the specific inputs that entered into each If-Then statement. One can create a very complicated program with thousands of branching If-Then statements, but regardless, the program still has to process them based on the logic of the program and come up with one final output.

This is just an analogy, and I don’t know enough about how the human brain works to say whether any sort of “If-Them” type processing actually happens in the brain, but I still feel that for each unique set of sensory inputs, memories, future models capable of being produced, current view of self, and current abstract influences at any point in time, only one output (choice) can come from that.

Does this align with your take on determinism?

Ed Gibney link

8/9/2021 11:25:06 am

Hey Eric! Thanks for the encouraging comments. Yes, I'd say that basically aligns with my understanding of determinism. Something I might add, however, would be that it's important to see ourselves and our brains as not just passive if-then responders (like a computer). Evolution has built up living organisms that seek to survive (and thrive, which = surviving well). So, there is bi-directional feedback between a self and its environment that generates options for the self to choose among. Only one choice at a time can ever be made (we can't split ourselves and we can't go back and redo any choices) and in a deterministic universe it sure seems like every choice is therefore determined by all of the life history of every particular self. But there's something about the role of these internally generated preferences that makes the choices feel like they are ours and no one else's.

Keep going, though. I feel like you were just leading up to your real questions with this.

Astronomer Eric

8/10/2021 01:12:23 am

“Keep going, though. I feel like you were just leading up to your real questions with this.”

This made me smile. It’s rewarding to know that we’ve had enough conversations for you to know me this well. Haha.

“Something I might add, however, would be that it's important to see ourselves and our brains as not just passive if-then responders (like a computer). Evolution has built up living organisms that seek to survive (and thrive, which = surviving well). So, there is bi-directional feedback between a self and its environment that generates options for the self to choose among.”

Definitely, we actively make decisions that move us towards survival. Then to add to the analogy to include this point, we could attempt to program a computer with “survival subroutines”. As an example, let’s say we have a computer that needs to be outside in order to perform its main function. But water getting into the computer would short its circuits and cause the computer to, in essence, die. So when it rains out, the computer would need to take steps to protect itself. Going through the Tinbergen chart you made for Free-Will Functions, we could write survival subroutines such as the following:

2. In moment reflex choice of good/bad – If water is detected on surface of computer, then run the water protection subroutine.

3. Choice of present based on past – Compare the weather conditions (barometric pressure, humidity, etc.) of all past days stored in memory where it rained and compare those to the present weather conditions. If a match is found, then run the water protection subroutine.

4. Choosing between alternate futures – Using the latest weather forecasting algorithms, if rain is expected in the next half hour, then run the water protection subroutine.

For functions 5 and 6, I don’t think such a single purpose computer needs to have subroutines that take into account a Wider View of Self or Abstract Influences. But the more general purpose and multi-functioned a computer gets, the more it might want to take those two levels into account. Especially a mobile computer attached to a general purpose robot.

Would such a computer no longer be considered a passive if-then responders?

Ed Gibney link

8/10/2021 10:42:52 am

Glad you smiled at that too! I agree that familiarity sure can lead to better conversations.

So, that's getting to be a very sophisticated computer. And I love the way you've immediately grasped and adopted my consciousness hierarchy to help program the computer. I'm not sure that passive / active is the right adjective to worry about anymore as this computer gets more and more sophisticated. But yes, in some sense, the computer is still passive since some outsiders programmed it to respond. (Albeit in an "active" way that responds to its environment.) If the computer isn't able to learn — e.g. if sprinkler systems or frat boy water balloon fights weren't programmed into it and they consistently caused death to the computer — then the computer would still be passively in need of updates from someone else.

Let me now guess a few further questions. If you can next program the computer to learn on its own and generate its own if-then responses based on a few primary drives (e.g. Jaak Panksepp's seven primary emotional networks), then it becomes hard to see how such a computer is any less active than we are.

However, there is then the issue of conscious *feeling* vs. simply information processing. My research leads me to believe (a la Mark Solms) that the feelings of affect are what drive the subjective feelings we talk about when we talk about conscious feelings. And my hypothesis is that these feelings arise as soon as life emerges (we see the simplest of life forms reacting to good / bad stimuli) and is caused by molecular forces (what I call "pan-dynamism"). The computer that is programmed to actively learn "if-then" responses to the world does not have the same molecular occurrences to help it feel good / bad about its choices. (The slightest chemical changes in our brains make huge differences to our own subjective feelings. So, it stands to reason that the categorical differences between biological and computer processing would result in categorically different subjective feelings for the respective entities.) So, even though the computer is now active, and developing personally irreplaceable traits due to its unique personal history, it still wouldn't feel consciousness the way that we biological things do.

But! That feeling isn't the only thing that matters morally. Such a computer would probably say it was conscious, and all its actions would end up indistinguishable from ours if given the exact same drives for its behaviour. So we would probably have to treat such a computer as a conscious being with rights and responsibilities, even though its consciousness would feel very different than our own.

Have I guessed where you were going? Where else would you like to take this?

Astronomer Eric

8/10/2021 01:48:07 pm

Your consciousness hierarchy is proving to be a very useful tool indeed! :)

Actually, this isn't the direction I was going. I'm still moving towards the direction of punishment that we were discussing in the last couple of emails or so. Unless I'm missing something, I feel like the topic of punishment is the largest source of contention between Caruso and Dennett. I wasn't trying to keep my direction a surprise in these recent posts here. Even though it's been a while since those last emails, I've been mulling over these ideas pretty consistently, so I guess that's why I just jumped back into the conversation without a clear link back to those emails. But I feel that what we are talking about now is very related to the topic of free will in my mind, so I don't mind elaborating on points you bring up in response to me. With that said:

“But yes, in some sense, the computer is still passive since some outsiders programmed it to respond.”

Aren’t mutations, genetic drift, etc. the outsiders that programmed us to respond and behave in all the various manners that we do? Granted they don’t have the same agency that we do, but if we are thinking in hierarchies, we are just programmers at a higher level of the evolutionary process than those outsiders that guided our own evolution. I feel like we are programming primarily in the realm of memes whereas mutations etc. are programing with genes. (Side Note: I don’t actually feel that mutations, genetic drift, etc. have a conscious will to guide our evolution in a certain direction. I just worded it that way more out of poetic license to make the analogy seem more symmetrical, if that makes any sense. )

“However, there is then the issue of conscious *feeling* vs. simply information processing. My research leads me to believe (a la Mark Solms) that the feelings of affect are what drive the subjective feelings we talk about when we talk about conscious feelings. And my hypothesis is that these feelings arise as soon as life emerges (we see the simplest of life forms reacting to good / bad stimuli) and is caused by molecular forces (what I call "pan-dynamism"). The computer that is programmed to actively learn "if-then" responses to the world does not have the same molecular occurrences to help it feel good / bad about its choices.”

