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

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 21/08/07, Michael M. Butler <mmbutler at gmail.com> wrote:

> Am I hallucinating, or is someone seriously proposing -- more than
> once -- that nonlethal deterrence of criminal behavior including
> punishment works and is somehow appropriate, but that capital
> punishment is bad and isn't justified... ...without, apparently,
> noticing that the threat of capital punishment juuuust miiight have a
> deterrent effect on some people? And most particularly, that its
> abolition might be problematical? I sense a lacuna in a world model.
> And let's set aside the problems presented by the substrate of the
> discussion.

You don't need to believe in free will to make deterrence work. If it
can be shown that a mindless automaton A will not do unpleasant act B
if faced with consequence C, then we should make sure that A believes
C will happen in case it does B. That is, unless we think that C or
the threat of C is not justified by its utility in preventing A, which
is another argument.



-- 
Stathis Papaioannou