Just or Merciful

[Moral Orel]

Again, I think it is altogether strange to claim that my question is unreasonable.

I never claimed that.

Moral Orel: That question is off-topic.

I never stated that either. I rolled my eyes at your "strawman" accusations because you're making things up that never happened and writing responses to your fantasies. I thought we could go a little longer than this with a perfectly relaxing conversation, but once again you've gotten all sensitive about a subject, so we can't just chill anymore.

But okay, whatever. I'll get started writing. I'm not trying to dodge anything. This isn't even a topic I haven't discussed on these forums before, so it isn't as if I haven't thought about it. Just understand that it was you who changed the tone when you read my further responses in this thread.

 

[Paulomycin]

One part I missed. . .

I'm open about being a subjectivist, so that sort of thing isn't really going to phase me.

If we take your word as an admitted subjectivist, then you admittedly have no objective arguments. You can't even pretend to make objective arguments that have any real effect on anyone else in their world; outside of your subjective world alone. You literally cannot share useful information.

Your confession of objective impotence means that even your "nuh-uhs" don't have any merit. Because you can't show your work. You're locked-into yourself alone. Your posts, fueled by pure subjectivism, will always fail to launch.

Why are you here again. . .??? <--Rhetorical question. You're a subjectivist, so don't even bother answering that.

 

[com7fy8]

Is it possible to go to court, have the judge fine you $100 and have someone pay that fine for you?

If you drove drunk, and the fine helps to motivate you not to drive drunk, there could be mercy in that; because you do not get harmed and others do not suffer because of you killing or crippling someone else.

Punishing one person can be mercy to others who will not keep being harmed by the punished person.

But you talk about how Jesus took our punishment, because of God's mercy. Well, along with receiving God's mercy, we need to trust Him for His correction > Hebrews 12:4-14 > so we get the rightful benefit of His mercy.

 

[zippy2006]

I never claimed that.

Okay, good.

Just understand that it was you who changed the tone when you read my further responses in this thread.

Nah. In #256 you "went meta" and started calling motives into question. That shift was your decision. Maybe I should have avoided the word "strawman," but that's essentially what I think is occurring.

I never stated that either.

"Impertinent" is the word you used, and it was accompanied by claims in effect saying that my question to you lacked intelligibility and relevance given your "subjectivism." I maintain that the question I asked is perfectly obvious and pertinent.

But okay, whatever. I'll get started writing. I'm not trying to dodge anything.

Okay. Feel free to take your time. I will be out until at least Easter Sunday.

...are you sure you want to ask me how I feel folks ought to act and how we ought to get them to act that way?

...to be clear, I asked what rational basis you have for civil law prohibiting theft but not gift-giving. If the civil law reads, "Theft is penalized; Gift-giving is not," how would you rationally justify that law?

 

[Moral Orel]

"Impertinent" is the word you used

That's not even true. And if you're going to use "" you should be more careful. I asked if you were sure it was "pertinent".

and it was accompanied by claims in effect saying that my question to you lacked intelligibility and relevance given your "subjectivism."

Also not true. The only claim I made was that our posts would double in length. I speculated (maybe this maybe that) and even that speculation didn't imply that your question lacked intelligibility. I'm still pretty sure it's a red herring, but whatever.

The worst part of it is, I don't regret telling you that you're better at accurately portraying other people's positions than most. Even including all these fantasies of yours, you're still better because you get it right sometimes. That's the sad state of these boards.

All you had to say was "Yes, I think it is and if our posts get really long, I'm fine with that." But instead, we're arguing about things you imagined I said and you tripling down that I actually said them. With how much you complain about having to write such lengthy responses, I didn't want to just jump right in.

...to be clear, I asked what rational basis you have for civil law prohibiting theft but not gift-giving. If the civil law reads, "Theft is penalized; Gift-giving is not," how would you rationally justify that law?

And "What should [civil law] be driven by?"

And for the record, these mini responses aren't me stalling. They're me procrastinating. I just bought a way too expensive TV for myself to play video games on, and with a vacation day from work, and the house to ourselves (no kid) this thread has suddenly taken a swan dive in importance for the time being.

 

[zippy2006]

That's not even true. And if you're going to use "" you should be more careful. I asked if you were sure it was "pertinent".

Okay, sure. You questioned its pertinence, but did not explicitly call it impertinent. And since you're quibbling, you did not ask me if I was sure/certain that it was pertinent, you said, "...but is that really pertinent?"

Y'know, I feel like I've been buried in a great deal of nit-picking for the last few posts, but this one tops them all.

I'm still pretty sure it's a red herring, but whatever.

