Dawkins’ Fawlty Idea
John on January 5, 2006 at 12:08 pm
Richard Dawkins has an amusing take on things. He was recently asked to comment on his dangerous idea for a magazine called Edge. [HT: Telic Thoughts] His response is worth quoting:
Ask people why they support the death penalty or prolonged incarceration for serious crimes, and the reasons they give will usually involve retribution…An especially warped and disgusting application of the flawed concept of retribution is Christian crucifixion as “atonement’ for “sin’.
He’s already into the Christian bashing in the first paragraph, big surprise there. Let’s look at Dawkins’ saner, scientific diagnosis of the problem:
As scientists, we believe that human brains, though they may not work in the same way as man-made computers, are as surely governed by the laws of physics. When a computer malfunctions, we do not punish it.
Basil Fawlty, British television’s hotelier from hell created by the immortal John Cleese, was at the end of his tether when his car broke down and wouldn’t start. He gave it fair warning, counted to three, gave it one more chance, and then acted. “Right! I warned you. You’ve had this coming to you!” He got out of the car, seized a tree branch and set about thrashing the car within an inch of its life.
For those of you not familiar with Basil Fawlty, he was the lead character of Fawlty Towers, a short lived British show which is one of the funniest sitcoms ever produced (On this point at least Dawkins and I are in agreement). In one episode, which many fans consider the best in the series, Basil becomes enraged and beats his car with a tree branch, like so:
Dawkins then uncorks his dangerous idea:
Why don’t we laugh at a judge who punishes a criminal, just as heartily as we laugh at Basil Fawlty?…[D]oesn’t a truly scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous system make nonsense of the very idea of responsibility, whether diminished or not? Any crime, however heinous, is in principle to be blamed on antecedent conditions acting through the accused’s physiology, heredity and environment. Don’t judicial hearings to decide questions of blame or diminished responsibility make as little sense for a faulty man as for a Fawlty car?
Like most of Dawkins’ ideas, this one is not his and is not new. In fact, this particular idea was famously brought to public attention in the 1924 trial of Leopold and Loeb, a pair of intelligent teens (Leopold was said to be a genius with an IQ of 210) set out to commit the perfect crime. They killed a 14 year old named Bobby Franks by luring him into a car and hitting him repeatedly with a chisel. After he was dead, they poured hydrochloric acid on his face and genitals and dumped the body in a remote culvert. Eventually, their game was uncovered and they were put on trial for their lives.
Clarence Darrow, most famous for his role in the Scopes Trial a year later, was hired as the boy’s defense attorney. Darrow was an atheist and also a believer in the kind of determinsim being recycled by Dawkins. Darrow’s argument in the case was very similar to the one Dawkins proposes. If the boys were guilty it was there parents fault, or the fault of some prior condition. As Darrow put it in his famous closing:
[A]ll the testimony of the alienists [psychiatrists]….shows that this terrible act was the act of immature and diseased brains, the act of children.
And here is Dawkins’ comment from the article for comparison:
Why do we vent such visceral hatred on child murderers, or on thuggish vandals, when we should simply regard them as faulty units that need fixing or replacing?
Here I will simply say that if this is a purely mechanistic universe then Dawkins is quite right. Punishing the murderer of a child makes no more sense than beating a car. That’s if Dawkins’ is right. But he is not. A human being is not a mechanism as simple as a car engine. We do have freedom and choice. We are responsible for those choices. We are, in other words, real beings and not programmed automatons.
As for Dawkins, I think the best one can say about him is what the alienists said of Leopold when they examined him:
In such a philosophy, without any place for emotions and feelings, the intelligence reigns supreme.
If this were really all Dawkins’ is, we would have reason to pity his wife and family. But I have read elsewhere that, like most atheists, he is a much better man than his philosophy allows.
Update: In a related story, Michelle Malkin has a piece on a judge in Vermont who seems to have taken Darrow and Dawkins to heart. He gave a 60 day sentence to the convicted rapist of a child. If this is the sane world, I’ll pass.
Category: Atheism, Science & Tech |
By the way, Clarence Darrow’s success in using determinist arguments to convince the judge in the Leopold and Loeb trial of the century in 1924 to spare the thrill killers from the death penalty was the biggest reason for William Jennings Bryan to get involved in the “Scopes Monkey Trial” the next year in opposition to Darrow and H.L. Mencken. Bryan was less concerned about the spread of Darwinism than the spread of Nietzscheanism, of which Mencken was the leading spokesman in America.