Yes, if we are trying to build mechanical replicas of ourselves, I also assume that replicating our conscious *feelings* would be an issue. But as this is not where I was headed, I’ll approach it from the opposite direction. At the end of the day, aren’t we, ourselves, just extremely sophisticated biological “robots” with extremely sophisticated branches of if-then-esque programming? I’m not ready to get into the consciousness weeds yet (still a lot of catching up to do). Regardless, I still have my current hypothesis about it, which is that our *feelings* are just ingenious (so ingenious that we can’t figure out what the heck is really going on with them) biological subroutines that when activated motivate us to then behave according to yet other action-oriented subroutines (like eating, running from predators, making friends, etc.). Couldn’t we program computers to at least mimic what feelings do for us, even though we couldn’t necessarily replicate the actual conscious feelings in the computers themselves? So, for example, when we *feel* hungry, we experience an urgency to eat; and the level of urgency increases the longer we don’t eat. Unless we are willing to starve to death, we are eventually motivated enough to take action and behave in a manner that satisfies our hunger. Wouldn’t the following subroutine in a computer serve the same purpose as a feeling of hunger? Such a *feeling-subroutine* would monitor the energy levels in the batteries required to keep the computer running, and as the energy levels drop this *feeling-subroutine* would also gradually prevent more and more “less important” *action-subroutines* from running such that the *action-subroutine* that controls recharging the computer’s batteries becomes more and more likely to be the next subroutine run.

Why I am focusing so much on the robot analogy and how it relates to whether punishment is the go-to method for providing justice in our civilization will hopefully become clearer as I bring up other points (and I think that your consciousness hierarchy plays a vital role in this). But as a quick preview, my hypothesis is that we are more passive agents than we would like to think, especially if determinism is the guiding principle that underlies the laws of nature. (Although, as you said maybe passive/active isn’t the right adjective pair to worry about anymore at our level of sophistication.) My current worldview centers around the notion that we are just biological mechanisms running the biological subroutines that are

Astronomer Eric

8/10/2021 01:55:23 pm

......My current worldview centers around the notion that we are just biological mechanisms running the biological subroutines that are hard-coded into our genetics and soft-coded into our memetics.

Ed Gibney link

8/10/2021 08:13:08 pm

Got it! I might need to go back and look at our latest emails then. My mind has been torn in so many directions since then so forgive me for losing the plot there! (I know you do.)

--> Aren’t mutations, genetic drift, etc. the outsiders that programmed us to respond and behave in all the various manners that we do?

I see where you are going with this but the poetic license hides a difference that I think matters between unconscious evolution (i.e. the slow emergence of us) and conscious evolution (i.e. the ability we now have to be aware of our actions and consequences). So, I don't think those mutations and genetic drift etc. are outsiders programming us in the same way that we would be as programmers of robots.

--> At the end of the day, aren’t we, ourselves, just extremely sophisticated biological “robots” with extremely sophisticated branches of if-then-esque programming?

Yes, that's probably true.

--> I still have my current hypothesis about [consciousness], which is that our *feelings* are just ingenious (so ingenious that we can’t figure out what the heck is really going on with them) biological subroutines that when activated motivate us to then behave according to yet other action-oriented subroutines (like eating, running from predators, making friends, etc.). Couldn’t we program computers to at least mimic what feelings do for us, even though we couldn’t necessarily replicate the actual conscious feelings in the computers themselves?

Yes, I believe that is possible. Especially with my hierarchies of needs, consciousness, and free will now to help guide the way. : )

--> Wouldn’t the following subroutine in a computer serve the same purpose as a feeling of hunger? Such a *feeling-subroutine* would monitor the energy levels in the batteries required to keep the computer running, and as the energy levels drop this *feeling-subroutine* would also gradually prevent more and more “less important” *action-subroutines* from running such that the *action-subroutine* that controls recharging the computer’s batteries becomes more and more likely to be the next subroutine run.

Yes. It's been a long time since I've done any programming. (And that was in Fortran!) But I know you can program countdown clocks that make some actions a higher and higher priority as each cycle is run. That could be an equivalent to the circadian rhythms that dominate so many functions of living organisms.

--> Why I am focusing so much on the robot analogy and how it relates to whether punishment is the go-to method for providing justice in our civilization will hopefully become clearer as I bring up other points.

Cool! Go on.

--> As a quick preview, my hypothesis is that we are more passive agents than we would like to think, especially if determinism is the guiding principle that underlies the laws of nature.

That sure seems true for most people. (Including the way I thought before I dove into philosophy and especially the study of consciousness.) Unconscious processing plays an enormous role in our lives and we aren't as "condemned to be free" as Sartre said we are. Staying alive requires many constraints at all levels of consideration.

--> My current worldview centers around the notion that we are just biological mechanisms running the biological subroutines that are hard-coded into our genetics and soft-coded into our memetics.

That sounds about right.

Sorry it looks like your last post got cut off! Good luck avoiding any lost words as you continue with more questions.

Astronomer Eric

8/11/2021 05:29:57 am

I’ll adopt your arrow -> strategy to highlight your quotes. :)

-> “Sorry it looks like your last post got cut off! Good luck avoiding any lost words as you continue with more questions.”

No worries! After it happened to me the first time long ago, I have since written my responses in Word first and then copy and pasted them over. So I was able to replace word for word the part that was cut off, and it really was just that short bit.

-> “Got it! I might need to go back and look at our latest emails then. My mind has been torn in so many directions since then so forgive me for losing the plot there! (I know you do.)”

Oh gosh I would forgive for sure, but there really there isn’t even a need for forgiveness on my part in this case since I didn’t feel slighted in the least. I didn’t really go into much detail in those emails anyway, so I’m sure it’s fine not to even revisit them, unless for curiosity’s sake. **And in a fun bit of related humor, I won’t require that you be punished for losing the plot :) **

-> “I see where you are going with this but the poetic license hides a difference that I think matters between unconscious evolution (i.e. the slow emergence of us) and conscious evolution (i.e. the ability we now have to be aware of our actions and consequences). So, I don't think those mutations and genetic drift etc. are outsiders programming us in the same way that we would be as programmers of robots.”

