Given the reactionary nature of the U.S. Congress and the Supreme Court, it’s unlikely that judicial executions in the U.S. will stop any time soon. But it’s embarrassing that we’re the only first-world country—except, I suppose, Japan—that still allows the death penalty for crimes like murder. Here’s Wikipedia map and key showing which countries retained capital punishment as of 2014:
America is going to kill two more people today, both by lethal injection. As the New York Times reports, Oklahoma, after a botched execution in April (and one in Arizona last July) is executing Charles F. Warner today, using the same drug, midazolam, that didn’t work very well in Arizona. And in Florida, Johnny Shane Kormondy will be injected with the same combination of three drugs that led to another horribly messed-up execution in Oklahoma.
There is a way to kill people relatively painlessly with injections: you just use barbiturates. That’ how we put our pets to sleep and how places like Dignitas, in Switzerland, help terminally ill people end their lives legally. But no company that makes barbiturates will allow them to be used for executions, and rightly so.
If we’re going to murder people for their crimes, and if we think that one of the rationales is to deter others, then why all the secrecy about these murders? After all, we see films of prisoners in jail all the time, sitting in their cells and serving their time. But public executions, which would certainly be a better deterrent than hidden ones, are out. That’s because, I think, we’re secretly ashamed of what we do, and so carry out the whole process hidden from public view. That’s supported by the new regulations on how executions can be viewed in Oklahoma. As the Times notes:
The news media and civil liberties groups have complained that Oklahoma’s remodeled execution chamber and new procedures have limited the ability of the public to observe lethal injections there. Officials say there is room for only five witnesses from the news media, compared with 12 before. Audio from the chamber will be turned off, and the state’s corrections director can close the curtains and block the view of the witnesses at his discretion.
“The officials are addressing some of the things that went wrong, but at the same time they’re making sure that the public doesn’t know as much about what happens,” said Brady Henderson, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma.
And even if you argue that the closed-curtain feature is to block out botched or overly grisly executions, well, isn’t that what people should be seeing if capital punishment is to act as a deterrent?
The whole business stinks, and in fact is more expensive than simply sentencing someone to life without parole. But I still think we need to invest more resources in figuring out how to rehabilitate criminals, and at least to treat them more humanely. After all, they had no choice about what they did.
Life in prison would lead a lot of people to request euthanasia.
As it did Gary Gilmore, the Utah murderer whose execution broke a 10-year US death-penalty moratorium (during which many thought, or at least hoped, the penalty had been outlawed under the Supreme Court’s Furman v. Georgia decision).
The circumstances surrounding Gilmore’s murders and execution were recounted brilliantly by Norman Mailer in The Executioner’s Song, the most un-Mailer-like of Mailer’s books — an American Crime and Punishment (well sort of, almost).
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If the US justice system really wanted to perform painless executions, they could just get a US company to manufacture the drugs in-country. I am convinced that the real barrier to painless executions isn’t drug supply, its that the people who defend execution as a pracitce don’t want it to be painless. Making barbituates available is not their priority.
Secondly, I think a firing squad or even noose would be more humane than the botched executions we’ve had lately. Literal hours strapped to a bed, trying to breathe, while you wonder whether the drugs will actually kill you or you’ll have to go through it again? Just shoot me in the head with a large caliber bullet already. Yeah I might get a few seconds of pain. Better than that damn table.
Noose, firing squad, electric chair…IMO these things have not been abandoned because they killed slower or more painfully. That’s a convenient lie. They’re pretty quick; much quicker than the minutes or hours it takes for drugs to take effect. They were abandoned because when the public sees a man writhing and wriggling on the ground, his neuromusculature responding to the brain’s dying, they don’t like executions. They tend to vote against it more. So the capital punishment supporters stopped the writhing more and more, in an effort to make executions more palatable.
I’m hoping the botches will cause them to ultimately fail.
I’ve wondered why they don’t use carbon dioxide- replacing the air in a sealed chamber with it would cause an almost immediate loss of consciousness. Once finished, the chamber could be safely evacuated to the outside air from a high stack, with little toxic effects aside from slightly increasing the rate of global warming.
Pure nitrogen might do the same. Though I don’t know whether the individual can notice it when it happens.
Helium is suggested by Exit International for voluntary euthanasia. Someone choosing to end their own life would not want the end to be uncomfortable or painful – defeats the point of the exercise.
I mention this only in an academic sense – I am totally against the death penalty.
If you are depressed and suicidal, helium could be a great antidote since it casues the voice to go all Chipmunky. It is hard to be serious when you sound like Alvin. Try saying, “I don’t want to live.” with your lungs full of helium. No way will you stop laphing long enough to go all the way.
Nitrous oxide is another great alternative. It will get you so zonked you will think you are The Dude (Lebowski). Bowling anyone?
Carbon dioxide would be an extraordinarily inhumane method that would cause huge feelings of panic. Nitrogen on the other hand would, I believe, be painless and the victim would slip from conciousness without realising what was happening.
However, capital punishment is barbaric whatever method is used. Not only is it morally wrong in my view, but the evidence indicates that it is not even very effective as a deterrent against crime.
I’ve read some places that it is in fact worse – that it is an *antideterrent*, i.e., increases the liklihood of certain violent crimes (e.g. homicides).
Carbon dioxide is widely used to “euthanase” animals. It’s effective all right, you don’t get any customers coming back complaining. As far as I’m concerned, it is as you say extraordinarily inhumane.
Carbon dioxide would not be a pleasant way to go. The urge to breathe is not triggered by a lack of oxygen but by the buildup of CO2 in the blood.
As some commenters have noted. Nitrogen would probably a much nicer way to go. And I doubt that you would even notice that it is happening as long as you have the chance to exhale CO2 normally.
And when the brain is being starved of Oxygen it just shuts down and you eventually loose conciousness. It is quite fun to look at videos of people in hypobaric chambers like this one (if you can bear the extremely annoying presentation).
Clearly they are not disturbed in the least by the lack of oxygen.
Michael Portillo, an ex-UK MP did a telly program on execution some years back & he looked at using nitrogen, subjecting himself (under controlled conditions) to sitting in a chamber that had the air changed to nitrogen. He became, in his own words, euphoric and didn’t care about the fact that he was dying.