For more on Leopold and Loeb, see my review of the Sandra Bullock movie that updated it : http://www.isteve.com/Film_Murder_by_Numbers.htm
For the relationship between Leopold and Loeb and the Scopes Monkey Trial, see:
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2005/08/real-story-of-scopes-monkey-trial.html
January 6, 2006 @ 7:09 pmWhat you guys are missing is that this is not about the idea of incarerating wrongdoers. It’s about PUNISHING them. I can understand your confusion.
You lock people up for 4 reasons:
1) To punish them. To provide retribution for wrongdoing.
2) To protect the public
3) To institutionalize them into a system that one hopes will reform them and help them not be criminals any more
4) As a deterent to prevent other people from comitting similar crimes.
Dawkins’ point is that you might as well not punish someone for being flawed, since they can’t help being flawed.
He’s right about this point. There really IS no reason to punish criminals. However the other 3 reasons are still in force and they still are all very good reasons to give people socially sanctioned consequences for their actions.
If your kid knocks over a glass of milk, do you punish them or do you make them clean it up?
Same idea – you give criminals consequences, but the philosophy behind the consequences is not retribution, it’s reform, deterence and self-preservation. This is why in liberal democracies (like ours) we have a judge decide the punishment, instead of the victim and their family – victims and families will punish. Judges will presumably mete out justice.
See the differenc?
October 13, 2008 @ 2:58 pmYes, I got his point when I wrote about it two years ago.
BTW, in our system, many states allow victims to speak at the sentencing. Judges mete out justice and punishment. That’s their job.
October 13, 2008 @ 3:30 pmWe’ve seen this before. Hapless victims of genes, chance, society, capitalism, bad toilet training. Take thy pick.
This is the Clarence Darrow theorem. All the bad guys, Darwin, Darrow, Dawkins. What’s up with this?
Anyhow, Darrow’s notion was that there is no criminal INTENT, per se, as there is no free will. No sooner do Darwinists deny that a materialist take on life necessitate the denial of free will (which is what the NON-punishment crusade must hold for individuals struggling with morals) than one of their chieftans makes the case in print yet again. And yet again. Daniel Dennett elsewhere chimes in to boldly proclaim that Darwinism is the Universal Acid that gets rid of religion and all other notions of nobility. Hurray! Some yell. Until they understand what he means by this is ALL notions. Not SOME. ALL.
The reasoning is quite simple. If all is some kind of Skinner Box of Action/Reaction, then morals in the first place have no more meaning than all non-material, ghostly notions that are actually survival mechanisms at most and outmoded ideas that no longer have applications, at worst. Thus for example taking this to outer space, Stephen Pinker says that modern humanity’s problems are not moral issues or lack or at all—but rather that we have too much. And need to slack off and relax about things like infanticide and other ditties that in yesteryear used to be considered criminal. Woe be unto him to find out that primitive cultures specialized in this also–and more. Including gruesome spectacles of cannibalism and ritual killings of the elderly. Wonder if that would go over well with the AARP? Hmmm.
In any case, the notion is far from new. It is merely, as Dinesh D’Souza today and GK Chesterton in the old days pointed out, the denial of all morals. If we are not to be held responsible for actions, and spilling milk due to clumsy arms is on par with genocide and brother Stalin just didn’t “understand” that his genes and not his politics of paranoia made him “do it”, then all other bets are off too. We are to demand nothing of anyone.
Of course we know better. I suspect that even the most benighted of killers and adulterers and tax cheats knows in the heart of hearts that what he or she is doing is not kosher.
But then that’s yet one more thing the Darwiniacs think is pure blarney–the human conscience.
October 13, 2008 @ 4:53 pmHaving said that, you do have to consider the sources.
Dawkins certainly finds moral issues of importance for NON-humans.
Will a violation of these dictates on our animal pals bring punishment? Or…mere incarceration?
As to the other: reform? Not sure about institutions that can do that consistently across the board. For some offenses, yes. Perhaps. But what about murder?
Now as far as the terminology–this is what can be called “distinction without a difference”
Incarceration IS a punishment to most people.
http://wakepedia.blogspot.com/2008/01/what-species-is-speciest.html
October 13, 2008 @ 5:05 pmSurely, the fact that society demands it is a reason, whether you consider it a good reason or no.
October 14, 2008 @ 6:28 amOh yeah–Dennett’s name also ends in a “D”.
(lol)
October 14, 2008 @ 6:42 amYou are missing the point. This is not about how you treat the criminal. It is about the motivation of the judge. If the judge’s motivation is to punish the criminal – that is make him suffer for the sake of making him suffer – then the judge is no more moral than the criminal. If the judge is motivated by the other three motives I posted above, then he is applying justice to the situation, not punishment.