Yes, I believe the difference that my poetic license hides can be described by how you’ve worded our free will in the past: it’s extra degrees of freedom that can so clearly be seen in your hierarchy chart. Mutations, gene drift, gene mixing via reproduction etc. apparently are unconsciously working towards only one goal; make sure the gene survives as long as possible. We are capable of not only working towards that survival goal, but also (as you’ve stated recently) towards thriving goals, and even goals that may not immediately seem all that related to survival (although my hunch is that in the end everything probably reduces down to survival).

Just to push back a little bit on wording though, are we ever actually *aware* of consequences? Don’t we really just build models to predict the future consequences, and as such (and akin to weather prediction) we never really know for sure exactly how the consequences will play out? Short term consequences (such as those from punching someone out of anger) are quite easy to predict accurately, but long term consequences that we increasingly run up against as our civilizations have gotten larger and more complicated (such as releasing large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere) are quite difficult to predict accurately…even though we can generally agree that some of these long term consequences are not really that good for much of the life that currently exists on the earth.

-> “That sure seems true for most people. (Including the way I thought before I dove into philosophy and especially the study of consciousness.) Unconscious processing plays an enormous role in our lives, and we aren't as "condemned to be free" as Sartre said we are. Staying alive requires many constraints at all levels of consideration.”

I’m not 100% sure I am interpreting this correctly, especially the part about the way you thought before you dove into philosophy. Can you elaborate on that a little bit more? Are you trying to draw a distinction here between unconscious processing and conscious processing, maybe in the sense that it’s the unconscious processing that is passive and the conscious processing that is active?

The part where you said “That sure seems true for most people.” reminded me of something Maslow observed. I’m not sure this observation follows your conscious/unconscious reasoning (if that’s what you were trying to convey), but it is very relevant in my mind to this entire conversation. I’ll take a quote from Scott Barry Kaufman’s Transcend to illustrate this:

“Despite the many challenges to growth, Maslow believed we are all capable of self-actualization, even if most of us do not self-actualize because we spend most of our lives motivated by deficiency.”

Excerpt From
Transcend
Scott Barry Kaufman
https://books.apple.com/us/book/transcend/id1477747419

The deficiency needs in that quote line up with the following Evolutionary Hierarchy of Needs on your chart: Existence, Durability, Interactions, and Identity. They exclude the Purpose needs listed at level 6. Abstraction on your chart. As you know from reading Transcend, these are considered the growth needs. Maybe this observation by Malow that most people don’t self-actualize consistently and your observation that most people seem as passive agents are related in some manner.

Astronomer Eric

8/11/2021 05:30:49 am

But even so, I was coming at it from a different perspective when I originally wrote that. I was including our conscious state of being as *also* being passive in a sense. That sense is that we are still just running the biological subroutines that we have at our disposal, even if some of those subroutines take place at the conscious level.

-> “Cool! Go on.”

I’m eager to! But I’d like to finish clarifying the points in this post before moving onto the next point.

Astronomer Eric

8/11/2021 05:54:33 am

It is definitely worth noting that Kaufman disagrees with Maslow's observation about the rarity of self-actualization, as stated in the following quote from Transcend:

“It’s striking just how many of the characteristics of self-actualizing people that Maslow proposed almost seventy years ago can be reliably and validly measured. Nevertheless, Maslow was way off base about one important thing: the characteristics of self-actualization are not nearly as rare as he believed....”

Excerpt From
Transcend
Scott Barry Kaufman
https://books.apple.com/us/book/transcend/id1477747419

Ed Gibney link

8/11/2021 10:09:40 am

--> We are capable of not only working towards that survival goal, but also (as you’ve stated recently) towards thriving goals, and even goals that may not immediately seem all that related to survival (although my hunch is that in the end everything probably reduces down to survival).

Yep. Trials and errors are of course allowed in this universe so people pursue goals all the time that aren't good for their or life's survival. Errors are eventually selected out though.

--> Just to push back a little bit on wording though, are we ever actually *aware* of consequences? Don’t we really just build models to predict the future consequences, and as such (and akin to weather prediction) we never really know for sure exactly how the consequences will play out?

Sure. We're never 100% sure we are aware of the exact consequences, but we do know that we are trying to predict them.

--> I’m not 100% sure I am interpreting this correctly, especially the part about the way you thought before you dove into philosophy. Can you elaborate on that a little bit more?

Sorry! I felt that was unclear even as I was writing it and didn't quite stick the landing. (Olympic metaphor for you in honor of Tokyo 2021!) What I was responding to was when you said, "we are more passive agents than we would like to think." I meant that yes, I used to think I was a more active agent than I actually am. I wasn't as aware of my unconscious processing. I can remember once hearing someone talk to me about how they thought it was cool that they would go to bed struggling with a crossword puzzle answer but then wake up and get it because their brain's "had figured it out overnight" and I thought that doesn't sound right. But it definitely is! Happens to me all the time and now I recognise it and even plan for it (in the case of how to write tough emails for example).

--> I’m eager to! But I’d like to finish clarifying the points in this post before moving onto the next point.

Good plan. Are we there yet now?

Astronomer Eric

8/11/2021 01:15:21 pm

-> “Yep. Trials and errors are of course allowed in this universe so people pursue goals all the time that aren't good for their or life's survival. Errors are eventually selected out though.”

Exactly!

-> “Sure. We're never 100% sure we are aware of the exact consequences, but we do know that we are trying to predict them.”

Awesome! So this will come up later when I get to the point that we also can’t be 100% sure that any laws we put into place will guide us towards outcomes that we predict will happen. But not now.

-> “and didn't quite stick the landing. (Olympic metaphor for you in honor of Tokyo 2021!)”

Haha! Love it!

-> “Good plan. Are we there yet now?”

Yup! Ok, let’s see what’s next. I want to continue going through your review of Just Deserts and then after I’m thinking to either move onto your next post in this series “Further Thoughts on Just Deserts” or maybe even just jump right into Just Deserts itself. I’ll let the path forward evolve as our discussion unfolds. ;) I think I’m going to bring up a large number of ideas in this one though, so we might be here for a bit.

