Future law: Prepunishment and the causal theory of verdicts

Noûs 40 (1):166–183 (2006)
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Abstract

The poster boy for my paper is the King's Messenger in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. Recall that since the White Queen lives backwards, her memory works forwards. She pities Alice who can only remember things after they happen. Alice asks which things the Queen remembers best: `Oh, things that happened the week after next,' the Queen replied in a careless tone. `For instance, . . . there's the King's Messenger. He's in prison now, being punished: and the trial doesn't even begin till next Wednesday: and of course the crime comes last of all.' (Chapter V) Is the King's Messenger being treated unjustly? Why not prepunish people for their future crimes? True, it is generally easier to have knowledge about past crimes than future crimes. But is unpredictability the only problem with prepunishment?

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10.1111/j.0029-4624.2006.00605.x

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Roy Sorensen
University of Texas at Austin

Citations of this work

Knowledge and Legal Proof.Sarah Moss - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Epistemology.
The Real-Life Issue of Prepunishment.Preston Greene - 2022 - Social Theory and Practice 48 (3):507-523.
The consequentialist problem with prepunishment.Preston Greene - 2021 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 10 (3):199-208.
What's Wrong with Prepunishment?Alex Kaiserman - 2023 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 104 (3):622-645.

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References found in this work

Reasons and Persons.Derek Parfit - 1984 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
Thought.Gilbert Harman - 1973 - Princeton, NJ, USA: Princeton University Press.
Reasons and Persons.Joseph Margolis - 1986 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47 (2):311-327.
Moral thinking: its levels, method, and point.R. M. Hare (ed.) - 1981 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
A causal theory of knowing.Alvin I. Goldman - 1967 - Journal of Philosophy 64 (12):357-372.

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