Lol, you've just validated everything I said. Red herrings are unreasonable, off-topic, and impertinent, among other things. Or did I manage to introduce a super reasonable, on-topic, and pertinent red herring? Clearly my reading of #256 was accurate.

And for the record, these mini responses aren't me stalling. They're me procrastinating. I just bought a way too expensive TV for myself to play video games on, and with a vacation day from work, and the house to ourselves (no kid) this thread has suddenly taken a swan dive in importance for the time being.

Haha, well enjoy the TV. You have plenty of time.

 

[Paulomycin]

That's not even true.

. . .

Also not true.

Careful. You're an admitted subjectivist. As such, you have no objective truth to appeal to. You're also an atheist. You have no objective evidence of any abstract truth to speak of.

 

[Moral Orel]

Okay, sure. You questioned its pertinence, but did not explicitly call it impertinent. And since you're quibbling, you did not ask me if I was sure/certain that it was pertinent, you said, "...but is that really pertinent?"

Y'know, I feel like I've been buried in a great deal of nit-picking for the last few posts, but this one tops them all.

That's a pretty low thresh hold for what you call "nit picking" to complain about me pointing out that a question isn't a claim. That's pretty of important. You kind of need to know the difference between '.' and '?'.

Lol, you've just validated everything I said. Red herrings are unreasonable, off-topic, and impertinent, among other things. Or did I manage to introduce a super reasonable, on-topic, and pertinent red herring? Clearly my reading of #256 was accurate.

No, not everything. Red herrings can be intelligible and reasonable. Just because it doesn't affect the topic doesn't mean it ain't a good question. If I fail to produce something better (I won't, but even if I did) that doesn't mean that justice doesn't have problems. Of course, you've removed any mention of people deserving stuff from your definition of justice, so I guess I kind of already won.

Your reading was inaccurate because I never implied that I wouldn't indulge your red herring. I was building to that eventually. I needed you to acknowledge the problems with seeking balance for balance's sake first. I guess you've done that enough. I mean, "What people deserve" isn't even in your definition of justice at all anymore.

Haha, well enjoy the TV. You have plenty of time.

Oh I will! It's beautiful!

 

[zippy2006]

I was building to that eventually.

Hah

I mean, "What people deserve" isn't even in your definition of justice at all anymore.

It's a long post. Read it carefully.

Oh I will! It's beautiful!

When I first skimmed this:

I just bought a way too expensive TV for myself to play video games on...

...I was like, "Well I suppose that's one way to kick a video game habit: buy a TV that is too expensive for video games."

 

[Moral Orel]

...I was like, "Well I suppose that's one way to kick a video game habit: buy a TV that is too expensive for video games."

I'm not trying to kick it, I'm embracing it. Why would I try to kick it?

 

[zippy2006]

I'm not trying to kick it, I'm embracing it. Why would I try to kick it?

To avoid the inevitable fate of becoming a homicidal maniac after playing violent video games. Have you learned nothing from our discussions?

 

[Moral Orel]

To avoid the inevitable fate of becoming a homicidal maniac after playing violent video games. Have you learned nothing from our discussions?

Well, since you mention that, now I have to keep murdering cops in GTA because it proves you wrong.

 

[Moral Orel]

Haha - apparently my attempt to shorten the length of posts is going to fail miserably. I should have intervened after you gave the teaser. I expected you to criticize the notion of natural law. Now I expect you to do that in the next post.

On the contrary. I'm open to accepting for the sake of argument that there is a "natural law". And since you say it can be apprehended by reason, then what that natural law is is up for debate, yes?

Of course civil law can be unjust. There are two places where I alluded to the fact that I was not intending "law" only in the sense of civil law (or human law):

• "Justice is interested in balanced exchange only in relation to the law, whether that law be natural or civil."
  
• "The (natural) law does not say that a man cannot receive a free gift of $100 from another, but it does say that a man who did not do something cannot receive a reward for doing it."

...Scant but existent.

Something which is against civil law--or more precisely, legitimate civil law--would be unjust. But that which is against natural law would also be unjust, even if civil law does not legislate against it. As a starting point we might just say that the natural law is morality as known by human reason. The natural law is precisely what we refer to when we argue that a civil law is unjust (or just, for that matter).

To take a familiar example, the nature of private property is known by natural law. It is wrong for someone to steal my coat no matter what country we are in, or even if we are in no country at all.

Well then I don't know why we're talking about civil law. If civil law can be unjust, then it isn't civil law that determines what is just. We can talk about natural law all you want. Since this thread is about whether or not God is just, civil law is even more irrelevant.

