100 Papers That Shaped Our Thinking, Professor Jo Wolff

On Tuesday, 9 December, Professor Jo Wolff, President of the Royal Institute, gave a talk on Philosophy’s 100 Papers That Shaped Our Thinking in honor of the Institute’s centenary. He discussed how the papers were chosen and provided in depth analysis and contextualization of several of them.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hi everyone, welcome and thank you so much for joining us. Today we're excited to welcome Professor Joe Wolfe. He is the emeritus Alfred Lanketer Professor of Values and Public Policy at the Blavotnik School of Government at Oxford University and the Supernumerary Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford. Thank you so much, Joe, for joining us.

SPEAKER_05 0:26

Well, thank you, Julia, and uh Melanie for setting this up. I'm very pleased to be here. Um, so you have if you're here, you have probably seen the link that um advertises a little bit about what I'm planning to do. But let me just um run through what I want to do and how I want to arrange things if that's going to be possible. I'm sorry, I'm just gonna adjust my screen a little bit. Okay. So um as I'm sure you all know or almost all know, uh, we've been putting together a collection of a hundred papers to celebrate the various different centenaries uh that we have for the Royal Institute of Philosophy. And um I had the rather challenging job of selecting the hundred papers, and of course, what I didn't do was read a hundred years of the journal, but um luckily for us, there are lists now of the most cited papers in the journal. And I began with a list of the hundred most cited, and then I started trimming. Uh, I didn't want more than one paper from any one person, uh, so there's some people with two or three, some seemed less suitable. Um, and there were other major philosophers who had given a talk that was then published as a paper or had replied to another paper in the journal. And so if there were big names, I brought them in as well, and if there were things that I thought were particularly interesting and uh or particularly connected with with TRIP, then I brought those in too. So we ended up with a hundred papers. I think we have just released, is it the 43rd something? 46th. 46th, yeah. Okay. And if you've been following assiduously, you will see each one has a short introduction that I have written. And um, what um occurred to me very soon after making the selection is that for some reason the journal seems to attract uh highly cited papers around punishment, forgiveness, mercy, evil. And so this question of wrongdoing and um our response as human beings to wrong being has been a major theme in the journal. So I don't know whether we're unusual as a journal to be uh attracting papers of that type or readers and citations, or whether this is actually what people are interested in, more generally in moral and political philosophy. I haven't checked that, but um there is a cluster of very interesting papers on this topic, including some of the most cited papers. Um, so what I've done is I've picked out five papers of the 40-something that we've already released, and I want to talk about the themes of those papers. So I'm not going to give you a detailed analysis and criticism of the papers. I'm not going to try to do that, but what I'm going to do is bring out the main concepts or the main ideas that we've got in each of the papers. And what I would like to do, if others are willing, but we'll see how this goes, is to do it more as a type of discussion than me giving you a lecture. Because I think what we have are some incredibly stimulating and controversial ideas in some of these papers. Some less so, some are more standard. But um, what I want to do is start with a paper called Um The Concept of Evil, which was published in the journal in 2004 by the American philosopher uh Marcus G. Singer. Now, Singer um died in 2016. Uh, he was born in 1926, so had a long life, and wrote quite a few important studies in political in moral philosophy. And he was known really for thinking about the topic of generalization in ethics and to the degree to which if you make a moral claim, um, are you committed to a general moral judgment? And if so, how do you generalize? How will you ever generalize? And those of you who know Kant's philosophy will know the problem of the idea of thinking about a maxim of an action. But in this paper, um, what Singer wants to do is to bring out a dilemma in the definition of evil and to give us his own account. So, what I thought I would start with, and um, this may not work so well, but just to see, um, if anyone has any thoughts about how you might define evil as a concept, and maybe also uh what types of difficulties there might be in doing so. So, this is a question for you to start with. Um, what is evil? Any thoughts? Maybe it's a concept we don't use so much, um maybe maybe it feels a bit almost theological, and it's an old testament concept rather than something we use in day-to-day life. But I think we might think we have seen evil in the last year, we've seen more evil lately than we've ever done before. Uh, we read the newspapers, you probably talk to your family members and say, um this is evil. So I'm now challenging you. Uh what do you mean when you say it? I just saw something come up come up in the chat from uh how do I see what was in the chat? Seems to have gone from my chat. Um so I'd be very welcome to anyone who wants to make a verbal contribution at this point, bearing in mind I don't seem to be able to see what's in the chat. Um, okay, I've got evil says Graham is going to be something that is, as it were, an expression of pure vice. Okay. Any comments on Graham's definition? No. Well, Graham, do you want to expand a little bit more on that? You can do that in person. Sure.

SPEAKER_02 6:52

Um, yeah, so I mean the thought is from the category of evil, there are going to be many bad things that you're going to want to exclude because they're sort of um an expression of weakness of will or um their you know absent-mindedness that was like, you know, so evil is going to be a kind of intentional acting that is um not subject to kind of mitigation or excuse.

SPEAKER_05 7:27

Okay, very nice. So that would it would follow from that you can't be evil by accident, or you can't be negligent negligently evil. Okay, so there has to be some sort of I mean, unless you can be intentionally negligent. You well, okay. Can you be intentionally negligent? I know many people actually who are intentionally negligent. Um, that they uh there's um the concept of thoughtlessness, I think, is quite interesting from a moral point of view because we normally tend to think things are only bad if you have some sort of um intention. But we often call people thoughtless, and there's no intention. I mean, how can you be intentionally thoughtless? Well, of course, in the short term you can't be intentionally thoughtless, but maybe in the longer term you can. You could cultivate yourself as a thoughtless person, or cultivate yourself as a negligent person. So you could train yourself to be negligent. Maybe that would be that would be evil. So we we've got another contribution from Miss Leigh. I I don't know if you'd like to talk or you'd prefer me to read out. Um, but I I read out one could overcome many of the obvious shortcomings of good and evil by supposing it relative. To be evil is to be acting in a way that opposes your own attempts at being good in the manner in which you define. Okay, so I think we've got something interesting here because both of the definitions, this is a problem with definitions, both of the definitions we've got rely on other words that are desperately in need of definition. So, Graham's, if you look at the chat, uh Graham says it's going to be something that, as it were, an expression of pure vice. You can see where we're going with this. Well, what do you mean by pure vice? That's the next thing. Graham did expand on that to say it has to be intentional, and and Miss Leigh, um the opposite of good. Okay, so let me put to you the central dilemma in the philosophy of evil here, as it has been uh discussed by Marcus Singer and other people who've talked about it. So there are two different accounts of evil, and we've we've got sorts of versions of the two of them actually very nicely. So one says um there's a scale that runs from good to bad, and at the top you can get sort of beyond good. I don't know what that would be, saintly or something like that, and at the bottom you get evil. So there's a continuum. So on this view, evil just means very, very, very, very, very bad, as bad as you could get. But there's another view that says actually, evil is something different to bad, it's a different concept, it's not just being very, very bad. There's something distinctive about evil which differentiates it from just being very bad. And we've got another contribution from Zaid Al Saji. The question of evil needing an active act by someone, um, not including accidentally unintentionally, evil is weak as it avoids situations where evil exists and people choose not to act against that evil. A sort of extension of Peter Singer's argument about not doing good. Well, this is a very interesting um reflection because it comes very close to Marcus Singer's actual own view here. So I'll come back to that in a second. So what we've got is this dilemma. Um evil is very, very bad. Or evil is something distinct, it's a different category to being very bad. And if you think of people who are genuinely evil, so yeah, the least controversial example we could probably have is hit Hitler, someone who is genuinely evil. Was he just a very, very, very, very, very bad person? Or was there something about him that sort of transcends that category? So before we started, Julia and I were having a quick discussion about this. And Julia, you I think you had a view about it, whether you want to come on cam on microphone quickly and say what you were thinking.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

