Crime, punishment and free will

[Tannhauser]

Hello.

 

Warning: this may challenge attention spans.

 

This post is sparked by the thread 'An eye for an eye', and also one from a little while back on fate and determinism. I'm starting this for anyone interested in a more philosophical view.

 

There are a lot of people on the board who are fiercely critical of religion, and are in favour of 'facts' over 'faith' and so on. I would call this view scientific determinism – the view that everything we experience has a physical cause, and in the fullness of time, humans may well be able to discover and fully account for these. That's the ultimate aim of science, a complete description of the physical universe.

 

To me, this view has profound implications about the way we view crime and punishment.

 

Let's take an example. Imagine two guys, Bob and Alan by name. Bob is a decent, caring human being who could never rob anyone for a few pennies. Alan is a scrounger who has never done an honest day's work. It's a mug's game, he says, and bashing some old fart is a bit of a laugh.

 

How do we explain the differences? The way we are used to doing it is to use the concept of choice. Bob could have taken the easy way to line his pockets, but he chose not to. Alan chose his life of crime.

 

OK, fair enough, but many on the BBS have already signed up for determinism. In determinism, every single event has a cause. A snooker ball doesn't move from A to B without something else pushing, hitting or pulling it. A fire doesn't start without – for example – a spark from some source. A leg doesn't move without a nerve cell instructing it to do so. And a thought doesn't come out of nowhere either. How can it? A thought is one or more nerve cells sending electrical signals (chemical ones at the synapses) to another – it's a physical event. Unless there's a religious or spiritual alternative, and thoughts are not the result of physical events, there's no way around this.

 

Why are you choosing to do whatever you are doing right this instant? A chain of billions of events, reaching back to the big bang, brings you inevitably to it. If you 'choose' to stop reading, that is the inevitable consequence of (a) the sum total of your personal experiences to this date (b) the sum total of the evolutionary, genetic, even nutritional events that have organised your brain into your wonderful, completely unique configuration.

 

Now, this idea makes people uneasy, and the natural response is to say, “well, I know I chose to do such-and-such, and I can choose not to any time I want to”. Fine. But where does that choice come from? Unless you believe that things have no cause, or that choices are somehow separate from the physical world, there's a contradiction. I may believe I'm typing this of my own 'free will' but really, that's like saying a light bulb chose to switch itself on. It's a glorious bit of self-deception meant to save us from the depressing and head-f**king alternative. Maybe our genes program us to believe that we have free will

 

Back to Alan and Bob. Alan chooses crime, Bob doesn't. Alan's choice must be the result of his genetics, evolution, experiences and precise brain architecture. If we try and get around this by saying his choices came from his earlier decisions, these too must have come from somewhere. They trace back in an unbreakable causal chain to the cradle and beyond.

 

Now to the killer implications. We punish Alan to (a) stop him from doing it again (b) keep him out of society and © crucially, because we feel he is responsible for doing wrong, and so retribution is necessary. If a child, or a dog, or someone who is mentally ill does something wrong, (a) and (b) might apply, but certainly not ©. Retribution is reserved for those who are 'responsible for his own actions'. But, as explored above, in what sense is Alan 'responsible' for his criminal life, or you for your non-criminal one? To put it simply: you didn't choose your genetics, and you didn't choose your family. Maybe you chose your mates – but only as a result of the other two, which weren't your choice. You didn't choose your thoughts, either, they are only the next link in the chain between past and future action.

 

It's a conclusion that plenty will reject outright, because it sounds like it's giving everyone carte blanche to do what the hell they want to, and then blame it on their genetics or their terrible background. Not really: it has no impact on what we find acceptable as a society, but it does have an impact on justice systems and the nature of punishment. It implies, for example, that retribution is a useless concept.

 

Views? I'm hoping StevieB and Trev might chip in.

[Paul]

? ? ? so, who's Bob again ?

[Gaz6002]

It's true that each person has a different composition of experiences, and nothing can change the past. Does that mean that punishing people can't possibly work unequivocally in our society?

[RiceRocket]

Hello.

 

Warning: this may challenge attention spans.

 

I'm out.

[Tannhauser]

? ? ? so, who's Bob again ?

 

Bob's the brother of the man who was renting some garden equipment to his cousin, also named Bob, but ended up being convicted of murdering Alan (codenamed: Bob) by force-feeding him a typewriter.

 

Clear?

