NATURALISM, EMOTIVISM, EGOISM, AND INTUITIONISM
"When we cannot follow what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable." (Rene Descartes)

    Naturalism, the idea that everything is susceptible to scientific explanation (that nature can be understood), goes back to the preSocratic, Democrites, but owes a great deal to the Epicureans and Ockham's nominalism. Naturalism should not be confused with natural law or natural right, despite the similarity in name. It is properly a Renaissance (14th & 15th century revival) creation. At this time in history, Constantinople fell, there was a visual revolution, new inventions were discovered, and a merchant class arose. Above all, there was glorification of humankind. Humanism is defined as faith in human power over life, society, and justice. In this age of discovery, humanism combined with physiology to create a fiercely anti-teleological environment. Remember the scholastic answer to why people have a heart--to circulate blood? Naturalists believed this was circular (teleological) reasoning, and soon Newton was discovering gravity, Galileo the thermometer, and Copernicus the way the universe worked. The criterion of measurability became the rallying cry for naturalists and the basis for natural science.

    There are four basic assumptions to naturalism in general. One, people are closer to animals than angels. Two, church dogma has no place in academic freedom, and the spirit of free inquiry that is inherent in academic freedom is good for the rest of the world too. Three, spiritual, superstitious, and romantic notions about humans should be replaced by an understanding of values as tangible objects of study. Four, science, through sensory observation, experimentation, and mathematics will benefit society. These give us some clues about the rather dim view of naturalism on human nature, but there are some remarkably sharp and well-formulated views of it too, such as the completeness of integrity found in, for example, the objectivism of Ayn Rand (see Bidinotto Blog on Ayn Rand and the Revolutionary Philosophy of Atlas Shrugged). Two branches of naturalism are covered in this lecture. First we will look at the empiricists, or followers of Bacon. Then, we will examine the rationalists, or followers of Descartes. Twentieth century naturalists are discussed within the other two branches.

EMPIRICISTS

    Sir Francis Bacon's (1561-1626) book, the New Atlantis, has the most relevance to criminal justice. It describes an island utopia where superstition is outlawed, government is social welfare oriented, and scientists try to bring about social salvation. Everyone is a scientist. Knowledge is power. Bacon is acclaimed for his theory of the four idols: the tribe (social stereotypes); the cave (one's own preferences); the forum (one's language); the theater (traditional systems of thought). His ethics involve removing these idols in yourself, gathering the facts, arranging the facts, drawing conclusions from the facts, and then acting on the resultant laws. Bacon's dictum is: "Get as little of yourself and others in the way of what you want."

    Despite the simplicity of Bacon's morality, it falls short of being a normative ethics. In fact, it is a meta-ethics. The resultant laws are guides to conducting scholarly inquiry, not conducting oneself in situations. Bacon's contribution to naturalist ethics applies to the behavior of scientists. The facts of biology, psychology, and sociology become the laws of ethics. A value free stance is advocated toward the study of behavior. The emotionlessness, impersonality, and impracticality of Bacon's dictum drew sharp reaction. Subsequent thinkers would criticize naturalism for forgetting to ask what would prevent anarchy if too much freedom were allowed, that is, neglecting the social contract question. Naturalists who insisted on the possibility of a normative ethics called themselves emotivists.

    Emotivism (Urmson, 1968) takes issue with the naturalist idea that moral dilemmas can be studied like scientific hypotheses. Resultant laws are knowable through cognitive ability and not necessarily tied to scientific impartiality. Emotivists like Klemke and Dennes believe that goodness can be measured by one's enthusiasm and tone of voice. Romanell's theory of compossibility is similar to the utilitarian notion of cognoscibility in that knowable laws are what change the least subjectively. It is unfortunate that emotivism is not utilized more by criminal justice because it would justify gut feelings and first impressions. Even in modern techniques of interviewing, Baconian meta-ethics is predominant while emotivism, a relatively undeveloped normative ethics lays dormant.
Bacon's view on crime is that it is natural. Laws do not make crime but they can shape common decency. Criminals offend common decency because of psychological and sociological forces beyond their control. We can probably infer atavism since naturalism is concerned with evolution, but naturalism avoids the genetic fallacy (that people cannot change). Punishment is a juristic duty, distasteful but necessary. Since government's purpose is to maximize freedom, procedural safeguards must be installed to ensure equal opportunity of punishment. For Bacon, the rule would be to do what would have the most fundamental effect by punishing criminals, although there should not be any blanket rules.

    Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) is another utopian writer who is normally credited with starting the essayist tradition in social thought. His book, Utopia, is a satirical account of visitors to an island where the inhabitants have conquered materialism. Gold and silver, not being in demand, are used to adorn the servants. Visitors foolishly mistake the servants for the masters. Life on the island is not unlike Plato's republic. Everyone learns a trade and there is full employment. Work (both industry and agriculture) is limited to six hours a day since workaholism is avoided. Distribution is on the basis of need, there is free health care, and city planning. People represent themselves as their own attorney. Fads and fashions are regulated, so everyone wears similar clothing. Laws are few in number, and professional mercenaries are used to protect the homeland and defend the rights of oppressed peoples everywhere according to rules of engagement. What is unique about More's work is that he advocates a science of penology, what is to be done with offenders once they are locked up. We would expect an explicit criminal justice focus from More, the Sheriff of London.

    One of More's accomplishments was eliminating the death penalty for theft in England. He simply pointed out that since English law required five witnesses, a thief would be better off killing any witnesses so no one could testify. He deplored poverty and unhealthy living conditions as ripe for crime but equally condemned the ostentatious dress of the well-to-do. With earthly connections for making a living and the expectation that people are above the law, crime could be avoided. Unhasty legislators and professional soldiers combined with self-representation means a condition of honesty. No crafty or subtle interpretations would be allowed. Government collects no fines for crime, restitution is to victims, and forced labor in terms of learning a trade is More's penology. This idea justifies what is today called correctional industries.

    It is important to note that learning a trade is more than simply avoiding idleness. The value of a simple, honest, working life is a basic theme in utopian literature as well as the communist community experiments of Owen and Fourier. More is cited favorably by the Schwendingers (Schwendinger and Schwendinger, 1985) as providing a early indictment of capitalism and an implicit theory of middle class delinquency (based on ostentatious dress and ill-timed luxuries). More's thought, however, does not call for the abolition of capitalism, only more equitable pursuit of wealth with guaranteed health. Concern is for the bottom ladder of society, moreover, placing his thought in the same tradition as Bellamy's Looking Backward where a guaranteed national income was advocated.

    Montaigne (1533-1592) is another essayist who resurrected some of Pyrrho's ideas, and is known as the last of the great skeptics. His works, the Essays and Apology, represent an epistemological shift where he tried to come more in line with naturalism's distaste for red tape and loopholes. It should be remembered that Montaigne is the developer of the noble savage thesis which many misattribute to Rousseau. His most notable saying, reminiscent of Pyrrho, is that ignorance is bliss. Stories of Renaissance voyagers impressed Montaigne, enough that what others called savages, he called noble free spirits, and he tried to develop a morality of relativism around this.

    Like most naturalists, Montaigne held people to be vain, stupid, and immoral, but that is the best part of them, allowing a dubious skepticism about manners and decency in everyday life. This merger of ontology and epistemology was problematic for Montaigne, however. In the Essays, he advocated a method of doubt until redundancy, a kind of Sherlock Holmes technique involving a process of elimination. In the Apology, he allowed room for reasoning from experience which is more in line with naturalism's regard of knowledge as power, but he differed on the usefulness of God. Anarchy is approached in the precept that the government that governs least is the best. Society is regarded as a sham, a front of manners and decency. Criminals are driven by psychological inner conflict, they simply don't love themselves enough. Regardless of this, Montaigne regarded rehabilitation as a waste of time. Capital punishment is justified for serious crimes, minor crimes are to be tolerated, and in all cases, the offender must agree with the sentence. Procedural safeguards at trial protect the defendent, but no appeals are allowed. Above all, it is important to be a free thinker, a free spirit.

    Montaigne was a early critic of the court process. He deplored the way courts decree a personality diagnosis without considering the mix of personality and situational influences. His analysis of court is not unlike modern characterizations as status degredation ceremonies (Garfinkel, 1967). Tolerance would be indicated where situational factors predominant. The courts should determine to what extent the finger pulls the trigger and the trigger pulls the finger (Berkowitz & Lepage, 1967). This would act as both procedural safeguard and basis for fair and agreeable punishment.

    Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), another essayist, is the father of leadership theory and developer of the nation-state concept. His works include the Prince and the Discourses, the latter showing how even a democracy can be run his way. While generally concerned with leadership traits and the summum bonum of prudence, Machiavelli also is a systematic thinker allowing us to examine our third ethical system--egoism.

