atopian.org

Yep, superb question. I can't offer any kind of complete and clear cut response to it, but perhaps point to two ways in which I think the force of the question can be softened.

Firstly, I think we've got to be aware of falling into the 'fatalist' trap here. That is:
"the view that human deliberation and actions are pointless and ineffectual in determining events, because whatever will be will be."

So that for example, the following becomes a good argument:
1. If I will die from my cancer, then seeing the doctor about it is worthless
2. If I will not die from my cancer, then seeing a doctor is redundant
Therefore: 3. There's no point seeing the doctor.

That is, even if things are determined in a very strong way, I'm not sure that we ought to act as though they are. I think that that might vindicate the idea that we should expect ourselves to act as though we have free will, but not others.

Secondly, and, I think, more convincingly, I didn't say that there was no sense in which claims of responsibility are true. Rather, I said that they are not "true to any strong degree". That is, I tend to think that we neither have total freedom of the will, nor are we completely determined. I take the common sense view that we have influences that push our Will around, but that doesn't make it entirely inert.

I think that view allows us to excuse (I'm not sure thats the best word to pick, but I can't think of any better) some actions because most people would act the same in that situation - determined as we are. But it also allows us to critisize other actions (killing someone out of boredom) as bad because the person could have willed otherwise.

Its a huge grey area, but I do think that its possible to make sense of the idea that at some times we should seek to exact causal forces on people*, but at other times grant them that its their responsibility to do the right thing.

Just to make clear - I don't think that you at all denied this - the issue doesn't change my original point that you can't take a strong responsibility line but then deny it to soldiers.

*That sounds so much more sinister than it is!

Thanks for the excellent comment,

Alex
alex@atopian.org

Big difference between responsibility and culpability in my view. As an ex-criminal i am surely responsible for the crimes i committed, however they were as a direct result of events which happened when i was not old enough to be responsible for the drug taking/drinking which led to addiction before i left school. I had no idea what i was getting into. My life was already such chaos that once i began using substances and found they controlled intolerable feelings, which had been getting me into trouble for years, i had no choice but to continue. But am i to blame? I think not. Who is? Does it matter? It changes nothing. Only i am able to respond to my psyche in any constructive way which prevents further offences, unless society would lock me away for ever, kill me, or follow me around 24/7.

What's truly laughable about much that gets spouted about crime, from a criminal's perspective, is the idea that assigning culpability and punishment deters crime. For the bulk of us, the circumstances of our lives mean that the commission of the offence is a given, the threat of punishment only comes into the equation when considering how to avoid being caught. Those who are put off by the thought wouldn't have the courage to do the deed itself, regardless of potential law inforcement, because they'd be much more in fear of the direct consequences from their victim or a member of the g-pub, should they be caught at it. more.

Thanks for the link to the great post - I'll put a link to it somewhere when I get around to it.

I've just never understood how anyone can deny that things like poverty, or dysfunctional family environments, cause crime when there's such a strong correlation between them.

"Only i am able to respond to my psyche in any constructive way which prevents further offences, unless society would lock me away for ever, kill me, or follow me around 24/7."

I don't think you'd disagree, but I'd qualify that society can - to use a cliche - help you to help yourself, by providing rehabilitation of various forms.

Alex
alex@atopian.org

Thank you Alex.

Absolutely: if it hadn't, i'd almost certainly be dead and if not, definitely in jail. I was fortunate to get mine in an environment which was without the taint of punishment, so was safe enough for me to engage in the process and derive benefit from it. The main help, i think, was in forebearance of punishment. I was lucky enough to get an old Judge who, i believe, could clearly see that i was, to use another cliché, 'a man on the edge'. I'd already demonstrated audacity and the wherewithall to run rings round the police, despite suffering from well documented drug-induced psychosis: i suspect he could see that there was a bigger risk to society from nudging me closer to a point of no return than letting me go with minimal supervision to a place where i might get some help. It didn't happen. It was two years later before i found a well run treatment facility, almost by chance really. So patience was at work too, for which i'm grateful.It may well "look like compassion", if one assumes that there is anything to be excused, ie - culpability. However, it might also, as you suggest, look like the height of misguided patronisation.