Real quick though: let’s come up with an acronym for your hierarchy chart since I’m going to refer to it so much! Haha! You should have the final say, but how about your THC for your Tinbergen Hierarchy of Consciousness chart? I’ll use THC in this post and change it for future posts if you want something different.

Ok! Later on in your review of Just Deserts, you summarize one of Caruso’s stances as such:

“We are entirely the products of our genes and our environment, but we didn’t choose our genes (constitutive luck) and we are never in control of our environments (present luck). So, according to Gregg, “luck swallows all” (JD p.15).”

To me, this doesn’t matter. While the past apparently completely determines the present, we still have agency. The example I usually go to for this is a rock falling down a mountain. Given the shape of the mountain at any point in time, the rock will only ever fall down one specific path. If, just before the rock falls, something is able to change the shape of the mountain, the rock will take a different path. Humans have the ability to “change the shape of the mountain” so to speak. As such, we have the ability to change the shape of our civilization, and in particular for this debate we have the ability to shape whether we want to use punishment or not as the tool to dispense justice. We have no control over the past, so I’m not sure we really can use it as a line of reasoning in this argument. What we can control is the future, and so what we should be working towards is trying to predict the best way to dispense with judgement for the sake of our future. As is probably clear by this point (mostly from those emails awhile back), I align closer to Caruso’s Public Health Quarantine Model, but I don’t think his luck argument does much to convince that this is the path forward. As you say in the next paragraph of your review:

“There are hordes of characteristics that all humans share, but the one that is most important for this debate is our capacity to learn. The extreme neuroplasticity we have (a mechanism of free will) is what enables all but the most unfortunate humans to sense and respond to their environments”

Exactly! This is the correct direction in time. Learning is all about the future. We use past experiences in order to define what we learn, but the learning is all about making better future models with which to shape our actions and the consequences of those actions.

Soon after, you say:

“This is precisely why children are judged differently than adults.”

Is this really the best way to go about things? Sure, there is a pretty well defined boundary when humans *physically* stop maturing in many ways. And it seems that the child-adult boundary primarily takes into account these physical changes. But humans operate mostly on the software level, not the hardware level. And I’m not sure we ever stop maturing software-wise. In addition, the child-adult boundary doesn’t allow for backward travel. It seems absurd to call an adult a child after they have already passed the adult boundary. According to Maslow’s theory, we are jumping back and forth continually in our location on the hierarchy of needs (more details on this in the next two paragraphs), which has a significant effect on the levels of consciousness listed in your THC that we are able to use in our decision making. Wouldn’t a better way to draw boundary lines come directly from your THC?

For example, someone who is focused primarily on the durability needs (i.e. someone living in an area where a disastrous typhoon is moving through) is l

Astronomer Eric

8/11/2021 01:16:30 pm

For example, someone who is focused primarily on the durability needs (i.e. someone living in an area where a disastrous typhoon is moving through) is likely to primarily be able to use the Affect levels of consciousness, with much diminished or next to zero ability to use the higher levels. Such a person might be labeled a “Durability-Focused” person. Someone who is focused primarily on the interaction needs (i.e. someone who is striving to get recognition from someone) is likely to primarily be able to use the 2. Affect and 3. Intention levels of consciousness and have diminished ability to use levels higher than that. Such a person might be labeled an “Interaction-Focused” person. And so on. I’m going to include a lengthy quote from SB Kaufman’s book that illustrates this (A direct quote from Maslow’s book “Motivation and Personality” is also in this quote).

Kaufman writes: “An underdiscussed aspect of Maslow’s theory is that his hierarchy of needs serves as an organizing framework for different states of mind—ways of looking at the world and at others. Maslow argued that, when deprived, each need is associated with its own distinctive world outlook, philosophy, and outlook on the future:

[Maslow writes]: ‘Another peculiar characteristic of the human organism when it is dominated by a certain need is that the whole philosophy of the future tends also to change. For our chronically and extremely hungry man, Utopia can be defined simply as a place where there is plenty of food. He tends to think that, if only he is guaranteed food for the rest of his life, he will be perfectly happy and will never want anything more. Life itself tends to be defined in terms of eating. Anything else will be defined as unimportant. Freedom, love, community feeling, respect, philosophy, may all be waved aside as fripperies that are useless since they fail to fill the stomach. Such a man may fairly be said to live by bread alone.’ 15

[Kaufman continues]: While Maslow often relied on extreme examples such as these, he was also quick to point out that most people “are partially satisfied in all their basic needs and partially unsatisfied in all their basic needs at the same time.” 16 He was insistent that “any behavior tends to be determined by several or all of the basic needs simultaneously rather than by only one of them,” and that any one of us at any moment in time can return to a particular state of mind depending on the deprivation of the need.17
Another common misconception is that the needs are isolated from one another or don’t depend on one another in any meaningful way. Again, this couldn’t be further from what Maslow’s theory actually stated: “[The human needs] are arranged in an integrated hierarchy rather than dichotomously, that is, they rest one upon another. . . . This means that the process of regression to lower needs remains always as a possibility, and in this context must be seen not only as pathological or sick, but as absolutely necessary to the integrity of the whole organism, and as prerequisite to the existence and functioning of the ‘higher needs.’”

Excerpt From
Transcend
Scott Barry Kaufman
https://books.apple.com/us/book/transcend/id1477747419
This material may be protected by copyright.

You then go on to say in your review: “It would result in a sorites paradox to try to precisely define when a child becomes an adult but we can agree to legally draw a bright line for convenience and still roughly understand the fuzziness in Tinbergen analyses that show how an evolved self eventually becomes the location of major influences on our judgeable actions.”

If we are going to use a Tinbergen analysis to describe locations of major influences on our judgeable actions, I only see Affect, Intention, Prediction, Awareness and Abstraction on your THC. I don’t see Child and Adult. Maybe our legal bright lines need a bit of work.

Finally, I’ll end this post with the following. You state soon after that: “It is also where any punishments can work to teach new habits to that self.”

I have some pretty big problems with this, but before we get into those, I feel like a typical issue in philosophical discussions comes from unclear definitions. Would you be able to put a definition onto the word “punishment”? Maybe also list some examples of punishment you find suitable in a forward thinking justice system?

Astronomer Eric

8/11/2021 01:22:24 pm

-> "I meant that yes, I used to think I was a more active agent than I actually am."

Woops, forgot to respond to this. Thanks for clarifying and I'm happy to see that it brings us closer into alignment.

