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.
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Punitive justice may not make sense without free will, but restorative and preventative justice still does.
At which point (if any) does someone deserve writing off as an asshole?
Wouldn’t it require an act of free will to decide that the murderer had no free will and therefore shouldn’t be jailed? If we have no free will and are always acting in response to that complex array of dominos, then the judge and jury sending the murderer to prison have the same amount of choice as the murderer.
That would be correct, the judge and jury have no more choice than the murderer, which is none. Hypothetically, the appearance of choice doesn’t mean there is choice or free will. As a slightly tortured analogy, like “perfect” loaded dice, which appear that they could be anything but always give the same result.
Time to make a dice which gives a specific result based on time
If you don’t know any math and I explain you why 1 + 1 = 2 and you get it, it’s not because you decided to understand. You helplessly did so and you can’t unlearn it anymore. There’s no free will in that.
This same applies to the judge and jury. If they truly understand the illusion of free will it will have an affect on how they relate to other people. You simply cannot blame them for their actions the same way once the illusion is broken. It’s like knowing the stove is hot and still touching it. You can do it but you’ll get burned and no matter of how hard you want to believe it’s cold it just isn’t and every attempt to live your life like it is just results in you getting burned again and again.
I think breaking the illusion would remove the concept of “blame” or vindictiveness from the judicial system, but not punishment. If a cog is broken in your watch, you remove it and get it fixed. You don’t remove it as punishment because the cog chose to misbehave, you do it because it’s necessary to get a fully working clock. Bringing it back to the court example, you put them in jail, not as punishment, but to protect society, rehabilitate, and/or set an example for others.
I feel like the level of mass education about the lack of free will required to make sure all judges and juries understand that murderers have no free will, would probably end up educating a lot of people with violent tendencies that they have no free will too - and if free will does exist, they now have an excuse not to even try to control themselves. Which the article did note has been observed in other studies.
I definitely agree there, as most philosophical subjects don’t really matter in a real sense. To me, though, this has some real implications regarding (pretty far in the future) AI development. If we were to say/prove humans have free will, that would be a potential bar to clear for when an “entity” is entitled to rights. It’s all largely arbitrary, though, as (at least in the US) we aren’t super rigorous to which animals are entitled to which rights. For instance, the Animal Welfare, which regulates when you have to use anesthesia, defines animals as
It is conceiviable for an entity to not have free will but still be consciouss. It feels like something to be that thing. It couldn’t choose their actions but they could experience pain and suffering. I don’t see a reason for such entity to not have rights only because they don’t have free will.
That’s true, I should have been more careful with my use of the word “rights.” What I meant regarding free will was whether or not they’d have all the same rights as a human. The Animal Welfare Act I think is a good example of where we convey a more limited set of rights to things which can experience pain, but don’t have free will*.
Free will or not - if you have intentionally killed a bunch of people in the past it’s to be expected you’re likely to do it again. Such person shouldn’t be put to jail because we want to punish him. After all he could not have done otherwise. However as they’re danger to others something clearly needs to be done. They have to be separated from society in some way to prevent further harm but we should still treat them humanely and make sure their live is as good as it could be withing the circumstances.
If a bear wanders onto residential area we don’t shoot it because it’s evil. In my opinion the bear is no different from a murdered. They’re both slaves of their biology.