Sure. So my thought was that I think that evil and bad are kind of different orders of assessing something. I saw good and bad as opposites. And then evil is more of an antithesis to kind, in that it kind of has to do with the motivations and the character behind your actions, not just the act itself.

SPEAKER_05 12:03

Okay. So you okay, so you're saying there are two contrasting scales, one is good and bad, and the other is evil, and you suggested kind. I mean, kind seems a bit weak to me. I don't know. I I don't know if um that really is the antithesis, but I see where you're going with this. There's there's a different scale with evil at one end and something else at the top. Okay, so so that's another interesting view, and but there's also the view that evil is just transcendent and that it's not on a scale, it's something completely different, being this. Okay. Uh same perhaps we we have as as the end. Um, all right, so let me tell you what Marcus Singer thinks. So Marcus Singer says that evil is its own category, it's not on the good bad spectrum. And I'll just read out his definition. Um evil act says one so bad, so awful, so horrendous, that no ordinary, decent, reasonable human being can conceive of himself or herself doing such a thing. So let me read that. That's just first sentence. I'll read that again. Uh, an evil act is one so bad, so awful, so horrendous, that no ordinary, decent, reasonable human being can conceive of himself or herself doing such a thing. And an evil person or organization is one who knowingly performs, that's Graham's point, wills or orders such actions, or, and this is Zaid's point, remains indifferent to them when performed by another in a situation where one could do something to stop or prevent it. So I'm very impressed because between us we've more or less, or you've annuism of arts, but you've more or less come up with um Singer's own definition. But um let me read out that first line from him because it it I think is somewhat problematic. Uh Singer says, is one so bad, so awful, so horrendous, that no ordinary, decent, reasonable human being can conceive of himself or herself doing such a thing. So anyone else feeling that's slightly problematic or you you're happy with it? Wayne, Wayne, you come on in.

SPEAKER_03 14:21

Yeah. Can you hear me? Perfectly, yeah.

unknown 14:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:24

Uh so just I just put something in the note. And I'm I'm here out of interest because I'm not a trained ethicist. Um, but it it seems to me that you could imagine a situation where someone might need to do something unspeakably awful for a greater good. And you might object to that, and you might say, well, no, the whole point of evil is that there are certain lines you cannot cross under any circumstances. But I think there are plenty of examples where people who believe that they are doing the right thing, they are acting for right reasons, also believe that they they have to do um unspeakably what would normally, in the ordinary course of life, be considered to be an unspeakably bad thing. Um, and you know, that's why nuclear weapons exist, because there are many, many people in history and science and in government who felt that it was necessary to have such a very big stick to prevent other evil, and a stick doesn't work if you don't use it, and that's why it was used um 70 years ago or whenever it was used.

SPEAKER_04 15:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 15:44

Um so my what I put in the note, and and this may be a waste of time because it doesn't come from reading Kant or anything like that, is that my sense of evil is that it is entirely based on earthy, selfish um emotions where there is no empathic or consideration of a wider world or of other people or of community. Whereas good is where you act um perhaps even denying selfish things uh for the sake of a wider, wider community. And I I think that ties slightly into the idea of Satan as being underneath the earth and um you know grabbing us by the ghoulies, so to speak. Um whereas whereas God is in heaven, not that I'm religious. Anyway, sorry, I'll stop speaking.

SPEAKER_05 16:38

Thank you. So would anyone like to comment on what Wayne has just said? Rather adding something new, but commenting on this idea?

SPEAKER_02 16:46

Um I can have a shot, I guess. Um I mean, so there's there's a line sort of evil be thou my good, at which you know you can imagine sort of Satan deciding that his good, the things that he considered worthy, are going to be evil. And um I know Anskom kind of criticizes this and going, Look, everybody acts for reasons that they think are good. You know, like the like everybody thinks that they're the hero of their own story and that they're justified in doing so. Um so the idea that someone thinks of themselves as being evil isn't isn't gonna work. But the kind of things you were pointing to, when what sorts of considerations are you taking into account? Are they purely selfish ones or are they considerate avoid a thing? I think that's what my comment about your vice was trying to sort of speak to a bit of selfishness is a particular vice, but but equally there are going to be lots of others. But but that idea of like we care a lot about what considerations are taken into account, and if they're not ones that we otherwise think are good, that's not going to count in favour of the action.

SPEAKER_05 18:04

Okay, this is a great discussion. We've got Henrietta has put something in the chat which I'll read out because she says she can't come on live. It says bad is failure to meet your own standards or aspirations of goodness or other external standards of society or authority. Evil is not intending to meet any standards, not even looking for reasons or excuses to act this way. So bad so if you're bad, you do have standards, or you accept some standards, but you fail to live up to them. Evil is not even having any any standards. That's possible, that's definitely possible. What I wonder is whether, and this goes back, I think, to Wayne's point, whether um evil involves knowing that you're going to do harm or that there's a possibility of harm. Because I think that there's a lot of act, a lot of people act very selfishly. And um I'm not sure we would call them evil if they don't do harm to other people, don't do serious harm to other people. So I think there has to be either this sort of extreme recklessness that you don't care whether you're causing harm. Uh, because, well, maybe selfish people, people we call selfish, do would stop if they knew they were causing a lot of harm, but um, but they don't mind some mild harm. But I think just if we go back to Singer's definition, where he says it's so bad, so awful, so horrendous that no ordinary, decent, reasonable human being can conceive of themselves. And you think, well, what is an ordinary, decent, reasonable human being? So in law, they used to use this idea of the man on the clapam omnibus or something that is the reasonable person. But what's reasonable to you might be unreasonable to me, vice versa. What's reasonable in one culture might be re and so on. But um, so I don't I don't want to dwell on this for too long, but I think we see the difficulty actually in defining this term evil, that um the dilemma is it just you know very, very, very bad. I'm not sure who's attracted to that view or not, because some of the the ideas coming up do seem to be like it's an extreme form of badness, but we also have some people who think that there is a difference between um evil and and very bad. So Zaid, I've seen you've come on camera. You put a few things in the chat. Would you like to say something to us?

