Luck and Punishment: Joel Marks tries to answer the following question from a read of PhNow: "The journalist Tom Utley has recently written (Daily Telegraph 04/11/2005) about a proposed new British law to punish drivers who cause a death through carelessness with up to five years' imprisonment. The journalist noted that he himself had once inadvertently (and carelessly) driven his car straight over a junction, but without causing an accident. He therefore was no differently placed in his actions and motives than a driver who had killed several people. Now one could argue that the driver who killed others should be punished in order to encourage all other drivers to exercise care. But this offends against the so-called Kantian Principle -- that people be always treated as ends, not as means. A deterrent punishment treats the offender as a means, by making an example of him. It is therefore arguably utilitarian. Is there any other way one might claim that it is right to punish someone for carelessness in such cases where very many are occasionally similarly careless, and so perform the same acts, but without any terrible (accidental) consequences?" Link
monochrom is an art-technology-philosophy group having its seat in Vienna and Zeta Draconis. monochrom is an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science, context hacking and political activism. Our mission is conducted everywhere, but first and foremost in culture-archeological digs into the seats (and pockets) of ideology and entertainment. monochrom has existed in this (and almost every other) form since 1993. [more]
