Does anyone deserve to suffer?

[Hype]

LJF, by your reasoning, you suffer by being in a society in the first place.

Why, help me understand how I've said that. I don't think that at all.

It'll depend on what is meant by 'rights', but you've claimed that losing a right = suffering, and I'm going to claim that what you think "rights" are is based in the standard story that created the United States. The social contract tradition (beginning with Hobbes, up through Thomas Paine and the framers of the US constitution) is based on the idea that each individual has what we could call "natural right(s)", which amount to something like the right to use whatever means one can to get whatever one wants. The problem is that this on its own would result in pure anarchy, in which the most powerful individuals would take whatever they want from others by force. But Hobbes was the first to notice that this seems to lend itself, by reason, to the "prisoner's dilemma" (a standard game-theory metaphor). Since we have the ability to plan ahead for the future, it turns out that natural right ends up tempering itself with cooperation fairly quickly. But *mere* cooperation is a problem, since without some means to make sure that all parties really do cooperate, it will always be more rational for one party to promise to cooperate, get what they want from the other, and then "defect" (i.e., renege on the promise). That is why we have legal contracts which require third-party enforcement by a party that is more powerful than either of the two members. But this is CLEARLY a giving up of one's right (to use one's own individual power to get what one wants). So it follows that existing in a society at all involves giving up one's natural right (i.e. "power") to the sovereign (i.e., the state) so that things are more stable. For Liberals who came along after Hobbes, like Locke and Mill and Rousseau, the question was always: how much of that natural right/liberty do we need to give up to ensure the optimal level of stability and beneficence in a society? (For Locke and Mill it was generally: as little as possible.)

The problem is that you've construed giving up rights itself as suffering, and so no matter what society you are in, you will be suffering to some degree. But this can't be right, because in fact, without society, you would be suffering far more (unless by luck you happened to be the most powerful single individual person, and were also able to stave off the collective forces of every other individual together, but this is probably impossible.)

So it simply isn't true that losing a right = suffering.

[LJF]

I guess we all do suffer some. To be part of society you must obey laws and not always do as you please, so I guess you are right we all suffer. Those that don't obey the laws and get caught suffer more.

But the suffering I do seems to work for me.

[Hype]

I guess we all do suffer some. To be part of society you must obey laws and not always do as you please, so I guess you are right we all suffer. Those that don't obey the laws and get caught suffer more.

But the suffering I do seems to work for me.

It may be true that we all suffer, but I was actually trying to show why it doesn't make sense to equate 'losing a right' with suffering. They aren't the same.

Children with cancer suffer, but they haven't lost any rights.

In Canada you can't smoke indoors in public places. But I don't think that means smokers suffer.

[LJF]

I guess we all do suffer some. To be part of society you must obey laws and not always do as you please, so I guess you are right we all suffer. Those that don't obey the laws and get caught suffer more.

But the suffering I do seems to work for me.

It may be true that we all suffer, but I was actually trying to show why it doesn't make sense to equate 'losing a right' with suffering. They aren't the same.

Children with cancer suffer, but they haven't lost any rights.

In Canada you can't smoke indoors in public places. But I don't think that means smokers suffer.

There are different ways to suffer. The person with cancer might be suffering but it would be more physical. If it is cold outside and they went out to smoke they might suffer from the cold if they aren't wearing enough.

Also if a smoker is at a bar and talking with someone they have interest in, then they decide to go out for a smoke. Now the person that th smoker was talking with stays inside and when the smoker comes back someone else is now with their interest. The smoker loses said interested person, then they did suffer from the law. The man is always trying to keep us down.

[Hype]

That isn't suffering. This view that any kind of lack of getting what one wants is equivalent to suffering seems insane to me. It sounds like a child throwing a tantrum.

[LJF]

That isn't suffering. This view that any kind of lack of getting what one wants is equivalent to suffering seems insane to me. It sounds like a child throwing a tantrum.

The smoker not getting their rocks off was more of a joke.

When a child throws a tantrum, the parents suffer and anyone near them might suffer. Ears hurting from the noise, maybe even back if you tryto pick up the child and they pull your back out.

Now I'm just being an ass.

[Hype]

That isn't suffering. This view that any kind of lack of getting what one wants is equivalent to suffering seems insane to me. It sounds like a child throwing a tantrum.

The smoker not getting their rocks off was more of a joke.

When a child throws a tantrum, the parents suffer and anyone near them might suffer. Ears hurting from the noise, maybe even back if you tryto pick up the child and they pull your back out.