SPEAKER_01 20:26

Um I'll have a go. I put myself on mute partly because I'm I'm coming towards the end of a cold and I'm coughing intermittently. So and and it it's it sounds terrible. It sounds a lot worse than it actually is. Um I I I liked Wayne's contribution, I thought it was very good. I I I would take issue with um his characterization of the acquisition of nuclear weapons. I think that was more a case of uh a long line in history of um powers attempting to gain the upper hand, and it wasn't a case of um uh people acquiring nuclear weapons to prevent evil. Um I think it was more a case of um had it been in uh other hands, had they been in other hands, they may have been may have been used far more widely. Um but generally I think the the concern I have is um in trying to define good and evil is that getting to any any sort of what you might call an absolute conception is fraught with difficulty in relativism. Uh and what's what's um uh considered evil by one culture may not be considered evil by another. And I'm not a religious person, um, but I can fully understand again. I'm I'm a not a religious person, and um uh not that it's my my choice, but um women's rights are paramount as far as their bodily autonomy goes. But I can understand people saying that abortion is uh is an evil act. I can understand that from the point of view I disagree, um, but I can I can accept their position. uh religious or or otherwise that you know taking of a life uh that could be um and i disagree with um uh uh richard dawkins uh idea that if it's imperfect you just get rid of it and try again which i think is is a callous approach to uh to you know um a couple having a child um i can understand that you know that that conception of it being an evil act um so i i think as a even that that's my position as a as a i sometimes call myself a militant atheist um because um i mean i i i um I like uh lots of things about religions music architecture and so on but uh I'm not a believer in any sort of uh unseen deity um but I mean I suppose my my conclusion is that I'm just I don't think that there's uh evil acts are um uh I think a result of a number of things they're they're they're they are the result of um the motivations of the evildoer um they're the result of the position of the pe people who are um subject to those evil acts and I think here's where a power imbalance um can uh can colour one particular act as evil and another particular act as just egregious. That's why it's you know I I'm I don't think um coming up with a a complete conception of of uh good and evil is is um an easy one.

SPEAKER_05 23:33

Okay so thank thank you very much for that so there's so that isn't I suppose a another question we need to consider whether there is a single notion of evil uh or some objective notion of evil you could have a definition of evil that made room for cultural difference of course so you the the mere fact you've got a definition doesn't mean that you you think there's an objective fact. So you know if we look at this I was worrying about what there's a reasonable you know what is a reasonable person. And you can say well there's actually room for cultural relativity there. So what what counts as a reasonable person in one culture might be unreasonable in another so what counts as evil in one culture might be just very bad or normal in in another so I think um we've got a lot of different questions here. So I I I just want to finish by saying I'm really pleased with this discussion. It was a type of experiment for me to see whether we could get a discussion going and I've been I I would declare this a successful experiment. Zyde you you mentioned Richard Dawkins you'll be pleased or appalled to hear that the paper this week is um Mary Midgley's criticism of Dawkins and then next week I'm I'll give you the preview we've got Dawkins' reply to Midgley where he's very upset at how unpleasant she's been to him which is uh is one of the most extraordinary exchanges actually in philosophy because she wrote a paper which if you you you really have to look at it just to see how dismissive it is of someone you know who's a senior professor in another subject and criticizing him on his own territory and then he comes back and says more or less says who are you to criticize me very brave um yes um anyway it's uh quite a memorable debate in in philosophy uh both in the journal and and in the discipline so okay we there's a lot more we could say and there are some comments sorry in the chat that I haven't had a chance to look at but I want to um talk about some of the other papers as well so we we better move on to the next topic so the next topic is punishment and the justification of punishment and you know there are two um papers that I'm going to include in this discussion. The first is from the philosopher W. D. Ross and it was published in one of the very first volumes of the journal back in 1929. So we've got papers that are hundred years old that are still worth reading and still influencing the debate to some degree. So Ross was um a very important philosopher he wrote a book called The Right and the Good which defends uh intuitionism so intuitionism was proposed as an alternative to utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is a view that we should maximize the good or maximize happiness. Intuitionism says that actually there are lots of different good things duty is good obligation is good friendship is good um and that what one needs to do is to understand the your moral intuitions and that your moral intuitions actually have priority over any theoretical perspective I mean that's put it very simply and those who are experts in Ross will know that I have not done uh justice to his view there. But here he's talking about punishment and the ethics of punishment and um where we think of punishment one of the common theories one of the most common theory is the deterrence theory of punishment okay so the idea is that we punish people in order to deter crimes in the future. So this is a forward looking consequentialist argument that says we we we punish in order to set an example to put people off maybe put that same person off or to put other people off not unlike actually some of the things that Wayne was saying about nuclear weapons that people have nuclear weapons to deter other behavior so it's a forward looking justification. So I don't know how many people are familiar with this question of the philosophical debate about punishment um so that's one argument uh the consequentialist argument which is a forward looking argument we also have backward looking arguments that say that punishment is about punishing people who've done wrong so it's retribution um again almost like a divine eye for an eye so if you've done something wrong you deserve punishment that may have a deterrent effect but that's secondary the idea is simply to exert a type of retribution that view um once upon a time was out of fashion because it looked very um well old fashioned in a way uh very illiberal very conservative that you know people deserve punishment there's another forward looking view that was popular for that's still popular although whether it really happens is another question which is rehabilitation so you put people in prison in order to change them in order to car change their character so they do good in the future so those are the main theories there are lots of other theories we'll talk about uh another in a moment but um they all have certain problems so um let me ask you if we go to the utilitarian theory the deterrence theory that says that we should punish people to put other people off who knows the standard philosophical objection to this does anyone remember this from their first year moral philosophy classes what's wrong with utilitarian theories of punishment that they like it really depends on how effective they are so you should only punish people if you've got evidence it will in fact put people off okay so that that's a very good argument that if you don't think it will have much effect if you don't think punishment will have much effect then it loses its justification. That is a good objection it wasn't the one I was thinking of though but it is a good objection that that there's almost the opposite objection to that I'm just generally anti-utilitarianism so any form of utilitarianess m must be false from my point of view. Okay it will help yeah so that's that's an opinion um but I'm not sure it advances a discussion for us as no way um um so yes okay as I has put up the point there's restorative justice as well which is a more modern theory of punishment in in 1929 people were not talking about restorative judge uh justice but uh that that is important and maybe we'll come to that in a moment so um does anyone remember the scapegoating objection to utilitarianism there's a there was a famous objection that comes up quite a lot involving um a case of um being a violent crime in a small village in the south in them in America just punish one person at random you don't care who it is but if you punish them halfly you know badly enough that has the effect of um of the retribution exactly the so the the problem with the deterrence theory of punishment is that the person you punish doesn't actually have to be guilty um that as long as you're punishing someone you're making example of someone um then people will have the same psychological effect as long as they think the person is guilty. So you don't have to have the person actually guilty you scapegoat them you you point to someone um and so this often has led in the past to racist forms of punishment where you get someone who looks like they're the sort of person that would have caused the crime and uh the general public are not going to worry too much about it and you punish them. Okay that's going to put a lid on it now. So the problem is if you're just based and maybe Wayne this is why you're against utilitarianism if you just do the calculation you can end up with grave injustices.