[Tannhauser]

It's true that each person has a different composition of experiences, and nothing can change the past. Does that mean that punishing people can't possibly work unequivocally in our society?

 

I think it means that punishment will only get you so far.

 

My view is that labels like 'evil' and so on do us some emotional good, but they don't get us anywhere. Crime is like any other action: it has a set of causes. Many of the circumstances resulting in crime can be addressed. But we're still stuck in pre-scientific thinking about it.

 

As an analogy, we've got malaria, and we're fussing around with herbal poultices trying to address the effects of it, instead of looking at the root causes and vaccinating against it.

[Ian C]

I think it means that punishment will only get you so far.

 

My view is that labels like 'evil' and so on do us some emotional good, but they don't get us anywhere. Crime is like any other action: it has a set of causes. Many of the circumstances resulting in crime can be addressed. But we're still stuck in pre-scientific thinking about it.

 

As an analogy, we've got malaria, and we're fussing around with herbal poultices trying to address the effects of it, instead of looking at the root causes and vaccinating against it.

 

Your analogy about malaria appears to support capital punishment Hang the germs and they'll never do it again, it's the only language they understand!

 

I don't like the idea of predestination, but I can't prove it exists or doesn't. If predestination was proven to exist, that means you could do anything and it's not your fault or responsibility - a scary world to live in (and perhaps a pointless one?).

 

Perhaps information theory could knock it on the head? Where is the information stored that predetermines every single event in the universe over its lifespan? It can't be stored in this universe, it's too big.

 

-Ian

[Abz]

Every knock creates a bang... I agree with you Tannhauser, you are correct in what you say.

 

Though like you say society does not work in this way, we have too many loop holes for everything & it seems the "Alan's" are getting away with it because of our softness. For example if Alan & Bob caused an accident... when appearing in court, chances are this is what will happen.

 

Bob = Will get fined £2,000 for dangerous driving, banned for 2 years & conviction on record = This could cripple Bob, his a bus driver & has a high mortgage payment for each month. Chances are he will lose his job & won't be able to get into the same line of work. He still has to pay the lawyers fee & court fees and is now in £4k worth of debt & without a job.

 

Alan = Will get a £200 fine & be asked to pay £5 a month, his already lost his license so they will just ban him again. His solicitor will be free and he can walk out of this court going on about with his business as if nothing happened.

 

IMO - All cases should be held on individual merit. We can not label anyone as that would not be fair. For example using your Malaria analogy, not every mosquito carries Malaria so you would be killing all for a few. Same as how the US are killing all them people in Afganishtan & Iraq for a few people.

[hogmaw]

Retribution serves to make the families of the victims feel vindicated. It can also serve as a deterrent to others thinking of committing a similar crime.

 

If we all believed that we didn't have a choice in things, then society would collapse. For someone to have no choice is to have no freedom, and the 'illusion' of freedom is vital for us to feel good about ourselves.

 

That's what gets me about religion - people readily sign up to a dogma that informs them they are mere pawns in god's big game.

[Tannhauser]

Your analogy about malaria appears to support capital punishment Hang the germs and they'll never do it again, it's the only language they understand!

 

I don't like the idea of predestination, but I can't prove it exists or doesn't. If predestination was proven to exist, that means you could do anything and it's not your fault or responsibility - a scary world to live in (and perhaps a pointless one?).

 

Perhaps information theory could knock it on the head? Where is the information stored that predetermines every single event in the universe over its lifespan? It can't be stored in this universe, it's too big.

 

-Ian

 

Yeah, I knew that malaria analogy was no good (and just to be irritating, it's caused by a protozoan - Plasmodium spp. - not a bacterium).

 

I know, it sounds like predestination, which is deeply unpalatable. But I just see it as the absolutely inevitable logical consequence of believing in a causal universe. I think the feelings that 'it therefore doesn't matter what I do' are something to do with mixing up contraints on events with explanations of them - but that's something I just can't untangle.

 

I don't know anything about information theory (off to Google in a bit), but my first instinct - and only that -is that it sounds like a cop-out to deny a conclusion we don't want to face. Quantum theory says the universe is fundamentally unpredictable, so that's a possible get-out clause, but I don't think at the macro scale it amounts to a rebuttal.

[Tannhauser]

Retribution serves to make the families of the victims feel vindicated. It can also serve as a deterrent to others thinking of committing a similar crime.

 

If we all believed that we didn't have a choice in things, then society would collapse. For someone to have no choice is to have no freedom, and the 'illusion' of freedom is vital for us to feel good about ourselves.