I think you may be missing my point a bit, but I'm not sure how you did. All I showed (and I do think I successfully showed) was that suffering and loss of rights are not inextricable -- you can lose rights without suffering, and you can suffer without losing rights. That's all I wanted to show, and I think I did. If you accept that, then your original claim is false.

[LJF]

That isn't suffering. This view that any kind of lack of getting what one wants is equivalent to suffering seems insane to me. It sounds like a child throwing a tantrum.

The smoker not getting their rocks off was more of a joke.

When a child throws a tantrum, the parents suffer and anyone near them might suffer. Ears hurting from the noise, maybe even back if you tryto pick up the child and they pull your back out.

I think you may be missing my point a bit, but I'm not sure how you did. All I showed (and I do think I successfully showed) was that suffering and loss of rights are not inextricable -- you can lose rights without suffering, and you can suffer without losing rights. That's all I wanted to show, and I think I did. If you accept that, then your original claim is false.

I got what you were saying, but my point was you don' have to lose a right to suffer. Someone that has cancer can suffer from pain, they aren't losing a right but they are suffering.

[Hype]

That isn't suffering. This view that any kind of lack of getting what one wants is equivalent to suffering seems insane to me. It sounds like a child throwing a tantrum.

The smoker not getting their rocks off was more of a joke.

When a child throws a tantrum, the parents suffer and anyone near them might suffer. Ears hurting from the noise, maybe even back if you tryto pick up the child and they pull your back out.

I think you may be missing my point a bit, but I'm not sure how you did. All I showed (and I do think I successfully showed) was that suffering and loss of rights are not inextricable -- you can lose rights without suffering, and you can suffer without losing rights. That's all I wanted to show, and I think I did. If you accept that, then your original claim is false.

I got what you were saying, but my point was you don' have to lose a right to suffer. Someone that has cancer can suffer from pain, they aren't losing a right but they are suffering.

No, that was my point... I was responding to your claim that losing rights = suffering. I have shown that that isn't true.

[Hype]

LJF, by your reasoning, you suffer by being in a society in the first place.

Why, help me understand how I've said that. I don't think that at all.

It'll depend on what is meant by 'rights', but you've claimed that losing a right = suffering, and I'm going to claim that what you think "rights" are is based in the standard story that created the United States. The social contract tradition (beginning with Hobbes, up through Thomas Paine and the framers of the US constitution) is based on the idea that each individual has what we could call "natural right(s)", which amount to something like the right to use whatever means one can to get whatever one wants. The problem is that this on its own would result in pure anarchy, in which the most powerful individuals would take whatever they want from others by force. But Hobbes was the first to notice that this seems to lend itself, by reason, to the "prisoner's dilemma" (a standard game-theory metaphor). Since we have the ability to plan ahead for the future, it turns out that natural right ends up tempering itself with cooperation fairly quickly. But *mere* cooperation is a problem, since without some means to make sure that all parties really do cooperate, it will always be more rational for one party to promise to cooperate, get what they want from the other, and then "defect" (i.e., renege on the promise). That is why we have legal contracts which require third-party enforcement by a party that is more powerful than either of the two members. But this is CLEARLY a giving up of one's right (to use one's own individual power to get what one wants). So it follows that existing in a society at all involves giving up one's natural right (i.e. "power") to the sovereign (i.e., the state) so that things are more stable. For Liberals who came along after Hobbes, like Locke and Mill and Rousseau, the question was always: how much of that natural right/liberty do we need to give up to ensure the optimal level of stability and beneficence in a society? (For Locke and Mill it was generally: as little as possible.)

The problem is that you've construed giving up rights itself as suffering, and so no matter what society you are in, you will be suffering to some degree. But this can't be right, because in fact, without society, you would be suffering far more (unless by luck you happened to be the most powerful single individual person, and were also able to stave off the collective forces of every other individual together, but this is probably impossible.)

So it simply isn't true that losing a right = suffering.

I came across this this evening, and it reminded me of what I said above: (two select quotations follow)
http://www.memorablequotations.com/SquareDeal.htm

It is all-essential to the continuance of our healthy national life that we should recognize this community of interest among our people. The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us, and therefore in public life that man is the best representative of each of us who seeks to do good to each by doing good to all; in other words, whose endeavor it is not to represent any special class and promote merely that class's selfish interests, but to represent all true and honest men of all sections and all classes and to work for their interests by working for our common country.

Finally, we must keep ever in mind that a republic such as ours can exist only by virtue of the orderly liberty which comes through the equal domination of the law over all men alike, and through its administration in such resolute and fearless fashion as shall teach all that no man is above it and no man below it.

[LJF]

So you don't think Osama Bin Laden deserved to suffer and die?