SPEAKER_03 32:23

You you can pick on someone um well cal calculate so just really quickly so you know utilitarianism is about balancing calculations and they never work and that's just one example. Another example would be how do you grade a punishment versus a crime? I mean how do you how do you calculate what's what's the balance and so on.

SPEAKER_05 32:46

Okay well the balance question isn't a problem for utilitarianism it's a problem for retribution um because it says you want to balance it balance the two you know you you know what you know what's a crime for stealing you know what's a punishment for stealing how many months in prison say and and so there you you've got a a real problem of balancing the two unless you're going to be very literal about it. So utilitarianism doesn't have to worry about that but it does have to worry about the calculation and it says no we should we should have the punishment that will be optimum in terms of deterring crime against the um punishment we're giving so you know in if you were hanging people for stealing a sheep as once happened you might say that's not an optimum balance because the punishment is too high you you would deter even if you didn't hang and then we go back to Graham's point does it actually really is there any evidence that it really did deter anyway but here so this is a problem that though that um we according to utilitarianism we do whatever maximizes happiness and if it turns out that punishing an innocent person is what will maximize happiness that is what we're required to do. So that sounds like a refutation of the um deterrence theory and Hegel said that the deterrence theory treats a human being like a dog uh that you're sort of rubbing a nose in it to deter to put other people off but do we really want to say that punishment has got nothing to do with deterrence because this seems a bizarre view um you know we we want to put people off crime and so the idea that there is no utilitarian element to punishment or no be broader consequentialist element to punishment seems very strange to me that um surely at least part of the point of punishment is to deter crime it's very yeah if you were to say it's got nothing to do with deterrence I'd want to hear more about the details.

SPEAKER_02 34:51

Graham you want to come in yes so I I I want to maybe push that I do think that punishment as such has nothing to do with deterrence in the way that we've been talking about it so far. So punishment like there's there's two different ways in which we might put people off right we might do a causal intervention that has the consequence that people are less likely to do something or we might as it were persuade them that there is no value in doing this action and that persuasion might not be scaring them and in fact deterrence in that kind of form of make you know filling them with fear that they're going to get caught and so on just means they're more likely to try and exploit times where they think they're not going to get caught. Like there are psychological reasons to be quite skeptical of that as a method of increasing the the kind of morality of behavior that what you do is just make it harder to catch because they try and gain the system. Whereas if you actually persuade them this is a bad thing to do, so I quite like Chris Bennett's theory of punishment essential that we like symbolically indicate that we think that this is a bad thing and we don't like in this house we do not do that.

SPEAKER_05 36:09

You know, we're making a collective statement but you might think that there is a role of the various social systems we have to disincentivize doing bad things but that's not punishment that's actually kind of the design of your social system and and and might not be a stick the whole time it might actually be removing temptation from people okay very good okay so we'll come back to the communicative theory because that's actually the topic of the next of the other paper we go well not not Chris Bennett but uh Ieyor Primratz but um so you're making a distinction between sort of generally educating people to be good people rather than um saying look if you do this now you're going to be punished because they may find an occasion where they can do the same thing without being punished. So I I so I like that a lot but I I still think that's you know imagine a couple of kids in the supermarket and one of them says let's steal the biscuits and the other one says no we might get caught and punished right um so it's very hard for me to say that punishment has got nothing to do with deterrence there just this ordinary casual theft of course there are career criminals or people who do the cost-benefit analysis but just as a general thing the idea that you're going to be caught and punished and maybe not even sent to jail maybe just go to the police station be arrested be up in court and told not to do it again that for many people will be a deterrent so what Ross does even though he's generally anti-utilitarian um he thinks that the there is an element of truth to the deterrent theory but he doesn't want to um accept the possibility that there could be justified punishment of innocent people so how do you square that circle how can you have an elementalist element without the possibility of punishing the innocent and so what he does is come up with what he calls a hybrid theory of punishment. So we start off with the presumption that you have a right not to be punished unless you've done something deserving of punishment unless you've let's say broken the law. Let's say broken the law to keep it easy you have a right not every one of us has a right not to be punished unless we've broken the law once we've broken the law then we can be subject to punishment and only then does a utilitarian calculation come in. So it's quite clever it's like having a filter first that this right says that if you're not guilty or if you haven't broken the law you should not be punished. You have a right not to be punished but once um you have broken the law we can do the utilitarian calculation to work out what is the best system of punishment with maximum deterrence in it without over punishing people. Now whether he's right or wrong I don't know but what I think is that this is quite an interesting argument. It's actually an argument I've seen over and over again in the hundred years later. So as far as I know Ross was the first person to propose this two-stage um argument so uh we've got a couple of contributions I need to have a look at Wayne O'Cave you're back from back from the oven um Zaid not answering the latest question but I guess there's also an element of punishment providing some form of restorative justice yes we're going to come back to that Wayne again um is that what we see with the Bill of Rights habeas corpus etc in our liberal system I think that's right I think we do have we do give people this right um not to be punished and a heavy presumption in favor of of innocence so it's guilt that has to be proven rather than a balance of probabilities. Now there's another contribution isn't this an us versus them argument where they're setting up this hypothetical group of criminals which can be discriminated against well if that's what it was then that would be a big problem. So if we're saying we know in advance who the criminals are and those are the people who who uh forfeit their rights that's even worse probably than the utilitarian argument where which randomly picks people out. But I don't think that's what Ross is doing. So what he's doing he's not saying that there's this already existing group of criminals he's saying there are people who have forfeited their right through their action and so it's not discrimination but rather a punishment. But I think it it could certainly degenerate into you know the usual you know we'll pick up the usual suspects which takes us back to the utilitarian argument. But anyway I I I'll finish the discussion of Ross there because I think what's so interesting is that he um anticipates a line of argument that we see again and again and again where people want to have some notion of deterrence but are worried about the possibility of punishing the innocent so put in a pre-test of some sort to make sure you you only punish the guilty which I think it is quite a neat theory whether it's the best theory is another matter because we'll move on to another theory now and this is from um an Israeli philosopher Igor Primeratz who was a specialist in um topics like punishment and terrorism and he wrote a paper called punishment and language now Graham you mentioned I think the communicative theory of punishment earlier do you do you want to tell us a little bit about that as you use that term?

SPEAKER_02 42:05

I mean I didn't use the term communicative um but the so the the view that I got from uh a lecturer at Sheffield Chris Bennett um was basically we are censoring people. Oh sorry um and we do this to sort of indicate as a society that we think this kind of thing is bad. So it may well be what is described as a communicative theory you you would know better than me. But I was really taken with this idea that rather than it being about sort of scaring people or having revenge on people or fixing people it's just a kind of collective statement that we think this thing was bad enough and we think the appropriate symbolic way of affirming that badness is to deprive you of your liberty for a period of time commensurate commensurate with the crime.

