(September 29, 2013 at 11:35 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Sure it does. Every time that idea or data is accessed (i.e. any time it affects any part of a person's thinking or behavior), there is active functioning. There is no passive data in the brain.
There is passive data in brain. A lot of memories, knowledge and ideas that are not accessed and therefore are not a part of active functioning. Further evidence that the process of accessing data does not make the data a process.
(September 29, 2013 at 11:35 pm)bennyboy Wrote: We don't punish people based on abstracts. We punish them based on behaviors, i.e. the process of translating the environment through moral (and other) ideas and outputting a behavior. Now, since you claim that the behavior is inevitable FOR THAT PERSON, he could not have done other than he did.
If this punishment is an attempt at conditioning, okay. If it is moral retribution, then it is unsupportable.
On the contrary, we do punish people based on abstracts. All ideas, principles, morals, laws and rules are abstractions. It is only when their behavior does not measure up to an abstract standard that they are punished. The process you indicated assumes a set of abstract principles as the core. And given that that set of principles is not inevitable for the person, the consequent behavior is not inevitable either. Thus, since the behavior is not inevitable for that person, he could have done other than he did.