When he put this to a supporter of the death penalty (the whole program,if I remember correctly, was filmed in the USA) as a more humane method of executing people, the man was horrified and said that he wanted them to suffer. Says it all really.
I used to be a supporter of the death penalty but we have had so many miscarriages of justice here in the UK with people locked up for life, only to be cleared several years later, that I can no longer support such a practise and haven’t done so for many years. Courts get things wrong and once you’ve executed someone, there’s no bringing them back and saying sorry.
“the man was horrified and said that he wanted them to suffer. Says it all really.”
Yes, this sentiment is common and is fueled by belief in Libertarian Free Will.
Yes exactly. As I said above, availability of barbituates is not really a barrier. That’s a lie the justice system tells to keep the more liberal section of populace satisfied. The truth is, we don’t have a humane execution method because most of the proponents of the death penalty don’t want a more humane execution method.
I’m sorry, but I have to ask, does the phrase “they had no choice about what they did” apply to the criminals?
I’ve just read about Charles F. Warner and exactly what he did – he raped and murdered and 11-month old baby. It may not be the popular view, but I have absolutely no issue with him being executed. None at all. Not by lethal injection, or hanging, or any other method you care to name. My sympathies lie far more with a helpless baby that will never get the chance at life.
I agree completely. Those US states that still apply the death penalty execute only the very worst of the worst criminals, always after exhaustive legal proceedings. I acknowledge that there is room for debate about the best method to use, but I have no issue at all with judicial killing of the vilest murderers and terrorists. I am not interested in trying to rehabilitate such people, and if their deaths act as a deterrent to at least some potential imitators, then that’s a bonus.
If given the chance I would vote in favour of restoring the death penalty in my own country (the UK), and so I believe would many millions of others.
“have no issue at all with judicial killing of the vilest murderers and terrorists. ”
This indicates more of a vindictive attitude rather than one of rational judgement. One that I perfectly understand, mind you. I certainly feel vindictive about the murder of an infant.
But I think that vindictiveness is not a virtue, and so shouldn’t be incorporated into our institutions.
hear,hear! 🙂
Yeah, I agree. You don’t want me deciding on such things. I know my vindictiveness does not belong in a civilized society. I don’t apologize for it because it’s only human but I’m not especially proud of it either.
It’s known that not every person who’s been executed for a crime was actually guilty. What’s an acceptable number of innocent people getting executed?
Well, no system devised by humans can ever be infallible, so yes I accept there is a theoretical risk of executing someone who’s actually innocent. However, the guilt of convicted serial killers, child-murderers, terrorists and the like is seldom in any serious doubt, so I’m comfortable that the chances of error are low enough for this not to be an issue.
According to Wikipedia, the number of wrongfully convicted people on death row in the US is estimated to be 4% or greater. And that does include sensational crimes. You find it acceptable that in the name of “justice,” 4 or 5 people out of every 100 executed didn’t commit the crime that they were accused of?
There’s nothing theoretical about it!
How can you say that after it was revealed that we held 22 innocent Uighurs in Guantanamo Bay for over 10 years? Three of them are still in there: the military admits they’re innocent. The prosecution lawyers admit they’re innocent. Yet we’re holding them in, basically, the equivalent of a maximum security solitary confinement facility.
No doubt if the question of capital punishment had been left up to the people convinced of the guilt of all GB inmates, they’d have been dead before their innocence came to light.
Well as a Brit you will be aware of a number of high profile cases in the UK of wrongful conviction. In some cases the convictions were overturned after years of incarceration but at least the prisoner was still alive and able to enjoy the fact that they had been exonerated and enjoy some years of freedom. If they had been killed that would not have been possible.
In reply to microraptor: Zero.
Try to imagine yourself as that innocent person.
The only rational justification for the death penalty is that there are some offenses so beyond the pale that the only “just desert” for them, and the only way for society to express its opprobrium adequately, is execution of the offender. (I don’t agree with that argument, but I accept its rationality.)
The problem, even if you buy this argument, is that we have never found an accurate way for sorting out those offenders that constitute “the worst of the worst.” Death penalty advocates, especially among laymen, tend to identify a death-worthy defendant the way Justice Potter Stewart identified obscenity: I know it when I see it.
But no one, despite repeated, rigorous attempts, has yet managed to formulate rules capable of reliably guiding death-penalty deciders (in some jurisdictions, juries; in others, judges) in identifying which defendants deserve death. (One problem is that the factors generally thought appropriate to making this decision are not necessarily unidirectional. Consider one minor example: Is an offender who has confessed — thus, leaving no doubt as to his guilt, but demonstrating his remorse — more, or less, deserving of death than an offender who persists, against all evidence, in maintaining his innocence — thus, showing a total lack of contrition, but perhaps leaving some residual doubt about his guilt.)
Instead, despite the manful efforts of many, the death penalty as applied in these United States is arbitrary and capricious at best and, at worst, discriminates on the basis of race, sex, and wealth (of the defendant for sure, but even more so of the victim, inasmuch as our society values some lives more than others).
The most comprehensive discussion of these issues, and the best overall overview of the death penalty, I’ve ever read (and I’ve read a few, as well as served as defense counsel in a handful of these cases) is Among the Lowest of the Dead by David von Drehle. That book may be 20 years old now, but little has changed in what Justice Harry Blackmun termed “the machinery of death.”
Maybe we should just take everyone convicted of Murder in the First and march them down a fairway during a thunderstorm while holding a 2-iron aloft. Death would still strike capriciously, by with less bias, as lightening doesn’t discriminate invidiously.
Actually, if one views the penal system as intended to protect the innocent rather than punish the guilty, then one could say that the only rational argument for execution is if the individual has proven themselves to not only be non-repentant but also so skilled at breaking free of imprisonment and committing further crimes that locking them up isn’t sufficient to protect people.
However, this is something that’s a concern primarily only in comic books.
Where death does not seem to have the same sense of finality as it does here in meat-world. In comic-land it’s more an opportunity for a later plot twist — or maybe some creative retcon….