Ed Gibney link

8/12/2021 02:52:56 pm

--> Real quick though: let’s come up with an acronym for your hierarchy chart since I’m going to refer to it so much! Haha! You should have the final say, but how about your THC.

Sorry, but I'm vetoing that one since THC is the active ingredient in marijuana and I'm already likely to be accused of smoking something to come up with a new theory of consciousness. : ) How about THOC (keep the "of" in there) THOFW (free will), and EHON (evolutionary hierarchy of needs).

--> “This is precisely why children are judged differently than adults.” Is this really the best way to go about things? ... Wouldn’t a better way to draw boundary lines come directly from your THOC?

Well sure, but no one else has heard of it yet to institute that into the law. : ) Even then, though, given the "problem of other minds", using the THOC might be too difficult to test and use for putting people into relevant consciousness categories. Age is a much simpler tool, precisely because it's so blunt. We'll probably stick to age limits for quite a while.

--> I only see Affect, Intention, Prediction, Awareness and Abstraction on your THC. I don’t see Child and Adult. Maybe our legal bright lines need a bit of work.

I could see that work happening if a theory of consciousness were ever actually agreed upon. First things first! I've only just begun developing this theory.

--> Would you be able to put a definition onto the word “punishment”? Maybe also list some examples of punishment you find suitable in a forward thinking justice system?

This is an excellent question! This came up a lot in "Just Deserts" but I didn't have space to discuss it in any of my posts. Dennett has a completely forward-looking concept of punishment in mind and completely rejects backward-looking retributive justice. So, it sounds like you might actually agree with him more than you think. And I think Gregg's public health quarantine model (PHQM) sounds good and is full of good intentions, but I have a major problem with one of his suppositions, which Dan does a good job of drawing out. Let me try to explain.

First of all, Dan and Gregg's exchanges actually started precisely because of this issue of punishment. In 2008, in Dan's paper "Some observations on the psychology of free will" (which is totally excellent by the way and really worth reading!), Dan made the following quote:

"A world without punishment is not a world any of us would want to live in."

Apparently, Gregg reacted strongly to this, had a long conversation with Dan about it in a bar at some conference, and the two then agreed to their Aeon magazine piece, which eventually was expanded into "Just
Deserts".

So, what's the issue? Here's is Gregg's definition of punishment:

"Punishment is the intentional imposition of an unpleasant penalty or deprivation for perceived wrongdoing upon a group or individual, typically meted out by an authority."

He goes on to say some "everyday examples include a teacher giving a pupil a "time out" for disrespectful behavior and a university expelling a student for plagiarism. Legal punishment is a specific sort of punishment; it is the intentional imposition of a penalty for conduct that is represented, either truly or falsely, as a violation of a law of the state, where the imposition of that penalty is sanctioned by the state's authority. More precisely, we can say that legal punishment consists in one person's deliberately harming another on behalf of the state in a way that is intended to constitute a fitting response to some offense and to give expression to the state's disapproval of that offense."

Dan said, "that seems fine to me" and I agree with him that this is a fine set of descriptions for the definition of punishment.

The problem comes, however, when Gregg claims that his PHQM is NOT punishment. He claims, "when we quarantine individuals with communicable diseases, we do not punish them. Punishment requires more than just limiting liberty." He then cites some literature on this as an agreed upon definition. But Dan (and I) disagree with this! And I think the Covid pandemic has shown this in sharp relief that quarantines are indeed viewed as punishments by some of the people it is inflicted upon. Dan specifically says:

"If I understand you, Gregg, this is how you deny that your view requires threats of punishment: 'I don't call it a *threat* because it's just the state's obligation to be transparent about treatment policy, and I don't call it *punishment* because even though it involves 'sanctioning' and 'incapacitation' that doesn't meet my definition of punishment.' The state, according to you, isn't *threatening*, or even *warning*, it's just *informing* people of a certain contingency. And if people are thus informed, most will likely be motivated to adjust their projects in light of that information. Or as the Godfather said, 'I made them an offer they couldn't refuse.' ... Well

Ed Gibney link

8/12/2021 02:54:09 pm

Or as the Godfather said, 'I made them an offer they couldn't refuse.' ... Well played."

I laughed out lout at this and wrote a big "Bingo!" in the margin of my book next to that passage. But Gregg came back to defend against the attack. He wrote:

"Let's settle this issue of whether quarantine is a form of punishment once and for all, since it's not just "my" definition of punishment that it fails to satisfy — quarantine fails to satisfy *any and all* reasonable definitions of punishment. ... At a minimum, *intended harm* is a necessary condition of punishment. ... It must also be the case that the state deliberately intends the harm, since unintended harms do not constitute punishment. ... No accidental harming can qualify as punishment; if you punish someone, then the harm that you cause is something that you intended to cause. ... [It] is absolutely correct that quarantine is not a form of punishment since it does not intentionally seek to cause harm."

Now, Dan ends up arguing against this by saying *some* people will not yield to these good intentions and therefore the threat of force (aka punishment) must be in there and certainly will be part of Gregg's PHQM or else it just won't work. He's right about that. But I had an even worse opinion of Gregg's arguments here as I found them truly Orwellian. By his logic, as long as the intentions are good, then punishment is not punishment. Any consequentialist who chops off an arm to prevent future stealing can say, "It's for your own good Mr. Thief, so this is clearly not a punishment against you. I don't know what you are complaining about." It's a rehashed version of the "doctrine of double effect" from the Middle Ages, which is an abomination in the wrong hands.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_double_effect

There's more to say here about punishment and how Dan's forward-looking consequentialist view of it works and is justified (and is part of the world we would not want to live without), but I'll stop here to see if you are following me and agree that the PHQM is actually a form of punishment too.

Astronomer Eric

8/12/2021 04:28:37 pm

-> “Sorry, but I'm vetoing that one since THC is the active ingredient in marijuana and I'm already likely to be accused of smoking something to come up with a new theory of consciousness. : ) How about THOC (keep the "of" in there) THOFW (free will), and EHON (evolutionary hierarchy of needs).”

Haha! Woops! Maybe I should have googled it before suggesting it. Well, I see you were using THOC multiple times after suggesting it, so it appears we have a winner!

