Recently i published an article at the libertarian standard titled Intent is Like Remorse that didn’t get nearly any feedback. I have been toying with the notion of expanding the article and maybe seeking publicatin elsewhere but would like to gather some feedback on the first article. Anyone willing to offer their criticism?
I didn’t read Kinsella and Tinsley (and don’t really feel inclined to) but if you have interpreted them correctly, then I like your article very much. I have long said, we can’t judge intent, we can only judge action. If intent is part of the restitution process, so be it.
I definitely think you should continue to develop this.
Also, you hinted (unintentionally?) at the end about a possible free market justice solution. Someone needs to develop the ideas of non-coercive shunning and blacklisting information networks, not unlike Ripoff Report.
I think that intent and remorse are not alike but apply differently. They apply differently when talking about actions taken to reverting to a previous state. Remorse does not apply when talking about reverting to conditions before the act of aggression.
Consider a scenario where a person A owns a unique valuable object. A person B eats this valuable and it gets entangled in his intestines. Let us say it is now impossible for the person A to get his valuable back unless he guts the person B causing him to die. (A terrible example, but I can’t think of a more realistic one right now.)
Now if the person B intentionally stole and hid the valuable it is within the person’s A rights to gut him and to cause him to die, in order to get his valuable back, because the person B brought it on himself knowingly. Wether he now regrets it or not.
Do you agree thus far? If so would you then also say that even if the person B ate the valuable accidentally, that the person A may still gut him, without being guilty of murder, if that is the only way he can get back his object and bring back the previous condition applying to him?
But I would not say this. I would say that harm caused accidentally can be removed and the previous state established only if the removal would not inflict on the accidental aggressor a disproportionally high amount of harm than he had himself accidentally caused.
@LS Thanks for taking the time to read the article, I will continue to develop this.
@ Marko. What I have noticed within the development of this essay is the close relationship between intent and the theory of what constitutes a threat.
As to your point, I can’t subscribe to the notion that an individual can begin cutting out a valuable out of the stomach of the thief simply because they are the owner of the valuable. My reasoning is not simply because the other individual’s stomach is also someone’s property, but because I believe such action would be denied and delegated by and to security agencies. Thus, a security agencies wouldn’t want to feud with each other over scenarios where someone takes justice into their own hands (after all, we can assume that life insurance policies will be involved under free market security), thus, it would likely be the policy of a security agency that scenarios involving theft—with some disclaimer—should be delegated to the security agency. Now, if the person attempted to steal your child then you can see why justice would be reserved for the individual property owner.
If we can accept that your scenario of the thief and the victim does indeed make it to an arbitration company (probably by way of you calling your security agency 911 and them arresting the person and holding them until trial) then we can begin to distinguish between intent and remorse
We can probably accept that remorse is irrelevant to the actions involved correct? Simply because the thief feels really bad about what they did does not mean that the restitution should be discounted correct? The arbitrator should not be factoring in someone’s remorse into the ruling of restitution. Likewise, I don’t believe that an arbitrator should be factoring in an individual’s intent into the process of restitution. Whether the person intended to swallow the valuable or did by accident is irrelevant to the fact that the valuable is swallowed.
My point is that the arbitrator should rule on action not intent or remorse
Now, after restitution is decided, the legal representatives may proceed to make a case for the fact that the restitution decided should be discounted because of either remorse, intent or both. But this is up to the victim to decide,
This ^^^
I enjoyed your article. I’m always inspired when I see people firing up their intellects to further refine libertarian theory. That being said, I’d like to offer a few comments for you to think about as your further develop this idea.
First off, I think you may want to consider changing the title. “Intent is Like Remorse” seems to indicate remorse playing a major role in the argument when it barely plays any role at all. In the article you say:
This article argues that intent, like remorse, is irrelevant to restitution. By default, intent, like any other subjective value judgment (for example remorse) should play the role of a restitution discount variable determined by the victim of an aggressive act, not the arbitration company.
Based on this, I would assume your basic argument would look something like this:
- Premise 1: Subjective value judgements are irrelevant to restitution.
- Premise 2: Remorse if a subjective value judgement.
- Conclusion 1: Remorse is irrelevant to restitution.
- Premise 3: Intent is like remorse.
- Conclusion 2: Intent is irrelevant to restitution.
Although reading the whole article I’d say your actual argument goes something like this (although I had difficulty detecting the structure):
- Premise 4: Intent is a subjective value judgement.
- Premise 5: Subjective value judgements are personal and cannot be discovered by third party persons (aka arbitrators).
- Premise 6: Remorse is also a subjective value judgement.