That depends of the comic book. I was thinking along the lines of Batman, where he always takes the Joker to prison even though the Joker can break out in about two and half minutes and every breakout involves several people getting murdered, followed by the Joker murdering a few more people before Batman catches him again.
Search the site for discussions about free will (and the absence of it).
His execution by the state will not solve anything. It certainly not going to prevent anything.
“I’m sorry, but I have to ask, does the phrase “they had no choice about what they did” apply to the criminals?”
Yes. Why wouldn’t it?
Do you think that this man had a choice to either start a nonprofit organization helping children or rape and murder an infant?
Unfortunately he happened to have a brain of a murderous pedophile. That there are dangerous people (and non-human animals like dogs) out there is a fact. Whether we should put them down, or not, remains open for debate.
“After all, they had no choice about what they did.”
How come?
Are you new here? Jerry is a determinist (an incompatibalist in fact); he doubts the existence of free will, as do I. As such, he does not believe that criminals, even ones who rape and kill an 11 month old baby (or perhaps especially such ones), choose to do what they do.
If you think this is a morally irresponsible position, watch the TED video “The Dark Side of Free Will” and decide for yourself which position is irresponsible.
For an example of a determinist world view at work in a prison system, watch the video “The Norden – Nordic Prisons” on YouTube. These prisons are generally rehabilitative rather than punitive. As a secular humanist, I find this both aesthetically more acceptable as well as more likely to be true, regardless of aesthetics.
Summarised nicely in the famous limerick:
There was a young man who said “Damn!
I perceive with regret that I am
But a creature that moves
In predestinate grooves
I’m not even a bus, I’m a tram.”
Oh,thank you so much! You may have made my week with that limerick 😉 ” How stupid not to have thought of that.”
Yes! Love it. Keeping a copy. 🙂
I’m generally not in favor of the death penalty. Throughout history, it has been used as a way for one group of people to silence another. Books and books could be written.
I understand about free will, and also that the way a person is brought up will have a great deal to do with their actions as adults.
However, in the case of Warner (and others like him), there is no doubt about the crime he perpetrated on that child. And that child had no choice. That child had rights that were stomped on in the worst, most vile way possible, and had it lived, it most likely would never have recovered from the trauma of the incident.
I say good riddance to Mr. Warner. I would also apply it to whomever brought him up. They are most likely far more guilty than he is.
That’s speaking as a woman, mother, grandmother.
“They are most likely far more guilty than he is. ”
Not really fair. Psychopaths are mostly born that way, rather than made.
Psychopaths are born that way; violent psychopaths are born that way AND made. But, I guess that’s why you said, “mostly”. 🙂
According to the books I’ve read, some high percent of psychopathy is explained by genes, with a much smaller percent being environment. The interpretation is that the right environment can help channel some psychopathy into a more prosocial direction.
I don’t recall the books making a distinction between violent and non-violent behavior, although they do say that violent psychopaths are the small minority. I don’t know why that would be the case….if you have no conscience, then murder shouldn’t be any more of a big deal than lying, which most of them do with impunity.
I think it’s because they also tend to be quite canny. They weigh the likely results of committing violence against the much easier ways of taking advantage of people and choose the route least apt to inconvenience themselves.
I think there are more out there than we think too. I’m no expert but I’ve met a lot in the corporate world.
Well, what a perfect set-up for them. 😉
From what I read in books written by psychopaths (what people would call “successful” psychopaths because they function in society), they feel their upbringing made all the difference. While they may be highly manipulative and even psychologically abusive, they don’t murder people and there are certain lines they won’t cross.
Well, if the cost of not-executing innocent people is that Warner stays in solitary for life, I’m okay with that. Its not so much that I disagree with the death penalty in every case, its that I have to pick between “kill people, and some of them (about 1 in every 20) will be innocent” and “kill no one.” Given those two choices, I choose the latter.
Absolutely agree with you.
I think it’s unacceptable that even one innocent person should be executed.
The thing about a (wrongful) life sentence is that there is at least time, and the opportunity, for further evidence to emerge – as it has often done with DNA evidence.
There are *some* murderers whose identity is beyond doubt – Anders Behring Breivik for example. They could execute him tomorrow by whatever sadistic method they liked and I wouldn’t care. But I suppose the risk is, that if we left a loophole for ‘only killers whose identity is beyond doubt’ then prosecutors would try to stretch that definition and juries appalled by the worst cases would suppress their doubts and we’d be back with the 4% or maybe just 1% – whatever percentage, it would be too high.
There are unfortunately violent individuals who are almost certainly incurable and, punishment or not, society needs to be protected from them. Fewer of those people are true “sociopaths” than we imagine, but it’s a distinction without a difference: no one “chooses” to be an awful person. And the horrid prison system the U.S. has created would be called torture by anyone who sees it for what it really is.
My older brother spent most of his life behind bars for drug offenses and petty property crimes. It was just to take him out of society, but there was no justice in what the system did to him: he is unemployable, never developed adult coping skills and has been homeless or couch-surfing for the past ten years. It’s an absolute tragedy and it’s sickening to realize many people have it far worse that he.
My family and I could not help him if we wanted to, and we don’t want to because he has hurt us so many times and the least bit of assistance quickly becomes counter-productive enabling that continues the cycle. So there’s more than enough blame to go around, and plenty of guilt to make the loss that much more painful.
In order for prison to act as a deterrence for a given person, I think that person has to value his or herself to some minimum degree, and has to be able to get a greater reward-to-risk ratio from “normal” life than they do from destructive behavior. I have no idea what the answer is, but I am confident it’s not what we do now, which is to make sure criminals’ self-hatred is exceeded by society’s hatred for them. It’s a sick self-reinforcing spiral.
I’m so sorry for you and all your family, MOOT. You expressed yourself most beautifully and thought-provokingly. I think you should consider sending this story to some major newspaper’s op ed department.
Thanks. I may do that in response to the next time a “what do we do about prisons” piece comes around. The fact that privileged white folks are not immune to the cycle of failure – mostly when heroin and meth are involved – is something that doesn’t get discused, and it should.
