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

[Samantha Atkins]

On Aug 17, 2007, at 2:56 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

> 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 he had no power to choose not to murder someone, for instance,  
then he is too dangerous to be left at large.  If he did have such  
power then he can be judged on his choices.

>> 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.

This does not follow in the slightest and is totally false by my  
experience of most critical choice points in my life.

>> 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).

Not so in any  actually relevant sense.  It is like saying that if I  
make a choice then my choice was determined by the very fact that I  
made a choice!   Therefore I could not really have made a choice  
because I in fact had no choice because, what?  There is no substance  
to that argument.  It begs the question.


>>
>> 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.
>>

That we confuse the issue with theological constructs because  
philosophy was for too long entangled with theology and because of  
certain weaknesses of human mentation is largely the problem in these  
interminable discussions.

>> 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.

And it is inescapable that we are having this discussion and we are  
doomed to continue to have it again and again.

> 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.
>

The only fantasy is our horrifically poor model of what choice and  
"free will" does and does not mean.

> 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.

A matter of taste?  Really?

- s