Retributivism, Justification and Credence: The Epistemic Argument Revisited

Abstract

Harming other people is prima facie wrong. Unless we can be very certain that doing so is justified under the circumstances, we ought not to do it. In this paper, I argue that we ought to dismantle harsh retributivist criminal justice systems for this reason; we cannot be sufficiently certain that the harm is justified. Gregg Caruso, Ben Vilhauer and others have previously argued for the same conclusion; however, my own version sidesteps certain controversial premises of theirs. Harsh retributivist criminal justice can only be morally right if the following three propositions are true: Moral responsibility exists, retributivism is right, and we can find out how much punishment offenders deserve for their crimes. Suppose that we initially assign a high credence to each of the three propositions; I assume for the sake of argument that there are good arguments in support of each. Nevertheless, these arguments ultimately depend on intuitions. Since we have philosophical peers whose intuitions differ from ours, we ought to downgrade our credence in each. However, even slightly less credence in each proposition means far less credence in a conjunction of all three. Since the stakes are high and there are morally safer options for a criminal justice system, we ought to dismantle harsh retributivist ones.

A comparative review on neuroethical issues in neuroscientific and neuroethical journals

“…Relatedly, an NE article by Klaming and Haselager (2013) discusses questions about the ethical and legal responsibility of those with brain implants. In addition to these issues, some NE articles examine the ethical theory of retributivism, paying little attention to neuroscience-specific issues ( Caruso, 2020 ; Jeppsson, 2021 ), whereas others focus on the ethical treatment of psychopaths ( Morse, 2008 ; Gillett and Huang, 2013 ; Hübner and White, 2016 ). Finally, the moral justifiability of mandatory rehabilitation for criminals with neurotechnology—sometimes called “neurorehabilitation”—is assessed as a philosophical-ethical question ( Pereboom, 2020 ; Holmen, 2021 ).…”

Retributivism, Free Will, and the Public Health-Quarantine Model

“…This brings me to my second argument against retributivism, the so-called Epistemic Argument (Caruso 2020(Caruso , 2021a. Versions of this argument have been developed by Derk Pereboom (2001;Benjamin Vilhauer (2009a, 2015, Elizabeth Shaw (2014Shaw ( , 2021, Michael Corrado (2017), and Sofia Jeppsson (2020), but my version of the argument can be summarized as follows:…”

Agency and responsibility: The personal and the political

“…Epistemic arguments against having a harsh retributivist criminal justice system do not attempt to convince people that such a system is definitely wrong; instead, they focus on all the controversy and uncertainty surrounding every premise required to justify harsh retributivism (Vilhauer, 2009; 2013; Shaw, 2014; Caruso, 2020: Jeppsson, 2021). The details can be quite technical and therefore unlikely to appeal to others than philosophical specialists, but the gist of it is simple enough: we should not subject people to harsh punishments unless we can be quite certain that we are justified in doing so, but there is a lot of uncertainty and controversy in this area.…”

“…The problem with intuitions I have argued elsewhere that we should all be somewhat humble when it comes to the merits of intuition-based arguments, at least when the intuitions invoked vary greatly among philosophical peers (Jeppsson, 2021). Who is to say whose intuitions are more reliable?…”