    Machiavelli was the first to write in vernacular Latin, expressing his belief that although people are no good, knowledge is obtained by mingling with them. There is a nominalist thrust to his writing in that people are seen as the only ones making things happen. People are naturally inclined toward power, living moment to moment, and enjoy ego-stroking. Altruism is a sham. A leader must be both loved and feared. The growth and expansion of the state is good, and laws must fit constantly changing circumstances. Only nation-states exist with borders, and such societies are ridden with conflict. Law making and enforcement must be proactive, examples being study commissions, surveillance, infiltration, and entrapment. Public safety is the raison d'etre of the state. Force is inevitable. There is no right to trial except where it is expedient to show mercy. Otherwise, the two types of criminals, both regarded as enemies of the state, should be exterminated. Besides the death penalty, fines and confiscation of property should be used to add to the coffers of the state. Ethical egoism presumes voluntarism, the belief that what is good for the state is good for the individual.

    Applying these steps to the Dirty Harry problem (Klockars, 1983), it can be seen the first three steps are affirmed. Inspector Callahan aims to save the girls life, is torturing the right person, and only shots him in the leg. The fourth step is conditionally affirmed since no sadism is evident, but the act cannot be justified since step five shows tainting of the state. It should be noted that egoism is the dominant ethical system in criminal justice today, and some further examples are in order.

    Consider the problem areas of use of force and qualified immunity. Egoism works best if there are clear policies on behalf of the state. In situation one, you are in hot pursuit of a fleeing felon who will not stop for a roadblock. Would shooting at the tires and accidentally hitting the driver subject you to lawsuit by survivors? Not according to egoism. The chase is a justified end. The roadblock is a related means. Shooting tires is the least severe alternative. It's nothing personal, and you do not taint the state since you're not firing blindly. If anything, there is simply a need for more firearms training.

    In situation two, you recieve a tip on the whereabouts of a fugitive after a Crimestoppers show. It turns out not to be him after a warrantful arrest involving his resistance. Are you liable for false arrest? Not according to egoism. You have probable cause, the arrest will tell, and you might expect fake identification. You have good faith that it is the fugitive, and although the action is unfortunate, it doesn't taint the state. For an example of action over the line, the Rodney King beating is typical because sadism appeared to be involved, and videotaping surely tainted the state. Consideration of advantage to a larger audience is what is expected under egoism, otherwise, honest self-concern and prudence are the good.

    Hobbes (1588-1679), the founder of social contract theory and classical criminology, is the last of the empiricists. His work, the Leviathan, presents a psychologically grounded egoism, which means that his version of social contract theory (sometimes called contractarianism) presumes that ethical norms are the agreed upon rules that people have instituted to promote their own self-interests (this being opposed to, say, a contractualism theory, as might be represented by Kant and others which sees ethical norms as being the result of a mutual free agreement of equal individuals). To understand society, Hobbes said, "you must understand human nature, and to understand human nature, you must understand mother nature." Hobbes popularized use of the state of nature example, and described primitive life as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Bobbio (1993) claims that Hobbes founded the modern natural law tradition. Fear affects the will, but in the end, the will is free. People are not political animals, indeed, not animals at all, but they are in constant conflict and competition with one another. To escape from this condition, people give up their natural rights to a sovereign, agreeing not to kill each other, and once the deal is made, it cannot be gone back on. Other notable contractarians include Locke, Voltaire, and Rousseau, and disagreement centers on whether the deal can be gone back on. He revived the epistemology of associationism, which is based on both observation and experience. Other associationists are Locke and Hume, and disagreement centers on whether cognitivism (expectations and insights) or behaviorism (habits and observable stimulus response chains) explains learning by association. For Hobbes, sensory experiences become associated by four laws: similarity, contrast, succession in time, and coexistence in space. In metaphysics, Hobbes was atheistic. There is no god, only endeavors, or association of particles, in the brain. His basic approach to reality was to break things down into their most mechanical parts. An understanding of the parts is an understanding of the whole.

    Ethical individualism, or its synonym psychological egoism, is not to be confused with ethical universalism, which is utilitarianism and has hedonism as its psychology. The summun bonum for Hobbes is self-preservation, which he regarded as natural as Galileo's principle of inertia. There are three presuppositions of psychological egoism. One, you will tend to promote for yourself the greatest good over evil in the long run. Two, you will always tend to do this because good is determined by your natural appetites. Three, you only appear to do things for others because ultimately, it brings you satisfaction. This contribution to ethics significantly changed the way altruism and sympathy were to be regarded as virtues.

