Sorry if I didn’t answer your questions, I’ll try again. There’s a chance that I’m not answering the questions in a way you like because I frame the questions differently.

> You are happy to lock up a criminal because ‘their brain and bodies’ make a predictably bad behaviour, so it seems like you do think the individual is ‘responsible.’

I suppose we need to unpack various meaning(s) of “responsible” then.

To clarify, I don’t hold a person ‘responsible’ in the way most people do; e.g. many people will suggest someone deserves a punishment because they had the freedom to do otherwise. I reject the idea that people have conscious free will. The universe just unfolds; individual decisions flow from the laws of the universe.

To clarify my argument: incarceration is just when the other options don’t work; i.e. the consequences are undesirable.

So, for example, if it were possible to take a dangerous person and guarantee that they would not be in an environment or situation where they would be a danger again, I don’t see the point of judging or punishing them based solely on some (mistaken) notion that they could’ve done anything differently.

That said, punishment may be just to the extent that it dissuades future lawbreaking.

Yes, there are consequences to one’s actions, especially in a society that strives for mutual respect and the rule of law. I think this is what you mean by ‘responsibility’?

I don’t care for how many people use ‘responsibility’.

(1) Too often such a meaning is so skewed towards individualism that it almost by definition rules out exploring collective action or systematic failures.

(2) It is easy to find the last proximate thing that “went wrong” and hold the person who did it “responsible”. But what about the more significant factors?

In so many cases, I think people expect people to be ‘responsible’ in ways that defy statistics. We need to stop “blaming” individuals and instead focus on solving problems.

Look at the number of car crashes. Are we really going blame the individuals? It seems awfully predictable that this many people are going to die. I touched on this issue in my above comment. It is much smarter to treat this as a system. Singling out particular people doesn’t solve the problem.

Another example. The phrase “don’t drink and drive” is good advice, but if you look at the number of times that drunk people get behind the wheel, it is clear that we can’t rely on individual responsibility to get the job done. Hence social movements for designated drivers, rules for people who serve alcohol, and more.

Judgmentalism is tricky to pin down. I try to distinguish an assessment from a judgment; an assessment is about facts whereas a judgment is about values. So when I talk about judgmentalism, I’m talking about this tendency of people to look at other people’s mistakes, and say/think “they should have known better and acted differently”.

I think I understand your perspective. Just to check: what is your stance on seatbelt laws and why?

I think it is in society’s interest to dissuade people from doing idiotic things. Of course, there is value in individual freedom too.

How often do completely victimless crimes occur?. The person who doesn’t wear their seatbelt ends up going to the hospital. That requires money and resources. Due to insurance and/or public funding, that person is not going to pay the full cost of that visit. Even if they paid the full cost, it still would have an effect on other people wanting to use the service around the same time.

> In this case I think our behaviour should be to allow people to make risky personal decisions and accept the consequences for those decisions.

Except that society likes having people around that are, well, alive, unmaimed, etc. for many reasons — for intrinsic value and also to contribute to society.

I’m not sure I have a comprehensive theory about the morality protecting people from themselves. But e.g. we know that humans are susceptible to alcoholism, so we try some things. I don’t think anyone thinks it is ethical to just let someone drink themselves to death — at least not until all other feasible options have been exhausted. Defining feasibility is not obvious. At some point we might say that the alcoholic’s life is not worth saving given the treatment cost.

> It is unworkable to think society can or should hold everyone’s hand all the time.

Loaded language again.

This is obvious but narrow. I grant that we don’t have unlimited money to do everything that we might want. But that has no bearing on what we should do with the money we have.

So I would ask you specify a principle that guides you.

When it comes to ethics, many thinkers define one or more or the following: principles, objectives, or ideal future states.

Most sensible ethical systems care about human flourishing and reducing human suffering. To those ends, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with getting help from a friend or a government. Whether or not social programs make sense is a calculation not a statement of first principles.

We should not put individualism on a pedestal. Nor should we put conformity on a pedestal. Human flourishing cannot be maximized by single-mindedly pursuing one narrow -ism.