Yes, good idea, send it in sometime when the issue’s hot.
And “cycle of failure” might make a good title (or subtitle). Heart-breaking.
Thanks for that – it sure is. And all the more so because he was the smart one, the sensitive one and the creative one in our family. I am the most accomplished person in my family, in terms of education, money, achievement and so on, so I don’t mean to pretend I don’t have the luck of the draw – I think that’s exactly what I have had, is dumb luck. My brother was a true artist and natural talent before the drugs and the incarceration. This pattern should surprise no one who lived through the 60’s and 70’s. The Needle and the Damage Done and Howl (especially the first stanza) mean something very different when you’ve actually seen in your own home what untreated mental illness – which is what it seems to me is the root of my family’s troubles – can do to a sweet young man and his family.
I hope people who can make a difference listen to you. I’ve often squawked about the way the welfare system is set up high is different from your case but is rpthe same annoying thing in that it is a flawed large system.
“. Fewer of those people are true “sociopaths” than we imagine,”
Yes, I read that the percentage is small, but they do represent a disproportionately large percentage of the crimes.
But you’re right…probably not a lot of practical difference. Even a lot of non-psychopaths are probably too far gone to be successfully rehabilitated.
But if you get them while they’re young? I was held up at gunpoint by a 14-year-old. It made me sick to have to testify against him at the trial…his mother was sobbing outside the courtroom. This person was surely salvageable, but was likely doomed.
That’s awful. I hope he wasn’t doomed, but it’s the rare kid who gets turned around after that. the whole ugly process starts with juvenile “justice.” That we can’t make a difference for kids and first-time offenders is a really sad indictment of the whole system.
Agreed. I think it would make sense to put adequate resources into kids in trouble.
An important part of Nordic society (I generalize but the 5 Nordic countries do have a fair amount if variation between them) which isn’t specifically touched upon in the video is that it is not just the prisons that operate on secular humanistic and deterministic ideals, it is the society in general. Less criminals are created in their society because everyone is provided for (high degree of social welfare), religiosity is minimal, and the general societal mindset is compassion. This leads to high levels of life satusfaction and lower incidences of unaddressed health (including and especially mental health) concerns and in fact lower incidences of such concerns; you would be surprised how much depression and anxiety is a result of barely scraping together the basic necessiies of survival.
The answer to what we must do is not a mystery. We need a society of secular humanism and determinism. The question is how to get everyone in board. Losing religion is a big step in that direction
Hear, hear!
Boghissian points out preachers are allowed to counsel prisoners but de-converters like him are not. So the faith virus has every chance to spread without inoculation.
A common point that I’ve heard policemen make is that serious criminals are, almost by definition, the people who think they’re not going to get caught. With the exception of crimes of passion, if you’re the sort of person who assesses you will probably get caught, you don’t do the crime in the first place.
So I would agree with you; the value of deterrence is going to be much smaller than most people expect, because the people we seek to deter believe very strongly that they’re not going to have to pay the price the deterrence represents. Or, they’re so desperate they’re not thinking straight…which is also going to eliminate any value deterrence has.
Sorry to hear this MOOT and it re-inforces my belief that drug laws have failed miserably. All I see them doing is giving people criminal records when they should be given help and making career criminals even richer.
“There are unfortunately violent individuals who are almost certainly incurable and, punishment or not, society needs to be protected from them.”
This is, I think, the critical point here. Capital punishment serves no purpose as a deterrent, nor does it re-set any kind of karmic scales or whatever. What it is, is a facing up to the fact that we are still in the infancy of psychology and neuroscience, and lack the ability to meaningfully rehabilitate our worst criminals (see recidivism rates). In terms of protecting society, that means either keeping them in prison for life, or else executing them. Many (myself included) view the latter as ultimately being more humane. It’s sad, but until we can actually cure people, those options are really the best we have.
I think that’s right. A previous commenter noted that criminals also often have underdeveloped senses of consequence, which defeats deterrence because a) the risk isn’t calculated if you think you won’t get caught an b) the risk doesn’t register as a consideration – and not to mention there are people who gamble, and the possibility of risk can be a motivating “juice.”
The one thing you can say about imprisonment and execution is that it separates a miscreant from the general population for the length of the sentence. A person who takes that risk seriously is probably capable of making all kinds of other calculations – the importance of following rules, right and wrong, personal safety, recognition of their own fallibility and mortality, family responsibilities, self-worth – that govern their behavior so that the idea “I could go to jail for this” doesn’t even make the list of pros and cons in their decision making – which decision making is an illusion anyway, since we “cannot have chosen otherwise.”
The problem here with citing recidivism is that we don’t have a justice system that makes a legitimate attempt at rehabilitation. Our justice system is aimed at confinement and punishment. With the latter, we’re already on the wrong track. This is greatly oversimplifying, as is necessary in a comment section on a website, but humans are largely driven by reinforcement, particularly intermittent reinforcement.
The reinforcement criminals receive for their crimes outweighs the reinforcement they receive for not committing them. Sure, they may not run through any type of mental calculations to figure this out, but they don’t have to. It’s how we’ve evolved. Furthermore, once incarcerated, especially for a felony, it’s damn near impossible to rejoin society and achieve middle class status since we effectively shun people for a lifetime once they’ve committed a crime. Likewise, petty crimes such as drug possession results in student loans being revoked, and for many, a lifetime of punishment due to carrying a bag of weed around with them in college before their brains were even fully developed.
This reinforcement principle applies even to people who have committed heinous crimes for which they receive the death penalty. I would not argue with you that some people are beyond help given today’s scientific knowledge and there is little to no hope we can figure out how to rehabilitate them. However, I diverge from you in supporting the death penalty for two main reasons: 1) Killing even one innocent person is not worth the advantage of killing a maniac versus containing him; 2) There is the always the possibility we may figure out how to rehabilitate the inmate.
In both cases, there’s no chance to undo the punishment once they’re dead.
Thoughtful response — thanks! I agree that I need to be much more clear about specific crimes here. I’m entirely against the “War on Drugs” and am particularly incensed about the loss of ability to maintain employment after serving one’s time for it — a practice which often makes any sentence effectively a life one for anyone not independently wealthy.