 

That's what gets me about religion - people readily sign up to a dogma that informs them they are mere pawns in god's big game.

 

That's a fascinating comment. Religion irritates you because effectively it says 'you are just a pawn, you have no free will'. This is a dogma - an unchallenged belief, a fairy story, an illusion.

 

But at the same time, you feel that free will is only a necessary illusion, because as a non-religious person, you believe in a causal universe.

 

So on the one hand you seem to be criticising religion for promoting the idea of no free will as an illusion, and on the other, you are saying that freewill is an illusion.

 

Agree about retribution being a necessary concept for families feeling vindicated, and a detrrent.

[Lbm]

I'd like to retrun to this.

 

A while ago, (approx 60mins) I was called away to eat a jacket potato and now I must go out and a sing a few tunes.

 

Nice thread. Till later then...But my thoughts will introduce the very borrowed watching the thinker concepts nicked from Eckhart Tolle, and I shall attempt to make sense of them and crow bar them into a post in a few hours or so

[Ian C]

I don't know anything about information theory (off to Google in a bit), but my first instinct - and only that -is that it sounds like a cop-out to deny a conclusion we don't want to face. Quantum theory says the universe is fundamentally unpredictable, so that's a possible get-out clause, but I don't think at the macro scale it amounts to a rebuttal.

 

I was going to mention chaos theory but the immediate rebuttal might simply be "that's only because we haven't sussed out how to predict it yet" So I didn't bother hah.

 

Information theory (or at least the thing that's stuck in my mind which might not strictly be information theory hah) is the simple question of "where did the information come from?". So you have an atom, and it's got stored in it various stuff like position, velocity, vector, mass, energy. It doesn't 'know' about anything else, certainly not the previous and future values for those variables for every tick of the universe, and it doesn't know about anything other than itself either.

 

Of course, from that the next step is that the underlying laws of the universe 'run' these values and generate the next iteration of the atom, changing values based on interactions with other objects (i.e. another atom hitting it imparts velocity and energy, the position is changed etc). So while thinking this through you might still be able to say "aha but it's still all predetermined by the universal runtime laws". So maybe info theory is a bust here.

 

Actually predestination sounds impossible to prove, but free will sounds impossible to prove as well. Any action assigned to one can be assigned to the other. Isn't there some scientific term for such an unproveable hypothesis? (aside from "religion" haha)

[Tannhauser]

I was going to mention chaos theory but the immediate rebuttal might simply be "that's only because we haven't sussed out how to predict it yet" So I didn't bother hah.

 

Information theory (or at least the thing that's stuck in my mind which might not strictly be information theory hah) is the simple question of "where did the information come from?". So you have an atom, and it's got stored in it various stuff like position, velocity, vector, mass, energy. It doesn't 'know' about anything else, certainly not the previous and future values for those variables for every tick of the universe, and it doesn't know about anything other than itself either.

 

Of course, from that the next step is that the underlying laws of the universe 'run' these values and generate the next iteration of the atom, changing values based on interactions with other objects (i.e. another atom hitting it imparts velocity and energy, the position is changed etc). So while thinking this through you might still be able to say "aha but it's still all predetermined by the universal runtime laws". So maybe info theory is a bust here.

 

Actually predestination sounds impossible to prove, but free will sounds impossible to prove as well. Any action assigned to one can be assigned to the other. Isn't there some scientific term for such an unproveable hypothesis? (aside from "religion" haha)

 

I've had a look and can't find anything about information theory in the context we're talking about, so if you come across anything online, let me know. I'm interested.

 

There is indeed a term within philosophy of science for an unproveable hypothesis: 'unfalsifiable' or 'non-falsifiable'. It was philosopher's Karl Popper's test of whether something is a science: something is scientific if it produces a hypothesis that at least in principle can be disconfirmed.

 

Here's an example. According to Meddis' theory of sleep, sleep is simply a behaviour that has evolved to deal with night-time danger. This led to the hypothesis that prey animals should sleep more, to stop them from moving around. But Allison and Cicchetti (1976) found that prey animals sleep more. So Meddis claims that this is also consistent with the theory - prey animals need to seep less, to watch out for predators. Same theory, but it's unfalsifiable (and therefore unscientific) because two contradictory hypotheses can be made. There's a lot of that in evolutionary theory.

 

What you're asking is whether the basic tenet of science -'things are determined by other things' is itself unfalsifiable and therefore -according to Popper - unscientific. Logic circuits go 'PING'. That's a cool idea and there could well be something to it.

 

If a scientist was to find an event happened with no antecedent causes, his immediate claim would be 'the causes are there, but they haven't been discovered yet'. Which is non-falsifiable, since the theory that everything has a cause has to be empirically testable.

 

(Nevertheless, of course everything has a cause, otherwise we're back in the religious camp, and I know that of all the sorts of camp you don't want to be associated with, the religious one is at the top of the list).

[Ian C]

I've had a look and can't find anything about information theory in the context we're talking about, so if you come across anything online, let me know. I'm interested.

 

I may have made the term up, then. Christ knows where I got it from but it makes sense to me, what with everything else in the laws of physics being based around the most efficient/path of least resistance, why would you store everything that everything is ever going to do in everything? Seems like the absolute most inefficient way to run a universe possible.

 

 

What you're asking is whether the basic tenet of science -'things are determined by other things' is itself unfalsifiable and therefore -according to Popper - unscientific. Logic circuits go 'PING'. That's a cool idea and there could well be something to it.

 

Well that wasn't my intention but I see what you mean - for any event, you can say "it was predetermined due to the initial start conditions of the universe" or "it happened because of the interactions of the laws of physics, and could have happened any number of other ways". The only way to prove it wasn't predetermined would be to go back in time to the same point and do something different, except then you could say doing *that* was predetermined as well (and other paradoxes). You'd have to observe it from outside the universe itself, and that's just plain mental.

 

I guess you could spawn a new universe in a bubble of fucallium and watch it progress, then reproduce it with exactly the same start conditions and see if it ends up exactly the same? We might be a way off that ability yet, though

 

If a scientist was to find an event happened with no antecedent causes, his immediate claim would be 'the causes are there, but they haven't been discovered yet'. Which is non-falsifiable, since the theory that everything has a cause has to be empirically testable.

 

I guess a lot of stuff is non-falsifiable really, but don't we bring into play stuff like Occam's Razor and just plain common sense to help with this? Like, erm, gravitational lensing for example - how do we empirically test that, all we've got is observations of distant galaxies that currently fit the theory and the maths behind it. Does that count as "empirical"?

 

-Ian

[caseys]

Tann,

 

I myself am a believe of cause and effect and would say I am of an agnostic viewpoint, but yet strangely believe in the concept of karma. Isn't this now more an argument for Aristotle and metaphysics?

 

But if you looked at Alan and Bob as a system, albeit possibly a holistic one that every brain is formed of neurons and electrical impulses and grey matter which affect physical and psychological behaviour. Neurons fire to help me type this but as you are aware there are degenerative or altering diseases which cause neurons to fire incorrectly, affecting both motor function and thought (free will if you so think) such as motor-neuron disease (self explanitory named) and Huntington's disease. Hence yes not free will.

 

Contrasting behaviour/decisions by Alan and Bob are down to environment (mentally stimulating) as well as external stimuli (physically altering substances etc). After all we all have the capability to talk Swahili, but do not do so or learn to do so because most of our environments dictate we don't have to so it's social conditioning. A human at the base level is an animal with instincts (never managed to explain those) and will react/adjust to their environment accordingly. Look at canibalism, you can have tribes of humans on a single island and one will think eating others is fine, but yet another will find it complete anathema.

 

Also yes we have genetic variation, not everyone or everything is born into the world with the same physical muscle/brain mass which in turn I think has a vast affect on how a person or a creature behaves whilst it grows up. Some factors though could be put down to the environment / social conditioning. You grow up with thieves, theres probably a higher statistical probability you'll become a thief. Whereas if you grew up in a campus full of tree-hugging nobel prized scientists you may *not* grow up into a thief. If you looked at it with a multiverse situation you could have the same physical person in an open system growing up in both situations and they would be a different person (unless you went down to the quantum level and say there's a nigh infinite amount of universes and in one they'd both grow up the same person in different situations).

 

This is going onto Ian C's quantum relativity/mechanics theories. In a scientific model there is a multiverse where every situation is played out (if we still take time as linear) and we're not talking about decisions where one universe I decided to eat a hot dog for lunch, and in another I infact decided to eat a hot dog but no onions.

