[ExI] insanity plea

[Anders Sandberg]

On 25/02/2013 18:49, John Clark wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se 
> <mailto:anders at aleph.se>> wrote:
>
>     > Criminals are assumed to know right from wrong but choose to do
>     wrong; mentally ill people might or might not have that ability
>
>
> I don't understand what ability you're talking about. If you choose to 
> do wrong you either did it for a reason (bad genes or a bad 
> environment or both) or you did a bad thing for no reason whatsoever 
> (a random quantum fluctuation in your head). Neither possibility would 
> matter to me in the slightest if you were chasing me with a bloody ax, 
> I don't care why you're doing it I just want you to stop.

We are not talking about the ax-chase part, but what happens once I get 
caught by the police and/or doctors.

If I was chasing after you because you owed me money, then it is a 
matter for the justice system: I had a reason, I was aware that I could 
harm you and that this was against the law and common decency (even 
though the debt might have been big). I choose (using the neural 
mechanisms of action selection in my brain) to use the ax instead of 
sending lawyers after you. I had a choice: humans in this kind of 
situation can and do use non-violent means to get their money.

If I was chasing after you because I believed that you were a leprechaun 
who stole my name, then that is evidence that my reality checking is 
broken and it is a matter for the hospital. Nobody says that delusional 
people have a real choice (they do not update their beliefs when given 
clear evidence against them).

> And I think preventing things like that is the only reason to have 
> criminal law at all, and so in a logical world that would leave no 
> room whatsoever for the insanity defense.

See my other recent post: you might disagree, but people actually have a 
lot of other reasons for criminal law. And many of these make the 
insanity defence totally sensible. (But it is not applicable to that 
many crimes.)


-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Faculty of Philosophy
Oxford University

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