Then again, what is characterised by the right as excusing bad behaviour could also be seen as realistically responding to the facts of the situation: there is no useful function in a modern society for the notion of culpability. If one accepts that terrible behaviour is primarily the result of terrible environments (and i don't see how any reasonable person can deny the correlation [determinism?]), then it follows that anyone who had choices but contributed to the situation which created the environment is culpable. But the same argument could be applied to those peoples agency, that it was coerced by their environment. Even so, not everyone who is culpable, by the harshest application of that notion, can have a part to play in the responsibility for resolving the problem. We must delegate the tasks and pay for their upkeep, therefore. So it all comes down to responsibility. The criminal has one to engage in the process of rehabilitation, the society to provide the means for such. This isn't "excusing" anything, rather it is a realistic assessment and proper apportioning of responsibility.

Of course, despite the fear of crime being on the increase, the incidence of crime is actually way down on what it was 10 years ago. For sure, figures show increase in certain types of crime, but that is because many things which were considered annoying and if extreme or continuous enough could get you charged with a Public Order Act offence, are now considered crimes in the first instance. We are approaching a stage where harsh treatment of offenders could well reduce the incidence of crime, because there are less criminals, society can afford the punishment. But criminalisation of the poor will lead to a backlash, as it has before. It is an enlightened self-interest that the right will have to accept. I can promise you, when i had the first touch from that Judge, i was on the point of becoming a murderer. Pushed further, i would have killed. We cannot afford the infrastructure of control necessary to have prevented me, leave alone the desirability of an Orwellian hegemony.

I know it looks paradoxical, but I think it's true both that (a) our behavior is completely determined, and (b) we're morally responsible for our behavior. This is because those two statements derive from two distinct orientations or kinds ("universes") of discourse. The first is a mechanistic orientation, which views events, including our own behavior, as being caused -- this is a view of ourselves from outside of ourselves, so to speak. The second is an agency orientation, which views events like our own behavior as being willed -- and this is a view of ourselves from our own situation. Either orientation can include the other in its own fashion -- thus, for example, "moral responsibility" appears within the mechanistic orientation as itself a cultural construct with causal effect, without which the observed pattern of behavior would be different; and "cause" appears within the agency orientation as reason or intention, which is always present as a motivator for will however finely we examine our thought processes. For reasons that I've discussed here, we can't really do without either orientation, but mixing them generates the sort of confusion you get from a category mistake.

I'd add one further note of caution: it may look like compassion to excuse bad (e.g., criminal) behavior on the grounds that the person "couldn't help it" -- but as your own sinister sounding phrase ("seek to exact causal forces on people") might indicate, it can lead to some truly nasty or inhuman practices; think of A Clockwork Orange for an example.

"I think it's true both that (a) our behavior is completely determined, and (b) we're morally responsible for our behavior. This is because those two statements derive from two distinct orientations or kinds ("universes") of discourse."

That looks suspiciously Kantian!

More seriously, I'm somewhat sceptical of (a), mainly because there are so many unsolved issues in philosophy of mind / psychology about how choice works. Science proceeds empirically, and since we just don't have empirical evidence one way or the other, I don't see how you can conclude that we don't have choice. Still, its a huge area, and by the looks of your site you know more about it than I do!

"but as your own sinister sounding phrase ("seek to exact causal forces on people") might indicate, it can lead to some truly nasty or inhuman practices; think of A Clockwork Orange for an example."

I completely agree, but don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. Reducing poverty so that kids have exciting avenues open to them which aren't crime would presumably reduce crime; thats the kind of 'causal force' I was talking about.

I'm also sure I heard that "A Clockwork Orange" was written on this very topic - that the correct moral choice is only available through sheer willpower - although wikipedia fails to confirm. Still, "The book was partly inspired by an event in 1944, when Burgess' pregnant wife Lynne was robbed and beaten by four U.S. GI deserters in a London street, suffering a miscarriage and chronic gynaecological problems. According to Burgess, writing the novel was both a catharsis and an "act of charity" towards his wife's attackers - the story is narrated by and essentially sympathetic to one of the attackers rather than their victim."

Alex
alex@atopian.org

Just a point of clarification: I think that we do have choice, and that we have free will. What I'm saying is that, like any other natural organism or system, we're also determined -- that is, our choices themselves have causes (or reasons, to translate between modes of discourse). The two orientations overlay one another, in other words -- what appears as "cause" in one is "reason" or "intention" in the other, and what appears as "effect" in one is "choice" in the other. Neither orientation is illusory, nor is either one dispensible.

Out of interest DK, do you extend the same line elsewhere, and think that rehabilitating criminals (for example) is refusing to extend them responsibility for their actions? After all, if it's their choice, isn't it up to them to use their agency appropriately, and not up to us to interfere with that use of agency?

(obviously you may deny that some criminals have really done anything that needs excusing, but I would assume you don't take that line with everything)

Alex
alex@atopian.org