RE: The place of rage and hate
November 18, 2014 at 6:09 pm
(This post was last modified: November 18, 2014 at 6:10 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
(November 13, 2014 at 8:39 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Does it rob us of agency, or of the illusion of agency? I think that's the philosophical question behind all of this.-and yet fairly easy to continue incarcerating people. I've always thought that just a little bit less "magic" in the justice system would be nice. We know that there is a prepeonderence of crime in the demographics of the poor. We enact programs to alleviate this with the notion that it will decrease crime (and it does seem to) - so clearly..we understand that crime isn't strictly a matter of fully and freely choosing. If it were, the skew in demographics would be difficult to explain.....
If we can confirm that all thoughts and behaviors are deterministic, then agency is really just a label for certain categories of brain function; it's hard to feel moral outrage in this case, or to build a legal system that focuses on the repayment of evil with punishment (aka righteous evil).
Meanwhile, our prisons (and police forces) seem to be filled with people who have a punishment fetish - and that's working out just swell, eh?
My objection doesn't cover every criminal (or every crime), but alot of them that it doesn't cover we decide are those that can't actually help themselves anyway, compulsives..the ones that do it for the fun of it, because they have little ticks (that most of us at least like to think we don't share....).
(hehehe, about the moral outrage bit Benny, why would it be hard to feel moral outrage? Wouldn't my feelings also be deterministic? Seems it would be just as easy to feel moral outrage either way :wink: )
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