morality is subjective and people don't have free will

[Edwardo Piet]

If it's not objectively wrong... is it wrong at all?

Only if the society in which it takes place agrees that it is.  

So if Hitler won WW2 and Nazism took over the world... if there were a couple of Jews left hiding somewhere.... it would be wrong for them to exist?

[Catholic_Lady]

Hehe...CL: does that mean that if you stopped believing in free will then you'd start believing that all criminals were insane because they had no control over their crimes?

Yeah, probably. I don't see how someone can rape and murder a child, for example, and not have chosen to do so unless the person was seriously insane. Unless someone was holding a gun up to his head and making him do it or something.

[Edwardo Piet]

Here is the problem, you and I and 99% of people might agree right now, today, that it is wrong to yell at a random person because you are having a bad day (again, my sincerest apologies about that), but that does not make it objectively wrong.
Under some circumstance, at some point in history, I'm sure that most people would have agreed it was acceptable.

For instance, what if the person yelling at you has autism?  Like severe autism, but they are still an adult.
Would you still call it objectively wrong for them to yell at a stranger because they are upset? Or is it suddenly more understandable, and therefore more acceptable, with that one little change?

If the person yelling at an innocent bystander has some kind of mental illness, I would say the act of yelling is still objectively wrong, but the yeller's culpability is lessened (if not entirely gone) due to his mental illness.

Hehe.

And here's me believing in objective morals but not even relative moral responsibility

I do believe in practical, social and legal responsibility, however.

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Hehe...CL: does that mean that if you stopped believing in free will then you'd start believing that all criminals were insane because they had no control over their crimes?

Yeah, probably. I don't see how someone can rape and murder a child, for example, and not have chosen to do so unless the person was seriously insane. Unless someone was holding a gun up to his head and making him do it or something.

What about more minor harms? Like yelling at someone?

If you stopped believing in free will would you start believing that yelling at someone when you're having a bad day but still shouldn't yell at them... meant you were insane?

[Aroura]

I think I answered that in my follow up post?

"I would also like to point out that I AM 100% against punishment for punishments sake. The death penalty, etc, is flat out wrong. Rehab should be priority for people who harm others and/or themselves, and if rehab is not an option, humane ways of protecting the public should be employed (lock-up but not solitary, sunlight, activity, and decent food, etc). "

But if that isn't clear enough, I'll try and elaborate, and be more specific.

No, it is not justifiable to specifically lock someone up or put them in jail simply for breaking a law or even causing harm.

Civilized places already do the following:
Step 1.  Attempt to correct the harmful behavior.  The vast majority of misbehavior is actually made worse by simply locking a person away.  Most minor to moderate misbehaviors can be corrected with time and effort.  That's why we call it the "Corrections" system.  The goal is to correct the behavior, first, and foremost, not to punish.  Do you agree?
Step 2. If person is severely dangerous, they may need to be kept away from the public while being corrected.  This would require some form of "locking-up", though it would vary per case.  Some people could do well under house arrest, others may require being kept in special facilites.  Serial violent offenders would fall into the later category.
Step 3.  If a person cannot be corrected for whatever reason, you just keep them in step 2.  You do your best to correct them while keeping them safely away from the pubic.  This becomes permanent.  Even the worst offenders should not be put in solitary confinement as a punishment (which can turn sane people insane).  People should be periodically reviewed for their safely. Rational steps should be take between rehab and release.  

I will field the follow-up question I suspect you are going to ask before you ask it. 
The justification for locking a person up at all is pretty obvious to me and others who hold these same ideas.  We aren't locking them up for chosing to be bad or "evil", we are locking them up to keep others, and often the person in question, safe.  

Again, hope that helps answer your questions.

I have one for you.  Very seriously, how do you think Jesus would propose we deal with nonviolent criminals?  And with violent ones?

Yeah, I saw you had already answered after I read what you wrote lol. Sorry bout that. 