In a more general sense, you’re also spot-on about the U.S.’ idiotic focus on “punishment” as opposed to rehabilitation.
That said, let’s look hard at the limits of our current knowledge and methodology — and consider that assessing whether such a person has, in fact, been successfully rehabilitated is one of the major gaps there. How do we feel about the possibility of incarcerating a rehabilitated person forever after?
And, again, faced with the possibility of execution vs. life imprisonment in a U.S. Supermax, I would unhesitatingly select the former over the latter as a far more humane alternative.
I watched the Nordic Prisons vid. Very interesting, and I think it’s a great model.
One thing in particular that interests me about the US is that I understand that anyone who’s served a prison sentence loses their right to vote for life? (Correct me if I’m wrong.) I think that’s appalling. It’s gotta be pretty hard getting someone to invest in society when they’re not even allowed to vote for its representatives.
I am opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances.
Disenfranchisement varies by state. See Felony Disenfranchisement.
I don’t really understand the application of the determinism argument to criminal sanctions. If we accept that the criminal had no choice in that his or her actions were just the inevitable end result of a chain of chemical reactions stretching back through time then surely the same must apply to everybody including the persons responsible for devising the criminal justice system. The judge and the executioner have no more choice in their decisions and actions than the criminal does.
Whether determinism is true or not we all have the illusion of free will and it seems to me that for practical every day purposes it is best to pretend that it is real and to act accordingly. Whilst this means reassigning responsibility to the criminal, I still believe that a rehabilitative rather than a retributional approach to criminal justice is the right one. I accept some prisoners may be incapable of being rehabilitated in which case they need to be isolated from society but even that can be done humanely.
I can’t speak for others, but I don’t think a determinist system should lay responsibility on individuals. As you said, you can infinitely regress responsibilty for a criminal’s actions back to his parents and back ro society and in innumerable directions really. The point is not to lay responaibility and punish, it is to treat the root causes as well as the immediate “symptoms”, if you will. Reorganizing our society into one where no one has to worry about survival and most are happy is addressing he root of the problem (in the majority of cases) and sending a criminal to a rehabilitative prison is addressing the symptoms.
That is, just because we are aren’t holding anyone responsible (I actually like to think of it as we should hold everyone in society responsible), that doesn’t mean we don’t have to deal with the fact that this criminal will repreat again. If this peraon is never rehabilitated and they must be locked up forever, that is fine. But do notice that someone being locked up forever in a rehabilitative centre is quite different from being locked up in a prison.
I fully agree with the argument for rehabilitation rather than retribution. My point is that if there is no free will that applies to everyone not just the criminal. My preference for rehabilitation is predetermined by that same infinite regression as is the vote of a congressman for or against any given law.
I accept that in an absolute sense we have no free will but this doesn’t help us live our lives so we all have to – and do – act as if we are free agents capable of deciding, for example, if it is better to hang a murderer or imprison him and if we imprison him whether we seek to rehabilitate him or not
Well my view is that if we are both humanists and determinists, there is literally no option other than to rehabilitate criminals and not punish them (except as far as removing them from the rest of society is a punishment). There is no, “maybe we should hang him or otherwise punish him”. Of course, how do we get there? We need systemaric societal change so that we are not just humanist and determinist individuals, our laws and institutions are as well. If that is the case, we don’t have to “choose” anything (not that we coukd anyway); the answer is clear and non-debatable. I use the Nordic societies as an example of where his occurs. America is a place where the exact opposite is true.
“I fully agree with the argument for rehabilitation rather than retribution. My point is that if there is no free will that applies to everyone not just the criminal. My preference for rehabilitation is predetermined by that same infinite regression as is the vote of a congressman for or against any given law.
I accept that in an absolute sense we have no free will but this doesn’t help us live our lives….”
I’d say it is helping you live your life. It looks like your disbelief in Libertarian Free Will has influenced your views and feelings about punishment.
Yes no Libertarian Free Will applies to everyone, but specifically what is important is the affect the belief is having on everybody.
This is why it makes as much sense to advocate disbelief in Libertarian Free Will as any other erroneous belief.
“so we all have to – and do – act as if we are free agents capable of deciding,”
There is no “as if” here, this can be understood in terms of determinism and indeterminism couldn’t possibly add anything useful.
You’ve stated your case articulately, and I agree with you in principle. Still, I can’t shake a nagging trepidation — owing in part, no doubt, to the cautionary tale told in Anthony Burgess’s excellent novel (and in Stanley Kubrick’s equally excellent film adaptation of it), A Clockwork Orange. (I recognize the pitfalls of extrapolating public policy from imaginative art…but still…but still…)
Any efforts toward reforming society and rehabilitating criminals by application of novel methods must heed humanist principles; in treating “root causes” and subjecting offenders to “rehabilitative prisons,” those offender, and others affected, must always remain ends unto themselves, never mere societal means. And let us be very wary indeed of the “law of unintended consequences” (especially as it concerns those pesky, Rumsfeldian “unknown unknowns”). Utmost prudence is demanded also in answering the most profound questions implicated: Who will we encharge to make these decisions? by what means? according to what standards? — as well their crucial corollary, “who will mind these minders?”
In considering these thorny questions, we could do worse than keep sight of the nasty results rendered by the vaunted “Ludovico technique” — not just for our young droogie Alex DeLarge, but as well for the dysfunctional near-future British society whither he sprang.
I see your concerns and I genuinely appreciate you making reference to my favourite filmmaker. I apologize for my spelling, I will never be used to touch screen typing on my phone.
The reason I am not too concerned about the methods of rehabilitation is because I am specifically referring to the Nordic prison systems detailed in the video I linked to several comments ago. The Nords have already tested out the methods for us, and they work quite well (though of course there is room for improvement). These methods are nothing like the Pavlovian brainwashing in A Clockwork Orange. They mostly consist of giving criminals what they have lacked in their lives: usually reliable acces to food and shelter, safety, trust, care, and the ability to express creativity. A primary example of the latter is demonstrated in the Norden video where a particular prison has a recording studio which inmates and guards can use. Very different to brainwashing and definitely very different to he American prison system. Ironically, prisoners in Nordic countries are generally much freer in what thy can do than American prisoners, despite Americans having such a fervour for freedom.