To try to avoid a deep rabbit hole we might just say that injustice transgresses the natural law insofar as it transgresses a law known to human reason, though not fully known by all. My general point is that we don't take offense at every act which creates an imbalance, but only at certain kinds of acts which create an imbalance, and that far from being arbitrary, there is something deeply reasonable about why we take offense at some things and not others.

Okay, I'll grant that. But should we take offense to imbalance, or is there something else going on? I say something else, but I'll get into that later.

So: what is the relation of justice, law, desert, fairness, and balance?

A very common definition of justice is, "the perpetual and constant will to render to each one his right" (or his due) [ST II.II.58.1]. Thomas is talking about justice as a virtue. We might simply say that justice is "to render to each one his right/due."

We have been primarily focused on injustices and the justices that rectify them. So an injustice would transgress a right or what someone is due (or what someone deserves). The injustice would of course be unfair and would create an imbalance in the form of a debt to the person you acted unjustly towards. Justice requires that you rectify the injustice by paying the debt and restoring balance or harmony.

Thomas says that law is a special kind of right, though he is talking there about human law rather than natural law (you may find his articles on Right interesting). My point regarding "law" is that not every imbalance is the object of justice. So we might say that law is the collection of "rights" or the collection of things that humans are due. Assuming that civil law is just it will tend to cover the more important rights/dues, whereas non-civil natural law would cover smaller rights/dues (technically natural law also includes things unrelated to justice, but I digress... again... ).

In simple terms, not all human actions fall into the realm of justice because the "law" (civil or natural) contains some rights/dues but not others. For example, the right to private property establishes that asymmetrical relation between the human acts of theft and the human acts of gift-giving. The imbalances that justice cares about are imbalances that impinge on rights/dues, and these are collected by law.

See now, I've been talking about what is deserved as in what is earned. You do an act, you earn a thing. Now you're talking about rights which aren't earned. Do we deserve to have rights? That seems off to me.

But you are using "weight" metaphorically, just as you are using "balance" metaphorically. How much weight does the idea of theft have? How much does the idea of murder have? Technically none, because ideas are immaterial entities.

You have been claiming that folks resort to special pleading with regard to justice because they don't care about all imbalances. But the notion that there even is some objective definition of "imbalance" or "all imbalances" is itself a form of "special pleading." All concepts of balance, no matter how metaphorical, require a system of weight and measurement. We might say that green and yellow are imbalanced, or light and darkness are imbalanced, or horses and ponies are imbalanced, or that Anakin Skywalker is unbalanced... These are highly equivocal uses, and they require an account of what is being balanced.

Okay, this bit and the next one seem to be contradicting each other. Here you say that an objective definition of imbalance is impossible, and next you'll say that if balance is impossible to measure then civil law is impossible.

But the terminus of the reductio is the negation of civil law. If civil law is based on justice and justice is based on balance and balance is either arbitrary or impossible to measure, then civil law is an impossibility. That is why I "started at the end" above. We both agree that imbalance is ubiquitous.

If there's no objective definition of imbalance, then what are you possibly measuring?

I think you're tripping on those "only if's" again. First, I don't agree with that first conditional, and secondly, your second conditional is logically false. Instead of parsing it let's just edit your first conditional by removing the word "only." In that case what you say would probably fly.

Nope. See if I were to replace X with "punishment" you'd be okay with it. You should only receive a punishment if you deserve a punishment. Later, when I asked you about what forgiven Christians deserved, I specifically asked if you "Deserve to not go to Hell" and you specifically responded with "We don't deserve to go to Hell". So the only time that not doing something causes you to "deserve to not" is if you're getting an award. If someone has done nothing (good or bad) then they don't deserve punishment, they don't deserve a gift, and they deserve to not get a reward. I'm afraid I just don't see what's special about that distinction. You gave me the example and all, but I need an explanation. See, if you give me a reward for being the first person on the moon, then it's an injustice towards the first person on the moon that someone else received the thing that they earned and it's not just for me to get something I haven't earned just like a gift.

Evildoers deserve to be not-aided.

Is that really it? Or should we simply not aid an evil act? I think it's the latter, even though I wish you'd pick a less political example.

Supposing that it is good to do some thing, it does not follow that there is a person who deserves to have that thing done to them. It doesn't follow that anyone has a right to the good act. There is no obligation to give gifts.

This and the next one belong together.

Perhaps, but the moral authorities who argue that you have an obligation to share some food with a starving man would not see it as a gift. They would say that the man has a right to your food and you are obliged to give it. We are no longer in gift territory.

