"Free Will" Belief/Disbelief Poll

[theVOID]

Interestingly enough, I just watched the Minority Report(or part of it, anyway) and I thought it was a rather interesting moral question for those who do not beleive in free will.(Although the movie itself is only decent.)

If there is no such thing as free will, then all action and reaction can be, to soem extent, predicted.

Not to 'some extent'. Given sufficient knowledge and processing power it can be predicted entirely. Your omnipotent friend would be able to do this (which he shouldn't be able to given free will).

Wouldn't this suggest that if we have suitable means of predicting a person's actions before they happen, we are obligated to prevent those actions, if they are a crime in the eyes of the law?

If we could be certain that someone will commit a crime should we prevent it? i'm sure we already do than whenever we have sufficient reason to believe they will.

Why would we not want to act? The risk is too great not to.

This denies people the ability, capacity, and fundamental right to make split-second decisions based entirely on internal changes.

1. If they had the ability there would be no deterministic certainty, so your other example can't quite be applied. We could say they are likely to commit this act, and that would be all. That is what we currently do in numerous circumstances.

2. Is it worth the risk, letting the bomber get all the way to the train station and then waiting just to make sure he doesn't change his mind? The risks are unacceptable, even more so than allowing the potential criminal to change his mind at the last minuet.

3. Conspiring to commit crime is still a crime, and they are still guilty of that even if they were to change their minds. If it was a spontaneous act then it would be more difficult to judge, but then again if we knew of some impending causal action than the person themselves are not currently aware of then we need only discourage them sufficiently.

Given we don't have the ability to predict these things and likely never will i see little point in worrying about it too much. It's certainly an interesting question.

Basically, if there is no such thing as free will, then this kind of pre-emptive stoppage of crime is permissable. Even though it is a violation of human rights.

How is it a violation of human rights? Conspiring to commit crime is a crime. Do i have the right to walk up to your front door with a gun and threaten you as long as I change my mind before it gets too serious? What if it was known for certain that i would kill you tomorrow, would it be a violation of my rights to stop me, or a violation to your rights to protection?

It would be more immoral for society to allow your death than it would to prevent my action.

Also, predicting and preventing crime in a deterministic universe has a much lower change of wrongfully convicting people. If we are serious about preventing crime then determinism works in our favor.

Contrarily, if such action is predictable to a point,(excluding the aforementioned split-second changes) then the way of things would seem to suggest that their is a pre-ordained structure or 'plan' for the future. It might be considered a scientifically plausible kind of 'Fate.' "Science has stolen most of our miracles."

Your miracles never existed, science just put a damper on ignoranance.

And Determinism is fate.