[Epaphras]

Interesting thoughts, Nate. Reminds me of my Criminology class back in sophomore year.

[Nate]

Originally Posted by Epaphras

Interesting thoughts, Nate. Reminds me of my Criminology class back in sophomore year.

Someone could write a very convincing moral narrative of our species by taking C. S. Lewis' moral argument and extending it out of theology.

Premise 1: We act and speak and think as if there are things that we ought not to do, and expect others to act, speak, think, behave the same.

Premise 2: We actually do almost all of the things we think that we ought not to do, despite expecting others [and ourselves] not to do them.

To me, those two premises form the basis of all right thinking about ourselves and the history [creative or evolutionary] of our species.

The economist playing criminologist would have us believe that we have created laws to protect ourselves and our private property.

That couldn't be further from the truth. We seem to have created laws simply to codify and clarify our social expectations of each other.

If it were the other way around, our laws would start with punishments prescribed for actions and then move toward prohibitions of action.

It goes the other way, though: The most important content of our laws are simply the prohibitions. We get "Thou shalt not kill" first, not later.

Only later do we actually go through and explain punishments and consequences of breaking the expectations that we put forth in our laws.