Are those who can do as they wish powerful? For Socrates, acting on your own whim, killing whomever you please or obtaining great wealth does not make you powerful, if you act unjustly you are acting against your own good. It does not matter how extreme or sophisticated your ability to be unjust if this is all you can accomplish. Callicles offered Socrates a different view, Continue Reading …
Jeffrie G. Murphy (Cruel & Unusual Podcast) on Rationales for Punishment
Our Gorgias episode, included Plato's claim that the purpose of punishment is reformative, i.e. to build character, either in the punished (reformation) or in observers (deterrence). That someone who does injustice should not then be rewarded for it is on Plato's account the natural order of things, true by definition, as it were, and is in itself a reason (much like Kant's Continue Reading …
Neurobiology and Criminal Justice
At about 30 minutes into the most recent episode with Pat Churchland, the discussion touched on how the neurochemistry of people who are well socialized differs from those who aren't. More specifically, there was a point made about how people who are well socialized and have the Humean (as we will soon discover, actually Smithian) moral sentiment have different brains than Continue Reading …