Of course we have a reward system in place to but punishment is more effective in imparting moral lessons. — TheMadFool

It is? That's news to me. In my psych classes we learned the opposite:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/family-affair/200809/rewards-are-better-punishment-here-s-why

Punishment is just easier to consistently dole out/we're more inclined to react to bad behavior.

It is? That's news to me. In my psych classes we learned the opposite:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/family-affair/200809/rewards-are-better-punishment-here-s-why

Punishment is just easier to consistently dole out/we're more inclined to react to bad behavior. — NKBJ

Thanks for the information but I think it's incorrect. People don't do bad things because they get rewarded for doing good. Someone in the forum asked ''what do we do when no one's looking?'' The answer to that question agrees with the existence of the police who are, well, they eyes of morality. The ''benefits'' of being crooked are far greater than being straightforward. Ergo, the effectiveness of deterrence by law through punishment. Haven't you seen chaos in the streets when policing is affected e.g. during natural disasters or political turmoil?

Well... the data says you're wrong. But I guess you'd rather argue by your intuition?

I think that's a pointless exercise though. Honest intellectualism/philosophy should be willing to change positions when confronted with evidence that doesn't support it.

Not really. I was just surprised to find out that there is, despite creativity being our forte, only one method, punishment, that we employ to guide people onto the right moral path.

Of course we have a reward system in place to but punishment is more effective in imparting moral lessons. Think of it. Quite odd isn't it that there's no reward for good behavior in terms of a legal sense. Yes, you get recognition, admiration, even fame, like Mother Teresa or Bill Gates, but we're under no legal obligation to praise, admire or the like such people.

If it was that people were moved more by reward than punishment it would have been the law that we should do good and praise, admire, respect the good. — TheMadFool

Maybe you've hit the nail right on the head here. We have two judgements, good and bad. We can treat the good with reward, and we can penalize the bad with punishment. It seems to me, that we are far more inclined to reward good behaviour of children than we are good behaviour of adults, and also far more inclined to punish the bad behaviour of adults than we are to punish the bad behaviour of children.

So maybe this is the difference right here. We reward children for good behaviour, encouraging them to act well and develop good habits, while we warn them that bad behaviour is punishable. When they've grown up, they're beyond the need of reward to develop good habits, and if they do proceed to act badly there is nothing left to do but punish them. So rewarding good behaviour is the first step, taken early in the child's life, hopefully producing good habits and leading that person toward a good life. When that fails, we resort to punishment.

Well... the data says you're wrong. But I guess you'd rather argue by your intuition?

I think that's a pointless exercise though. Honest intellectualism/philosophy should be willing to change positions when confronted with evidence that doesn't support it. — NKBJ

Well, it's not all intuition. How do you explain the presence of crime police but the absence of reward police? I mean there's no police force seeking out good people and rewarding them for their goodness but we do have a crime police that actively looks for bad people and then punishes them.

Doesn't this show that the stick is considered more important than the carrot in moral education? I think I made a mistake by saying punishment is more effective than reward. I'd rather say punishment is necessary for people to behave morally. If punishment were effective then we should be seeing more peaceful cities, towns, ect. This isn't the case. However punishment is necessary because, given what is the case, economically, socially, etc, there's more to gain in being an immoral person, cheating, stealing, killing, etc. and we need to keep that in check.

Also, it seems that evil is more easily specified than good. Murder, stealing, cheating, fraud, etc. are easily definable relative to altruism, goodness, etc. Therefore, we have laws against immoral behavior but none in favor of good behavior.

If the study you cited is true then isn't it time to change our policies?

That's right. It seems we have the reward-punishment model that is used in moral education. As you said children are rewarded but adults are not. Adults are punished by children are not. I guess children are motivated more by reward and adults more by punishment.

It bears mentioning that this actually hints at failure of moral education because it literally means that we failed to educate our children in morality and so must control them through punishment when they're adults.

Something's wrong. What do you think is a better method of educating children and adults in morals?