I heard about an incident a couple of years ago in a Swedish prison where the wardens accidentally forgot to lock the inmates’ cells one night.
The inmates proceeded to go down to the prison’s kitchen, baked a bunch of cookies, then settled down to watch television until the wardens returned the next morning.
I can’t imagine anything remotely like that occurring in an American prison.
Your absolutely right, microraptor, American prisoners given the same opportunity would have undoubtedly availed themselves of the kitchen to cook up a pot of pasta and “gravy.” (We have a prison population now that is conversant with canonical American cinema, including Scorsese’s Goodfellas. I’d be surprised if they didn’t insist that the prep guy use Pauli’s special razor-blade “system” for slicing the garlic paper-thin and warn their “Charley” not to put too many onions in the tomato sauce.)
Seriously, whether American prisoners would have attempted an escape would depend on a number of factors, including whether they were “short” (due for release soon), in which case, excluding extenuating circumstances, they wouldn’t risk it. The most import factor, of course, certainly for any inmate with a substantial bid yet to serve, would be the likelihood of success of any escape attempt. Unfortunately for them, an escape would be farfetched. (Though never underestimate a group of inmates resourcefulness.) Most American prisons, especially those of a sufficient security level to be holding inmates doing substantial stretches, are set up so that inmates are always at least pneumatic-bolt style gates — which can only be opened seriatim, usually by a corrections officer manning a control booth — away from the outside world.
What they would actually do, depends upon a lost of factors subject to the vicissitudes of prison life — the status of the prisoners themselves, their gang affiliations (if any), the relations between prison gangs (if there are any beefs or wars underway), and the relationship between the inmate population and staff (including relations particular inmates and particular staff member). They might try to smuggle food to other inmates (especially to their homeboys, if reachable). They might even set aside a bowl for the COs, either as a joke or a thumb-in-the eye. They might even — if the CO who accidentally left their cell doors open was considered “good people” rather than a “bug” or “hard-ass,” — return and close their cells before any other COs realizes what happened, so as to cover for the errant CO, such that that CO will owe them a favor down the line. Keep in mind, too, that while the inmates are under less stringent supervision at night, there are still COs present, who make regular rounds.
If anyone has an interest in this subject beyond my surface, outsider view, I recommend the book New Jack, by Ted Conover, a long-form journalist who went undercover for a year as a correctional officer at New York’s infamous Sing-Sing maximum-security prison. It’s a ripping read, and has a lot of interesting insights about prison sociology, both inmate and staff.
““After all, they had no choice about what they did.”
How come?”
“They had no choice” is being used to mean they couldn’t have done otherwise without the need for circumstances beyond their control to have been different to produce different behaviour.
Basically they were unlucky because they needed circumstances beyond their control, or put another way, not of their choosing to have been different to have avoided committing their crimes.
The other point about this is if circumstances not of my choosing had been appropriately different I would have committed a horrendous crime.
The difference between me and them is luck in the final analysis.
A number of us think how we feel about deserved outcomes doesn’t fit with these facts.
PCC. I doubt that public executions would act as a deterrent. They were seen as “entertainment” ( note quotes) throughout the ages. In Victorian England, special trains were laid on to transport the crowds to the scene. Charles Dickens saw more than one execution as did Thomas Hardy. The main reason they were abolished was because of worries over expense and crowd control rather than any views on ethics. In fact the last public execution in France occurred as late as 1939 ( a young Sir Christopher Lee actually witnessed it). Again that was stopped because of crowd control issues.
Look at the crowds (if you can bear to keep your eyes open through the barbarity) who watch an execution in Saudi and you will see my point.
No … abolishment of capital punishment must come through social change, led by brave people in Congress ( as it was done in the UK) who push it through. Eventually, slowly, public opinion will follow. Even if the UK could restore it ( it can’t because of membership of various European institutions) I doubt that it ever will come back. Public opinion has changed enough to stop it happening.
Yes, I agree with you. I suspect public executions would be quite popular in the US–though of course if asked the spectators would have all sorts of pious reasons…
It would be interesting to see if any studies have been done as to whether public executions in Saudi Arabia have lowered the crime rate and/or their role in keeping it where it is. Have their executions of people for “witchcraft” stayed stable over the years, or have they increased?
It would be interesting.
I wonder if they’ve arrived at a steady-state level at which the population gets just enough spectacle to keep them in line without crossing a line to too much brutality which some people simply couldn’t stand, despite the threat of speaking up.
I have the feeling that a public execution in the US would greatly resemble a monster truck rally- with crowds of people buying beers and greasy food along with merchandise vendors selling souvenir t-shirts and ball caps.
Pretty much like Victorian England TBH
Exactly.
But with more rednecks.
And without the t-shirts.
I believe that’s what George Carlin advocated a few years back – public executions on television. Said for comic effect but I’m sure he was only half-joking.
What’s American for Allah-hu Akbar?
Oh, probably, “praise the lord!” Or “praise Jesus!”
And a lot of, “take that, you m*****f*****.”
“U-S-A!
U-S-A!”
Oh, right.
Probably something like, “Allah Who? ONLY CHRIST!”
I am basically opposed to the death penalty because we have screwed up convictions too many times in the past. Some huge percentage of death row convicts were shown to be wrongly convicted some years back when DNA testing became very common. Death is permanent, no way to say, oops, sorry, we messed up.
I’ve thought about this a lot recently. If some one killed my child, I hope I would have the emotional balance to not bay for their blood, like so many victims’ relatives do. I see no “closure” or “justice” in killing the person. Yes, keep them away from society, forever (no parole).
Killing someone to satisfy a desire for revenge can only hurt me, not help me.
Yes. One of the desirable characteristics of a decent society is protecting people from themselves when they are emotionally compromised.
I have heard justification for capital punishment being revenge for relatives of the murder victim. Not for society to feel better but the immediate relatives. So even if the prosecutor and judge don’t think it serves much practical purpose, it will often make mom feel better (closure) to see the killer of her child put to death.