 

To look at possibilities at a quantum level the chances do get really slim and the possibilites do get nearly infinite. I once had an analogy explained to me and I'll try and recall it correctly... Scientific theory states that I could sit here and bounce a tennis ball against a wall and there is a chance albeit very small that I could throw the tennis ball through the wall. This would actually involve a very slim chance of every molecule of the tennis ball lining up adjacent to every molecule in my wall. This is quantum mechanics and trying to examine large scale systems at an atomic level. Yes you could sit there for a million years and probably wear out many tennis balls and many walls before it'd occur if you repeated it, but eventually it *would* occur. Same as it could occur first time around.

 

In one universe I could win every lottery draw in the year with the same combination of numbers on a single ticket, someone would argue that this is impossible but it's not. Statistically very slim, but not impossible so you cannot rule it out.

 

So you could say that Bob decides to go off and mug someone purely because all the electrons in his brain fired in that sequence, chemical imbalances and such triggered the action, rather than so perceived 'free will'. In another universe where say a mass passed by him (a seagull for instance) and it's gravitational mass affected his brain and so the action was not triggered.

 

I forgot about the quantum butterfly analogy. A butterfly flaps it's wings in Camden Town, this in turn could trigger a tropical storm in Miami (wind currents etc and a cascading chain of events).

 

Yes, I agree free will is a concept I am not sure of and would say things are more cause and affect. We are who we are due to external stimuli. Nearly every living being can be defined as a system with input and output and some sort of storage memory and nearly all are systems that either react instinctively which we cannot explain, or certain ways because of physical setup but also many reaction because of previous events/memories which in a way form a flow chart as to how to react to the next event. A person learns once they put their hand in a fire that it hurts and so will recall this the next time they go to do it and adjust their action accordingly. Yes some could argue that you have the free will to put your hand in the fire again, many will not because of the pain, so that's determinism. Some will do so though to spite others - behavioural determinism.

 

Sorry to waffle at length but to get back to your last point you forgot the insanity idea. Some do it because they are mentally insane or have a disease meaning the brain is acting in what is viewed as an abnormal manner. Ok we do remove these people from society though the majority of the time. At the end of the day there are too many components to take into account to make a vague all-encompassing reason as to why people are basically c***s.

 

Retribution and punishment or the fear of punishment is only useful on a larger scale and not on an individual basis, yes there are the maxims of 'learning from other's mistakes' as well as 'you'll get what's coming to you' and so forth but many don't seem to learn or abide by these.

 

Hmmm I need some cofffee. Sorry if much of this was trite, I bet most won't read this post anyway

[gaz1]

bloody carol singers, every night this week don,t mind the little kids dressed as angels with there parents, but the chavs with a fag in the corner of there mouths grrrr:rolleyes:

[AndyT]

Some very clever people in this club. Cheers for the thoughts guys.

[Septic]

Without an entrenched, objective, infallible and supreme authority, we derive our whole system of morality and justice from what Tannhauser has correctly analysed as mere physical events- (electrical signals in our brain). Thus, to believe in evil you have to actually believe in God in the first place.

 

Simply via acknowledging this fact, a religious view with the belief that GOd exists is far superior to the aforementioned belief (a bi-product of scientific determinism so to speak).

 

Obviously- the latter view is redundant if God doesn't exist- but that's a whole different debate entirely.

 

Essentially, if you don't believe in GOd then the questions of crime, punishment and free will always be subject to change because we know all too well, society's values are always in a state of flux and never static (unless dictated by faith).

 

Brilliant thread by the way Tannhauser- and excellent first post. Great points by all.

[Tannhauser]

I guess a lot of stuff is non-falsifiable really, but don't we bring into play stuff like Occam's Razor and just plain common sense to help with this? Like, erm, gravitational lensing for example - how do we empirically test that, all we've got is observations of distant galaxies that currently fit the theory and the maths behind it. Does that count as "empirical"?

-Ian

 

Oh yes.

 

See, that's where a lot of people have, in my opinion, quite a naive view of science. Many see Science as adhering strictly to these golden principles like empiricism and non-falsifiability. But in practice, Science is a human activity and rival theories - other things being equal - are judged using Occam's razor, common sense and aesthetic appeal. None of those things are 'scientific' - they are just kind of dressed up 'instincts'.

 

Take Copernicus. As far as I remember, there was no empirical observation that the Ptolemaic system (Geocentric) couldn't explain. The position of the planets could be predicted with accuracy under that system. Along comes Copernicus and suddenly there is a rival model. Why did people switch? Not because it explained the data better, but because it's a more elegant solution.