    Society is seen as a superindividual, a thing unto itself, a leviathan, held together by the social contract, a fear of death, a fear of war of all-against-all. Unrestricted government not justified by divine right anymore guarantees personal security. Hobbes was an absolutist when it came to government. Laws are necessary guides to conduct, inducing motion towards perfect obedience. Criminals, driven by short sighted greed and passion must be taught by force that sovereign authority is supreme. In essence, this is egoism's definition of power--to reinforce authority. Might makes right. Even though people are unequal in terms of power, they are equal in their share of protection under the commonwealth. The distributive justice concern of Hobbes was how to fine tune the shares of costs and benefits under this arrangement. This, and little else, is what he meant by deterrence.

    Ayn Rand's philosophy of objectivism is a type of ethical individualism (or more correctly, rational individualism) which holds that there is no greater moral goal than achieving happiness.  As Ayn Rand put it in the appendix to her famous book, Atlas Shrugged: "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."  Three things should be the ruling values and virtues of life: reason, purpose, and self-esteem.  Material well-being is possible for everyone, and no one needs to make others poor to get rich.  While objectivists tend to believe in the need for government, they are libertarian in other ways.  Perhaps the central feature of objectivism is throwing off the myths and superstitions of traditional moral codes (life is a war of dog-eat-dog; love your brother as yourself; to each according to his need).  Self-sacrifice and self-abnegation are things to be avoided in this version of individualism.

RATIONALISTS

    Rationalism, as a branch of naturalism, tried to do many things at once. It tried to find an alternative to skepticism. It attacked the epistemology of sensory experience. It regarded mathematical principles as part of a parallel universe, almost as a theology. Rationalist ethics is an act-deontology because you are supposed to ask if the act you are doing has an obligatory property that is self-evident and simple. The rationalist contribution to philosophy is greatest, however, in metaphysics. Its ethics are derived from a metaphysics that there is no god, or at least not an anthropromorphic one. There are three principles of rationalism which contain ideas going back as far as Plato and owing a great deal to Augustine's method of faith before reason. One, the power of thinking is the essential nature of the soul. Two, thought, being immaterial, is unextended or simple. Three, what is simple, having no parts, is indestructable. Modern rationalists are called analytic philosophers, and some of the more famous ones are Bertrand Russell, author of Principia Mathematica (1872), George Moore (1873-1958), author of Principia Ethica and developer of the phrase, naturalistic fallacy, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) who claimed what is paradoxical is self-evident, and Morris Schlick (1882-1936), the founder of logical positivism and the verifiability principle (a good act falls under a norm which is itself part of a larger norm).

    The father of modern philosophy and inventor of geometry, Descartes (1596-1650), is the first rationalist we will consider in detail. His book, Meditations, contains the clearest exposition of his thought. Descartes' legacy is the free will debate (he believed in it, but his philosophy does not express it), and although he had little to say about crime and justice, certain statements can be constructed by way of implication.

    For Descartes, all living animals operate like mechanical clockwork. An automaton responds mechanically to objects it comes into contact with. The only thing people know a priori or firsthand is that they exist. Cogito ergo sum. Experience validates this through memory. In metaphysics, Descartes believed in an infinite universe where motion is due to mechanical impact. His mechanicism, however, does not require breaking things down into their parts. A whole of something can meet the criterion of being clearly and distinctly true. Society and government serve the needs of individuals, but there is little else Descartes had to say on these matters. Crime clearly results from hastiness and being unreflective. Descartes can be said to be an early criminal psychologist because he advocated that extensive analysis of the amount of responsibility for the crime. This kind of concern implies a focus on procedural justice. He would not be an advocate of the death penalty because there is no guarantee of freedom from error in life. What is most remarkable is Cartesian ethics which encourages us to take a negative, alienated attitude toward ourselves and life. The wheels of justice would indeed move slow in this framework. Other implications can be made via a complete enumeration of the meditations.

    Descartes' 1st meditation established the notions of methodic doubt and the evil genius hypothesis. This means that you should doubt everything because there might be an evil genius deceiving you at every step. Descartes' 2nd meditation claims that the mind exists while the body does not. This means that if the body and material objects exist, they only do so by inference from the certain existence of the mind. His 3rd meditation is regarded as the proof of god because one can conceive of a perfect being who does not deceive. Yet this meditation also contains the notion of casuitry, that everything must have a cause. The connectedness of events are important to know for Descartes, and this hints at the procedural justice requirement of a chain of evidence in a criminal trial. Descartes' 4th meditation says that error is possible because of free will. His 5th meditation is the ontological argument, a reminder that there is only one god who exists because each person can only have one idea of perfection. The 6th meditation invokes a dualism between mind and body, the former as indivisible and the latter as a machine. This dualism has captured the attention of subsequent philosophers a great deal, but Descartes and his philosophy do not rule out completely the idea of interaction (Lavine, 1984).

    Our next rationalist philosopher was a mathematician of cones and inventor of a calculating machine. Pascal (1623-1662) was a friend of Hobbes and took issue with Cartesian metaphysics. He had absolutely nothing to say on crime and justice matters, and it would be exceedingly risky to make inferences. Therefore, his philosophy will only be briefly sketched. In ontology, Pascal regarded the person as a thinking reed. This metaphor captured the imagination of rationalists. It means people are small and fragile yet capable of intuition in a vast universe. In epistemology, Pascal argued for the axiomatic method, statements linked together logically, and the importance of falsifiability, finding the counterexamples that would falsify a theory. A priori principles must pass the axiomatic test, and then, intuition and revelation must be used to find counterexamples. In metaphysics, Pascal said that Descartes neglected god except as the prime mover and neglected people as movers themselves. He is best known for his idea that there is a fifty-fifty chance that god exists which means that people make reality as much as it is already made. People are both creators and creations of reality, an idea that is central to modern symbolic interactionist thought. They cannot help but check their intuitions against another's. In ethics, he advocated a teleological approach, finding the final end of action with an attitude remarkably similar to Descartes' negative alienation. He said that one should seek meaning or salvation with an attitude characterized by having nothing left to lose. Pascal's place in rationalist thought is pivotal because he steered it towards what eventually became the rationalist ethics, intuitionism.

    Spinoza (1632-1677), a mathematician of Euclidian geometry and founder of substance philosophy, substance being a key term meaning the totality of all things, is considered next. His book, Ethics Demonstrated in Geometric Manner, allows some inferences about his views on criminal justice, although much more relevant work, it is suspected, remains untranslated. Spinoza lived in Holland, the safest place for a pure philosopher in seventeenth century Europe. His ideas earned him the nickname, the dangerous athiest, and Russian communists have claimed him as an early materialist. We shall see how his ideas clarify the rationalist approach to punishment.

    Spinoza's determinism takes the form that people are not inherently bad, but naturally antisocial and driven towards self-preservation. His epistemology takes Cartesian mechanicism to its ultimate conclusion. Attributes exist as brain states, but since only mental antecedents can have mental effects, understanding and clarity is achieved by consideration of wholes, totalities, or things-in-themselves. In metaphysics, Spinoza is a pantheist. All is god, god and nature are one, and body and nature are one. The impossibility of nothingness represents an influence of Eastern philosophy, which holds that empty space is real. Spinoza argues that if you pump air out of a jar, there is still something left, what we call a vacuum. Things like vacuums, which cannot be extended, demonstrate when something is clear and understandable.

    His notion of society follows the Hobbesian convention of personal gain to avoid the war of all against all, and government representatives prioritize the relativism of needs by substantive legislation based on geometric principles. Some laws have the properties of lines and the least priority, other laws have the properties of cones and the highest priority, for example. Donald Black (1976) presents a modern exposition of these ideas. Spinoza differs from Hobbes in that power reverts back to the people if rulers abuse power. Crime is evil or blindly selfish, viewed by Spinoza as theodicy, or necessary suffering. Criminals do not understand that there is already enough suffering in the world by causal necessity. Spinoza said that punishment should not be measured by how much suffering it causes. The retributive approach relies on the senses too much. It is better to measure crime and punishment by its own nature, its power relative to already existing suffering. He called this the perfection of punishment, and advocated imaginative but humane ways to deal with offenders, unfortunately outlined in untranslated works. We can, however, consider the ethics of punishment as part of his general ethics of blessedness. By this concept, he meant seeing the union of mind and body, the whole of human nature. In many ways, this refers to the classicist notion of cultivating both mind and body. Only by conditioning the whole person to understand what freedoms are obtainable within the limits of causal necessity will substantive justice arise. It is easy now to see how Russian communism is related in the notion of a new personality being formed through an understanding of necessity.