Execution, on the whole, is worse for my own safety. It both advertises and congeals the fact to those who have nothing to lose that the state will take of your needs after you plunder and pillage it’s civilians. Rehabilitation is actually a real deterrent. Imagine all the criminals thinking, good grief they’re going to put me to work if I do bad things…I am not sure I want to do anything bad then.
Sorry, but I got very stuck with your last few words “they had no choice” etc. I must (I hope) be misunderstanding something somewhere, please explain more clearly in your next post what you mean here? Are you implying that serious crimes are perpetrated by individuals who have no choice? Surely not? What did you mean?
I recommend you search the site for posts about free will.
Sam Harris has an excellent you tube lecture on free will and punishment. (He talks about the school tower sniper Whitman ?sp.?
). My idea would be that once a person is convicted and all appeals are done, executions should be televised pay per view for any one that wants to tune in, with all money raised to go to the victims family/surviving children/victim’s legal expenses.
The family of victims are devastated three times.
The crime
The trials/appeals
The emotional and financial consequences of the absence of the victim.
And our system has nothing to compensate victims.
And it would be a great deterrent
It was Charles Whitman, at the University of Texas (Austin), 1966.
The brain tumor cause seems not completely established:
His father beat his mother and he beat his wife. He was a marine sharpshooter. Sounds like he was pretty messed up in addition to having the brain tumor.
Ps ….. I have read about Determinism, and am taking a breather and some fresh air before I read any more. What troubles me is the throw away nature of your final comment, it is intended to be provocative? Cos its provoked me!
I would say that Jerry made the comment with a bit of a wink to those who follow the free will discussions. If you haven’t, then it wouldn’t serve much purpose for you to weigh in on the issue in this thread.
Greg, I was asking a question, not “weighing-in”. I think that you might show a tad more empathy towards one whom you consider unqualified to join the discussion.
Relax, neilrobin. I don’t think Greg intended any offense. And you did, in fact “weigh in” to the extent that you said Jerry’s “throw away” comment troubles you. This subject (the absence of free will) has a lot of history on WEIT. Greg (I think) is just suggesting that you may want to check some of it out.
“and in fact is more expensive than simply sentencing someone to life without parole. ”
I expect a conservative would argue that this is true only because the liberals have made the process so difficult.
Given the express-lane nature of executions in Texas, that might be true.
The counter-reply is that liberals have only made it difficult because prosecutors and police routinely commit legal infractions that result in innocent people getting convicted, because they are more concerned about convictions than truth. Start punishing police for lying on police reports (blatantly lying, as cameras are starting to show), start punishing prosecutors for withholding evidence, and stop providing perverse incentives for prosecutors to get convictions, and it wouldn’t be so necessary to give death sentenced criminals so many appeals
There is certainly a detectable impulse among some of our police (in NZ, I’m sure the US is the same) to ‘get a result’. There have been a number of cases where people have been wrongly or dubiously convicted of murder. (Just as well we don’t have the death penalty). And the police/prosecution are always adamantly opposed to a retrial if new evidence emerges.
In my cynical view, if I were near the scene of a crime and the police were appealing for witnesses, I might think twice about coming forward since I can imagine them saying to each other “Well, we’ve got no leads, who have we got as suspects?” “Only this fellow Infinite who admits he was there” “Nobody else?” “Okay, let’s turn him upside down and see what falls out and let the jury decide”
No thanks!
Another reason to think twice before volunteering information to the police is that they might not act on it directly, but pass it on to another jurisdiction that has much harsher penalties, e.g. death. That’s what the Australian Federal Police did in 2005. Executions to proceed pretty soon.
Very chilling!
Those examples are why the War on Some Drugs is particularly evil. Started (so I have read somewhere) by J Edgar Hoover as a way to perpetuate the power of the FBI after Prohibition collapsed, the US was only too keen to export it to other countries whose regard for the rights of defendants was minimal compared with the US. So now we have the ironic situation where some states in the US are coming to their senses and regarding marijuana as a minor offence, while so many other countries are stuck with extreme or absurd penalties for trivial offences.
(Not saying the Bali 9’s offence in your link was trivial, but their sentences were certainly savagely disproportionate)
The death penalty is certainly inefficient. Thing is, every layer of juridical review pealed away from the process increases the likelihood of another innocent convict being executed. In applying the death penalty, efficiency and efficacy are mortal enemies.
The ROC curve looks more like a straight diagonal, eh?
Well said!
Glad to see the US of A is right up there with its wondeful ally, good ol’ Saudi Arabia. WHen are they going to start publick executions, not to mention worse?
There is no excuse for state murders and only one reason: revenge. Is this what we want to have become the result of all that evolution.
Here in Europe, state murder must be abolished before a country becomes a member.
To double down on the irony, the Saudi method of execution is more humane than some of the methods used in the US.
One reason death-penalty proponents fear public executions is that they know it would attract a sick-o cult of death-penalty-as-porn perverts — those for whom the pull of Thanatos far outweighs that of Eros. Such people, and their death-penalty enablers, lie beyond the reach of Ethos, or Logos, or even Pathos (if I may be given a last-minute governor’s reprieve for the Freud/Aristotle mash-up).
“
AmericaUSA is going to kill two more people today…”fixed that for you.
Yes, it’s actually “‘Murica”.
Mainly muslim countries then, plus the great democracies of India & the US, & of course China…
There is a huge quantitative and qualitative difference between the death penalties in India and the US. There have been an order of magnitude less executions in India in the past 10 years* than the state of Texas has had in just the past year (35). To put India in the same league as the US and China just does not sound right (both of which have tens of executions every year).
Even Pakistan had a multi-year moratorium on executions before finally executing some (I think the number was 7) convicted terrorists in the aftermath of the Peshawar school attack last month.
* 2, one of those executed was a gunman involved in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, the second was convicted for his role in a 2001 terrorist attack on the Indian parliament
The silver thread in the death penalty’s purple ribbon is that both executions and death-row commitments have dropped significantly in the US over the past few decades.* (Maybe it’s a sign of improved times that two executions in a day is considered newsworthy — on this website, at least.) We may put this atavistic bullshit behind us and find our way to the family of civilized nations yet!