-> “Well sure, but no one else has heard of it yet to institute that into the law. : )”

Haha, what, me get ahead of myself? Never! :)

-> “Even then, though, given the "problem of other minds", using the THOC might be too difficult to test and use for putting people into relevant consciousness categories. Age is a much simpler tool, precisely because it's so blunt. We'll probably stick to age limits for quite a while.”

Yeah, but I bet SB Kaufman and others of similar training could do a pretty good job of evaluating someone and figuring out which category they are largely neurotically/pathologically stuck at.

-> “I could see that work happening if a theory of consciousness were ever actually agreed upon. First things first! I've only just begun developing this theory.”

I think you’re really on to something. Keep on trucking!

-> “There's more to say here about punishment and how Dan's forward-looking consequentialist view of it works and is justified (and is part of the world we would not want to live without), but I'll stop here to see if you are following me and agree that the PHQM is actually a form of punishment too.”

I think quarantining by itself is definitely punishment (as punishment was defined by Gregg, which I also think is a fine definition). I’m not 100% sure what Gregg would have take place while one is being quarantined. I did read his 25 page paper on the PHQM, and can’t recall any specific details in this regard, but I have lots of my own ideas how to minimize the suffering in such a quarantining process. Although, if the severity of crime fits a bell curve (not sure that it does) then I think quarantining is probably only really necessary for the severe end of the bell curve, likely a small percentage of cases. The ideas that I have and the justification for them will likely be an extremely long post or posts, so I don’t want to disrupt the flow we currently have. You have more to say about Dan’s view of punishment, and as I’m only in part 2 of Just Deserts, I haven’t come across this yet. I would love to hear your summary of it since I’m pretty slow at comprehending their deep philosophical points in the book. I will say as a very brief summary, that to expect absolutely no suffering during any intervention is unrealistic. I just think that minimizing as much suffering as possible instead of implementing a set required amount of suffering in the form of punishment will have a net greater effect in moving civilization towards a more enlightened level. But I better stop here or this post will get way our of hand really quickly. :)

Ed Gibney link

8/13/2021 10:22:52 am

--> I’m not 100% sure what Gregg would have take place while one is being quarantined.

Me neither, but he may cover that in his latest book "Rejecting Retributivism". Honestly, I probably won't get to that one. I do know Gregg thinks some Scandinavian prisons are doing things much better than the US so I'm picturing graduated amounts of retraining and freedom with a focus on reintroduction into society and the goal of vastly reduced recidivism. I'm on board with all of those kinds of reforms. I just don't completely remove free will and moral responsibility to do so.

--> You have more to say about Dan’s view of punishment, and as I’m only in part 2 of Just Deserts, I haven’t come across this yet. I would love to hear your summary of it.

Ah that's great that you are working through JD. I don't want to spoil things too much so I'll just give a very quick summary. I believe Dan would say that as a society, we design the justice system and its punishments in order to have positive forward-looking consequences for individuals and society. There should not be any extra retributive punishment intended to look back at people's pasts and harm them "because they deserve it". Some harm, as you say, is unavoidable, however, even in this scenario, and it ought to be applied evenly and fairly across society like the rules of a game. Looking at the individual circumstances and trying to judge whether any individual is more or less likely to revisit their crimes is too hard to do and more likely to undermine respect for the rule of law than to increase fairness in society. So, if you do the crime, you do the time. But Dan is in full agreement with Gregg that this time should not be purposefully painful and ought to have the goals of easing reintroduction and reducing recidivism. Dan says this is a completely consequentialist view of justice (perhaps with more explanation than I've just given it), with some balance struck between the consequences for individuals and the consequences for society, and I agree that's an excellent way to approach this issue.

Astronomer Eric

8/13/2021 02:49:50 pm

-> “I believe Dan would say that as a society, we design the justice system and its punishments…”

So Dan believes there should be punishment designed into the system, but…

-> “…But Dan is in full agreement with Gregg that this time should not be purposefully painful “

I’m confused then. If both Dan and Gregg agree on the following definition of punishment:

“Punishment is the intentional imposition of an unpleasant penalty or deprivation for perceived wrongdoing upon a group or individual, typically meted out by an authority."

Doesn’t Dan think then that punishment *should* be purposefully painful according to this definition?

Dan also said in Just Deserts:

“You are entitled to the praise you get for your good deeds and to the paycheck you get for your doing your job; and the criticism, the shame, the blame you get if you offend common decency or violate the laws is quite justly and properly placed at your doorstep. That is not “retributive” punishment, I guess, but it hurts, and so it should.”

That also sounds like a defense for the purposeful pain of punishment.

Also, I’m not sure I’m on board with how Dan makes praise and punishment equivalent. Praise satisfies a need. If we go for an extended period of time without praise, we suffer. As SBK says in Transcend:

“This is why feelings of self-worth are so strongly linked to the need for belonging…Self-worth is often influenced by praise and acceptance from others, and this tendency never goes away entirely, no matter how secure one’s sense of self-worth.”

So praise is sort of the “food” for the belonging and self-esteem needs. Punishment is not a need nor does it fulfill a need. We don’t suffer if we go for an extended period of time without punishment and our suffering *increases* upon being punished. Let’s also not forget that when we talk about suffering, we’re talking about the “natural” suffering that’s hard coded into our genes, the hunger we feel, that pain from a burn, the loneliness, boredom, and the shame Dan mentioned in that quote etc.. We can’t change this suffering without genetic modification. So any shame we may feel from a social harm is evolved suffering that gave us an evolutionary advantage. Punishment is different. It is essentially memetic suffering. It’s humans high jacking our own evolved genetic suffering traits to serve the purpose of our memes (in this case, our laws). It’s suffering that we impart upon ourselves for the social norms we *invent*. Our memes are very young and change so quickly that we should be very cautious to feel so strongly about their ability to impart long term survival upon us. Think of the laws of slavery not too long ago in America, and all the punishment that was imparted to slaves at the time for actions like using the wrong public facilities. Some might say, well yeah, but slavery is obviously wrong. What about stealing? How can that be a bad law? Who’s to say in a few hundred years that ownership hasn’t been culturally wiped out? In such a culture, people of that time might look back and say how barbaric criminalizing theft was. Causing intended suffering for memes that may seem barbaric in the future should give anyone pause.

-> “There should not be any extra retributive punishment intended to look back at people's pasts and harm them "because they deserve it".

Is this referring to past actions previous to one’s most current crime?