    Leibniz (1646-1716), inventor of calculus and developer, along with Pascal, of probability theory, is our next rationalist. He worked on creating a universal language. His philosophy makes extensive use of the a priori and a posteriori distinction, and like Pascal's thought, contains much in common with modern symbolic interactionism. His book, Monadology, will be considered here which establishes the metaphysics of occasionalism. Monadology itself is an extension of substance philosophy. Leibniz is perhaps best remembered for his position on the free will issue, specifically the idea that people are active agents of society rather than blank slates determined by society, or what is regarded as the Leibniz-Locke debate.

    Leibniz regarded people as free thinkers and active agents in the construction of society, but most importantly, treated them as clever like wolves. This particular ontology is called homo homini lupus, and is associated with Georg Simmel, a forerunner of symbolic interactionism (Wolff, 1950). Monadology in many ways is a type of nonmaterialistic atomism. Leibniz, the analytic philosopher, believed that all mental concepts are atoms. The most primary atoms are like little mirrors or dewdrops that reflect the whole universe on their surfaces. These atomistic structures are called monads, substances without any parts. They connect individuals and all things to one another in a preestablished harmony. The metaphysics of occasionalism is the idea that we are all flashes in god's mind. God is the architect of the universe, and we perceive causal necessity whenever god intervenes in the world. This notion is similar to the scholastic conception of natural law. Leibniz added that logic can help discover cause, but emphasized the notion of divinely preestablished harmony.

    Government is a representative body striving toward perfection, and Leibniz's model of society is one where this is the best of all possible worlds. This particular model of society was spoofed in Voltaire's Candide. Order and freedom are synthesized in the logic of reasonableness. Reasonableness is the standard against which governments and punishment are judged. Reasonableness is associated with the tort of negligence, conjuring up an image of the everyday man in shirt sleeves, tending his garden (Naffine, 1987). Leibniz was a retributivist, however, and he extended the duty not to act foolish to the idea of not acting too clever. He believed that punishment should be matched to the severity of crime, but it should not happen too quickly. Hasty punishment leads to the same kind of confusion that drives crime. Confusion results from the contingency of truth, the main ethical proposition for Leibniz. Simple and primitive truths are best, but people often outfox themselves by trying to make certain social worlds (regional or local ones) more perfect than the world as a whole. Social worlds analysis (Unruh, 1980) is intended to avoid treating the offender as a negative alienated individual. Justice would require a consideration of the locales, sites, or social worlds that the offender was most involved in before analyzing the severity of harm.

    The last of the classical rationalists was Berkeley (1685-1753), the Bishop of Cloyne, himself an able mathematician. His book, A New Theory of Vision, contains a commonsense notion of justice and introduced an ethics based on the metaphysics of immaterialism, a philosophy bordering on solipsism.

    Berkeley regarded all forms of matter that are supposedly involved in determining human behavior as phantoms. The mind is all that exists and is separate in nature from matter. He accepted an empiricist epistemology, that the mind is a blank slate upon which society writes, but held that free will channeled all knowledge into two forms: esse is percipi and esse is posse percipi. The first is to be perceived in god's mind. The second is to be perceived in other's minds. People strive to be perceived, or achieve status, in one of these categories. The doctrine of immaterialism holds that by creation, god made the world knowable but placed knowledge about hot and cold, for example, in the mind, not in nature. It borders on solipsism because ultimately, there is no external world to be perceived at all. It avoids solipsism by a commonsense ethics. Things don't disappear when we turn our backs on them. The tree still falls in the forest even if no one hears it. Commonsense to Berkeley is the unity of being perceived in god's mind and others' minds. He also regarded this as the unity of equity and equality. Government maintains stability in a society fraught with fear by enlightened commonsense, appealing to god's mind when it has to. He was rather harsh concerning crime which he described as a poison rotting away from within. Criminals were to be reconditioned, as in Spinoza's philosophy, to be less seekers of status in others' minds. Punishment concerns would be shaped by this consideration, and also presumably harsh, although, like Spinoza's thought, Berkeley's ideas on this topic remain untranslated. To this day, the commonsense element of rationalist ethics, intuitionism, remains undeveloped.