[Hype]

So you don't think Osama Bin Laden deserved to suffer and die?

I think the world is better for him not being in it doing what he was doing, but I don't think that implies deserving to suffer. I also don't necessarily think death/dying is a kind of suffering.

[lollapaloser]

I think it really doesnt matter, people are gonna suffer anyways. Whether or not they deserve it is purely subjective.

[LJF]

So you don't think Osama Bin Laden deserved to suffer and die?

I think the world is better for him not being in it doing what he was doing, but I don't think that implies deserving to suffer. I also don't necessarily think death/dying is a kind of suffering.

Thank you for at least saying that. This is a personal issue for me.

[Hype]

I think it really doesnt matter, people are gonna suffer anyways. Whether or not they deserve it is purely subjective.

I don't think it means anything to say that whether or not someone deserves something is "subjective". There's a kind of uncritical relativism that this could mean... "There are no truths, so who cares... if some group thinks some other group should suffer, then they should. If not, then not. Sometimes we disagree, but there's no right answer."

IF you mean THAT, then I object that you're simply wrong. There is a right answer, and it DOES matter, because holding your view means innocent people will be treated worse than they could and should be.

[Hype]

So you don't think Osama Bin Laden deserved to suffer and die?

I think the world is better for him not being in it doing what he was doing, but I don't think that implies deserving to suffer. I also don't necessarily think death/dying is a kind of suffering.

Thank you for at least saying that. This is a personal issue for me.

You seemed, this whole time, to be equating what I was saying with not thinking that bad people (or rather, what we do regarding them) matter(s). Of course it matters, but it simply doesn't follow that they deserve to suffer. In order to justify that, you would have to tie the suffering to something else we think we should want. But this, I argue, can't be done.

[Hype]

Here's an example I just thought of. Take the example of an addict... could be tobacco, heroin, alcohol... whatever...

We KNOW addiction is a state of diminished responsibility. There is clear neurological evidence that addicts are incapable of "normal" decision-making and impulse control.

But now imagine that I'm your professor, and I come to class, stand at the front, open a bottle of wine, chug the whole thing, and then proceed to try and lecture. Most people, I think, would want to say that even if I were an addict, this is something I *shouldn't* have done, in some robust sense of *shouldn't*. In the most obvious sense: it was not an ideal situation for anyone involved with respect to what was actually understood to be the purpose of the event. So in spite of my alcoholism being the complete and utter cause of this behaviour, there are good reasons to want to try to control behaviours that detract from our purposes, and so we might say: we are justified in forcing you into rehab, or barring you from lecturing, until such time as you can prove that you are able to abstain from alcohol. And this might be what we have to do, even if I am incapable of responding to any of these reprimands in a responsible or successful manner. It's got nothing to do with punishing me, or making me suffer, and everything to do with trying to produce a state of affairs that best approximates what would ideally be the case.

Likewise, for any crime, it seems that we're trying to find ways to both prevent crimes from ever happening, and also prevent recidivism. But we are really bad at both of these, and so the criminal justice system has to sort of guess at what would best produce the future that is closest to what we were aiming at to begin with. Jailing murderers is, in most cases, the best we can do to approximate this... even if no one deserves to suffer (which, of course, I think they don't). So it's not that we put criminals in jail because THEY deserve it, necessarily, but more that society is aiming at the goal of preventing future badness, and this involves trying to control cases where past badness has occurred. The "suffering" of criminals seems superfluous to any of this. It is hard to see what exactly "deserving to suffer" would be for...

[Juana]

Hype are you drinking and teaching? I mean I know college aged people are annoying but still

[Hype]

Hype are you drinking and teaching? I mean I know college aged people are annoying but still

Christ no. I'd never do that, but then I am not at that stage of addiction.

[Juana]

Hype are you drinking and teaching? I mean I know college aged people are annoying but still

Christ no. I'd never do that, but then I am not at that stage of addiction.

Class would be a lot cooler if you did, I would attend lol

[Hype]

Hype are you drinking and teaching? I mean I know college aged people are annoying but still

Christ no. I'd never do that, but then I am not at that stage of addiction.

Class would be a lot cooler if you did, I would attend lol

My classes are pretty good even without the alcohol, imho. For one, I put up some photos of David Hume's grave on the projector, then said to the whole class: "Hey, uh... I'm nervous, so I feel like I'm going to vomit." So some goofball in the front row says: "Do it!" and I go: "Well, I might, but I'll aim for you." But seriously, I try to make this stuff worth listening to. Bad lecturing is the worst, and I refuse to do it.

Another related video: