> My challenge for readers: Propose any alternative to retributivism that precludes family punishment
The assumption underlying this is that one has to have some moral system, some set of explicable rules, consistently applied. The reality is that one's sense of morality doesn't spring from a set of rules but is more akin to an aesthetic judgement. We feel that things are wrong.
This doesn't mean we can't discuss morality. On the contrary, different people have different moral feelings and those feelings can change in response to new information and to persuasion. Moreover we have ways of achieving some form of overall consensus, embodied in cultural artifacts, systems and rules. But these (in a healthy society) are living things, continually updated and maintained and ultimately in service of the feelings of the individuals and groups that make up a society.
It's common to argue that someone's moral judgements are inconsistent and therefore invalid, but moral judgements, being akin to aesthetic ones, can never be inconsistent because they are independent emotional responses to particular scenarios. That doesnt mean that arguments about consistency are pointless, though, as we may come up with a rule that produces different outcomes in scenarios we feel should have the same outcome. But there we are talking about the consistency of a rule and how well or badly it reflects out own moral judgements, not our moral judgements themselves.
So to this challenge I'd just say that I don't need an "ism" to feel that both retribution-motivated state punishment and family punishment are wrong, and that if you can't think of an "ism" that describes the majority view that's a failing of moral philosophy as an academic subject, not something that has any bearing on my moral judgements whatsoever.
The assumption underlying this is that one has to have some moral system, some set of explicable rules, consistently applied. The reality is that one's sense of morality doesn't spring from a set of rules but is more akin to an aesthetic judgement. We feel that things are wrong.
This doesn't mean we can't discuss morality. On the contrary, different people have different moral feelings and those feelings can change in response to new information and to persuasion. Moreover we have ways of achieving some form of overall consensus, embodied in cultural artifacts, systems and rules. But these (in a healthy society) are living things, continually updated and maintained and ultimately in service of the feelings of the individuals and groups that make up a society.
It's common to argue that someone's moral judgements are inconsistent and therefore invalid, but moral judgements, being akin to aesthetic ones, can never be inconsistent because they are independent emotional responses to particular scenarios. That doesnt mean that arguments about consistency are pointless, though, as we may come up with a rule that produces different outcomes in scenarios we feel should have the same outcome. But there we are talking about the consistency of a rule and how well or badly it reflects out own moral judgements, not our moral judgements themselves.
So to this challenge I'd just say that I don't need an "ism" to feel that both retribution-motivated state punishment and family punishment are wrong, and that if you can't think of an "ism" that describes the majority view that's a failing of moral philosophy as an academic subject, not something that has any bearing on my moral judgements whatsoever.
That's how I think about it, anyway.