- Premise 7: Intent is like remorse.
- Conclusion 3: Intent cannot be discovered by third party persons (aka arbitrators).
- Premise 8: Things that are personal and cannot be discovered by third party persons should not be considered when deciding restitution.
- Conclusion 4: Intent should not be considered when deciding restitution.
I think you could drop remorse entirely and not miss a beat. In fact I recommend it because the “Intent is like remorse” premise possibly shaky to begin with Consider semantics. Remorse is a noun, and intent, while it can technically be called a noun, is really a nominalization of the verb intend. Verbs fill a completely different role in our language (and by extension: our thoughts) than nouns do. Can a verb = a noun? I think it is a mistake to relate them as strongly as you seem to want to. Talking about remorse is talking about an object. Talking about intent is talking about an action.
Furthermore, I’d like to bring up subjective value judgements and the role they play in your argument. You don’t give the definition of how you are using the term subjective value judgement so it is hard to tell how broadly you are using it. Now, whereas I can accept how a noun, like remorse, can be the object of a subjection value judgement being that it is a person, place, or thing, I don’t how a verb could fill that role. What does it mean to value “to be” or “to go”? It seems likely that “to intend” isn’t a subjective value judgement at all, and is more like a verbal description of purposeful action. In this sense, intent could be seen as the action that starts the causal chain of events leading to the outcome being arbitrated. If there is no intent, then the causal chain doesn’t begin with the human in question and instead is due to the nature of the universe. Incidentally, this is similar Kinsella and Tinsley’s (KT) argument.
For the sake of argument, however, let’s ignore those previous remarks and look at the rest of the article.
You seem to focus the majority of the article defending different situations in which Premise 5 is true while simply assuming Premise 4. Either way I’d agree that this is an interesting argument. Indeed, Austrian economics and praxeology tend to make it a point to ignore subjective value judgements and instead focus on the demonstrated action we can actually witness. This appears to be your approach as you advocate for arbitration companies to judge based purely on the aggressive action in question and ignore intent.
I’ll have to admit though, there are major shortcomings to this approach. A scenario I didn’t see brought up in either your paper or KT’s is one of benevolence gone wrong. Suppose I am choking and you notice this. You perform the Heimlich Maneuver and are successful in saving my life. Unfortunately, in the process you inadvertently break two of my ribs. Now, as far as I know, there would be no reason why I couldn’t sue you over the broken ribs. I personally would hope that the arbitration company overseeing this case would quickly dismiss it due to the circumstances, but I can’t see that happening in the arbitration system you advocate because breaking ribs is aggression and aggression must be punished. No two ways about it.
KT would argue that it was not your intent to break my ribs; it was to save your life. Certainly there was an action that lead to the broken ribs, but (and this is key) it was not a human action because there was no intent and thus the causal chain breaks before it gets to you. I don’t believe you adequately addressed this distinction. A person sneezing, or a person’s heart beating are actions, but they are not human actions in that they are automatic behaviors and not purposeful. This was KT’s point. Purposeful behavior is human action; if behavior isn’t purposeful then it isn’t a human action. And how can you possibly seek restitution from a human for a non-human action? KT’s answer is that it would be wrong to do so. Justice must weigh the extent of the control the human had over the action.
As to how an arbitration company is supposed to have access to intent assuming that it is a subjective value preference; I think the problem is one of scope. Economics ignores the nitty gritty of subjective values because of the calculation problem involved with determining very large numbers of dynamic preferences and use them to create policies or systems that themselves will cause preferences to change in response. It is certainly an intractable problem. However, dealing with one person’s value preferences at a static moment in time is not the same kind of problem. I believe it is possible to discover what was intended through careful investigation. For example, I’ve known my wife for a while now, and could probably tell you, good degree of accuracy, what her intentions are when she acts certain ways. Same with some of my friends. Granted, this isn’t a foolproof method, but is simply meant to suggest that discovering intentions isn’t an impossible task.
One final point. I think an important aspect of society is at stake in a debate like this. I know there are many different flavors, but it certainly seems libertarian to allow arbitration companies to option of offering rulings based on subjective value judgements if they want. Then the market could decide if that was a workable system or not. Perhaps, freedom to choose should be the default choice.
I don’t pretend to be an expert in this area; just a fellow-traveler, so take my words with a grain of salt. Like I said, I enjoyed reading your article, and I look forward to your future work.
@Robbie Six Thank you for the quality remarks. Upon reflection i do think the argument could have been strengthened more with added scenarios and the article (orginally a blog) was rushed in structure, but you may be right about the use of the word remorse.
Thanks!