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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 June 2015
My lack of training in the discipline of academic philosophy will be evident in the following comments on the Conference papers. Nonetheless, having been associated with criminal justice research and policy over many years, my thinking may serve as an example of what philosophers have to put up with if they attempt to communicate with persons of my background.
1. National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals, The Courts Standard 16.7 (Washington D.C.: U.S. Printing Office, 1973).Google Scholar
2. This seems to follow from communication theory, specifically, Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety. Ashby, R.W., Design of a Brain (London: 1952)Google Scholar as elaborated in Beer, S., Decision and Control (London: Unwin, Woking, 1978).Google Scholar
3. See Meehl, P.E., Clinical versus Statistical Prediction (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1954).Google Scholar
4. The dramatic incident should not be thought to address the general case. I realise that this point provides an implicit criticism of the whole procedures of courts of appeal, in that only a selected set of cases are dealt with by them; and hence any general principles of sentencing they may base on this evidence is faulty.
5. I am much inclined to accept Timo Airaksinen’s view that the demand for punishment can be best explained on the basis of evolution, and that it is not now possible to “justify” it.
6. Here I will have to omit any discussion of the interface between individual moral positions and the moral position exemplified by the state in its policies. I will maintain the distinction between individuals or small collectives within the jurisdiction (which I designate micro) and the social, political structure, which in the present case, is usually the judicial system (macro). The complex nature of the interface between micro and macro is well discussed in Pepinsky, H., The Geometry of Violence and Democracy (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1991) c. 5.Google Scholar
7. See Gottfredson, D.M., et. al., Guidelines for Parole and Sentencing: A Policy Control Method (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1978).Google Scholar
8. Lanza, R., “The Past Needs its People” (1991) 1751 New Scientist 68 at 69.Google Scholar
9. This states that discrete events may have a continuous cause. Breaks in the fossil record do not invalidate the theory of evolution. See Zeeman, E.C., Catastrophe Theory, Selected Papers, 1972-77 (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley).CrossRefGoogle Scholar