SPEAKER_05 43:00

And so if you were really sorry you would still serve the time if if you were really put off and you were never going to do it again you still serve the time okay very good so that is almost a description of the paper we're looking at actually the expressive theory of punishment and so this idea is that we so we've seen punishment is a deterrence punishment's retribution restoration here the idea is punishment expresses a message and I think that is quite plausible isn't it so if you particularly when you see I suppose earlier forms of punishment that were very often in public or people putting people in the stocks or uh flogging people even hanging them publicly so this is society con uh uh collectively venting an emotion of some sort collectively saying um that you know we strongly disapprove of this action so um can we think of any problems with that view Parallel to the utilitarian case. Why do why does it have to be someone who has actually done wrong in order to vent?

SPEAKER_02 44:21

Because it's not just venting, right? Like it's it's not as it were unbridled emotions. Like this is the a well-calibrated, appropriate emotional response, and and anger when well calibrated is a response to injustice.

SPEAKER_05 44:34

Very nice. Very good reply, thank you. Um so so um the argument of this paper though is that if all we're doing, if literally all we're doing, is communicating our uh distaste or our moral disapproval, then why do we think putting people in prison is the right way, or finging them is the right way of expressing our antipathy towards them? Uh so he says, wouldn't it be more appropriate to burn an effigy of them, you know, like we do with Guy Fawkes on November the 5th? So why don't we just make a model of them and voodoo model and stick pins in them or something as other ways of expressing our uh antipathy towards them? So if we have an expressive theory, why is it that we think that locking people up and taking them off the streets is the way to express that? So I think um what he does is to um argue that expressive theory can only be part of a theory of punishment, that we need other theories to explain why it takes the form it does. Even though there is something probably right about the expressive theory, what we're doing, yeah, because we have a whole pantomime of the court and taking people away and taking people down. Now, other systems don't necessarily do that. So I um I although it doesn't appear in this paper, um, someone told me, a Norwegian told me, that in Norway uh it's quite common for people, if they you know if you're a murderer or a violent criminal, it's another matter. But if you if you're someone who is um say uh has committed fraud or uh relatively minor offence, even if you're going to prison, you don't necessarily go to prison straight away from court, that you you're sent home and you get time to sort out your business affairs or to sort out your family affairs rather than being taken to the dock. So in the British system, the American system, as you see on TV, as soon as you're guilty, you're wearing the prison gear and you're taken away, and there's this huge expressive feature of that. So the expressive nature of it is clearly part of the system for us. Um, but other systems don't necessarily have it. So, anyway, I think what what um so Primaratza's paper has been very influential. I think the reason for it is just this very simple point that if we think of punishment as an expressive act, why does it take the forms that it has taken? We could do it much more cheaply. It costs a lot of money to put people away in prison for a long time. It's humiliating for them, of course, but it's also a big problem for their family, big problem for society, big problem for the economy. We've got much cheaper and more effective ways of communicating our distaste for them, if it was all if it was all about censure or communication. Okay, um, so I'm gonna move on from punishment in a moment, but I don't know if anyone wants to comment on this or add anything to it. Actually, Zayd, you mentioned restorative justice uh as an approach to punishment. I think even though it's not in any of the papers, you know, the two papers here, it may well be in other papers. Do you want as as you brought it up, do you want to say a little bit about what you had in mind there?

SPEAKER_01 47:56

Um I suppose what I was uh thinking of is that uh part of the um a confidence that people have in the justice system is that um any violation of their themselves, uh of their property, um is something that attracts um uh I suppose it's recognized publicly. People say, well, that uh we know you've been wrong. It's part of um, I suppose that uh that's what you could call it philosophical notion of us uh as individuals uh of having rights. And I think that part of the the justice system is is important. Um and it's particularly so um, for example, if you were to think of um uh minorities in some states that um where the the the system of law um or system of justice doesn't act equally for all victims. Um and uh at least until recently, I'm not suggesting there's been a slippery slope, but at least until recently you could probably confidently say that the British um justice system has been quite exemplary in this in this regard. Um I'm not a I'm not a uh my my criticisms of the UK. I I'm actually Australian by citizenship and and British and another one as well. Um, but um I think it's something that the British system has um always said, you know, we treat each victim as a victim. And we we are there to to say that what happened to them as an individual or as a group of individuals is wrong. Um and I always remind me of a very quickly, it reminds me of a program I watched on the BBC years ago where um they followed a crime squad in in London that had they found a body of a an African boy that had been fished out, was torso, headless, limbless, being fished out of the Thames, and they went around, visited a number of African countries trying to determine who the victim was. And there was a policeman in Nigeria who expressed surprise that um the uh law enforcement uh authorities in the UK were bothering themselves uh trying to find out the uh uh the identity of someone that was clearly not a well they assumed was not a British citizen. Um and I think that's that's an example of where you know I think there's that restorative element to uh the justice system that's extremely important. It gives people that idea that they are part of polity, whatever that may be.

SPEAKER_05 50:47

Okay, very good. Okay, so it's very rare for anyone to praise a British justice system.

SPEAKER_01 50:53

So uh look, I I'll I'll praise it when it when it warrants it.

