The Newly Departed thread: announcements (departures)

[ignoramus]

That's called having a life, Kit.


Unlike us...

[KittyAnn]

You don't believe in free will, so I guess it wouldn't make sense for you to hold anyone's bad actions against them.

There are multiple levels to this... I don't think hammy managed to convey it

When you label an action as bad, you are referring to bad relative to something... usually, relative to other people.... sometimes to the self (seat belts!)

At the social level, a group of people has a certain number of needs and wants that should be catered to. One of those wants is that nothing bad happens to them, specially as coming from someone else in the same group. So, society has come up with multiple ways to deal with those few individuals that pop up and ruin the whole fun for the rest of us.... on some places, the person is killed, on some places, they are simply put in a place away from the rest of society (jail)... on some places, they get the offending limb chopped off... etc..etc..etc... humans are an imaginative bunch!

At the basic physics level, where we deal with atoms and electrons and the like, every thing that happens in our minds is deterministic, within the probabilistic nature of the Quantum world. Biological systems display this deterministic character, as they are usually large enough for QM crazyness to play a small, nearly negligible, role.

The brain is a very large biological system, linked to all points of our bodies.
It is known that damage to specific locations in the brain lead to very precise psychological alterations. But the brain is also a living organ, so it can, for certain types of damages, bypass the damage and everything continues functioning as normal.

Aside from memory, one of the basic cognitive functions of the brain is pattern recognition. Language can be thought of as one such pattern, I guess.... just like any other social behavior... even love.

At a higher level, we have our consciousness, our awareness. How the brain produces these is still unknown, so there's wiggle room for metaphysics to play around. But it is clear that this awareness draws upon the patterns stored in the brain, as well as the emotions associated with those patterns. These emotions are, at this level, a symptom of certain hormones being produced in the brain, at a more basic level. Perceived danger leads to one kind of emotion, while perceived offspring production leads to another kind, etc, etc...

Intuitively (which is to say that, apparently, evolution has favored the inclusion of these features built-in the brain), we can tell that something is bad if it leads to harm towards a member of our tribe. Nowadays, to us, "tribe" here may mean "country", it may mean group of friends, our religious group, our political group, it may mean an actual tribe, or the whole human population.

Just going by these varying concepts of "tribe" within individual minds, one can see how that can lead to varying results - what one considers good, the other might not, and so can, without going against his intuition, cause harm upon another individual. Our society, with its countries, has had to encompass all sorts of people in it and thus this country-wide tribe needs as broad as possible a definition of tribe for it to function.
Historically, a hierarchical structure has been found to work well in the governance of the people of these countries and this government has become perceived as good if its functions lead to a minimal harm towards the citizens. Those individuals who display a pattern of behaviors that lead to harm of the country's population need to be kept away from that population.

No matter how those individuals lack the underlying ability to act differently, to act good, they still need to be kept apart from the general population who does possess that ability.


(was this too convoluted?)

ok Poca...all in all, you're right..without a reference point there is no chance ... even all scientific theories do not make sense...
but I missed something here ... abstract thinking ...
Abstractness can be represented by a scale, at one end of which there are images corresponding to real objects, registered in the process of perception, and at the other end there are abstract concepts, i.e. those that have no equivalent among real objects. An abstract concept can be, for example, the concept of God.
Besides, people who can think abstractly, in contrast to people who use only particulars, are looking for original solutions and are able to present hypothetical situations, thanks to which they can see the heart of the matter faster. Particular/concret units only see a section of available data or solutions.
People who have difficulty with abstract thinking, that is, those that focus only on facts that correspond to reality, may have difficulty, among other things, to guess the intentions of a person telling a joke or may be less prone to empathy...
So...in one word our brain is guilty of everything!!

[Edwardo Piet]

I get putting people in prison to protect society, and not as punishment. And I agree with that. Nonetheless, if a person is not responsible for the acts they commited, I still don't think imprisoning them is just.

I think it is when the alternative is letting them roam free and hurt people.

Example would be someone who is innocent by reason of insanity.

But they still get institutionalized. They're still detained from society so as not to harm anyone.

