I used to get these letters all the time, when I was doing forensic DNA analysis (and testimony) for defense attorneys. Inmates would somehow find out about me, and write me letters asking for help. They were always pathetic, pleaded that they were innocent (something that has to be considered if they’re asking for DNA evidence), and I never had the time to do anything but (occasionally) respond by saying “no,” as I had a day job and my hands full with other cases.
The letters were umistakeable. They’d always come in a stamped envelope with my name and address scrawled in bad handwriting, like this one that came yesterday. (The address, by the way, is wrong, but it found its way to me anyway. I’ve also left out the return address and name.)
And I knew that if I turned the letter over, I would find it rubber-stamped like this:
But this letter was different: it was from an inmate who has been reading books about evolution (including mine and several of Dawkins’s), was a former M.D. and seemed intelligent. He had a couple of questions about whether there was enough time for evolution to occur (i.e., “What mathematical evidence is there that evolution had time to proceed from a one-cellular replicator to man in 4.5 billion years?” [JAC: it wasn’t quite that long]), and what I thought the best existing fossil evidence was for a transition from one species to another. Those aren’t bad questions for a layperson.
So I looked the guy up. He was in for murder, and the sentence was life without parole. He killed his wife and tried to pretend that somebody else did it. It was not a pretty story. It was, however, sort of a crime of passion. I won’t divulge details, but I suspect that’s why, in a state that has capital punishment (e.g., Timothy McVeigh), he isn’t on death row.
My question is this? Should I answer his questions? The downside is that I’m busy, that it may engage me in a correspondence I don’t want, and the guy did something horrible.
On the other hand, he’s in for life without parole, which surely must be one of the worst possible ways to live one’s life. (And yes, I know he was convicted for taking away the life of another.) I also don’t believe in moral responsibility, that is, I don’t think the guy had a choice about whether to kill his wife or not. Yes, he needs to be punished, to deter others and keep him out of society (rehabilitation is not an option for someone who will never get out). But that doesn’t mean that he’s not a human being, or that his life could not be a tiny bit bettered by a response from a scientist.
I just keep thinking what it must be like to live in a small cell, knowing that the only way out is in a coffin. Yes, I know the guy did something unconscionable, but that doesn’t make him inhuman. My impulse is to answer, but I thought I’d pose it as a general question.
I think you have to answer; as someone pointed out above, as atheists we tend to less judgemental, and the man has asked for help.
Let’s face this subject is something that is dear to all of us.
If you’ve got the paper to spare you could also print off the posts on this thread and let him see that there are quite a lot of us.
Ian
He has been judged by society, so I see no harm in dropping a quick line suggesting further reading – if his primary concern is time surely there is an article or two you could send or maybe suggest a book on geology. I would suggest a history of science that goes through how humans came to terms with science like The Ascent of Man. I would be happy to send him a copy at my own expense.
I can’t see the relevance of where he is or what he’s done at all. The Oklahoma Department of Corrections is taking care of that (bearing in mind that an inordinately large part of the US population is in prison compared to the rest of the world, and I have the impression that US prisons are inordinately tough).
He’s just another person who’s written to you with a question about your field of study. Answer him or not, exactly as if he were anyone else who’d done that.
« He’s just another person who’s written to you with a question about your field of study. Answer him or not, exactly as if he were anyone else who’d done that. »
Yep.
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When this thread has run its course, I suggest a print-out is sent to the prisoner, it will give him much food for thought and will mean the Jerry, who is greatly occupied with his book can continue his work.
I think this situation prompts to cognitive dissonance. I would have to face the question if I accepted to correspond with someone that I know has committed a murder, regardless he is a human being like all of us or his interest in evolution or any other topic. To solve this I would search for more information about him, more context, and decide according to it.
I’m curious about this – “I also don’t believe in moral responsibility, that is, I don’t think the guy had a choice about whether to kill his wife or not.” In which way he has no choice?
Because he has no free will. To see that, just search the site for posts on “free will” here; there are many.
Thank you!
