Peterkin

Yes. They don't. I've had as many wet toys shoved at my by human babies as by dogs. They figure it out in their peer-group, and become selective in their reciprocal sharing transactions as early as pre-school. Adult directed "sharing" generally focuses on persuading a child to sacrifice something he or she values, rather than sharing resources or inviting another to participate in an activity. Those are not at all the same social dynamic nor psychological motivation. Sure. If we can have souls, so can elephants and whales. I take Dimreepr's "soul" to mean that healthy self-respect social animals feel when they live up to their own and their community's standard of ethics. Other animals put by for hard times, if they can, and store food for winter. They also try to secure and defend sources preferred food for their own flock or troop. Humans, being imaginative, exaggerate every sensible idea into a destructive obsessions. Your grandmother had to live on carrot tops and potato peels in the Great depression? You must roll over all your rivals, acquaintances and friends to become a billionnaire so you can shake your tiny fist and holler "As Goad is my witness, I'll never be hungry again!"

They were called fantasists, alarmist and hysterical even at their most restrained. World leaders have had the facts, observations, graphs, calculations, models and projections spread out before them, year after year, international conference after fruitless hot air junket, since the early 1970's. At that time, moderate, sensible action would have averted catastrophe.

It's hot outside! Can't work more than fifteen minutes before I become short of breath and see coloured spots synchronized swimming. It would be unfair to force a frail old person like me to dig a ditch in Savanna in August. Yet it was done, multiple times, in the name of justice. Such treatment or prisoners is, in fact, still very common. A reasonably well socialized four-year-old has a basic sense of fairness. The notions of "human nature" that dominate in different societies varies by cultural philosophy, but there are some traits all humans (or at least the overwhelming majority) are born with, that are part of the social animal package, and a sense of fairness is one of them. I put in the bracketed phrase. Now, if a four-year-old knows what's unfair, you'd think a prison warden with 30 years' experience rehabilitating criminals would have some idea. But, or course he does. And of course he knows most of what happens in his domain is unfair and unjust. Why does he allow it to continue? For lots and lots of reasons that are not remotely connected with concept of justice. Maybe justice would be best served if we didn't allow anyone over the age of eight to serve on a jury, preside in a courtroom or run a correctional facility. By the way, that Scientific American article is worth reading.

Damned if I know! I'll give it some thought and try to offer a coherent idea after I get some work done around here.

Except that bleeds into History about two layers down. Which is all right, so long as you then direct the history streams in navigable channels. Which would also mean that History isn't first-layer sub heading of Anthropology...Hm... Could go either way: have history branch off from both events and anthropology, or else divide the humanities in a different way and demote anthropology. Aaaarrrggggghhhh ! That's light-years beyond my level of incompetence. I can't even manage these fancy reply boxes very well. No, That one closed down in 2000. We're writing and selling books now, which takes no computing sophistication at all. But if you show me pictures, I'll be happy to comment on them.

Not entirely! A great many movies do question the values, do challenge the status quo, do reveal a dark side of society that makes some of its members uncomfortable enough to educate themselves and take some corrective action. Popular entertainment can influence a society for its improvement as well as contribute to its vices. Most people don't think about (let alone calculate with any accuracy) the cost of lawmaking, lawbreaking, law enforcement and their consequences, both short and long term. They hear on the news, once in a while, about $millions or $billions the government spends on something, but those numbers are meaningless. What they are acutely conscious of is the number at the bottom of their tax return form. Some political candidate promises to reduce that number, through efficiency or private enterprise or whatever, they vote for him and get an even worse standard of crime control. But that same politician has a scapegoat all warmed up and pointed at the wilderness.

The values of the society - or, more accurately, the elite of the society. What's good for the Waltons is good for America. Of course, it gets a lot more complex, not to mention messy, over time, will people acting up, acting out, protesting, legislating, writing books, singing songs, shooting one another, telling one another what to wear, whom to love, what to desire.... No, it's the other way around. The movies reflect a popular mind-set, as well as a much more practical reality: it's way cheaper to punish than to reform a person; it's easier to "throw away the key" and discard 1% of the population than to creat a suitable place in society for them, simply because there are too many people already: that 1% mainly comes from the 20% that's been discounted and relegated to marginal citizenship.

