Jones & Kurzban on Intuitions of Punishment

Owen D. Jones (pictured) and Robert Kurzban (Vanderbilt University - School of Law & Department of Biological Sciences and University of Pennsylvania - Department of Psychology) have posted Intuitions of Punishment (University of Chicago Law Review, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Recent work reveals, contrary to wide-spread assumptions, remarkably high levels of agreement about how to rank order, by blameworthiness, wrongs that involve physical harms, takings of property, or deception in exchanges. In The Origins of Shared Intuitions of Justice (http://ssrn.com/abstract=952726) we proposed a new explanation for these unexpectedly high levels of agreement.

Elsewhere in this issue, Professors Braman, Kahan, and Hoffman offer a critique of our views, to which we reply here. Our reply clarifies a number of important issues, such as the interconnected roles that culture, variation, and evolutionary processes play in generating intuitions of punishment.