Adults are punished by children are not. I guess children are motivated more by reward and adults more by punishment. — TheMadFool

There's more to it than just motivation. Children are fundamentally different from adults, there's a much higher degree of tabula rasa there within the children, while adults have formed habits. So the childhood years are the years in which habits are formed. Habits are formed by repetition, so good behaviour must be repeated, and this requires the rewarding program. The possibility of punishment is more like the "carrot", held out there, at arms length as a deterrent, but seldom used in childhood. The "stick" is the reward. Act well, do what I tell you, and I'll shower you with praise, affection, and other things which you like.

It bears mentioning that this actually hints at failure of moral education because it literally means that we failed to educate our children in morality and so must control them through punishment when they're adults.

Something's wrong. What do you think is a better method of educating children and adults in morals? — TheMadFool

I'd say that's true, the need to punish adults reflects a failed moral training in childhood. I don't think there's an easy solution, as the matter is complicated. Maybe not enough time is spent with the very young children directing them and rewarding them. Maybe we don't know exactly which behaviours to reward. Maybe we don't know exactly which rewards to use. Maybe different children, having different aptitudes, need to be guided in different directions. I think it's a complicated matter.

Children are fundamentally different from adults — Metaphysician Undercover

I think this is correct but I wonder sometimes if adults are really that different from children Children are usually thought of as playing with toys and absorbed in their own worlds. Yet, if we follow any child's journey into adulthood we see only a difference in the type of ''toy'' they play with. Toddlers play with action figures and dolls. Adolescents play computer games. Adults play with ideas.

So, growing up seems to be only a matter of upgrading they ''toy'' one plays with.

What could be relevant to our discussion from your point that children are different from adults?

Is it the severity of harm they can do?

Is it that, as you say, they're blank slates incapable of evil?

As I said, it's all play isn't it? The type of ''toy'' makes all the difference. Children don't play with other people's emotions intentionally like adults do.

I think it's a matter of habit. Habits develop over time. A child may like playing with a particular toy, but it's relatively easy to replace the toy with something else. The child quickly forgets the old toy and focuses on the new. It's not so easy with adults who have developed long standing patterns of "play".

So for the educator there's a matter of identifying and differentiating healthy play from unhealthy play. Then there is the matter of discouraging the latter and encouraging the former. If this fails, the bad habits develop.

Children are morally pristine, innocent, — TheMadFool

I don't know what kids you've spent time around. :razz:

:lol: Yeah little devils

Children are morally pristine, innocent, but criminals are morally depraved and some are downright evil. — TheMadFool

This is a very simplistic summary of criminal behavior and behavior in general. There's a lot more to this than just singular labels.

The thing is that punishment is an illusion. It's a legacy from times when we didn't know anything about the human psyche and how we behave in social groups. At this time in history, we have a lot of knowledge about how we function as a species. But we still have punishment as a way of teaching and controlling morality. Without there being solid evidence at all about its effectiveness.

Children, for example, do not start acting morally because they have been punished for their behavior into good behavior. Its observed that it creates anxiety and fear of authority more than any balanced morality later in life. The more effective way is to show and really teach children why their behavior is wrong. The consequences for others, not the self. It builds up better empathy and better social skills than fear.

In crime and punishment, there's no real evidence for punishment having any effect on crime. It might be the difference between total chaos and the baseline for a functioning society, but there's nothing that proves it to actually be a factor for those that has decided on making a criminal act. It's basically a total misunderstanding of the mechanics of how why criminals do crimes. To fix problems with high criminality, you don't punish more, you fix the problems that nurture crime and criminals. You fix socioeconomic problems, segregation, inequality etc. Thos things that pitch people against each other and pressures in life that place someone on the brink of being homeless. Desperate people do not care if there's punishment or not, they do not see any other way forward but committing a crime. And if it's about violent acts that do not revolve around money, it's the desperation of the situation, the inability to see a way out, the anger of failure etc.

The psychology of criminals should not be ignored and punishment, as it exist today, is a very medieval and blunt tool for controlling crimes. The one thing that keeps it going as the method even today when we know much more about psychology and sociology is the retribution and revenge aspect.
Punishment is retribution and revenge, it is not a cure for crimes. But society has even wrapped the linguistic description of punishment in ways so that it doesn't come across like revenge. It's "the state against..." and "by the law you are punished..." etc. Never, "the victim's revenge..." "by the victims suffering you will receive their vengeance in form of...".