-> “Looking at the individual circumstances and trying to judge whether any individual is more or less likely to revisit their crimes is too hard to do and more likely to undermine respect for the rule of law than to increase fairness in society.”

Is looking at each individual patient in a hospital to judge why they are sick and to determine the best course of treatment for each particular patient too hard to do? Is the respect of the health care system undermined by treating each patient individually? Isn’t treating patients individually more fair than just giving everyone the same treatment no matter why they were sick?

Astronomer Eric

8/13/2021 03:04:53 pm

Hijacking…not high jacking! Hahahaha. I must have been affected from all the THC I wrote into that earlier post. :)

Ed Gibney link

8/13/2021 04:03:58 pm

--> Doesn’t Dan think then that punishment *should* be purposefully painful according to this definition?

Dan thinks the deprivation of liberty is a painful punishment. Gregg doesn't think that it is. (And I think Gregg is wrong about that.)

--> That also sounds like a defense for the purposeful pain of punishment.

Yes, but he doesn't inflict it to change the past, just to change the future. That's the point of the discussion about Immanuel Kant in JD and Kant's thought experiment about the man left alone on an island for the rest of his life. Kant said that man should still be punished to pay for the past crimes. Dan and Gregg both think that is wrong. (But it's unrealistic because you can't really guarantee that the man will always be on the island alone forever.)

--> Punishment is not a need nor does it fulfill a need.

We aren't only drawn forward by meeting needs and gaining pleasure signals. Pain signals keep us from going in the wrong direction. Pain and punishment are needs in that way. Look at the people who can't feel pain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_insensitivity_to_pain

--> So any shame we may feel from a social harm is evolved suffering that gave us an evolutionary advantage.

Be careful with the wording there. Everything we feel isn't necessarily an evolutionary advantage. But I think you get that so I won't dwell.

--> Punishment is different. It is essentially memetic suffering.

It sounds to me like you are using dualist language here placing genes in a material realm and memes in an etherial realm. They're both in the same realm to me. The retching people experience when, say, seeing a dead body, is built using the same mechanisms as the retching that happens after eating something literally poisonous to us.

--> It’s suffering that we impart upon ourselves for the social norms we *invent*. Our memes are very young and change so quickly that we should be very cautious to feel so strongly about their ability to impart long term survival upon us.

These "inventions" serve to preserve our bodies too. We're right to treat them with care.

--> In such a culture, people of that time might look back and say how barbaric criminalizing theft was.

That specific example is pretty farfetched but I take your point. Still, we act on the evidence we have at the moment. Property is a norm that has developed and holds society together at the moment. You shouldn't abandon punishment for transgressions of that norm until there is evidence the norm is no longer necessary. (Say when Star Trek replicators make anything one could ever want for free.)

--> Is this referring to past actions previous to one’s most current crime?

No. The most recent crime that is currently under consideration. The point is that there is no justification for extra harm (lashes, prison rapes, horrible conditions) since they can't change the past.

--> Is looking at each individual patient in a hospital to judge why they are sick and to determine the best course of treatment for each particular patient too hard to do?

No, because the patient is also trying to heal themselves. Your examples aren't equivalent because criminals might just *say* they are really really sorry and won't ever do it again so there's no need to punish them. If we believed them, that would undermine the justice system.

Astronomer Eric

8/14/2021 02:59:37 am

-> “Dan thinks the deprivation of liberty is a painful punishment. Gregg doesn't think that it is. (And I think Gregg is wrong about that.)”

Ok, I’m fine with Just Desert spoilers if that helps clarify this for me. I’m not sure I follow the point here. Let me try to rephrase it and see if I’m understanding the underlying point. Quarantining is essentially a deprivation of liberty, and Dan thinks this is painful, but Gregg doesn’t? And when Dan says that punishment shouldn’t be purposefully painful, he means that there shouldn’t be any extra punishment added on top of quarantining? And Gregg thinks that quarantining is ok since he doesn’t consider it punishment? So essentially, they both agree on how to handle crime but disagree on the philosophical underpinnings of what quarantining entails? Or am I missing something?

-> “We aren't only drawn forward by meeting needs and gaining pleasure signals. Pain signals keep us from going in the wrong direction. Pain and punishment are needs in that way. Look at the people who can't feel pain.”

Agreed that reward and suffering signals motivate actions geared towards the right direction and away from the wrong direction. I’m just being picky here, but let’s not conflate the need with the signal. If we need safety, a relief pleasure signal tells us we have satisfied that need due to actions in the right direction, and a painful suffering signal tells us are currently acting in the wrong direction and so we still have to satisfy that need. Pleasure and reward, pain and punishment are not needs themselves. That’s partly why I initially disagreed with Dan’s equating praise and punishment. But I thought more deeply about it and wrote down a little chart and actually now I agree with the equivalency of praise and punishment.

Do good action
Get PRAISE
Feel pleasure
Satisfy need

Do wrong action
Get PUNISHMENT
Feel suffering
Change direction and try to satisfy need in a different way

-> “It sounds to me like you are using dualist language here placing genes in a material realm and memes in an ethereal realm. They're both in the same realm to me. The retching people experience when, say, seeing a dead body, is built using the same mechanisms as the retching that happens after eating something literally poisonous to us.”

No, I’m not thinking dualistically about it, but I *think* I’m starting to understand what the disagreement is all about between Dan and Gregg, and also why I am also so drawn into the disagreement. I think both Gregg and I are hung up on a definition and use of a word. That word is *punishment*. It has a connotation to it that I don’t think serves the purpose of a forward looking justice system. I might be oversimplifying the disagreement between Dan and Gregg, but I kind of feel that if Dan stopped using the word *punishment* and instead used something like *restoration*, that he would suddenly find himself on the same side of the issue as Gregg. Maybe I’ll find out after finishing Just Deserts, but I wonder what Dan envisions should be done once someone has been quarantined for a crime. It sounds like Dan and Gregg also might agree on this and that Dan doesn’t just think that quarantining is enough (i.e. let someone sit in a prison for a set amount of time and after thinking about their situation they will magically be rehabilitated).

-> “These "inventions" serve to preserve our bodies too. We're right to treat them with care.”