SPEAKER_05 50:57

So thank you. Thank you for doing that, and the and the comparison, of course, to other systems. So we've got a few um contributions. Wayne points out that there is the uh take them off the street arguments that is often used. That um, you know, if if someone has committed, particularly if there's been a crime spree, uh, the idea of taking them off the street for a while and having arrest from these people is actually quite a common idea. So it's not about deterrence, it's just about removing them from circulation for a while. I think that is quite a common popular notion of defensive punishment, even though it is not much discussed in the philosophical literature, oddly. And Henry Essa has um put out the expression of punishment through Orwell's two-minute hate rather than sending people to prison. I think that is um like an amplification of the Primarat's argument that we we could have our expression of our antipathy to someone by doing something in public like that rather than putting them in prison. Just want to say one more thing about restorative justice before we move on. So thank you, Zide, for your contribution on that. Um, I think one of the oddities about the criminal justice system is that if you are the victim of a crime, you are not yourself represented in court that because it's the state prosecuting the victim. Sorry, the um the defendant. So the person who committed the crime is represented, the state is represented, but as a victim of crime, you are um a witness rather than uh someone who's represented. So you'll be called to give evidence rather than having your own lawyer there in court. I think this is surprising to people who feel they should have more standing in that process. Um, and so you know, crime is treated as a crime against a society that happened to have been perpetrated against particular individuals. So the idea of restorative justice is to make it more um focused on the victim and to try and restore relationship between the victim and the perpetrator, so they both understand each other a bit more. Uh, and maybe that would be a greater form of deterrence, the type of deterrence Graham was talking about, in terms of the type of moral education of the people, when they understand how the victims are affected by the crime. I mean, on that matter, um some years ago um I needed some work done to my house, and someone just knocked on the door and and offered themselves, and uh they seemed okay, so yeah, I got them to do some work, I even left the keys with them. And then a bit later on he said to me how amazed he was I left him with the keys because he'd only recently come out of prison for housebreaking. And um he he said, but he'd gone straight now, so he said, and the reason for that was that um his parents had been broken into and they were completely devastated, even though almost nothing had been taken. And he said he didn't realise the effect he must have been having on other people. Now, of course, this could have just been a good con game against me, knowing he sussed out the sort of person I was. Um, but I was very impressed with this because you think actually, if you were grown up in a certain place, you think you know you ri you steal from rich people, they're insured you're not really doing any harm. Maybe they'll even benefit, get a you know, better furniture or something if you damage some things in their house. So I think he this idea of understanding things from a victim's perspective could also have a deterrent effect and also make the victims feel better in the process. Okay, so we'll we'll come back to that um actually in our last paper, which was about forgiveness. Actually, but I want to now move to a paper from uh 1960s by an Australian philosopher uh called Alwyn Smart, uh, who was um at the time she was a philosopher, she moved into um the field of arts education, actually, after after writing this work. But she wrote a paper called Mercy, and it's very interesting. It's a it's an argument, she gives an argument I've heard from others as well. But I think again she was one of the earlier people to make this argument. So if you think about mercy, should courts show mercy? So if you're a bleeding heart liberal like me, then you think, of course, short courts should show mercy. But yeah, what does that mean? So what she says is, well, sometimes what it means is that um they take into account, say, the difficult upbringing that the criminal has had, or extenuating circumstances, or look for reasons why in this particular case the crime wasn't as bad as it seemed to be. Um sorry, I'm uh uh Henrietta's asked me to write a name in the chat, and I will do that. Um so she published under this name uh Alwyn Smart, uh, but she changed her name, uh presumably on marriage, uh or maybe for other reasons, but she changed her surname to Alwyn Uh Mackey and became an arts educator in in Melbourne. I took a bit of time to track her down actually because I'd be I've been trying to uh give a little bit of information about each of the authors, and um I had to put on social media anyone heard of Alwyn Smart? I can't yeah, I don't know who this philosopher is. And someone said, Oh yes, she she went to Australia and got married and called herself Alwyn Mackey and did something else. Okay, um so Alwyn Mackey, or Alwyn Smart as she was, says there there are cases where you know the judge may give a lesser sentence and we call that showing mercy. But if it's because you know the person was young or they were in bad company or they had a problem at home or something like that, what you're not you're not really showing mercy. What you're doing is making the punishment fit the circumstances rather than showing mercy. To show mercy would be to accept that a certain punishment is reasonable, but to give a lesser punishment. So that sounds very humane. But um smart doesn't think so. So what's the problem with that? What is the problem with showing mercy?

SPEAKER_02 57:49

I mean one problem is essentially you're punishing other people more. Like you're like you are indicating to everybody else that they are being treated worse than this person, and so are more deserving of punishment, where previously you said this was the fitting punishment for what they did.

SPEAKER_05 58:09

Yeah, exactly. And so I so that is the worry that she has here, and and that mercy just makes it look arbitrary, and that um so uh Masley has put in is mercy something you can really increase, show mercy to a person who committed a bad act, is be less merciful to the victim, and vice versa. So that is right, I think, that people will might be disgusted at a lower sentence. You often see that where people say um that you know the i the punishment didn't fit the crime. But Graham's point is the one that um Owen Smart made, which is that you're then giving less punishment to this person than to other people who've been punished for the same thing. And how is that fair? So it's unfair to everyone who is um already in jail. Now, what do we think of this argument? Is it a good one? I mean I was when I first heard this argument, it was from the Cambridge philosopher Ross Harrison, but it was much later than um Smart's argument. I was sort of stunned by it because I felt that um I was very much in favour of mercy, but I'm not in favor of arbitrary punishment, I'm not in favour of inconsistency. So, how do we square this circle? Um, I mean there are lots of other examples of this, and I don't know what you think of it. So um Biden, Joe Biden uh was going to let people off their student loans, or let some people in some categories off their student loans. Remember the objection that some people made to this? So people who paid off their student loans felt it was really unfair that these other people shouldn't have to go through the same thing. That if I've paid off my loan, why should these other people not have to go through the pain that I went through? Wayne, you've got yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:19

So at the beginning of that, you distinguished between I'm gonna call it mercy for a reason, um, which you described as being adjusting the punishment to fit the circumstances.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:33

That's very good, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:34

And and so you kind of boxed a version of mercy, which almost by definition seems to be arbitrary. But I mean, is when someone is being merciful, isn't there always a reason? So, I mean, Biden had a reason for forgiving student loans, which is the punishing level of interest rates, etc. etc. etc. And and then there was that objection, exactly as you say. But but is it is there ever a purely arbitrary mercy?

SPEAKER_05 1:01:08

Well, what do you think? Um, so come back to the Biden thing in a moment. I'm I hope I haven't confused the issue by introducing the Biden case. Um, and it may be that some people here are paying off student loans, and so have got a very strong view about it. But um the so I th I think, well just imagine um the judge who says, well, normally I would give you a three-year sentence for this. That's in the sentence in guidelines. But look, it's a lovely day, and I'm feeling merciful today. Um, so I'm just gonna give you two and a half years. I'm gonna show you some mercy. So that's the sort of thing that we have in in mind, where um no reason is given other than the judge is feeling merciful today, right? Um, and there the argument comes up that says, Well, if I got three years for it, why is this person only getting two and a half years? So if you give mercy to one person, shouldn't you retrospectively change everyone else's sentence if that was possible? So there's there's this it's a rather primitive notion of unfairness, I think, but nevertheless, it can seem unfair. On the other hand, it goes against the notion of generosity. So even the people who are doing three years, some of them might say, Well, I'm glad you only got two and a half years because doing three years is is bad. But what have we got here? Um, we in the Biden case, isn't that arguably selfish? The expectation others should suffer because you suffer. Biden's mercy is he lacked the power to do so when it was applicable to help those in the past. So I think that is exactly what I think. That um why should other people suffer just because you suffered? But there is this niggling little argument. It's unfair. It's unfair for there to be different punishments or different fee regimes. Um, on the other hand, you saw a life's like that, life's full of unfairness, we can't make uh everything fair. Well, I'm a political philosopher, my job is to try and make everything fair if I can, or at least to my push this slightly more as well. Is that Graham? Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:10

Yes, sorry, I just want to because um one of the things that that people see of it, it's not just I suffered, other people should suffer, but they might again with this kind of communicative, it's not just communicative punishment, but kind of communicative generosity. I worked really hard and did all the things that were told me, and the thing the people who were irresponsible are now being rewarded in the end, that I am being taken for a mug. Like that's that's where a lot of it comes from. It's not just that I suffered and therefore other people suffered, but we are symbolically being told that behaving as I did, which was painful but virtuous, actually was a mistake, and people are very upset by that.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:54

