Quote: (05-29-2013 02:33 PM)Wutang Wrote:
When I say judgement, I was thinking beyond just analytic judgement of whether "x is a y". To use a forum example, on this forum we judge beta orbiters, women who divorce rape their husbands as being deficient in some way and we express contempt and outrages towards them. Not only are we are making the analytic judgement that beta orbitors = losers we are also making a value judgement that they are in some sort of way deficient and worthy of being spited. I'm saying that the latter would be unjustified in the case of determinism being true. Same with anyone who is a murderer, a mass rapist, Stalin, etc. The correct sort of way mental state that a determinist should have to these sort of situations should not be rage or disdain. Instead it should be the same as people have towards natural disasters.
The thing is, rage and disdain are healthy emotion responses that serve a purpose. Healthy rage is about protection; it's summoning aggressive energy to deal with threats. Healthy disdain is about influencing people to behave in line with the greater good.
So these can be natural and healthy responses to people behaving in fucked up ways. At the same time, is capital punishment right for someone who's brain wiring is so fucked up that sooner or later, they were always going to do something heinous?
There's a whole field around this called "neuroethics". There's good evidence that very disturbed people just have brains that "sooner or later, were just going to make them commit violent crime", as a result of certain combinations of nature and nurture.
Does that mean they shouldn't be punished? Not really, because even if they were always going to break bad, we still live in a society where murder, violence etc is unsustainable/unacceptable, and the people affected are owed justice.
To me that means limiting their freedom (prison), and the signal that sends ("our society does not condone your behavior") and some degree of rehab is probably in the ballpark of the "right" response.
I do think you're kind of right though - ultimately, on the physical level, it is much like a natural disaster (in terms of their brain wiring from genetics + early experience that turned them into killers).
BTW, to me this isn't about free will - it's about people's emotional health and what that entails for the responsibility for their own actions; i.e. whether they can make certain
kinds of choices (e.g. compassion/empathy/self-inhibition). Some people are obviously more able to do that than others.
Determinism isn't the right framework here, because it doesn't say anything ethically - all it says is "everything that was going to happen was always going to happen that way, and everything will happen a certain way in the future". That prescription includes your rage/disdain (or not) to whatever happens - it's not like you're somehow outside determinism looking in.