Now it seems like we're redefining "gift". Something I own, freely given to someone else without requiring payment isn't a gift? What if the man is just lazy? He just quit his job and moved out onto the street because he'd rather beg for handouts than work a real job. By virtue of the fact that he's starving now, he deserves for me to give him something from my pocket? Doing nothing has earned him something. That cannot be just.

No, but you've skirted my point. My claim was that it is not unjust to give a gift because although the recipient does not deserve the gift, he does not deserve to not-have the gift. No right or due is being violated in the case of gift giving. Even if a starving beggar has a right to food, that does not mean that people have a general right to gifts.

You deserve the rewards and punishments that you earn. Now you can deserve rewards without doing anything and that sounds awful silly to me.

The reason it's not true is because we can receive things we don't deserve, even though we should receive all things that we are due. See my distinction between the two senses of "deserve" in my last post.

I don't really understand the point you are trying to make here. If you want to maintain this tack, then please include in your clarification the precise kind of "deserving" you are referring to. I gave the two options above.

And we should not receive things we don't deserve, unless it's rewards for no reason. If it's for a reason, then it must be a valid reason or we deserve to not...

No, if "just" is defined as "lawful" then they can be substituted in propositions. So all lawful acts are good and not all good acts are lawful. The transitive syllogism you are fishing for is as follows: if all just acts are good, and all lawful acts are just, then all lawful acts are good.

Meh... I still think all good acts are lawful. You ought to be generous, and generous folk give gifts.

Two reasons spring to mind immediately. First, not all acts take place between humans. Second, by "the actions" I did not mean "all actions." For example, beneficent acts are good but they are not guided by a set of rules or laws. In the same way, civil law guides human actions and interactions without guiding each and every one.

You ought to be X type of person. Is that sort of thing not in the natural law?

What should it be driven by?

Why not happiness? In a chat from a while ago we decided that happiness was an objectively good thing, and we agreed that there are better ways to attain it than others. Theft is bad because it makes a victim unhappy. Gifts are good because it makes both parties happy. We should allow gifts because it doesn't generally make anyone unhappy (ugly Christmas sweaters aside). We should punish theft because it causes there to be less theft, which means less unhappy victims. Don't punish thieves because they deserve it, punish them because it deters theft. Whatever gets done should have some good result from it. And balance for balance sake isn't a good unto itself.

 

[zippy2006]

Let me begin by quoting myself:

I have been pondering ways to make argument more effective and productive for those without formal training (but I have not tried very hard, I assure you). One very simple thing I've decided on is the importance of stating the conclusions each person is aiming at, both intermediate and final conclusions. So I'll do that with some short argumentation attached:

First, giving gifts is not unjust because it does not create an imbalance or inequality that is relevant to justice. That is, there is no law, right, or due that prohibits giving or receiving gifts. To put it simply: there is nothing wrong with giving gifts.

Second, if the concept of justice is based on arbitrary balancing then civil law would be either arbitrary or impossible, and it is neither. Therefore the concept of justice is not based on arbitrary balancing.

...those two conclusions are my only aim at this stage, apart from answering your objections.

I gave my immediate conclusions. What are yours? What are you aiming at proving in this stage of the discussion?

On the contrary. I'm open to accepting for the sake of argument that there is a "natural law".

Okay.

And since you say it can be apprehended by reason, then what that natural law is is up for debate, yes?

Yes.

Well then I don't know why we're talking about civil law. If civil law can be unjust, then it isn't civil law that determines what is just. We can talk about natural law all you want. Since this thread is about whether or not God is just, civil law is even more irrelevant.

We are talking exclusively about civil law because you misread my post and assumed that I meant “civil law” by “law.” Yet civil law is an important part of the discussion because it is the most visible and robust attempt at fleshing out the relevant part of the natural law. It is very tightly bound up with justice. In a real sense there is no better thing to talk about.

Okay, I'll grant that. But should we take offense to imbalance, or is there something else going on? I say something else, but I'll get into that later.

If we take offense at some kinds of imbalance but not others then clearly imbalance is not sufficient to explain our offense.

See now, I've been talking about what is deserved as in what is earned. You do an act, you earn a thing. Now you're talking about rights which aren't earned. Do we deserve to have rights? That seems off to me.

Thomas isn’t referring to a modern notion of rights, but I didn’t bother to point that out because I am happy to defend the modern notion. What I did do is indicate that “right” could be replaced with “due” (which is a form of desert).

Now I am happy to say that I have a right to be not-murdered and that if you murder me then you have violated what is my due. Yet even your transactional view presupposes rights. The sort of right that you are presupposing is a particular instantiation of balance. For example, you say that, “You do an act, you earn a thing.” The rights in your system would define what recompense is deserved for certain acts. They are still rights.