So that is an argument you certainly see. I'm not sure that is the Biden argument here, in that it was um people maybe from a different generation rather than the current generation, but there but there's definitely that argument too. I've I've certainly seen it, and you often get that um uh you know, when people save to buy something and then it's given free to everyone and say, Well, I did, you know, I was paying the payments and so on. So you you that idea, but people absolutely hate this idea that they've been made a sucker of some sort. Um you know, I've been taken advantage of, particularly when you did the things that were told you were told were the good things. And this is one of the reasons why so many of these financial scandals are so devastating for people that they were told, you know, the government told me to put my money into the savings scheme and it collapsed. Um but I was doing what I was told was a prudent thing. Now, Henrietta has put in an argument here. I'm not ready to make this argument convincingly myself. Okay, I always like the disclaimer beforehand, but the generous decision, when it's not completely unadjusted to the circumstances, is more beneficial for society in the wider perspective in the longer run. So the idea is to make it um to send a message that we are a society that is forgiving, maybe uh a society that is is more generous and that will be better in the long run. So that is what I hope is true. Sometimes I worry about this, even though that is absolutely my view, and that um but punishment itself is a very interesting phenomenon. I don't know if any of you have read Foucault on discipline and punishment. I I don't recommend spending a lot of time on it. But um when I read the first few pages of it, um what what it brought out to me is that the types of punishment we have. Have now putting people in prison are incredibly expensive, and that only relatively developed countries can afford to have prisons with prison staff where you put people away for criminal offences. So before that, people were um transported to other countries, Australia, the Americas, they were branded. He says, and branding is an amazingly good system in a way, if you don't think about what it involves, because first of all, it's a punishment, but also it's a form of public record keeping at a time when you don't have public records. So you brand the criminal as someone who is a criminal, um, with you know, with the Hawaii and so on. So we have these very barbaric forms of punishment, and the prisons, at least for ordinary offences, are a type of late luxury and are unbelievably expensive. So if you think about, particularly in the United States, how much money public money is spent on prisons. So prisons are incredibly economically inefficient. So you might say, well, why not abolish just abolish them? You know, why send anyone to prison if it's so expensive? And you know, the deterrence argument sort of comes back in here that we need to have quite a tight social contract, and this is the cost we have to pay for the social contract. So this idea of making things fair but also hard may be what we need, at least in some social circumstances, to keep society going. So I think we've got this very interesting balance between how generous can we be, how rigorous do we have to be, and different societies have come to different equilibria there. So the Scandinavian societies have tended to be more generous, the Anglo-Saxon societies have tended to be much more punitive in order to try to get that right. And so I've yeah, um Finola has pointed out that Foucault's bigger argument wasn't so much about the cost of punishment, but um change from being into targeted from the body to the soul. Um, so I didn't read that far on into Foucault to say whether you're right or wrong about that, but I was very impressed with the beginning about how corporal punishment was, how much punishment was of the bulk of the body. I mean, you might still say it is of the body, um, sending people to prison, but we don't have the hard labor and the floggings that was there before. So, anyway, the argument about mercy is I think a very interesting dilemma about strict fairness versus type of generosity that we can see in other areas as well. So the student grants is one, um, aspects of how intrusive the welfare state is, you know, what if you're applying for unemployment benefit, what do you have to prove? How much do you have to prove? And that we, if we make it very strict, then people resent everything. Um, but if we make it lax, then maybe there'll be some cheating or a lot of cheating, and then things will be even worse. So we've always got that dilemma about how harsh the rules should be and how generous they should be. So let me move to the last paper now, which is by Joanna North. And um, Joanna North is someone I had again I had to track down, um, because I could not find any um reference to her at all as a philosopher. She wrote this paper, which is one of the very most um cited in the history of the journal. I think it was number seven in the all-time list of cited papers. So really very impressive. Um but I didn't know who she was. But I saw that her affiliation at the time was Birkbeck College, and so I wrote to Dorothy Edgington, who was a so I was it used to teach at UCL, Dorothy used to teach at Birkbeck, and she was there a bit before me. And I said, Have you ever heard of this person, Joanna North? And he said, Oh yes, um, Jo North. Uh, I know her and her ex-husband, and um she left philosophy and she went into writing children's books, I think, and consultancy. So I don't think she even finished her PhD, and she had no idea that this paper that she'd written had been so influential. So she wrote a paper when she was a PhD student, published it in our journal, for whatever reason, didn't complete her PhD, went off into another life, and this paper has just taken off this life of its own. So I think this is a very encouraging story, but at the same time, um, it's discouraging that women writing in the 80s didn't continue in philosophy but felt they had to go off and do something else. And I I think the level of sexism and philosophy in the 80s, yeah, when I was a student, probably explains um a lot of flight from academic career at that point. I'm hoping we're doing better now, though uh we'll have to see the evidence when when we have enough of it. So she's interested in these questions about wrongdoing and forgiveness, and she's not now talking about judicial decisions. So we've we've moved out of the courts into ordinary life now. And it's very, very much connected with the discussion of um restorative justice that we saw before. Because she asks no, what do we mean when we forgive someone? So if we say we're forgiving you for what you've done, are we saying we're treating it as if it never happened? So you you've done something bad to me, I say I forgive you. Does it mean that we sort of wipe the slate clean? It's as if we you know that thing, that bad thing that never happened. Well, her view is that that is not forgiveness. That is not how uh forgiveness works. Um forgiveness recognises that a bad thing was done. And both parties should recognize, continue to recognize that a bad thing was done. But forgiveness is to say, I know you've done that, but I'm not going to let it permanently disrupt our relationship. So for her, forgiveness is about the restoration of a relationship rather than ignoring or forgetting that something happened, and that for her view, you have to actually acknowledge that the bad thing happened in order for forgiveness to take place. So I think this is a very interesting perspective. And when I read it, the paper is so beautifully written, I was completely convinced by her. Um now I am stating the view. I don't know whether I believe it or not. I don't know what your reactions are. So it is so we we talk, we have this expression forget and forgive. And so on her analysis, those would be two completely different things. Forgetting it happened is one thing, forgiving someone for it is another. Um just off the top of your head, and I won't hold anyone to this in the long term, but does anyone have any reaction to what I have said? Are you with Joanna North or against her on this? The Australian Labour Party of the 80s people would forgive but never forget. Okay, so that is what the paradigm of forgiveness is for Joanna North. You forgive but never forget, because forgiving presupposes remembering, on her view, as I understand it. I may not I've got all the subtlety.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:58

Certainly, if there's forgetting to happen on her view, it has to happen afterwards, right? Like maybe you forgive and then forget later. Yeah, yeah, but it just ceases to be salient. Okay. But you can't do forgetting and then forgiving.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:11

Well, that is true. That is that is um that must be or it's literally true. Julia, you were looking very thoughtful as I was talking. I don't know whether it was prompting any ideas.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:24

No, I'm not trying to put you under any pressure, but if you feel the need, if you feel the Yeah, I was just thinking, because I feel like she misses the whole point of if the relationship continues the same way or just continues, period. And I feel like there are many cases of people who will have I'm thinking of just like riffs between friends and just things you hear of where person A doesn't wrong to person B, and they can remain each other, even like familial riffs where there's this kind of forgiveness, but it's kind of there's still resentment, or it could be a kind of convenience forgiveness. And so I guess would she say that's not true forgiveness, or is that just kind of a middle ground that she's not addressing?