Yes – or if you have a grad student or someone that volunteers to answer and has more time. Who’s not to say that a good theory might not come of this man’s questions? If not, at least he’s continuing his education.
And the inmate’s edification may benefit a few of his fellow prisoners.
One must be very careful when dealing with inmates. I worked for five years in a Florida prison. I also taught problem-solving skills to inmate classes as a private contractor. Inmates are or learn to be manipulative. We had cases of nurses and guards falling in love with inmates and then being used to smuggle in drugs. Life in prison is not as depicted in the HBO series OZ, but inmate behavior is not to different.
We had an inmate who committed the same crime as this one. He was a member of MENSA and learned his prison street skills very well. I would recommend that his letter be answered, but do not engage in a long pen pal relationship.
“Crime of passion” suggests to me that something happened that made him act out of character. Yes, he may have killed his wife, but it’s not as if he’s a cold-blooded killer. If he was someone with no regard at all for the lives of others, it would be different. He was a victim of circumstance (which I can relate to, to some extent), and I think his sentence is punishment enough. I’d absolutely reply.
No “Pre-Marital Check-Off List” can be complete.
Nevertheless, I wonder if there should be included the questions:
Do you believe that you have free will?
What transgression would I have to commit sufficient to prompt you to murder me?
You’d never get an accurate answer. Not because the responder would deliberately lie, but because I doubt anyone can accurately predict their response when under stress.
I know my reaction to aggravation has varied all the way from ‘yeah, so what?’ to going completely bananas, and it has far more to do with a host of extraneous factors than it has the aggravating ’cause’ of my reaction. (And no, so far as I know I don’t suffer from any mental disorder other than being human…)
You’d never get an accurate answer . . . I doubt anyone can accurately predict their response when under stress.”
I agree. But one can’t be blamed for contemplating making some poor attempt at avoiding an abusive relationship/getting killed.
(I’m thinking of that Rice football player noble fellow videoed hitting his fiancée. That video is evidence of assault. Was it up to her to press charges? Couldn’t the police charge him regardless of her wishes, and regardless of what the NFL did? Or is this “accommodating” and special pleading by another Amuricun religion, Sports?)
I’m surprised at your statement that you don’t think the prisoner had a choice of whether to kill. I assume this is for the reasons advanced in e.g. Sam Harris’ book about free will, mostly that you can detect brain signals in a test subject reflecting a decision to do something seconds before the subject is consciously aware of his own decision.
I’m surprised at Harris’ conclusions because from experience I know we can sense our own pre-made decisions, yet I think it’s clear we can overrule them. There may be some people incapable of overruling them but I think that falls into the category of mental illness.
Unless there is other research I’m not aware of, this looks like bad science. If you do have any additional reasons for denying free will I’d appreciate being pointed to them.
What is “bad science” is someone claiming that he/she KNOWS that you can sense your own pre-made decisions based on “experience,” and then can overcome them. There is no evidence for that at all save your own wish-thinking. Can you overcome what your brain has decided to do by overcoming the laws of physics? If so, you are a dualist. As for you denying the Libet and Soon et al. experiments because of your own experience, that’s just silly. How do you know that the overcoming of what you thought you decided wasn’t decided itself.
Sorry, but I’m not going to reject science and the laws of physics based on one person’s “personal experience.” Everyone FEELS as if they have free will, but that’s an illusion, one that you are subject to as well, and is apparently operating on a meta level.
Although in need of some tweaking, Peter Tse’s theory [1] strikes me as a potentially viable approach (but then, I’m a medievalist, not a scientist).
Is anyone else familiar with Tse’s theory? If so, what do you think of it?
[1] See: http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/tse/ ; http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/illusion-chasers/2013/08/12/tse-free-will/ ; http://philosophycommons.typepad.com/flickers_of_freedom/2013/12/peter-tses-the-neural-basis-of-free-will-an-overview.html
Jerry, if you do respond to this man, you may wish to direct his attention to the CFI’s Freethought Books Project: http://www.centerforinquiry.net/outreach/about_freethought_books/
The FBP provides secular & freethinking literature to prisoners, inmates of psychiatric institutions, & related populations, & also connects the foregoing individuals with volunteer atheist/humanist/secular pen pals. If his questions are sincere, this could be an excellent resource for him.