On the beach, nobody cares about it. In a sandcastle, it's expected to keep still and hold its place. In a gear-box, it's destructive and must be flushed out. For me, it's what we're born with (no one is born a bully/racist); original sin is just an expression of a potential bad life... Your personal take is not a consensus. However, I do agree with you that every healthy infant is potentially a fine, upstanding, productive citizen - as well as a potential criminal, maniac or screw-up. But in all that potential, there are already present some inherited traits, tendencies, advantages and disadvantages, capabilities and temperament. If a child is raised with close attention to his particular nature - encouraging the positive aspects of his personality while correcting and teaching him to control the negative (feeding the good wolf), he should be able to reach his best potential, both personally and socially. But if they're treated like mass-produced items, some children will be damaged beyond repair. Original sin is a concept that arises from the recognition of human autonomy: we can choose to disobey - which is a very bad thing to do in a rigid patriarchy.

If nobody here can agree to definitions of "torture" that have already been enshrined in national and international legal codes, you're not likely to have better luck on a definition of "justice". Is there a consensus on the meaning of "good"? From a practical standpoint, that doesn't really matter. The society that drove you to madness or crime still wants you to conform to its norms. Moreover, it will only admit to demanding that you obey its rules; it will never admit to making unreasonable or impossible rules, nor to creating a crazy developmental environment for its children, nor to driving a significant portion of its members to abarrent behaviour. So, if it acknowledges that some antisocial act is the result of mental illness, it will narrow the causes of that illness to some local, particular situation and treat the individual thus acting out as an exception. It will never treat an entire class of mental illness, no matter the number of individuals exhibiting it, as a symptom of its dysfunction. Every society would much rather - vigorously and forcefully - insist that whatever you've done, whatever you've become, it's your fault. On that point, societies differ. Some call it Correction; some call it Rehabilitation; some call it Re-education. How it's actually carried out doesn't always bear a direct relation to its label. I think most Americans have an image in their mind of how a prison should work (counselling, job training, education, behaviour modification through peer support and self-esteem....) while at the same time, secretly or not so secretly relishing the movie image of prisons (bullying, privation, humiliation and violent assault, both plain and sexual, by inmates and guards....) I truly do not believe any modern legal system will take that philosophical tack. A tribal one might - indeed, would be forced to, since in a small group, every individual is a precious resource, and social cohesion is literally a matter of collective life and death. But in a society of millions or hundreds of millions, individuals are mere grains of sand - that had better not get into the economic gear-box!

If you pick a subject like Cats, you can follow that branch down, as Barmaley showed in the example, or follow it upward, to -- Carnivorous mammals -- Mammals -- Vertebrates -- Animals -- Taxonomy -- Biology -- Science. That would probably be Current Events, from which you could go to Sport, Politics, Weather, Persons of Note, Demographics (statistics) Economics, Jurisprudence (civil rights?), News ... Problem there: how long does any item stay new? So maybe you could have, as one of the 8 branches : Today's News, with a function to push it down to the next level (news of the past week, month, year, Europe, Asia, Africa, Americas) every 24 hours. I don't really have that kind of experience. We designed web sites for small business 20 years ago (all obsolete knowledge), and I did help work out the logic from the user's perspective, and the aesthetic. From that limited standpoint, I'll help if I can. Have you worked out the top levels? (My tentative suggestion: Science, Earth & Space, Maths, Current Events, Language, Anthropology, Art, Philosophy. Just a first run at it, not sure.) As I said, you can just make a long list of topics you feel should be included and trace them by association, up to their parent subject. But, um, why do you want to recreate Wykipedia?

I'm not sure Humanity is one subject - or even that it should be a top level subject: too ambiguous. What were the other five top-level subjects being considered? Religion can go under Philosophy or Anthropology - both of which should probably be top headings. Or Psychology, which is a branch of Medical Science, but you'd get some flak about it. You'll need a good cross-reference system. (Helluvan ambitious project!! Wait till you have to figure out what myths and legends and superstitious rituals should be placed under. ) Philosophy! Ask any discipline whether it belongs in the top level and it will volunteer. You have to decide how to section this pie. Don't worry too much about where you start, as long as it makes intuitive sense, because everything is related to everything else at some level.

That would be nice, but consensus appears unattainable. Partly because of subjective perception of what hurts, partly because of bias about justice, but most significantly due to language. Viscerally, we all - or nearly all - understand what torture is; legal articulation is a whole other order of difficulty. While courts have to negotiate that difficulty every day, individuals are able to avoid it indefinitely. As has been amply demonstrated. You read the Stanford prison experiment, and you can comprehend it, but then it's challenged on the grounds of fakery , of unsound scientific method, ?dismissed.... And yet, and yet.... Read that second article carefully. This bit gave me a longish pause

Torture as punishment is the topic. The objective existence or non-existence of evil, conundrums, paradoxes, and other abstract ideas is a debate I had rather relegate to its own thread, since I've contributed quite enough lumber to this one.

no, none of them (evil, conundrum, paradox) can; concepts have no physical reality but that's another topic....

