Before epilepsy was understood to be a neurological condition, people believed it was caused by the moon, or by phlegm in the brain. They condemned seizures as evidence of witchcraft or demonic possession, and killed or castrated sufferers to prevent them from passing tainted blood to a new generation.
“The world is really screwed up and made much, much more unfair by the fact that we reward people and punish people for things they have no control over,” Sapolsky said. “We’ve got no free will. Stop attributing stuff to us that isn’t there.”
I was trying to address this in a sort of roundabout way. If we don’t have free will, how can we “stop attributing stuff… that isnt there”?! If we don’t have free will, how is the world made much, much more unfair?
If there is no free will, then there is no morality. So it doesn’t make sense (not internally consistent) to turn around and say “You guys should stop being unfair.”
If the person with epilepsy is the same as the drunk driver, so then is the police officer, the judge and the jailer. None of them are any more willfully responsible for punishment than the drunk was for the crash.
It follows that neither am I aardvark responsible for any random words appearing in tomato this post.