Crime, Law, & Punishment | Philosophy Tube

39 thoughts on “Crime, Law, & Punishment | Philosophy Tube”

1. So cute in this video. I hope that doesn’t come off creepy since this person no longer exists. You made a very attractive gentleman. I wonder if you were attracted and dated girls or where in the closet for most of your life. I’d love to know…

2. The hamirabi way of punishing tax evasion is either the repayment of those taxes or a tax increase for the duration of tide evaded.

3. TIL I’ve been arguing for Moral Desert Nihilism for years

4. The TI(targeted individual) program is the worst punishment.. yet no TI know's what has warranted it yet lol. It not only destroys the body and mind.. but the soul itself

5. good effort olly lad

6. If they get caught speeding they have to drive a certain speed for a certain time down a mildly rough track. They cant go home until their crime is paid for. It sounds fun until you start to spin from a wet patch on your third hour of going 155. Or make it the opposite. Make them drive a nascar car down a beautiful track freshly cleaned at 5mph for a couple days. If they are driving carelessly make it an obstacle course. If they drive drunk then make a drunk obstacle course where they are governed at 5mph. Showing someone why its a bad idea might help. Or maybe it would reinforce confidence, like a normal sobriety test.

7. Even if punishment deters crime, is that not the same as threatening people into compliance? If something like extortion could be described as threatening to hurt someone, in some way, to get them to do, or not do, some action, and or behave in a certain way, then is the idea of punishment deterring people from committing crimes not the same? This is because deterrence through punishment also is threatening to hurt someone(jail/prison) to get them to make, or not make certain actions, and or behave in a certain way. If extortion is wrong because it’s that, then punishing to deter crime should also be wrong.

8. Yes one kilogram of suffering please

9. I wonder to what extent does Public Shaming work?

10. The problem with the criminal justice system is that some people are too rich, white, and powerful enough that the law doesn't apply to them.

11. most people are really into retribution… like Ceasar's Legion.

12. Isn't it desert – the barren wilderness, not dessert – the after-dinner treat?

13. wow, what an indoctrinated scumbag. you just lost a sub Olly !

14. for what reason does Stalin deserve to suffer ?

15. Aside of what you said, An Eye For An Eye -> Equal Suffering has another problem: What if the victim suffers way more from losing that one eye than the person to be punished? Equal Suffering isn't just hard to measure, it also potentially changes what punishment people would get where Eye For Eye is actually really clear.
    Proportionality is a little better there, but really it's just the same thing dressed up in a little more nuance? I guess it would serve to refocus punishment to be more equal. The utility of the individual wouldn't go into it, right? Different people same crime? Proportionality, I'm pretty sure, would answer Same Punishment. And so would, in so far as it can be done, Eye For Eye. Equal Suffering necessarily wouldn't.

    I think Moral Desert Nihilism is actually right, or at least the most right of the options you gave on the retributivist side. But really, consequentialism is where it's at for me. The punishment itself should never be the goal. It should be a means to help a former criminal be a productive and "moral" member of society. (I'm vague with what I mean by "moral" here because I'm not quite sure I have a good answer, but I think it should be clear enough even with this vagueness. – Basically, they should no longer do crimes.)
    In short, Reform > Punish. Looking forward to hear more about Communicative Punishment though. To see whether that changes anything.

16. atavistic behavior is really all there is, the systems societies have shape that atavistic response but have no ultimate foundation and shift about because of social tensions in a civilization (domestication) of humans. law and ethics are determined often more by class and its branches ( sex, race etc) than by rationally or measure. systems of people embedded in maintaining law amd order have less interest in "justice" than what they actually do act as normalizers of their social seat. the crimes all people in a technological society commit daily against each other, "nature" and the potential future societies is enormous and monsterous, every bit of burnt coal or plastic used once is a total crime against life but we all atavistically continue to eat, drink, shelter, transport, etc in the most detrimental ways because it feels good to us, what ever is our punishment for these act? perhaps the unwillingness to be set free into the chaos, our lack of desire to be free sets us all to the capricious whims of ever shifting happenstance of law and obediance training.

17. Hey! Hands off Stalin!

18. ok but if stalin or hitler were on trial, killing them is not about them suffering, killing them is about eliminating a threat to public safety. I think personally that our justice system is bad because we bace it on either "they deserve to be punished" or on "its a deturrant" when we really should be worried about "is this person a threat to themselves and others." We should make prisons much nicer to live in and stop storing petty theives in there but instead put abusers, rapists, murderers, terrorists and buisness execs who exploit their workers there, not because they deserve it or because it will stop others but because they need to be kept away from the public until we can be sure they've reformed and can interact safely with those around them again

19. There is also if internal punishment, if someone was suddenly tried for a behaviour they themselves out an end to, and did their best to rectify due to their own guilt then I don't believe they deserve any additional punishment.

    Punishment, or, forced guilting serves no extra purpose and can also be immoral in it's self.

    I think the major flaws to these philosophies is assuming all crimes go punished, where in reality the overwhelming majority of crimes are fixed without the need of a court's intervention.

20. This is an older video, but an episode (or series) on Foucault would be awesome.

21. This the first time ever wanted to donate to someone on YouTube, too bad I have no money.

22. IMO punishment has nothing to do with suffering but everything to do with removing the capacity of or precluding the possibility of a similar event occuring in the future. Whether it's imprisonment, reform & rehabilitation etc. the end goal is to minimize the probability of it reoccurring, either by the criminal themselves or by other potential criminals.