 

It seems to me that things like string theory are absolutely miles from being empirically verified - but they are gaining credence because the maths looks so nice and, again, elegantly solves many solutions.

 

Not so sure about gravitational lensing. I don't know how what evidence there is that light is being distorted, though apparently there's something called 'microlensing' from nearby objects, so it's not all quasars etc.

[Kopite]

Hello.

 

Warning: this may challenge attention spans.

 

This post is sparked by the thread 'An eye for an eye', and also one from a little while back on fate and determinism. I'm starting this for anyone interested in a more philosophical view.

 

There are a lot of people on the board who are fiercely critical of religion, and are in favour of 'facts' over 'faith' and so on. I would call this view scientific determinism – the view that everything we experience has a physical cause, and in the fullness of time, humans may well be able to discover and fully account for these. That's the ultimate aim of science, a complete description of the physical universe.

 

To me, this view has profound implications about the way we view crime and punishment.

 

Let's take an example. Imagine two guys, Bob and Alan by name. Bob is a decent, caring human being who could never rob anyone for a few pennies. Alan is a scrounger who has never done an honest day's work. It's a mug's game, he says, and bashing some old fart is a bit of a laugh.

 

How do we explain the differences? The way we are used to doing it is to use the concept of choice. Bob could have taken the easy way to line his pockets, but he chose not to. Alan chose his life of crime.

 

OK, fair enough, but many on the BBS have already signed up for determinism. In determinism, every single event has a cause. A snooker ball doesn't move from A to B without something else pushing, hitting or pulling it. A fire doesn't start without – for example – a spark from some source. A leg doesn't move without a nerve cell instructing it to do so. And a thought doesn't come out of nowhere either. How can it? A thought is one or more nerve cells sending electrical signals (chemical ones at the synapses) to another – it's a physical event. Unless there's a religious or spiritual alternative, and thoughts are not the result of physical events, there's no way around this.

 

Why are you choosing to do whatever you are doing right this instant? A chain of billions of events, reaching back to the big bang, brings you inevitably to it. If you 'choose' to stop reading, that is the inevitable consequence of (a) the sum total of your personal experiences to this date (b) the sum total of the evolutionary, genetic, even nutritional events that have organised your brain into your wonderful, completely unique configuration.

 

Now, this idea makes people uneasy, and the natural response is to say, “well, I know I chose to do such-and-such, and I can choose not to any time I want to”. Fine. But where does that choice come from? Unless you believe that things have no cause, or that choices are somehow separate from the physical world, there's a contradiction. I may believe I'm typing this of my own 'free will' but really, that's like saying a light bulb chose to switch itself on. It's a glorious bit of self-deception meant to save us from the depressing and head-f**king alternative. Maybe our genes program us to believe that we have free will

 

Back to Alan and Bob. Alan chooses crime, Bob doesn't. Alan's choice must be the result of his genetics, evolution, experiences and precise brain architecture. If we try and get around this by saying his choices came from his earlier decisions, these too must have come from somewhere. They trace back in an unbreakable causal chain to the cradle and beyond.

 

Now to the killer implications. We punish Alan to (a) stop him from doing it again (b) keep him out of society and © crucially, because we feel he is responsible for doing wrong, and so retribution is necessary. If a child, or a dog, or someone who is mentally ill does something wrong, (a) and (b) might apply, but certainly not ©. Retribution is reserved for those who are 'responsible for his own actions'. But, as explored above, in what sense is Alan 'responsible' for his criminal life, or you for your non-criminal one? To put it simply: you didn't choose your genetics, and you didn't choose your family. Maybe you chose your mates – but only as a result of the other two, which weren't your choice. You didn't choose your thoughts, either, they are only the next link in the chain between past and future action.

 

It's a conclusion that plenty will reject outright, because it sounds like it's giving everyone carte blanche to do what the hell they want to, and then blame it on their genetics or their terrible background. Not really: it has no impact on what we find acceptable as a society, but it does have an impact on justice systems and the nature of punishment. It implies, for example, that retribution is a useless concept.

 

Views? I'm hoping StevieB and Trev might chip in.

 

The choices people make are definitely influenced by physical and environmental factors e.g. born into poverty means less chance of a decent education, leading to poor qualifications (if any) meaning the chances of a decent job are low. You then get depressed and motivation drops more so the "easy way out" becomes more of an option as self survival takes over. This might account for crimes of theft and so forth, not for rape, murder etc.