    As mentioned previously, rationalist ethics is an act-deontology. It seeks intrinsic goodness through the best form of direct awareness and values primitive terms like good, right, fitting, or valuable. It is opposed to act-utilitarianism because nothing can be maximized since people are endowed with the same amounts of commonsense. People simply know the answer before they ask a question, and they can anticipate disagreements. Intuitionism, also called commonalism, claims to be aware of nonnatural qualities of an act in a way that is not literally observable. Truth is simply known. There are two kinds of intuitionists today. Analytic philosophers, like Ayer, say that certain utterances express and evoke attitudes similar to equations like two plus two equals four. Synthetic philosophers, like Hare, say certain utterances invoke intelligence and a sense of moral imperative as in statements like it is wrong to kill children. The analytic-synthetic debate boils down to semiotics in ethics, whether action producing statements contain simple descriptions of the good or link what is with what ought to be. Both sides agree on the role of intuitions, which are like unstated agreements or words of honor that the material facts don't really matter, we will not be worse off than before, and no distress comes from arguing about it. Intuitionism can be broken down into steps applicable to criminal justice decision-making regarding the use of discretion.

    Step one requires that what is contemplated be simple to do, that is, it comes to the mind in all its wholeness. Step two can be accomplished by a feeling of obligation, or more precisely, a sense that it has to happen. Casuitry requires that one knows the chain of events leading to an action, or at least an earlier event that set things on this course. Step three involves the absence of ego. The contemplated action is self-justifying. You would be emotionally disinterested. Step four is the verifiability principle. The act falls under a norm which is itself part of a larger norm. Step five allows for the checking of your intuition against another's intuition, reasonableness if you will. The person you have in mind must be someone similar to yourself.

    Take for example a scenario where you are a rookie police officer on motorized patrol by yourself. On a downtown streetcorner, you notice a young girl who appears to be prostituting because she's bending over to talk in car windows. You pick her up and discover she's only 14. She says she's just asking for directions and money to get home and gives you her word she won't bother any drivers again. Using the steps to intuitionism, do you have sufficient grounds for arrest? Working the first step, the answer is no. Booking a juvenile prostitute would be a difficult and complicated procedure. Besides, you have no material proof, but this doesn't matter anyway. You could take her to the stationhouse and let your sergeant sort it all out. Working step two, you realize there is causal necessity. You have reason to believe she was prostituting because this is a streetcorner where known prostitutes do what she was doing. For step three, your ego may be involved since she has given you a story intended to make you feel sorry for her. You may be emotionally self-interested. With step four, you are beginning to consider releasing her. She has given you her word and sounds sincere (not required or by convention) which falls under a larger norm of honesty. For you to act, wouldn't equality demand you pick up every suspicious person you see? Finally, in step five, you consider what another officer like yourself would do, and you are again tempted to release her for fear of looking like a renegade police officer. Because you only have enough evidence for a stationhouse adjustment, your ego is too involved, and your intuition is to release her at her word, avoiding making things worse than before, your best decision under intuitionism is probably to release her.

    Egoism, intuitionism and even emotivism are powerful ethical frameworks. Egoism and emotivism have the appealing characteristic of quicker decision-making, but intuitionism should be considered seriously. Combined with an animalistic ontology and associationist epistemology, intuitionism can become a habit of thought resulting in quick decision making. Neither is any one ethical framework more compatible with leniency. Intuitionism appears to suffer from this, but consider a scenario involving prison life. Under the roof of such an unvirtuous environment, other norms than honesty would have to be found to meet the verifiability principle. It is hoped this exposure to constructing ethics stimulates your own constructions.

INTERNET RESOURCES
About Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand
An Introduction to Naturalistic Ethics
Catholic Encyclopedia on Rationalism
Egoism
Foundations of Cartesian Ethics
Free Dictionary article on Naturalistic Ethics
G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica
Intuitionism and the Philosophy of Mathematics
Intuitionism versus Emotivism
Naturalism, Situation Ethics, and Value Theory
Sir Francis Bacon and the Four Idols
The Objectivist Center

PRINTED RESOURCES
Berkowitz, L. & Lepage, A. (1967). “Weapons as aggression eliciting stimuli,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 7: 202-07.
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Last updated: Sept. 30, 2006
Not an official webpage of APSU, copyright restrictions apply, see Megalinks in Criminal Justice
O'Connor, T.  (Date of Last Update at bottom of page). In Part of web cited (Windows name for file at top of browser), MegaLinks in Criminal Justice. Retrieved from http://www.apsu.edu/oconnort/rest of URL accessed on today's date.