Louis Pojman basically sends a strong moral signal, and it would be hard to disagree that virtue should be rewarded, and vicious behaviors should be punished in some way. If a rational person disagreed with that idea, it would be news. The terrorist who sets off a bomb in a building and kills 30 people should not be treated the same way as the Good Samaritan doctor in Africa healing sick children as a volunteer because he cares.
That said, author Carrie Wilson makes a good point in her essay “Let the punishment fit the crime: The law of just desserts”; she writes that good should be rewarded and vice punished but it’s not as simple as the statement presents it to be. Who will be the judge of what is good and what is evil? She asks. Wilson notes that Pojman believes, “Our sense of merit, especially regarding desert, seems to cry out for an omniscient and omnipotent Judge…” that will dole out the rewards for the good people and slap the bad guys with punishment.
Short of an omnipotent judge to swoop down and deal with good and evil, who and what is to carry out justice in this regard? Pojman says that humans have a “deep intuitive sense, which the principle of fittingness signifies…” and Wilson has a problem with trusting humans’ intuitive sense. So do I. According to Pojman truth is “obvious on reflection” but how many citizens among us are pure as the driven snow when it comes to objective truth?
Wilson wonders, will some “magical strength” be sent down from above, giving people this deep intuitive sense in which moral value judgments will be obvious on reflection? Wilson also questions the concept that there are only two kinds of people — good, and evil. No one is all evil and no one is totally benevelant either. We’re part wonderful and yet we have flaws.
Meantime Stefany Smith coyly questions the idea of simply agreeing with Pojman’s statement per se. it’s a matter of agreeing with the theory in its whole context, Smith observes. Pojman is alluding to how things “should be” and not how things really are, according to Smith’s take on the passage. Moreover, Smith believes that in the real world of American society today, things “…actually turn out quite opposite from the initial statement.” In other words, Smith notes that many “criminals” sit in jails and prisons, incarcerated while guilty men who had good lawyers are “free to roam the streets” (Smith, 2010, p. 1). Of course that is a generalization by Smith, but it does seem that every couple weeks new DNA testing shows that the African-American man who was sitting on death row did not do the killing after all, and he is released after 12 years rotting in prison.
Another point Smith makes is that people work hard, sometimes taking two jobs, to make ends meet, and on the other side of town a white collar criminal works a couple hours a week and makes thousands of dollars on some scheme. So, notwithstanding what Pojman posits about good being rewarded and bad getting their just deserts, “…it is not true today that you get what you put out,” Smith asserts.
Conclusion
Okay, this is philosophy, so the reader can assume that what Pojman was offering was an argument that the world should function this way, good rewarded, bad punished, and perhaps that is a goal, impossible as it would appear to be in the current social and political climate in America, that is more important than the reality that its out of reach. As Smith points out, “Is this world possible?” Of course this kind of a world is not possible, nor is it possible to imagine people living in peace because they understand justice and respect others’ viewpoints. What Pojman is proposing is a philosophical guideline, a concept, not unlike those that the Christian Bible poses: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Is this possible? Not in every situation, of course, but it is a good thought and even coming close to achieving this goal is a positive step forward.
Works Cited
Smith, Stefany. (2010). Common Misunderstandings in Philosophy: Pojman’s Argument for Merit or Desert. Associated Content. Retrieved Nov. 17, 2010, from http://www.associatedcontent.com.
Wilson, Carrie. (2010). Let the punishment fit the crime: The law of just desserts.” Helium.
Retrieved Nov. 17, 2010, from http://www.helium.com/items/1440031-merit-dessert/print.
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