23. I believe in crime prevention over punishment. I think prison should focus on rehabilitation, criminal behaviour analysis and preparation to succeed outside of criminality. If it's vengeance you want then perhaps there should be a separate body for that. Obviously some criminals don't reform so i don't think it's a punishment to keep society safe from them. But at that point should that criminal not be considered to be severely mentally ill?

24. So, if I pirate music, government should forcebly pay for my musical education, buy me a studio, give me a grant to develop and promote my music label, and then let people pirate my music. That would be fair, no?

25. Quick comment: lex talionis = talion's law

26. Once you feel like you have suffered enough, you have the luxury of feeling absolved of the crime. But how do you tell that to somebody who has to live with the knowledge that their perpetrator has escaped without having to undergo traditional punishments? But, since, imho, no real value ascribed to suffering telling somebody they've suffered enough doesn't undo their crime but merely pacifies the mob within us.

27. I wonder if a retributivist argument might work better with a theory of ethics that focuses more on autonomy. If person (or people) A takes away person (or people) B's autonomy in some way, then B should benefit in as equal as possible an amount from a loss of A's autonomy. On a small scale it seems like it would work towards filling in the gaps that Lex Talionis leaves. A reckless driver could perform community service for groups that support the victims of car accidents for example. Some work would have to be done to figure out how much a person's reckless driving put others' autonomy at risk, but at least in this case the a lot of the heavy lifting could be done by statistics.

    The main problem with this theory that I can see at first glance would be that on larger scales (in both severity and number of people affected) it seems like it would inevitably lead to legalized indentured servitude. But I guess in a lot of prisons indentured servitude is already a reality, and at least with this system the essentially free labour would go towards helping those who are considered to have been wronged, so I guess an argument could be made that that might make this morally better than at least some consequentialist models..

28. No one deserves anything. Desert is an inherently irrational idea.

29. Irrelevant but, How do you kill an immortal? (Maybe for another video.)

30. A small correction: when the Quran mentions the "eye for an eye" principle it is talking about how it was ordered upon the children of Israel in the Torah. But this command is not part of Quranic law. It has been abrogated so to speak.

31. I think neither consequentialism nor retributivism have it right. I think we, who do not commit any crime are just morally lucky.

    If any of us were born in the criminal's place, lived their life, shared their memories, I wonder If we would not commit that crimes too. Usually, people who commit crimes had a rough start, they suffered and are frustrated. Something might have gotten wrong in their past, even childhood, others were raised by their parents to steal. How can we blame them? Did we ever put ourselves in their shoes? No, we were raised in good families, values were inspired on us by our parents and had no abusive parents/ adults in our lives while growing up. Those people have their reason for their disfunctional moral compass.

    They should be seen not as criminals, but as sick people, because they are mentally sick to behave in that way. If a criminal kills a person, how is that criminal being in jail ever make the victim's family feel good about their loss? What matters is that that criminal never kills again, right? but we all know people who go to jail come back worse and continue doing crimes after. Punishing does not work and will never work because you don't punish sick people, sick people go to the doctor.
    Dostoevsky talks a lot about this dilemma in his books. His views are a bit too religious but the main point is that criminals are sick and society should try all it's best to make those people mentally healthy again.

32. Since we're talking about crime and punishment, I'd like to ask for your personal opinion on Lavinia Woodward, the student who stabbed her boyfriend with a bread knife and was told that she would not receive a custodial sentence because of ''her talent'' and that it would ruin her future career. I'll leave the article at the end but my personal opinion is that, yeah, it would ruin her future career but perhaps she should have thought of that before she stabbed her ex with a bread knife. Does this mean that if I was studying in a top uni, at the top of my class that I could get away with such a crime? What if I studied at a mediocre uni and committed the same crime? For my opinion, I may be wrong but I feel – sometimes, you just have to accept the consequences for your actions.

    Article: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/may/16/oxford-university-lavinia-woodward-stabbed-boyfriend-may-avoid-jail

33. Hey Olly! Unrelated to the video, but could you recommend additional philosophy-centric YouTubers or podcasts that you find enjoyable or illuminating? I'm a huge fan of your videos, but also a man of large intellectual appetites seeking a buffet

34. Is consequentialism the same as/a form of utilitarianism, as applied to crime and punishment?

35. If all we do and decide is just a consequence of chemical and electrical reactions in our brain how can we be accountable for any of the crimes we do? Punishing someone would be like putting the sun in prison because it's shining.

36. Why did you say inches?

37. I hope you continue this topic of crime and punishment. It is very interesting and can be approached from basically every academic discipline 🙂 Thx for video

38. "Skyscraper. I love you. Dib-de-do-do. Dib-de-do-do. Dib-de-do-do. Dib-de-do-do. Dib-de-do-do. Dib-de-do-do. Dib-de-do-do. Dib-de-do-do. Dom do do. Dom do do. Dom do do. Dom do do. Dom do do. Dom do do. Dom do do. Dom do do. Dib-de-do-do…" – Underworld.

39. Have you been hanging out with any mad arabs lately? Because I see your Necronomicon there!

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