I think there are 2 justifiable reasons for putting people in jail:

1. To protect the rights of others. (For stealing, harming, raping, destroying property, or killing. People who do drugs/prostitution should not go to jail bc they are not infringing on others' rights)

2. To deter people from committing crimes by establishing jail time as a consequence.

Like you, I disagree with the death penalty, solitary confinement, and am even starting to wonder if life in prison without possibility of parole is ok.

I agree that imprisonment shouldn't be done as punishment for punishment's sake.   

However, if I thought the criminal did not choose to act the way they did, I still wouldn't feel right about them being imprisoned, even under the 2 justifiable reasons I posted above. So for people who I believe actually didn't choose to act as they did, such as those who are innocent for reason of insanity, I think they should stay at a hospital and maybe house arrest, and only for long enough until they are treated. 

I try to hold the position that I think Jesus would hold, so if I had to guess on His position, it would be the same one I already explained above. To recap: 

1. Imprisonment for those who infringe on other's rights (thieves, rapists, murderers, etc), while still respecting their human dignity by outlawing death penalty and solitary confinement.   

2. No imprisonment for those who don't infringe on other's rights (prostitutes, drug users, etc) 

3. Treatment and no imprisonment who those who had no control over the crime they committed (insane people)

Ok, I'm on board with most of that.  I actually think improsonment is wrong, and that every person fits under category 3.  Thereofr, no imprisonment and treatment.


Prisons are a monstrosity to me (as they currently exist, anyway). Permanent "imprisonment" should basically be for the very criminally insane who cannot ever be fully cured or made safe for society, and should never be in a "prison" but instead in (well kept and well managed) mental hospitals, where people continue to get treatment, and are continually evaluated to see if they have improved because as you say, life without parole is also unjust.  What if there is a new medication or treatment that comes along that can help them?

But just locking people up?  No. It fixes nothing, and unjustly harms a lot of people.
Put them somewhere they can learn not to infringe on someone's right, teach them, help them, treat them, then help them get back into society when and where they can.

Honestly, you and I agree here about 95%, it's just a few details and a few why's we are tussling over.

[Edwardo Piet]

When treatment is ineffective, unachievable and unrealistic and the person is dangerous then the right thing to do is detain them.... but treat them as justly as possible while they're being detained.

[Aroura]

Here is the problem, you and I and 99% of people might agree right now, today, that it is wrong to yell at a random person because you are having a bad day (again, my sincerest apologies about that), but that does not make it objectively wrong.
Under some circumstance, at some point in history, I'm sure that most people would have agreed it was acceptable.

For instance, what if the person yelling at you has autism?  Like severe autism, but they are still an adult.
Would you still call it objectively wrong for them to yell at a stranger because they are upset? Or is it suddenly more understandable, and therefore more acceptable, with that one little change?

If the person yelling at an innocent bystander has some kind of mental illness, I would say the act of yelling is still objectively wrong, but the yeller's culpability is lessened (if not entirely gone) due to his mental illness.

So it moved more into a grey area, though.

Point is, there is also some "what if" out there we haven't thought of.  There is nothing that every society through all of human history would 100% agree is objectively right or wrong. Even things we would call murder.  In the middle ages in some places, it was perfectly acceptable in Christian Society to kill a political rival or someone who had wronged you in revenge, unless they were sheltering in your home, then it was suddenly a big moral no-no.

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When treatment is ineffective, unachievable and unrealistic and the person is dangerous then the right thing to do is detain them.... but treat them as justly as possible while they're being detained.

That is a very succinct way of putting it. Agreed!

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Hehe...CL: does that mean that if you stopped believing in free will then you'd start believing that all criminals were insane because they had no control over their crimes?

Yeah, probably. I don't see how someone can rape and murder a child, for example, and not have chosen to do so unless the person was seriously insane. Unless someone was holding a gun up to his head and making him do it or something.

Exactly.
All criminal behavior, as Ham and I see it, is a result of mental illness.  Not choice.
My mom came up against this conundrum once, I recall, when I was in my early teens, and it really upset her.  We watched a show about a guy who had brain damage and became an utter monster. When he was treated, he was able to recover somewhat.