For example, presumably you would say that if you steal an apple from me then you deserve punishment, at least insofar as restitution is made to me. That affords me a right to restitution. Or if I employ you and you labor for me, then you deserve payment. That’s not any different from the right of a laborer to payment, or the right to have contracts fulfilled, etc.

Okay, this bit and the next one seem to be contradicting each other. Here you say that an objective definition of imbalance is impossible, and next you'll say that if balance is impossible to measure then civil law is impossible.

I laid out my argument a number of different times. My whole point is that justice is not mere imbalance. If it were then civil law would be impossible. That is one of our central disagreements: whether justice can be explained entirely in terms of imbalance, remember?

If there's no objective definition of imbalance, then what are you possibly measuring?

Justice measures particular kinds of imbalance as interpreted by rights or dues. So we have a right: private property. An unjust imbalance occurs with respect to the right to private property in the case of theft, but not in the case of gift-giving, despite the fact that both entail an imbalance.

Nope. See if I were to replace X with "punishment" you'd be okay with it. You should only receive a punishment if you deserve a punishment.

I would agree with the first conditional in the case of punishment because it would then avoid the equivocation on “deserve.”

Later, when I asked you about what forgiven Christians deserved, I specifically asked if you "Deserve to not go to Hell" and you specifically responded with "We don't deserve to go to Hell".

No, that wasn't my point. I was answering with respect to the concept of forgiveness of sins and mortal sins, not the specific kind of desert. Indeed, if your interpretation were correct then it could not be true that, "[I'd] be okay with it." ("it" being the replacement of X with "punishment")

So the only time that not doing something causes you to "deserve to not" is if you're getting an award.

I disagree, but I'm not sure why you are saying this.

I'm afraid I just don't see what's special about that distinction. You gave me the example and all, but I need an explanation. See, if you give me a reward for being the first person on the moon, then it's an injustice towards the first person on the moon that someone else received the thing that they earned and it's not just for me to get something I haven't earned just like a gift.

Quoting myself:

This gets to the equivocation present in premise (2), and is perhaps related to the distinction you made in the second sentence of #204. If I gift you $100 it is undeserved, and if I give you an award for being the first man on the moon it is undeserved, but in two different ways. In the first case you don’t deserve to have it. In the second case you deserve to not-have it. Only the second case is against the law and therefore unjust. The (natural) law does not say that a man cannot receive a free gift of $100 from another, but it does say that a man who did not do something cannot receive a reward for doing it.

The distinction matters because you have claimed that gifts are undeserved and are therefore unjust. But that is an equivocation. It is perfectly rational to say that theft is undeserved, gifts are undeserved, theft is unjust, and gifts are not. The reason why lies in the distinction given.

Is that really it? Or should we simply not aid an evil act? I think it's the latter, even though I wish you'd pick a less political example.

I don’t see the difference. In any case, contrary to your claim, desert obviously enters in.

Now it seems like we're redefining "gift". Something I own, freely given to someone else without requiring payment isn't a gift? What if the man is just lazy? He just quit his job and moved out onto the street because he'd rather beg for handouts than work a real job. By virtue of the fact that he's starving now, he deserves for me to give him something from my pocket?

Philosophers who argue for things like the “universal destination of goods” have a more complex view of property, but I see no need for us to descend into that rabbit hole. Let’s just follow civil law and say that it isn’t unjust/unlawful to deny a beggar food or money. That’s fine with me. Later I will address your implicit claim that all good things are obligatory.

Doing nothing has earned him something. That cannot be just.

Why not, though? How are you justifying this sort of claim on your system?

You deserve the rewards and punishments that you earn. Now you can deserve rewards without doing anything and that sounds awful silly to me.

Heh, you’ve managed to dodge my point/question two times successively, and that’s impressive. Let me state it very clearly for you: why is a man unjust for giving a gift? What wrong has he done?

And we should not receive things we don't deserve, unless it's rewards for no reason.

Remember how I asked you to be mindful of the distinction between two different kinds of "deserving," and then in your direct reply to that sentence of mine you forgot the distinction, again? Your statement would only make sense if it were rephrased, “And we should not receive things we deserve to not have, unless it’s rewards for no reason.” Not everything we receive is a reward, nor is everything we receive intended as a reward.

If it's for a reason, then it must be a valid reason or we deserve to not...

What I hear you saying is, “We should only receive things we deserve; we should only receive things for a reason; if we receive something for an invalid reason then we deserve to not have that thing.”

