[Retric]

That’s more effective as an argument to get rid of the most extreme forms of punishment (eg drawn and quartered) not all forms of retribution.

In a world without free will crimes of passion are simply the result of the situation which means that person would always chose murder in that situation. People who would respond with murder in an unacceptably wide range of situations is an edge case worth consideration without free will. Alternatively if we want nobody to respond with murder in a crime of passion situation evolutionary pressure could eventually work even without free will.

> E.g. punishment might still be justified from the point of view of reducing offending and reoffending rates, but if that is the goal then it is only justified to the extent that it actually achieves those goals, and that has emotionally difficult consequences. For example, for non-premeditated murders carried out out of passion rather than e.g. gang crimes, the odds of someone carrying out another is extremely low and the odds that the fear of a long prison sentence is an actual deterrence is generally low, and and so long prison terms are hard to justify once vengeance is off the table.

That’s assuming absolute certainty about what happened. Punishments may make sense as a logical argument even if it’s only useful in a subset of cases if you can’t be absolutely sure which case something happened to be.

Uncertainty does a lot to align emotional heuristics and logical actions.

[zzo38computer]

Whether or not you have free will is not relevant, as I had described in other comments.

> In a world without free will crimes of passion are simply the result of the situation which means that person would always chose murder in that situation. People who would respond with murder in an unacceptably wide range of situations is an edge case worth consideration without free will.

This is a significant argument. However, there is also worth considering if that is actually accurate, and if such a situation will occur (in a case where whoever would be killed would not effectively protect themself from this).

> That’s assuming absolute certainty about what happened. Punishments may make sense as a logical argument even if it’s only useful in a subset of cases if you can’t be absolutely sure which case something happened to be.

It is true that you do not have absolute certainty, but neither should you arrest someone who is not guilty.

> Uncertainty does a lot to align emotional heuristics and logical actions.

In some cases, yes, but it is not always valid. But, even if it is, this does not mean that you should not consider it logically if you are able to do so.