Why not bring back corporal punishment? That's a question raised by Blair's macho talk about overhauling the criminal justice system. Corporal punishment has obvious advantages. It's cheap. And it would satisfy the public's desire to see criminals punished. Sure, it wouldn't take independent financial advice criminals off the streets, so it's an alternative to non-custodial sentences rather than to jail. Would it be an effective deterrent? This is an empirical question which could be tested in pilot studies in different areas: how would the stocks, flogging or the pillory fare against tagging or community service? If the government is serious about evidence-based policy-making, it would want to find out. There are two objections to corporal punishment that aren't good enough. One is that it's illiberal. I just don't see this. Are a few public floggings really a lesser exercise of state power than a full therapeutic-managerialist approach to trying to change criminals' characters? And remember - corporal punishment is consistent with the due legal process that Blair is trying to undermine . Who's being anti-liberal? Another misplaced objection is that corporal punishment is barbaric. New Labour cannot use this objection - not when it wants to spend billions on the means of burning millions of innocent people to death. What's more, good deterrents are necessarily barbaric.

I’ve recently been thinking a little bit (and only a little bit!) about the relation between intention and intentional action. Presumably, an intention is a mental state. And an intentional action is an action with a certain property, namely, the property of being intentional. According to the simple view of intentional action, intentional action requires the corresponding intention—that is, SVI: x intentionally A-s only if x intends to A. Nearly everyone thinks that this principle is just obvious the first time they see or hear it. But most philosophers of action reject it; they copy files to dvd believe, instead, that it is a necessary condition for intentional action only that the actor has some intention or other. The standard way to argue against SVI is to offer putative counterexamples, such as variants on Harman’s sniper case (in which a sniper, in knowingly firing his gun within earshot of his enemy, is said to intentionally alert the enemy to his presence, though he does not intend to do so; rather, he simply intends to shoot his target) or Knobe’s harm case (in which a businessman, in implementing a program that he knows will harm the environment, is said to intentionally harm the environment, though he does not intend to do so; rather, he simply intends to make a profit). One (in my opinion) very good philosopher sympathetic to SVI (who shall remain nameless) has responded to these not uncontroversial cases in conversation in an interesting manner.

Well, Sammy Sosa hit a milestone home run last night, and Fernando Vina and John Kruk spent a few moments (ESPN spent far more time over the course of "Baseball Tonight" and "Sportscenter") touting the achievement. They discussed Sosa's Hall of Fame worthiness (of course he is, sayeth the experts), whether he's a first balloter (not sure, sayeth the experts). But one thing they didn't discuss was steroids (the AP mentions it near the end of an ESPN-linked game summary ). Neither of the former players uttered one word about the suspicions surrounding Sosa, his "testimony" to Congress, or his physical changes that, in replays of his 1st, 100th through 600th dingers, how to install central air conditioning were ridiculously obvious. It's like a time warp has happened back to '98-'99, and all the ignominious, bulging history of those days has just been left for dead. It's ironic, then, that on the day Sosa hits #600, fireworks went off over Arlington, Tom Hicks (who employs Sosa and paid for the fireworks) felt the need to carpetbomb accusations of someone else's suspected transgressions, while Jason Giambi checked his calendar for openings. All this as fans are encouraged to celebrate Sosa, as former players inflatedly gush over his "comeback".

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I’ve recently been thinking a little bit (and only a little bit!) about the relation between intention and intentional action. Presumably, an intention is a mental state. And an intentional action is an action with a certain property, namely, the property of being intentional. According to the simple view of intentional action, intentional action requires the corresponding intention—that is, SVI: x intentionally A-s only if x intends to A. Nearly everyone thinks that this principle is just obvious the first time they see or hear it. But most philosophers of action reject it; they believe, instead, that it is a necessary condition for intentional action only that the actor has some intention or other. The standard way to argue against SVI is to offer putative counterexamples, such as variants on Harman’s sniper case (in which a sniper, in knowingly firing his gun within earshot of his enemy, is said to intentionally alert the enemy to his presence, though he does not intend to do so; rather, he simply intends to shoot his target) or Knobe’s harm case (in which a businessman, in implementing a program that he knows will harm the environment, is said alka slim to intentionally harm the environment, though he does not intend to do so; rather, he simply intends to make a profit). One (in my opinion) very good philosopher sympathetic to SVI (who shall remain nameless) has responded to these not uncontroversial cases in conversation in an interesting manner.