SPEAKER_05 1:15:16

Okay, so so that's very interesting. So if a bad thing happens, someone says they forgive, but the bad thing is still lurking and is still creating resentment or has changed the nature of the relationship. Well, that certainly happens, and and you use that expression convenience forgiveness. Is is that something you made up, or is that is that well known in the literature?

SPEAKER_00 1:15:43

I totally just made that up. I'm just thinking of if someone's close to you and you don't want to cause a rift or completely cut them off, you kind of forgive them because it's more convenient for you emotionally to forgive than to hold that grudge react on that grudge.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:02

Okay, but that was not true forgiveness in your view. I mean, it's so it make then then it makes me wonder if there is ever such a thing as a true as true forgiveness, if um the bad thing is still remembered. Uh so Graham says, I think forgiveness means no longer resenting, but I'm not sure that you can always get things as they were before, right? I think that is really your point, Julia, isn't it? That that very often who says you can never do it, but very often you're not going to. Um so Henrietta, this is a standard educational mechanism, mum-like, what is forgiveness kept on for further educational illustrations for future reference. Very good. So it's on the ledger still, um, but we don't let it ruin anything. Wayne, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:47

Um, so we're talking about forgiveness, but in a sense, this whole discussion since Julia's uh comment makes me think we need to talk about what is forgetting. Um, because you know, history can't be rewritten, um, and what has happened is always there. Unless you have brain surgery, it can't be removed from the past. So it implies that in the expression forgive and forget, um that there's something about the forgetting aspect of that, which is not really what forgetting is. Um, and so these two alternatives are about okay, so the relationship obviously will never be exactly the same because there's still that thing that happened in the past. And even if you completely forgive and there's no follow-on consequences, nonetheless, it's still it is still there in the past, and it's still defining of the past of that relationship. So, I mean, I don't think you can ever, and unless you have literally got amnesia, you cannot properly forget, but you can have different grades of forgiveness. There's the conditional forgiveness, don't do it again. There's the complete absolution and forgiveness, you know, the slate is wiped clean. Um, but you still can't get rid of the fact of the past. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:18:15

Very interesting. So murky, murky areas here getting into. Yeah. Very good. Um, history is frequently rewritten. This is a major occupation of historians. True, but I'm not sure that is exactly what Wayne was was uh the history of, but I suppose the history of a relationship is can is continually renegotiated in various ways. Okay, so um we're we're getting closer towards the end of the allotted time here. Um I I pretty much covered the things I wanted to cover, but I just think in the last few minutes, is there a comment anyone has that they'd like to make about um either the papers or discussions or anything adjacent to the things that we've looked at? Any burning thoughts you don't want to go away unspoken or un unwritten down?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:10

I mean, I've got one I think about kind of shame and guilt. I guess I've I've heard lots of discussions sort of in in conversations that circle around these topics about kind of shame cultures and guilt cultures, and insofar as I remember what the distinction is supposed to be, um sort of shame is it shame's like directed towards yourself and guilt is is that you produce and shame is imposed on you socially. Is it something like that?

SPEAKER_05 1:19:48

Well, so so let me explain how I understand it.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:51

Um I defer to your expertise.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:53

Yeah, um so if um so the claim is, and I'm not endorsing this, but the claim is there are certain cultures where shame is important, so it's very important to keep face. Um it's very important not to be caught out, and so if you are um on the verge of being found out, do something you dissemble and you tell lies and do everything you can to keep it's because it's all about public display. Um, guilt cultures, so I was told, are much more inward focused. So um if you feel guilty about something, you might want to tell other people you you feel guilty because it's not about whether you're shamed in front of other people, it's whether you it's almost more like a religious notion that you confess. You confess, you confess to this thing, you you seek absolution for the guilty thing, or you get other people to share in your guilt. So, you know, so it makes sense on this view for someone to say, I'm so you know, to come up to you and say, I'm feel so guilty, I did blah blah blah blah blah. Um, more difficult for someone to say I'm so ashamed, um, because that would then compound the shame by spreading it. Now, I'm not completely convinced by that because people do say I'm ashamed. Um, and maybe in ordinary life we don't use shame and guilt as different that much different concepts. But uh where was this going, Graham?

SPEAKER_02 1:21:24

I mean, who knows? But um, I mean, roughly the thought was that the things we discussed, so sort of punishment and mercy, um, like whether we're thinking, you know, we've talked about like what we communicate when we do that in the different ways, what we communicate through mercy, what we communicate through um punishment, and whether we're thinking of this as people maintaining face, you know, whether we're thinking of deterrence as to do with potentially you will lose face, or whether you will actually feel bad. That's kind of that that this distinction of like is it to do with face or is it to do with this kind of internal feeling might really affect how all of these different notions we've discussed play out was the thought.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:09

Okay. Interesting. So if you think about um putting someone in the stocks as a form of expressive punishment, that is about shaming them. Um, whereas some of the things we were talking about, maybe restorative justice is not about shaming people, but making them feel guilty for what they have done. So making it much more internal. So guilt feels like a deeper emotion than shame in that respect, in that it's inward turning. Okay, so um connecting this whole topic with guilt and shame, I think, is a very fruitful step. Excellent. Uh, Sophia, you've come on camera. Were you did you want to make a contribution?

SPEAKER_04 1:22:48

No, sorry, I just uh had to turn off the camera because of my dog. He just went crazy. Sorry.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:54

Okay, fine. Um, very good.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:59

Be merciful towards them.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:01

Be merciful, don't yeah. Um dogs now. Dogs, can they suffer shame? Can they suffer guilt? Um, dogs can be ashamed. Can they be guilty? I don't know. I don't know if dogs can be guilty. I don't have a dog, so I can't um investigate.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:16

We we had a dog once who ate our dinner, and I think he was both ashamed and guilty.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:23

Okay, he knew he'd done wrong, certainly. Yeah, very good. Okay, well, look, on that note, um I just want to say how pleased I am with how this session has gone. Um, I I didn't know how keen you would be to join in the discussion. I think if you can't get a discussion going on these topics, what can you get a discussion going on, really? Because I think they're such interesting topics, and um, it's a great testament to the journal that we published these papers, and even a paper from a hundred years ago, the W. D. Ross, is still being discussed, and you know, all of all of these papers are still lively and taken up in the literature. So it looks like we've been doing something right over the last hundred years, and I think this has been a great discussion today. So, thank you so much for being cooperative and uh raising some points I hadn't thought of as well. So uh I'll just on that note say goodbye from me. But Julia, is there something you want to add at the end?

SPEAKER_00 1:24:20

So thank you so much, everyone, for joining us. We'd like to invite you to continue the conversation on our Discord channel if you have any lingering thoughts. But other than that, thank you, Joe, so much. This was so interesting.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:34

Okay, thank you. So I will leave on that note. Thank you. Bye.