Going back to your post about "choices", i think the main thing that can influence what path you chose is your conscience.

I could easily steal from work without getting caught but I never would because my conscience wouldn't allow me to. I know i'd end up putting back what i stole.

The thing is though, your conscience is going to be defined by environmental factors etc, some people would feel guilty whereas others would say "survival of the fittest". The argument then to make is, is your conscience purely spiritual or is it defined more by physiology?

[Tannhauser]

Tann,

 

This is going onto Ian C's quantum relativity/mechanics theories. In a scientific model there is a multiverse where every situation is played out (if we still take time as linear) and we're not talking about decisions where one universe I decided to eat a hot dog for lunch, and in another I infact decided to eat a hot dog but no onions.

 

To look at possibilities at a quantum level the chances do get really slim and the possibilites do get nearly infinite. I once had an analogy explained to me and I'll try and recall it correctly... Scientific theory states that I could sit here and bounce a tennis ball against a wall and there is a chance albeit very small that I could throw the tennis ball through the wall. This would actually involve a very slim chance of every molecule of the tennis ball lining up adjacent to every molecule in my wall. This is quantum mechanics and trying to examine large scale systems at an atomic level. Yes you could sit there for a million years and probably wear out many tennis balls and many walls before it'd occur if you repeated it, but eventually it *would* occur. Same as it could occur first time around.

 

Just to pick up on one of your points, quantum theory has interesting implications for a deterministic universe.

 

To summarise: I'm saying that every event has a cause, whether it's a pebble being washed up on a shore or a man deciding to kill another man. If we know absolutely all the forces on the pebble, we can predict where it will land. And if we know all the electrical and chemical events in the brain, we can predict absolutely the murderer's decision. In this scenario, as the guy's choices can be explained completely in terms of events he cannot control - in what sense is he responsible.

 

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that (a) chaos theory makes the world unpredictable - small events elsewhere (e.g. a butterfly's wing) unpredictably affect events elsewhere. and (b) quantum theory makes the universe unpredictable.

 

For me, chaos is a non-starter. Let's say a butterfly's wing in Camden starts a storm in Miami. There still has to be a causal chain between them, even if it's very difficult to track. There might by ten billion interactions along the way, but I see nothing that could not potentially be explained by conventional physics.

 

Quantum theory is a bit different. My understanding of it is very basic. My take on it is that quantum theory says that at a subatomic level, events are unpredictable. But as you move up to the macro scale, these effects become less and less influential on causality. You would probably have to wait the lifetime of the universe before the tennis ball went through the wall. Where does that leave us? To me, it only means that Alan's brain events ('choices') are predictable at a 99.999999999999% level rather than a 100.000000000000 % level. To me, that doesn't sound like free will. It doesn't get around the issue of what 'personal responsibility' actually means.

[Tannhauser]

The choices people make are definitely influenced by physical and environmental factors e.g. born into poverty means less chance of a decent education, leading to poor qualifications (if any) meaning the chances of a decent job are low. You then get depressed and motivation drops more so the "easy way out" becomes more of an option as self survival takes over. This might account for crimes of theft and so forth, not for rape, murder etc.

 

Going back to your post about "choices", i think the main thing that can influence what path you chose is your conscience.

I could easily steal from work without getting caught but I never would because my conscience wouldn't allow me to. I know i'd end up putting back what i stole.

The thing is though, your conscience is going to be defined by environmental factors etc, some people would feel guilty whereas others would say "survival of the fittest". The argument then to make is, is your conscience purely spiritual or is it defined more by physiology?

 

Yeah, exactly. I'm saying for non-spiritual types, conscience can only be environment+learning+physiology. Your conscience is a product of those three things. If your physiology had been slightly different, maybe this would have caused you to pay attention to role models X, Y, Z instead of A, B and C, and you would have ended up tea-leafing all the optical equipment that wasn't nailed down.

 

I mean, it's a depressing thought, because we all like to believe that we are self-invented. But anyone who was truly self-invented would be a first cause, and therefore God. Or Thorin, as he likes to call himself on here .

[Tannhauser]

a new universe in a bubble of fucallium

 

I just got this. Classic Chisholm.

[Paul]

Bob's the brother of the man who was renting some garden equipment to his cousin, also named Bob, but ended up being convicted of murdering Alan (codenamed: Bob) by force-feeding him a typewriter.

 

Clear?

 

.........as mud mate ;)