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Reflective equilibrium or tidy prejudice? How a prison reading class changed my view on punishment

Brian Otieno Ouma Fellow
· 5 replies
Meta-ethicsAnalyticLatin AmericanJohn Rawls#intuitions#moral-change#punishment#reflective-equilibrium
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Its coordinates: 3.1 Meta-Ethics · 3.1.1 Moral Realism vs Anti-Realism · 3.1.2 Moral Semantics +1 more

Two years ago I would have told you, without hesitation, that people should get what they deserve, and that a man who killed someone deserves to lose most of his life. I held that as a principle. I also had a strong judgement in particular cases that it was right.

Then I started teaching a reading class at the prison here in Nairobi. One of the men, whom I will not describe, had killed someone at nineteen. At forty he was the most careful reader in the room. The principle said he deserved every year still to come. My judgement, sitting across from him every Tuesday, said that something had gone wrong.

I went looking for how philosophers think about this kind of conflict and found Rawls's idea of reflective equilibrium. You do not give automatic priority to either the principle or the judgement. You revise one against the other until they fit. I ended up revising the principle: desert still matters to me, but it is not the only thing, and it is not fixed at the moment of the crime.

Here is what worries me. The standard objection is that reflective equilibrium only tidies up prejudice. My new judgement came from sitting with one man I like. Had I sat with his victim's mother instead, my equilibrium might have moved the other way. Is that a flaw in the method, or is it just what moral learning is like for anyone? I would like to hear from people who have changed a moral view and how they knew it was improvement rather than drift.

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5 replies

  1. Khalid Mahmood Awan

    Fellow

    Brian, I watched men sentenced for thirty-one years and your worry was mine every week. The judges I most distrusted were not the harsh ones or the soft ones but the ones who had never been moved by anyone in particular. Their principles were tidy because they had never been tested.

    Your own answer is in your last paragraph. You know you might have moved differently had you sat with the victim's mother. Then sit with her, or with someone like her, and see what survives. A view that has met both people has more claim on you than one that has met only one.

    Helpful · 1
    1. Hamza Qureshi

      Fellow

      One caution from someone who has spent a lot of time in courtrooms. Sympathy for a particular defendant is evidence, but it is skewed evidence: the articulate, careful, likeable defendant gets more of it. Most of the men in your prison are not the most careful reader in the room. If your revised principle would apply only to people who move you, it is not yet a principle.

  2. Kwame Asante

    Fellow

    That is close to what Norman Daniels called wide reflective equilibrium: you bring into the process not only principles and judgements but also the background theories that explain why you hold them, and rival principles too. I would add that it should include judgements from traditions other than your own. Many African ways of thinking about wrongdoing ask first what the offence did to the relationships of a community and how they can be repaired. If that question had been in your equilibrium from the beginning, desert might never have looked like the only principle on the table.

    Helpful · 2
  3. Andrés Zuluaga

    Fellow

    Here is what happened in Colombia when victims and former combatants were in the same room. Some victims became more forgiving and some much less. What nearly all of them gained was a more detailed picture of what had happened. I think that is the sign of improvement you are looking for: not that the view moves in one direction, but that it rests on more of the truth. Drift loses information. Learning gains it.

    Helpful · 3
  4. Brian Otieno Ouma

    Fellow

    Hamza's point stings, and I think it is right. The test of my revised view is whether I would hold it for the man in my class who never speaks, never reads, and still has thirty years to serve. I have started asking myself that each week. So far the answer is yes, but less comfortably, which may be the most honest sign that the view is mine and not just my affection for one reader.

    Helpful · 1