As soon as you really dive into the psychology, sociology and deconstruct what punishment really is, you will see that there is no paradox since punishment in itself is a paradox against what punishment is supposed to be in the first place. It doesn't reduce crimes, it doesn't teach children the right lessons, it does the opposite.

It's the message that stories like Judge Dredd tells. In that society, the police have the special force "Judges" that will punish on site, often by direct execution. It should be the perfect fear for criminals, but instead, crimes are on the rise and the criminal acts more violent. Because no one in Judge Dredd cares for the actual reasons crimes occur, they are blind to the punishment aspect of keeping control and it fails. That's the dystopia of that story. And that's the truth of punishment.

I wonder sometimes. Morality has a rational basis - empathy being somewhat necessary. Children are incapable of reasoning well enough to understand moral arguments. Given that it seems the carrot-stick approach seems apt.

Coming to adults, we assume them to be rational and capable of apprehending morals. If they choose bad over good inspite of that then, punishment becomes justified.

Its observed that it creates anxiety and fear of authority more than any balanced morality later in life. The more effective way is to show and really teach children why their behavior is wrong. — Christoffer

That's where the difficulty lies. Morality has a rational basis on empathy but children are incapable of understanding arguments aren't they? That or their reasoning skills aren't developed enough to comprehend moral arguments. It's like trying to feed an infant with adult food. Infants simply lack the ability to digest adult food.

So, we must resort to a simpler method - reward & punishment. It's a language children understand.

As for the difficulty with adults, I think punishment is justifed as a deterrent and not as a process to exact vengeance. When people know they'll have to pay a price for breaking the law, they will think twice before doing anything illegal. If they still commit a crime then punishment is justified because they were aware of the consequences and yet commited a crime.

Despite the above it's still quite odd that adults are punished since they, with ''well-developed'' rational skills, are perfect candidates for education in morality. Instead they're punished. I guess it's assumed that by adulthood we're supposed to be in the know about moral rules. Is this assumption justified?

That's where the difficulty lies. Morality has a rational basis on empathy but children are incapable of understanding arguments aren't they? That or their reasoning skills aren't developed enough to comprehend moral arguments. It's like trying to feed an infant with adult food. Infants simply lack the ability to digest adult food.

So, we must resort to a simpler method - reward & punishment. It's a language children understand. — TheMadFool

I'm not sure this is entirely true. It seems that abandoning reasoning with kids in favor of reward & punishment is the lazy route. It's giving up on actually preparing kids for life because parents don't have enough time to pay attention to their kids. It's one of the reasons I believe that most people in our developed society actually aren't equipped to have children because of the time constraints society have on parents.

I'm not saying abandon all, and do over. I do think there is a reasonable level of reward and punishment, but I wouldn't really call it reward and punishment. The foundation for these methods is basically teaching capitalism. It's hacking the reward center in our brain and using repetition to establish fear. I would say that a lot of the fears that parents establish in their kids could even impair their ability to think rationally later on, essentially making Orwellian thought-crimeesque pavlovian behavior in that as grown-ups they can't even, in their own private thoughts, allow themselves to think in certain perspectives on a subject. So I don't think reward and punishment is the way, the level of restriction and what's allowed by parents should be controlled with consequence and personal reward. I'm not talking about small children at the age of 3 but from 5 years of age. Children at that age start developing social skills and it's from this age parents need to pay attention to what they are doing. If the children do something bad, the consequence needs to be out of that context and not out of something else. Instead of taking away their candy when they do something bad, it should be a consequence out of the things they have done so that they start connecting the dots between cause and effect.

The biggest problem with having a punishment that isn't in context with what they've done is that they learn that if they do something, the consequences can be "whatever" other people can imagine. When choices later on in life becomes much vaguer and what is moral or not is cloaked in ambiguity, people can freak out since they've learned from an early age that punishment for doing something wrong can be something entirely different from what they actually have done. We essentially learn to distrust other people, especially in situations when we aren't sure what is entirely right or wrong. It affects relationships, business relations and so on, not just aspects of crime and punishment.

And this is why the following becomes a corrupted ideal...