Agreed, but to either cause excessive suffering or not actively try to minimize suffering through rehabilitation is not treating them with care in my opinion. My idea of treating them with care sounds something like this: Person A commits a crime. Person B applies justice by sitting down with Person A and saying something along the lines of, “Person A, you acted in a way that we currently believe undermines the future of our civilization. It’s understood that you acted in this manner to fulfill a need/set of needs. But there are multiple ways to fulfill this need/set of needs, and many (if not most) of the ways to do this are currently considered beneficial for the future of our civilization. So, let’s work together to figure out first what need/set of needs your actions were taken to fulfill and then together we’ll to find acceptable alternatives that work well for you. The action you took requires that you stay at this location while we go through this process, which will be a bit painful, especially at first. But we’ll make sure that all of your needs are met in the duration so that any suffering you feel will be minimized as much as possible.”

Treating crime in this manner takes care of all the issues that crop up in my opinion. It still holds one responsible for their action, and if necessary, quarantine

Astronomer Eric

8/14/2021 03:04:02 am

Treating crime in this manner takes care of all the issues that crop up in my opinion. It still holds one responsible for their action, and if necessary, quarantines them for the safety of the general public while they are rehabilitated. This should maintain respect for law and increase fairness, while also reducing the average level of suffering society-wide. It minimizes suffering for the individual, which is ideal in general, but especially so for laws that might be considered barbaric in the future. It attempts to heal an unhealthy (neurotic/pathological) individual which should lower the recidivity rates.

-> “No, because the patient is also trying to heal themselves. Your examples aren't equivalent because criminals might just *say* they are really really sorry and won't ever do it again so there's no need to punish them. If we believed them, that would undermine the justice system.”

I think that they are equivalent in the sense that we don’t let patients out of the hospital until the doctor deems the patient is healthy enough to leave. A criminal would only *just say* they are really sorry if they thought it was a quicker, easier way to reduce suffering. If the rehabilitation process was focused on reducing suffering in the first place, the number of cases of this happening would drop dramatically. Does a doctor ever let a patient leave too early? Sure. No system is perfect. But improvement can be made over time. And so I think every person who commits a crime should have the same level of individual attention that a patient in a hospital does (via a process similar to the Person A/B example I gave above).

But at the end of the day, I think you and Dan would still call the Person A/B process I detailed above *punishment*, and I would rather call it something else like *restoration*.

Astronomer Eric

8/14/2021 03:14:22 am

By the way, most medical issues don't require hospital stays. Likewise, I don't think most criminal issues require rehabilitation stays. Which I think roughly maps onto current levels of punishment (i.e. prison vs punishments like fines, community servie etc.) But, I still think every single crime should have at least a "doctor visit" and discussion like that Person A/B discussion I laid out. Even if one doesn't need to be quarantined, helping one fulfill a need in a socially acceptable way is still preferable to something like a fine, and in my opinion more beneficial to the society in a forward-looking sense.

Ed Gibney link

8/14/2021 07:35:54 am

I don’t have much time to comment this weekend, but I basically agree with much of what you say. Dan and Gregg don’t get into specifics of what prison should look like, but your rehabilitation conversation is ideal even if it might be naive in too many instances. That is still the start.

One of my wife’s friends and colleagues at the university (another Criminologist) is an expert on “restorative justice.” So yes, that’s a thing, and yes, that’s a great place to start. It is still “punishment” though and that may be just a word with more nuance than you like. Dan is clear he wants punishment but not wicked punishment. The type matters.

This quick post from me had a bit about escalating through the various types of justice — restorative, rehabilitate, and finally incapacitating. But never going to retributive. It sounds like you, me, Gregg, and Dan all on board with that.

http://www.evphil.com/blog/2-thoughts-on-justice

Astronomer Eric

8/14/2021 03:17:07 pm

Sounds good Ed! Thanks for taking so much time already to work through this with me! It’s nice to know that I’m not way out in left field with this. I can live with idealistic, as it gives a goalpost to strive for. Have a great weekend!

Astronomer Eric

8/17/2021 01:21:22 am

Hey Ed! Hope you had a good weekend. In a month or two (I don't want to pester you too much, I know you've got tons of projects on your plate), would you be up for continuing the discussion about how that rehabilitation person A/B scenario might be naive in some cases? Maybe you could list a few examples of cases where you think it might not be suitable and I can see if I'm able to defend/justify it. But yeah, if you're up for it, let's take a break for awhile and I promise to not just jump right back in like I did this time without reminding where we left off. haha.

Ed Gibney link

8/17/2021 03:48:11 pm

Thanks Eric! Of course I'm up for continuing our discussion as and when I can. It just so happens that a county just next to us has done an experiment that sounds exactly like your A/B scenario. It seems to work really well, isn't perfect, but a great approach. You can read about it here:

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/feb/18/how-to-stay-out-of-jail-review-criminal-justice-durham-checkpoint-miraculous-uplifting

The documentary discussed in that article is available here, but I don't know if you'll be able to watch it in Japan (maybe with some VPN chicanery?):

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/how-to-stay-out-of-jail

I think those articles or documentaries might answer some of your questions. I'm all for scaling this up everywhere.

Astronomer Eric

8/18/2021 06:09:08 am

Wow, Ed! Great find! The Checkpoint program is exactly what I had been envisioning as a starting point. Agreed that it definitely isn’t perfect, but what is? As an analogy to the medical profession, I think back to what the earliest forms of medicine would have looked like, and then to much more recent historical movies/TV shows I’ve seen that depict amputations without anesthesia and bleeding as examples of past forms of medication that seem very archaic now, and finally to where we actually are now. Something like Checkpoint has obviously not started from scratch, as can be evidenced by its awesome success rate. But even with such early high success rates, over time with scientific study, it can only improve. Hopefully soon something like Checkpoint is available at every level of criminal severity, so if someone fails at, for example, the current level of crime that Checkpoint serves which allows people to still live out in the world, they aren’t just sent back to prison with no further help but instead have an even more rigorous level of therapy.

I looked further into Checkpoint and found a more recent article (a very long one) that discusses the “evidence-based medicine” rationale behind Checkpoint.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/evidence-based-policing

I didn’t ever see any reference to Maslow’s theory (besides the word “needs”) anywhere in these Checkpoint descriptions. But I truly think that Maslow’s theory when applied to an organizing hierarchical structure like your THOC will be the foundation for something like this, and that people trained in these memes will be the best “doctors” in the criminal justice system. Well, at least until we start to unlock much deeper inner workings of human consciousness and behavior. But that’s likely at least a hundred or so years of scientific research away.

My Review of "Just Deserts" by Daniel Dennett and Gregg Caruso

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