For what it’s worth, I would reply. Most likely I’d open my letter with a brief note to the effect that the demands of academia prevented me from entering into ongoing correspondence. Then I’d answer his questions, recommend a few texts, & provide the FBP contact information as a tactful ‘hint’ on where to direct further questions.
This answers gravelinspector-Aidan’s question (above) affirmatively. I suspected there was something like this in operation.
ah, I missed that question, else I would have replied to it directly. Apologies @ gravelinspector-Aidan!
The thread was well developed by the time I arrived, so I didn’t read every comment closely. How nice to learn that I answered a question — even if inadvertently!
(^_^)
I agree that you can respond, but I do not agree that the “moral responsibility” argument should factor in at all. If he had raped a child, there is no way you would reply to him. And yet the “moral responsibility” argument would apply there every bit as much as it does here.
How do you know that?
Ha! I don’t, thanks. Me and my assumptions! I assumed since he also cited the fact that it was a crime of passion. Does it make a moral difference to you personally what the crime was? I think it does to me.
I would like to think it would not make a difference. But I could be wrong.
If you honestly hold that there’s no such thing as contra-causal free will, then it should not.
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I’m not sure that’s true. It might be that someone who likes to rape and murder children “shouldn’t” receive replies to fan mail from their favorite public figures while in prison. Most people agree that criminals should be punished, whether we have free will or not. We draw moral distinctions, whether we are ultimately control of our actions or not. I think a moral distinction might be called for here. Maybe it sends the wrong message to the rest of society if you can brutalize children and still have your fan mail answered? I’m open to other thoughts on the topic.
I take your point, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a “moral” objection. If their state of mind was such that they (or others) saw correspondence with a celebrity as somehow endorsing their crimes, then we might deprecate it. But that’s a different thing to the degree of moral outrage we feel about the crime.
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I would argue that teaching prisoners how to think rationally about the world is key to the rehabilitative goal. I have know idea what state of mind this prisoner is, but we know for surveys that the large majority of people in prison are both religious and, to differing degrees, uneducated (at least less educated than the public at large).
A key component to religion is emotions, thus we shouldn’t be surprised to see a fundamentalist inmate who hungers to see people rot in hell and for God to smite sinners have more emotional responses to every day scenarios.
I have a relatively quick temper, but I think I have learned over time to better assess whether anger is dictating my actions and whether the actions are logical. Rationality may be a key component in overcoming passion driven decisions. Of course, one could also argue it may help a person better plan crimes in order not to get caught. But, the evidence seems to support education and atheism corresponding with lower crime, which would by definition include passionate crimes such as murder.
Unless the sentence mandates “no contact”, then you’re just adding your own extras. You and I are not in a position to arbitrarily add conditions and “extras” to the sentence.
Personally, I think politicians who are sentenced for misconduct in office should also have their fingernails pulled out. Otherwise we’re sending a message that their crimes are OK.
The subject of free will is briefly discussed in Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow’s book, “The Grand Design”. They consider the matter pages 30-33. They agree that our will is deterministic, beyond doubt, but argue that it is impossible to know and understand the deterministic pathway leading to a decision.
Therefore they advocate a physics concept, an “effective theory”, one which models observed phenomena without describing in detail all the underlying processes. So we are left with free will as an effective theory. They mention gravity, chemisty, psychology, and economics as examples of effective theories. I suspect much of evolution, speciation for example, is in part, effective theory.
I liked that book… worth a look & fairly short.
Please Jerry answer the letter! I’m in a kind of cell too… I life far from my hometown, work in a place at a awful time (night) so i sleep at daytime and at night a almost don’t have contact with other general people and friends, only other workers who i dislike… At last i have my books, games and the internet… he has to be punished i agree but… 20 years it’s fair (i guess) but whole life…
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