Now without touching the substance of those claims, a preliminary problem is that it is largely tautologous. I am thinking particularly of the phrase saying that it “must be for a valid reason.” That isn’t a meaningful statement until we have some idea of the difference between a valid and invalid reason.

Meh... I still think all good acts are lawful. You ought to be generous, and generous folk give gifts.

So this is a slightly different equivocation that has been at work in the background. When I said all lawful acts are just, “lawful” meant “according to the law.” When you say all good acts are lawful, “lawful” means “not contrary to the law.” Justice and law relate in the former sense, not the latter. I have tried to explain this a few times. All good acts are allowed, but not all good acts are just; not all good acts are according to the law. Lots of acts are non-just, neither just nor unjust; neither contrary to the law nor according to the law. Theft is unjust; restitution is just; gifting is non-just. Theft is unlawful; restitution is lawful/according to the law; gifting is apart from the law. In terms of obligation: we have an obligation to not-steal; we have an obligation to make restitution when we do steal; and we have no obligations regarding gifts.

You ought to be X type of person. Is that sort of thing not in the natural law?

“You ought to be beneficent.” Earlier I said, “technically natural law also includes things unrelated to justice, but I digress…” On my view this a part of the natural law that is not part of justice. Again, civil law is a helpful instantiation of that part of the natural law that relates to justice. There are all sorts of things which we ought to do but which the law does not prescribe. “Be nice, be generous, be intelligent.”

Why not happiness? In a chat from a while ago we decided that happiness was an objectively good thing, and we agreed that there are better ways to attain it than others. Theft is bad because it makes a victim unhappy. Gifts are good because it makes both parties happy. We should allow gifts because it doesn't generally make anyone unhappy (ugly Christmas sweaters aside). We should punish theft because it causes there to be less theft, which means less unhappy victims. Don't punish thieves because they deserve it, punish them because it deters theft. Whatever gets done should have some good result from it. And balance for balance sake isn't a good unto itself.

This is a form of rule utilitarianism, and there are serious difficulties with such an approach, but let me run with it for the sake of argument.

Considering civil law, we currently have three categories of acts: prohibited, mandated, and unregulated. That is, there are some things we can't do, some things we must do, and some things that are not legislated for or against. This is the same distinction: Theft is unlawful; restitution is lawful/according to the law; gifting is apart from the law.

Now it seems to me that your tirade against gifts leads you to collapse the three categories into two and mandate gifting. That is, the way that you would justify the civil law would not provide for any differentiation between things like restitution and things like a gift. It's not only that theft is unjust and gifts are just, but rather that gifts are non-just. We need three categories, not two. The "happiness justification" leads to a good/evil binary, which in a roundabout way is one of the central problems with rule utilitarianism.

If you want to retain that approach then you would have to acknowledge the happiness that comes from freedom. You would then have to acknowledge that freedom is served when civil law does not legislate for or against every single act, such as gift-giving. Part of the happiness that accompanies gift-giving comes precisely from the fact that it is a free act and is not mandated by legislation.

So sure, let's say that your happiness rule provides a way for civil law to allow gift-giving but prohibit theft. Even so, there is a second problem: how does the happiness rule accommodate the trinary civil space that we currently occupy?

(There are also things which are mandatory that are not forms of restitution, such as good Samaritan laws, seatbelt laws, child neglect laws, and perhaps even paying taxes.)

 

[Chriliman]

Does God practice justice, or does God practice mercy?

I would say that practicing justice is to ensure that people get punishments they deserve.

And I would say that practicing mercy is to spare people from punishments they deserve.

Clearly, it isn't possible to do both, so which does God practice?

Justice is about setting things right, which doesn’t always involve inflicting punishment(if punishment is inflicted the goal should be to set things right).

Sometimes it’s simply asking forgiveness and receiving it, which is both just and merciful.

 

[Moral Orel]

I gave my immediate conclusions. What are yours? What are you aiming at proving in this stage of the discussion?

That balance for the sake of balance is not a good in and of itself. I think we've established that we agree, but I'm betting that when we apply that, you will disagree with my conclusions.

We are talking exclusively about civil law because you misread my post and assumed that I meant “civil law” by “law.” Yet civil law is an important part of the discussion because it is the most visible and robust attempt at fleshing out the relevant part of the natural law. It is very tightly bound up with justice. In a real sense there is no better thing to talk about.

No, civil law is not an important part of our discussion. It can be useful as an allegory, and that's it.

If we take offense at some kinds of imbalance but not others then clearly imbalance is not sufficient to explain our offense.

Agreed, imbalance isn't the bad thing.

