“But how can I logically punish someone for what he or she did to me when I cannot fathom intentions or motives?” (ODAT, 28 May)
I’ve tested out with people whether they are mind-readers. I’ve asked them to guess what I’m thinking, and they never can. They find it a bit disconcerting, because they usually thought they were terribly good at it.
One can have a jolly good guess if one is going based on the evidence of what someone says or does, but even when I tell myself why I’m doing something, I often turn out to be wrong, and I am the one with all the available data.
Most people, most of the time, are in any case like me: not ill-intentioned but merely ill-informed, daft, blithe, craven, venal, sloppy, or fragile. Sometimes they’re even perfectly reasonable. And on the rare occasions they’re really ill-intentioned, well, aside from the fact that’s surprisingly rare, they must be treated as phenomena of nature. In other words, there’s an answer whatever the motivations are. One doesn’t need to know the motivations for sure to excuse or forgive or to work around the behaviour.
Moreover, none of these ‘reasons’ require punishment beyond what the person’s own thinking and behaviour generates in their own experience, so none of these require additional punishment from me. I’m not failing in my duty by leaving them be: I’m performing it.