This led her down the path of realizing that, perhaps, it is this way for everyone. The drug addict is depressed, or was abused.  The rapist was born with brain damage, lacking empathy.  They don't chose to have empathy or not, that part of their brain is broken.  Just like an autistic person has trouble communicating, sociopaths have trouble understanding and empathizing with people.  The autistic person yells and cries.  The sociopath coldly steals all of your money, or kills.  It isn't choice, it is an unavoidable consequence of their nature. 

It really fried her brain, and I know she still struggles to reconcile the part of her that wishes to believe in free-will, and the part that recognizes we are all victims of consequence.

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Only if the society in which it takes place agrees that it is.  

So if Hitler won WW2 and Nazism took over the world... if there were a couple of Jews left hiding somewhere.... it would be wrong for them to exist?

Sadly, yes (subjectively, of course).  Society tells us what our morals are, and sometimes it can have some pretty fucked up morals, in our current opinion!

[Catholic_Lady]

Put them somewhere they can learn not to infringe on someone's right, teach them, help them, treat them, then help them get back into society when and where they can.

I think this would be the ideal for every criminal, just don't know how realistic it would be. 

Mainly because, unlike you, I believe with a few exceptions that people choose their actions. If a man (who is mentally sane) chose to rape a girl, I believe he chose it freely... probably because he likes to dominate and felt horny and wanted to do it, and in his selfishness, put that ahead of the girl's rights. There is nothing he needed to be treated for, and nothing he needed to be taught, imho.  

But yes, if there was a way to truly change these people and put them safely back in society, that would be ideal. I just don't think there is. It's mainly a matter of hoping they learn their lessen or just grow out of their ways before releasing them again.

[Edwardo Piet]

Sadly, yes (subjectively, of course).  Society tells us what our morals are, and sometimes it can have some pretty fucked up morals, in our current opinion!

I think if the whole world thought killing the Jews was moral... it would still be immoral. Not from my perspective. If I didn't exist it would still be wrong because the suffering would be real.

[Catholic_Lady]

Yeah, probably. I don't see how someone can rape and murder a child, for example, and not have chosen to do so unless the person was seriously insane. Unless someone was holding a gun up to his head and making him do it or something.

What about more minor harms? Like yelling at someone?

If you stopped believing in free will would you start believing that yelling at someone when you're having a bad day but still shouldn't yell at them... meant you were insane?

Honestly, I'm not sure what would be running through my head if I stopped believing that people have the freedom to choose their actions. The notion that everyone has 0 control over everything they do makes no sense to me, so I'm not sure how I'd rationalize that in my mind if I thought it. As it stands now, when a person does something they had 0 control over, they were either forced, insane, or were dealing with some other extreme sort of circumstance that I can't even think of.

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Sadly, yes (subjectively, of course).  Society tells us what our morals are, and sometimes it can have some pretty fucked up morals, in our current opinion!

I think if the whole world thought killing the Jews was moral... it would still be immoral. Not from my perspective. If I didn't exist it would still be wrong because the suffering would be real.

Agreed. 

But who's to say that making someone suffer is objectively wrong though? 

While I agree with you that morality is objective, I don't understand how a person can have that stance if they don't believe in a Moral Law Giver (aka, a god(s) of some sort).

[brewer]

 
If morals have grey areas then they are not objective/absolute.

By that, I just mean they are dependent on circumstances, but that they are still objective within those circumstances.

Example:

The morality of yelling at someone is a grey area. 

It is objectively wrong to yell at a random person simply because you are having a bad day and need someone to take your anger out on, even though the person has nothing to do with why you are upset. 

It is objectively not wrong to yell at someone you just caught abusing your child.

bold mine

Sorry, as far as I'm concerned all that describes is subjective/relative. 

If the person laughs at your bad day rant, what then? Oops, relative/subjective. 

If the someone does not know it's abuse? If only you consider it abuse but I don't? 

I doubt we will ever agree.