As for the difficulty with adults, I think a punishment is justified as a deterrent and not as a process to exact vengeance. When people know they'll have to pay a price for breaking the law, they will think twice before doing anything illegal. If they still commit a crime then punishment is justified because they were aware of the consequences and yet committed a crime. — TheMadFool

First off, there's research that suggests that some form of crime and punishment is needed as a baseline for a working society, even though research is still ongoing on this. But the ideal you mention here is exactly how every one of us has been brought up to view morality.

Let me ask you, is it possible that you are wrong? Is it possible that the common knowledge outside of the scientific community, among the general public, is... wrong? That we have been so trained in thought about how punishment is a deterrent that most of us are unable to combine it with the actual facts on how our human psyche works?

The entire idea about it being a deterrent is not able to combine with the true nature of why people commit crimes. Those who commit crimes already know it's wrong, they do it because for most of them, they have no other choice or they have been pushed so far that reason is suppressed by strong emotions they cannot control. People aren't rational, no one is rational in their day to day life. If people were rational, commercials wouldn't work, but they do, they control people so effectively that businesses can steer people to do whatever they like. We think and act out of emotional choices, not rational ones. We are only rational when we use "system 2" of our brain, as we are doing now when discussing. We do not act out of instinct but out of slowly writing our balanced opinion on these subjects. This is one reason why I feel verbal discussions often fail since we are so focused on the social skills we need in order to maintain a conversation, while the process of writing is much more careful. Maybe that's why I write so much since I want to carefully address all aspects of the subject.

The hard truth is that punishment only works as a deterrent for those who already have no reason to commit crimes. It's the true paradox of crime and punishment. If there were no punishment or law, then people that have no reason to commit crimes could do it since there are no parameters about order in society, so a baseline is needed. But it does not have any effect on those pushed into a serious criminal life. It's an illusion that everyone who isn't a criminal has about criminals.

The best example of this is when people who aren't criminals watch a movie about a criminal. They get emotionally invested in that characters life, feel empathy, and feel that the character is treated wrong when they get caught. In any other context, in the news, people would spew hate over these people, but not when they've established an empathic connection to such a character because that is exactly the moral ambiguity that our irrational emotions have on us, have on those who commit crimes.

We cannot demand logic towards criminals out of the moral compass that we have since we are demanding them to act more rational and reasonable than even we do. We demand reason, balance, and almost inhuman rationality from them since our parameters is that of our own comfort in life. It's much harder to demand the same rationality and reason if we were in the same shoes as them.

Which leads to...

I guess it's assumed that by adulthood we're supposed to be in the know about moral rules. Is this assumption justified? — TheMadFool

No, we do not know about moral rules since our moral rules are illusions. It's either past down morality from religion or it's a twisted morality based on corrupted agendas by others. True discussion about morality need to be detached from everything we've learned about morals, it needs to be founded on scientific facts about human psychology and a baseline of the things that are objectively good for humans, which isn't as straight forward as it sounds, but it's the only true morality we can establish. Every other idea about morality is influenced by doctrines that have nothing to do with morality but by religious and political control.

Essentially, most people in the world today do not live by the knowledge we have about humanity, society, psychology, morality and so on. We live by our emotions, we live by the stupidity of comfort, by, in psychology, "System 1". We are irrational, we reject truth in favor of comfort. This is why our systems in crime and punishment, in parenting, in finding morality are so extremely flawed.

It's the reason I turn to philosophy in the first place because it has the means and methods of deconstructing our irrationality to find truths a priori.

The basic idea here, the question I ask, is what if you are wrong? What if every idea you have about the subject of crime and punishment is wrong, wouldn't you want to know that it is?
- Comfort says no, "system 2" says yes.

But philosophy doesn't allow "comfort" to be a factor in thought.

Same principle behind it. Children generally commit lesser wrongs, hence lesser punishment. Criminals generally are older, and thus commit more grave crimes which require increased punishment.
What constitutes innocence? The lack of wrongdoing? How is one to know what is wrong and what is right but through teaching? For example, a child is told directly to not eat the cookies before dinner, he chooses to anyway. The mother comes in and directly punishes him. The mother has not done wrong, but the child. The punishment must match the crime also, as a child would not be given the death penalty or sentenced to life in prison for eating the cookie, but a person who murdered another person might. The child likely will not learn to obey if there are no punishments and may become a criminal or at least a very unpleasant adult.