[Guantanamo justified?] Well, I agree with those who do not see it justified. Yet it continues in operation, because enough - and powerful enough - others insist that it's necessary. No justice reform takes place until there is general consensus on some aspect of it - and there can be no comprehensive reform in some countries, even if the majority of citizens agree in principle, as long as one or more influential faction(s) reject it. But that proves my point, because it's justifiable; almost every other prison on the planet is used as an excuse to punish. That was a reply to your question: "What prison isn't?" [a place of detention and torture as depicted in the OP] I don't quite get your point about justification. One is meant to be a correctional facility, while almost every other prison is a place of punishment. Though British and Canadian, and no doubt modern Australian prisons are intended to rehabilitate lawbreakers, there is that segment of the population which insists on retribution - and the two functions in a single institution are in constant disharmony. So the revenge faction always wins, simply because punishment is cheaper and the average voter won't do the math; doesn't realize how much more it costs society in the long term to grow naughty boys into hardened felons then it would be to turn them around at the earliest opportunity. It's relatively easy for the Scandinavian countries to be progressive and united: they haven't had any major social upheavals since... even the Roman empire barely touched their shores. Recent influx of refugees from the Middle East, and the natives' reaction to their presence has been causing ructions - the Scandinavian Paradise may well be in decline. That's rather simplistic, since not all crime is criminal and not all criminal's are guilty. Of course it's simplistic. It was in response to this: In the countries I mentioned, it doesn't make any difference to your treatment whether you're guilty of anything. Perhaps I should have advised him, rather, to get caught breaking a law in Sweden, then Italy, then Turkey and finally Saudi Arabia in order to form an appreciation of what degrees of punishment meet the criteria for the UN jurists' definition of torture. I would not, however, recommend doing it in reverse order. Now, there is a conundrum! (PS I don't care how many mistakes I find, I'm not editing this!)

Best guess: c 150,000,000 years ago. Would you believe termites?

Then you should either refrain from crime (especially in Turkey or Saudi Arabia - assuming you know what's considered a crime there) or be clever enough to avoid capture.

He rejected every proffered definition of "torture'" included those used by big, serious jurists on world courts. That is his prerogative, not my guide. As far as I know, "justice" hasn't been defined at all, let alone measured, though it has been discussed. It was justified up and down a purple streak by its owners. I wasn't convinced. I don't understand what this refers to - the prison or my comment. In the present context, I'm not even sure I answered the question you asked last time. I have trouble placing the references. What prison isn't? Halden Fengsel.

No, the real ones, outside. It's summer.

crickets

All copacetic here, mate!

Was that justified? How do you mean? The OP question was torture of prisoners in detention as used by law-enforcement as punishment or deterrent to criminals. Guantanamo - to the best of my information - is a place of detention and torture. It has also been a contentious issue in the US for two decades. It seemed relevant in the context. The matters of forgiveness and peace, or revenge, or punishment, go no way at all toward resolving that problem. Your answer hasn't helped; my answer hasn't helped, Beecee's answer hasn't helped. I conclude that whatever we, even all three put together, understand about justice cannot solve such a problem. And it's not a unique problem, globally.

I don't think so. I have no idea what your version of justice is. I have some idea of Beecee's and disagree with at least some of it. However, I didn't articulate "my version" of justice. I don't have a comprehensive, universal philosophy of justice - only examples of how some societies have handled some aspects of it, well or badly. I answered the question about torture-as-justice in the negative on Page 1; since then, all I've done was respond to various comments, on and off topic. You could say so. It didn't solve the problem of Guantanamo. No-one has.

Oh well, I've tried my best. Carry on!

I read the OP question as: on criminals, not by criminals. There are many instances of miscarriage of justice when "we" didn't go by the evidence. However, as previously stated, I'm prepared to discuss the efficacy of the prison system at some other time. Some wrongfully convicted prisoners are compensated... well, that is to say, given some money, in lieu of what-all has been taken from them. Some are executed, some are abused by guards and/or other inmates; some have their appeal denied. It's not my agenda; it's Alex Mercer's. If you want to start a thread on any of those other subjects, please do. Then I will abide by your agenda.