I see that you don’t get the distinction, but I bet that Dawkins does. I am sure that most criminals don’t get the distinction either – In fact most of the criminals I have known (and I have known many) are too psychologicaly and emotionally immature to understand that they are not necessarily being punished by being incarcerated. But what they think doesn’t matter – the judge still has to do what the judge has to do.
What you are missing is that punishment and justice are not the same thing. they are OPPOSITE things. Let me give you an example:
Let’s say that you steal from me.
If I am going to punish you, then I am going to first get angry. Almost always this anger is about the fact that you have violated my authority, and I want to make you pay for doing this.
so what do I do? I have your legs broken mafia style – this is punishment.
On the other hand, I could call the cops, get my stuff back and have you arested, not to punish you, but to:
1) Give you some consequences for your actions.
2) keep you from steeling from others.
3) Deter you from steeling in the future.
This is justice.
I could sick the cops on you out of some sense of vengence and punishment as well, but by doing so, I am not changing the outcome for you, however I am disturbing my own peace of mind because I am filling my mind with anger and hatred, and acting out that anger and hatered.
See the difference?
October 14, 2008 @ 8:36 amNo–you’ve missed the point.
And this is what can be called in some contexts for people on the receiving end of this “justice”–a distinction without the difference.
If there is free will, there is culpability.
If there is moral culpability, punishment is appropriate, since you knew ahead of time that what you are doing is in the wrong. It is a deterrent and reminder to others.
As to the other, incarceration IS punishment. Perhaps in the mind’s eye of men like Dawkins. But certainly in the long separation from social interaction the criminal element receives. So the ultimate motivation to the person on the receiving end is often not all that important in the long run. Separation or punishement regardless–punishment it ends up being.
The very recognition of free will and being responsible for one’s own actions dictates that we treat the offender with the full knowledge that there are consequences to actions and that this can be expected and fully warranted.
You are chopping up a hair into segments, guessing that many of the criminal element would understand the issue, when in fact what they DO understand is that they are in the wrong, but perhaps don’t understand the full reasoning you and Dawkins would have.
Moreover, punishment need not always be accompanied by anger. So yes that’s why we have the courts and not personal vengeance.
October 14, 2008 @ 9:05 amMeant to say “perhaps NOT in the mind’s eye….”
October 14, 2008 @ 9:07 amOK. My bad. I see you DID address the issue of what “they” think.
But what they, the criminal element, think IS still relevent. At least to the point of understanding their actions as being opposed to society’s expectations regarding behavior. If they can’t be made to see such distinctions as you claim, then I still wonder about the issue of reformation of their minds.
The judge ultimately does what culture and society expect. And the nature of the crime and his personal insights do often weigh heavily on the matter of “incarceration” or punishment. That’s why we still have a death penalty. And as many high level court decisions have demonstrated, that can shift dramatically over time.
October 14, 2008 @ 9:22 amPaul,
Not sure if you realize it but #8 is a strawman argument.
First of all, what you’re describing is vigilantism. Second, I think most people, even in a fit of anger, would feel the punishment did not fit the crime. So this is a double straw man.
First of all, all you really did here was rename punishment and call it “consequences.” Being arrested and possibly jailed is certainly a consequence, but if you were on the receiving end, you’d no doubt see it as punishment as well. Punishment need not involve breaking bones.
Our system is designed to provide justice by making sure the state and the people always come between the accused and the victim. This way punishment is delivered appropriately and not through vigilantism. You’ve just clouded the issue with your example.
October 14, 2008 @ 9:23 amThe real flaw in Dawkins’ argument is that he’s claiming it’s illogical to punish a murderer given that he is just a faulty unit. Therefore, long incarceration or execution is not sensible.
In fact, he’s jumped the tracks and hasn’t even realized it. We may laugh at Basil Fawlty (I certainly do) when he whacks a car with a tree branch. However, if he calmly called a mechanic and had it towed to the junkyard to be sold as scrap, that would be perfectly reasonable. It’s Basil’s emotion that’s silly. Getting rid of the car is perfectly sane.
This is very much what is being done in Communist (atheist) China. China does a booming trade in human organs harvested from “bad units.” There is no irrational punishment going on. It’s all very logical. Why shouldn’t the world benefit from these spare parts? Why let them go to waste? I’m not sure what Dawkins would say to all this. These sorts of things never seem to even occur to him.
October 14, 2008 @ 9:37 amPaul
The consequence is the redressing of the balance, the evening up of the score, the equaliser, ensuring that crime doesn’t pay. Whatever you want to call it, I call it punishment. It is all of the above, which is why the punishment should be proportionate to the crime, unlike the leg breaking example you gave above.
October 14, 2008 @ 3:02 pm