Thomas isn’t referring to a modern notion of rights, but I didn’t bother to point that out because I am happy to defend the modern notion. What I did do is indicate that “right” could be replaced with “due” (which is a form of desert).

Now I am happy to say that I have a right to be not-murdered and that if you murder me then you have violated what is my due. Yet even your transactional view presupposes rights. The sort of right that you are presupposing is a particular instantiation of balance. For example, you say that, “You do an act, you earn a thing.” The rights in your system would define what recompense is deserved for certain acts. They are still rights.

For example, presumably you would say that if you steal an apple from me then you deserve punishment, at least insofar as restitution is made to me. That affords me a right to restitution. Or if I employ you and you labor for me, then you deserve payment. That’s not any different from the right of a laborer to payment, or the right to have contracts fulfilled, etc.

So now we're flipping back and forth between rights that we earn and rights that we have naturally. Which only furthers the expanding definition of justice beyond what is deserved.

I laid out my argument a number of different times. My whole point is that justice is not mere imbalance. If it were then civil law would be impossible. That is one of our central disagreements: whether justice can be explained entirely in terms of imbalance, remember?

Not quite. If justice needs something else instead of imbalance to explain it, then it's that "something else" that drives what is good, not imbalance.

Justice measures particular kinds of imbalance as interpreted by rights or dues. So we have a right: private property. An unjust imbalance occurs with respect to the right to private property in the case of theft, but not in the case of gift-giving, despite the fact that both entail an imbalance.

Again, balance for the sake of balance isn't a good in and of itself. I'm fine with that.

I would agree with the first conditional in the case of punishment because it would then avoid the equivocation on “deserve.”

Why doesn't punishment have a "deserve to not be punished"? Why is it only rewards for specific things we haven't done that get the "deserve to not"?

No, that wasn't my point. I was answering with respect to the concept of forgiveness of sins and mortal sins, not the specific kind of desert. Indeed, if your interpretation were correct then it could not be true that, "[I'd] be okay with it." ("it" being the replacement of X with "punishment")

I asked whether you "don't deserve to go to Hell" or if I should phrase it "you deserve to not go to Hell" and you chose the former. That's why you're okay with replacing X with "punishment" because there isn't a "deserve to not" when it comes to punishment, only when receiving awards for specific actions that we didn't actually do.

I disagree, but I'm not sure why you are saying this.

I've tried to see what earns you "deserve to not" and that's all you've given me.

The distinction matters because you have claimed that gifts are undeserved and are therefore unjust. But that is an equivocation. It is perfectly rational to say that theft is undeserved, gifts are undeserved, theft is unjust, and gifts are not. The reason why lies in the distinction given.

I can't see why you're making the distinction. It's good to give gifts, it's bad to give awards for deeds not done. That's all the reasoning I can find.

I don’t see the difference. In any case, contrary to your claim, desert obviously enters in.

If you aid an evildoer in doing evil, you're creating more evil. It isn't a matter of what they deserve, it's a matter of what you're causing to happen as a result of your aid.

Philosophers who argue for things like the “universal destination of goods” have a more complex view of property, but I see no need for us to descend into that rabbit hole. Let’s just follow civil law and say that it isn’t unjust/unlawful to deny a beggar food or money. That’s fine with me. Later I will address your implicit claim that all good things are obligatory.

No, I won't follow the civil law. Flipping back and forth between civil law and natural law is ridiculous. We have to pick one, and since civil law can be unjust, we aren't going that route.

Why not, though? How are you justifying this sort of claim on your system?

You deserve things that you have done something to earn. How is that controversial?

Heh, you’ve managed to dodge my point/question two times successively, and that’s impressive. Let me state it very clearly for you: why is a man unjust for giving a gift? What wrong has he done?

It's unjust because it's imbalanced. Imbalance isn't wrong.

Remember how I asked you to be mindful of the distinction between two different kinds of "deserving," and then in your direct reply to that sentence of mine you forgot the distinction, again? Your statement would only make sense if it were rephrased, “And we should not receive things we deserve to not have, unless it’s rewards for no reason.” Not everything we receive is a reward, nor is everything we receive intended as a reward.

I did not forget that distinction, I've been denying it exists.

What I hear you saying is, “We should only receive things we deserve; we should only receive things for a reason; if we receive something for an invalid reason then we deserve to not have that thing.”

Yeah, I don't see where "deserve to not" comes into play either.

Now without touching the substance of those claims, a preliminary problem is that it is largely tautologous. I am thinking particularly of the phrase saying that it “must be for a valid reason.” That isn’t a meaningful statement until we have some idea of the difference between a valid and invalid reason.

