[ExI] free-will, determinism, crime and punishment

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 17/08/07, gts <gts_2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I've been thinking lately about crime and punishment...
>
> As a compatibilist I define free-will, roughly, as the capacity to act
> freely according to one's will or nature at any given moment.  We all have
> free-will. But this does not mean the future, including one's future
> choices and actions, cannot also be completely determined by the past. On
> the compatibilist view, free-will is compatible with determinism.
>
> The criminal chooses freely to commit the crime, but it does not follow
> necessarily that he could have chosen otherwise. If we could re-wind the
> clock to the moment before the crime, to the exact same circumstance, he
> would certainly choose to commit the same crime again. His choice to offend
> was a free choice (in that he was not forced) but it was also a
> determined choice (in that it was in his nature at that moment to make
> that choice).
>
> There is no need then for any philosophical hoo-hah about that
> quasi-religious mental construct we call 'moral agency', nor is there any
> need for the associated idea that we should punish people as retribution
> for having acted wrongly when they could have acted rightly. Such
> considerations are just so much metaphysical baggage.
>
> The burden of proof is on the prosecution, and no prosecutor can
> produce evidence to prove that a defendant could have acted rightly. As
> far as anyone knows, the criminal acted freely *but according to his
> nature*.
>
> So, in an enlightened society, the goal of a correctional facility should
> be
> simply to correct the nature of the criminal (rehabilitation), and to
> correct
> the natures of would-be criminals through his example (deterrence).
>
> Retribution ought not figure into the equation.
>
> At least that's my take on this subject. Comments?

If determinism is true, the criminal could not have acted differently
but neither could the judge have decided on a different sentence. An
enlightened society would not blame the criminal (or the judge), but
then whether society is enlightened or not is not a matter of choice
either. This doesn't stop us indulging in the fantasy that our choices
are "free", and indeed it is very difficult to stop thinking this way
even if we realise it is a fantasy.

Compatibilism involves redefining "free" so that it doesn't mean the
logically impossible thing we intuitively feel it means: neither
determined nor random. Whether you accept the redefinition and call
yourself a compatibilist is a matter of taste rather than a
substantive philosophical issue.



-- 
Stathis Papaioannou