And, although ultimately no one is responsible at all... that doesn't mean there isn't a difference between harming someone on purpose and harming someone by accident. For example, manslaugther... when someone kills someone by accident. Because it was by accident, they are less likely to go around killing people than, say, a serial killer who kills people on purpose and doesn't regret it.

Another purpose for prison is to punish people who are able to be deterred by punishment. And also to make other people more afraid to commit crimes.

Psychopaths have no conscience so they are certainly not discouraged from killing people by their conscience. They don't have a conscience. However, most psychopaths don't kill people. Why is that? They're afraid of going to prison, they're afraid of being punished.


Without prisons you'd have anarchy. There are plenty of horrible people who would hurt people a lot more often if they knew they wouldn't be punished for it.

Of course, if you think no one is responsible for the acts they commit because they don't actually have free will, then it would seem everyone would fall under the category of innocent by your standards.

Well, there's still a clear difference between intentionally hurting someone and not intentionally hurting someone. Ultimately, everyone is innocent by reason of causation, but not by reason of insanity. There's a big difference between being sane and being insane. Sane people can learn from their mistakes and they can be detered, insane people can't. If a sane person gets punished, they might not commit the crime again. If an insane person gets punished, it has no effect on them because they didn't commit the crime maliciously (or even out of rational self-interest at the expense of others), they committed it because they're out of their mind. And if their insanity is so bad that they're incurable, then unfortunately the best that can be done to protect people from an insane and dangerous person, such as the criminally insane, is to detain them.

[Minimalist]

Also, it is most imperfect in how it favors those who spend the most money to earn the freedom from the justice they deserve.

Now that could well be the understatement of the century!



https://www.wokv.com/news/local/nassau-c...OGdI4nYLN/

Nassau County woman sentenced to 30 years for DUI crash that killed her two sons, injured 6 other kids

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/02/us/ethan-...index.html

Ethan Couch, known for his "affluenza" defense in his deadly drunk driving case, was released from a Texas jail Monday after serving nearly two years behind bars for violating his probation.
Couch, 20, first made headlines as a teenager when he was sentenced to probation for a drunken driving crash that killed four people and seriously injured two others.
Prosecutors in that 2013 case sought 20 years in jail, but Couch received no prison time after a psychologist testified that Couch was a victim of "affluenza," a product of wealthy, privileged parents who never set limits for him.

It's about as far from perfect as it is possible to get!

[Catholic_Lady]

I figure if someone is innocent, they are innocent regardless of reason. It doesn't feel right putting an innocent person in prison to me, imho. But I'm glad you are still in favor of putting rapists/murderers in prison despite feeling they are innocent. At the end of the day, that's what matters.

[Edwardo Piet]

Well yeah ultimately everyone is innocent in the sense it ultimately wasn't them that caused their crimes. But this doesn't mean that people don't commit crimes, or that there isn't a difference between killing someone on purpose or killing them by accident.

People still aren't innocent in the compatabilist sense. But yeah, I'm not a compatabilist because "free will" is a loaded term and most people believe in much more. It's misleading to call any version of free will that is compatible with determinism "free will".

[Mystic]

Hammy, I for one am not deceived that anyone honestly doesn't believe in free-will. It's impossible.

[Catholic_Lady]

Free will simply means you choose your actions and are therefore morally responsible for them.

[vorlon13]

Free will simply means you choose your actions and are therefore morally responsible for them.

We have to pray to be not lead into temptation . .

Matthew 6 (KJV)
13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

[Edwardo Piet]

Hammy, I for one am not deceived that anyone honestly doesn't believe in free-will. It's impossible.

Free will is indeed impossible.

---

Free will simply means you choose your actions and are therefore morally responsible for them.

Well, there's two different versions of free-will.

One is the kind that everyone believes in, including me.

Another is the kind that almost everyone believes in. The magical kind.

The ability to do otherwise in exactly the same situation, is impossible.

My point is that ultimately your choices are caused.

But I really didn't want this thread to turn into a free-will debate. But feel free to make another free-will thread if you wish. There's been fucking tons of them over the years, and I've argued my point time and time again.

Here's my favorite version of the argument against incompatabilist free-will: