The deserts of meaningless words

Jeremy Patrick (jhaeman@hotmail.com)

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice. "Whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all."

Frequently, I think of a cartoon I saw in a magazine several months ago depicting a stereotypical college professor standing in front of a chalkboard. At the top of the chalkboard, written in big block letters, were the words "THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE 20TH CENTURY." And under these words are various questions, taking up the bulk of the chalkboard:

"What precisely do you mean by 'accomplishment?'" "What exactly are you referring to by the term 'philosophy?'" etc.

Jokes, of course, are funniest when they contain a kernel of truth. Much of the philosophical scholarship of the past 100 years (whether under the rubric of post-modernism, post-structuralism, moral relativism, emotivity, or even existentialism) was devoted to exploring what various concepts meant and, specifically, whether the moral language we use has any real meaning beyond the expression of personal preference.

Philosophers in the 20th Century understood that we often use words in everyday speech that are incoherent or internally inconsistent. Some questions, such as the meaning of "love" or "friendship," are pedantic and generally irrelevant. Exploration of other concepts may help resolve academic debates that have continued for centuries, but have little significance to most people. Nietzsche took us "Beyond Good and Evil," while philosophers like Anthony Flew and Kai Nielsen have argued that the question "Does God exist?" is irrational because the entire concept of "God" is contradictory and incoherent.

A few special concepts, however, have been the cause of bloodshed, war and even revolutions: honor, pride, virtue and liberty. The problem is exacerbated when these problematic, and possibly meaningless, terms are used, not just in everyday speech, but in scholarship and policy-making.

A brief example: In 1976, the Supreme Court was faced with one of its most controversial issues: whether capital punishment, after a four-year moratorium, should be reinstated in the United States. If capital punishment didn't further "legitimate state interests," it would violate the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Interestingly, of all of the possible arguments for capital punishment the Supreme Court may have considered (such as its cost-effectiveness or ability to provide "closure" to victims), it held that only two were legitimate: deterrence and retribution.

Deterrence, of course, is almost universally seen as a valid purpose of punishment. If deterrence were the sole legitimate purpose, the issue would be resolved by asking if the death penalty deterred. The answer: a resounding no. Instead, we have an additional purpose of "retribution," which is generally understood as making sure that people get what they "deserve." And here, the problem becomes apparent.

What does "desert" mean? Unlike deterrence, there is no objective way to measure "desert." It was, is and always will be a simple expression of personal taste. It embodies the dangerous belief that mere intuitions or feelings are sufficient justification for general rules.

As Kant said, "A knowledge of laws, and of their morality, can scarcely be derived from any sort of feeling ... unless we wish to open wide the gates to every kind of fanaticism."

History provides ample support for this view. Michael Foucault's classic text, "Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison" details the history of punishment from roughly the 17th Century to the 20th (he died in 1960). Upon reading the book, one fact becomes starkly apparent: the punishments society has inflicted on its own members have varied drastically in intensity, duration and viciousness, but one common factor remains: it was always "deserved."

It was not very long ago that England had more than 200 crimes punishable by the death penalty, including theft. Several cultures, including Puritans, believed in flogging or maiming. Death penalties varied from drawing and quartering, boiling in oil, ritual disembowelment and probably any other form of cruel torture imaginable. When anesthesia was first introduced, many religious leaders objected to its use during pregnancy since the mother "deserved" the pain because of Eve's sin. Any infliction of pain, no matter how cruel, irrational or unnecessary, could be justified if you could simply argue that the person "deserved" it.

The problem is not that there is a gray area. With almost any category, we will have some difficulty deciding what belongs and what does not. The problem is that there are no black and white areas, no grounds where everyone in society can agree. And even when a majority of our country votes on what the appropriate "desert" for a certain crime is, we have no way of knowing if we are correct or if medieval England (or any other society in any other time) is. As Karl Menninger, a prominent critic of our penal system said, "It does not advance a solution to use the word [desert]. It is a subjective emotional word ... the concept is so vague, so distorted in its application, so hypocritical and usually so irrelevant that it offers no help in the solution of the crime problem ... but results in its exact opposite - injustice, injustice to everybody." John Rawls, the most revered American political philosopher of the 20th Century, had a similar view of desert.

In the context of capital punishment then, America is left without guidance. No fact, no evidence, no argument can ever "prove" that the execution is not a just "desert."

So long as a majority of the public (or at least five members of the Court) believe that it is "deserved," things will not change. I suppose I would not be so concerned about letting a democracy decide questions of "desert" if I had the least confidence that it knew what the term actually means: absolutely nothing.

Modern philosophy is often criticized as having destroyed faith in everything that is important: morality, God, goodness, patriotism. Perhaps that faith was never justified to begin with.

(c) Jeremy Patrick, 2001