For no reason is non-just, for an invalid reason is unjust.

So this is a slightly different equivocation that has been at work in the background. When I said all lawful acts are just, “lawful” meant “according to the law.” When you say all good acts are lawful, “lawful” means “not contrary to the law.” Justice and law relate in the former sense, not the latter. I have tried to explain this a few times. All good acts are allowed, but not all good acts are just; not all good acts are according to the law. Lots of acts are non-just, neither just nor unjust; neither contrary to the law nor according to the law. Theft is unjust; restitution is just; gifting is non-just. Theft is unlawful; restitution is lawful/according to the law; gifting is apart from the law. In terms of obligation: we have an obligation to not-steal; we have an obligation to make restitution when we do steal; and we have no obligations regarding gifts.

But what is good or bad is what you're using to determine whether something is just or unjust. Imbalance that is bad is unjust, imbalance that is good is non-just.

“You ought to be beneficent.” Earlier I said, “technically natural law also includes things unrelated to justice, but I digress…” On my view this a part of the natural law that is not part of justice. Again, civil law is a helpful instantiation of that part of the natural law that relates to justice. There are all sorts of things which we ought to do but which the law does not prescribe. “Be nice, be generous, be intelligent.”

If you aren't nice, then civil law won't penalize you, but God will, so we aren't talking about civil law.

Now it seems to me that your tirade against gifts

Let me start here. What tirade against gifts? I've said over and over that gifts are good. How is that a "tirade against gifts"? I've said that they are unjust, sure, but I also said it's good to be unjust sometimes. You're acting as though I've been arguing that I think that balance is good, and if you think that's what's going on you are way off.

This is a form of rule utilitarianism, and there are serious difficulties with such an approach, but let me run with it for the sake of argument.

Considering civil law, we currently have three categories of acts: prohibited, mandated, and unregulated. That is, there are some things we can't do, some things we must do, and some things that are not legislated for or against. This is the same distinction: Theft is unlawful; restitution is lawful/according to the law; gifting is apart from the law.

Now it seems to me that your tirade against gifts leads you to collapse the three categories into two and mandate gifting. That is, the way that you would justify the civil law would not provide for any differentiation between things like restitution and things like a gift. It's not only that theft is unjust and gifts are just, but rather that gifts are non-just. We need three categories, not two. The "happiness justification" leads to a good/evil binary, which in a roundabout way is one of the central problems with rule utilitarianism.

If you want to retain that approach then you would have to acknowledge the happiness that comes from freedom. You would then have to acknowledge that freedom is served when civil law does not legislate for or against every single act, such as gift-giving. Part of the happiness that accompanies gift-giving comes precisely from the fact that it is a free act and is not mandated by legislation.

So sure, let's say that your happiness rule provides a way for civil law to allow gift-giving but prohibit theft. Even so, there is a second problem: how does the happiness rule accommodate the trinary civil space that we currently occupy?

Because oppression makes people unhappy.

(There are also things which are mandatory that are not forms of restitution, such as good Samaritan laws, seatbelt laws, child neglect laws, and perhaps even paying taxes.)

Are these laws just or non just or unjust?

-------​

Okay, I think our posts have passed critical mass. Neither of us is retaining everything the other is saying and it's already starting in with the "I didn't say that, I said this". I'm losing interest, maybe you are too, but we're probably both getting annoyed. If you want to keep going we can, but I'm going to redact huge portions of your next response to shrink this back down to a manageable size.

 

[Paulomycin]

Neither of us is retaining everything the other is saying. . .

Speak for yourself.

 

[Gene Parmesan]

Does God practice justice, or does God practice mercy?

I would say that practicing justice is to ensure that people get punishments they deserve.

And I would say that practicing mercy is to spare people from punishments they deserve.

Clearly, it isn't possible to do both, so which does God practice?

I would say that if Hell exists and people are punished infinitely for finite crimes, He is neither merciful nor just.

 

[Paulomycin]

I would say that if Hell exists and people are punished infinitely for finite crimes, He is neither merciful nor just.

The punishment fits the actual crime of eternal cosmic treason. <-- That's what sin is.

We are not sinners because we sin, [rather] we sin because we're sinners (by nature).

And if God is eternally just, then the level of mercy would be equally overwhelming.

 

[Gene Parmesan]

The punishment fits the actual crime of eternal cosmic treason. <-- That's what sin is.

We are not sinners because we sin, [rather] we sin because we're sinners (by nature).

And if God is eternally just, then the level of mercy would be equally overwhelming.

Eternal Cosmic Treason is my favorite metal album.