*The one outlier year in which executions spiked was 1999 — when, I seem to recall, a certain Texas governor took to signing death warrants like chits at a New Haven dining club, so as to burnish his law-and-order credentials in anticipation of a presidential run.
That’s right, Professor, determinism! It’s easy to forget in a place like Oklahoma, where people’s Arminian theology presupposes children have the ability to choose their own lot in life (jesus or crime), that men and women such as Charles Warner really never had a chance. Racism, undiagnosed mental illness, domestic violence, alcohol/drug addicts for parents, poverty, an unnurturing environment, one might say the circumstances of his life were a perfect storm of misfortune culminating the only way it could in a place like Oklahoma.
In a place like Oklahoma, where the state essentially creates people like Charles Warren with its draconian policies only to execute them when a politician or wealthy for-profit prison owner wants another payday. It’s beyond tragic.
While the majority in Oklahoma are cheering this execution, know that not all of us are that warped. Thanks for bringing this to light on your blog so people can think about it.
In Saudi Arabia you can go to the square and watch beheadings for free. Great fun, and you can go home feeling self-righteous to boot! [sarcasm]
Many great comments in this thread. I’ll have to save some of them.
I understand the relevance of determinism / lack of magical free will to this issue, and to trying to convince people to give up retributive punishment, particularly the death penalty. But, it seems to me to be simpler than that. What kind of society would you rather live in? Victorian England? The US Wild West? Or one more like that depicted in the Star Trek universe?
I am not suggesting that people stop talking about implications of determinism regarding this issue. By all means, whatever may work to convince people should be used.
In these types of discussions on WEIT, most often punishment for crimes already committed, and the rehabilitation of criminals (people that have already committed crimes)is the focus. As mentioned by arollinson in several great comments above, determinism is also great justification for doing those things that will prevent people from becoming criminals in the first place.
Mainly, to my mind, it all comes down to simply looking at the available data, figuring out what actually works and building on those things, instead of making choices based on what seems to fit best with your ideology / politics, or what seems the best bet to increase your wealth or power in the short term. In other words, science (broadly or however you want to construe it). Get enough of the population to embrace that and I think many of the ugly aspects of our societies would improve very quickly. But that is sure to take a long time.
I think if you could convince Clint Eastwood, you be well on your way to a healthy society.
That’s a great point and largely sums up the way I feel as well. The determinism/free-will debate largely comes down to semantics one dualism is dropped (as Jerry points out) and, as evidenced by the free will threads being some of the most popular on this site, quickly devolve in to a quagmire of posters endlessly debating semantics. Needless to say, this is quite the indirect method for making a point about our justice system, and also results in having to knock down the hysterics such as, “If I had no choice, then what’s that point? I have no choice but to execute the criminal,” which involves explaining the framework for describing how we are variables in each other’s environments, and on it goes. And, of course, we have some evidence pointing to the fact that taking away the illusion of free will from people makes them behave less responsibly.
A much more direct method is to point out what we understand scientifically about human behavior. My wife works in the behavior therapy field; nowhere is there anything about telling autistic or mentally challenged children to simply “make a choice” and stop behaving the way they behave. It all involves reinforcement, behavior plans, and even behavior modification for the parents who often unwittingly set the stage to make the child behave in precisely the most undesirable way. In the same vein, I think we can make much more progress on how our justice system works by examining the evidence we have on how to make society a more desirable place to live in.
You are right, but determinism allows you to go a little further. And I find it always nice when people do things for the right reasons.
Before my belief in determinism, I was all in for punishing bad behaviour (Although against death-penalty for being too barbaric.
Now I’ve seen the light determinism tells me that nothing is earned and nothing is deserved. So punishment is never earned or deserved, there are no valid arguments for this anymore. It’s for me now morally wrong to want to punish people for a bit of bad luck. Also death penalty is now a no-brainer.
So to prevent a breakdown of society, what criminals really need is Mental Health Care. Treat it like an illness. And when they seem to be cured or are of no great danger for society, they are always welcome back. Only for those that are dangerous and incurable this could mean a lifelong stay in an institution; but as humane as possible and our neuroscientist have found no cure.
Of course there are always people that think they can keep a bit of punishment because it deters people from doing bad things.
But deterrence is a very limited tool to lower crime rates. For instance why not torture a rapist before killing him and possibly his family. Or think f.i. about militarizing police so people feel they are living in a police state.
When you try to increase or maximize deterrence it tends to increase injustice and often is not acceptable in a liberal democratic society.
It can prevent but also start a riot, see f.i. after police violence in London (BlackBerry riots) and Ferguson.
And also according to wikipedia:
“There is an ongoing debate about deterrence correlation with capital punishment. Today, there is no conclusive evidence supporting either theory.”
If today still isn’t clear that capital punishment has a positive effect on crime rates, ….. I rest my case.
Happy societies often tend to minimize it for good reasons.
Of course we still need police, a good and fair legal system and freedom of speech to condemn evildoers and bad ideas. Probably many more things.
I know, this is for most people unacceptable because it goes against our built in morality-instincts. In an political arena this equals to political suicide, at birthday parties you will be ridiculed. But for me it’s simply the only defensible position.
And if you think I’m crazy an wrong, a determinist like me can always reply:
it’s not my fault 🙂
Despite the nuances, occasional justification for the death penalty in particularly heinous crimes, and the rate of recidivism in some criminals, I’m still against the death penalty.
I often try to look at it as a statistical exercise: If (X more murders committed) x (chance of correct conviction) > (incorrect conviction rate), then execution is mathematically saving more lives than it’s costing, if you can see what I’m driving at.
Good math Kirth. How about this: Have everyone who’s for capital punishment sign a book and if they commit a capital offence they can be fairly executed. Everyone else gets a chance at rehabilitation.
“Do unto others…” and all that.
I suspect that the motivation for witnessing an execution would not be delight at seeing someone killed in most cases these days . The popularity of horror movies is not because psycho killers are admired, it is because we seek extreme experiences and emotions.
Taking myself as an example. I abhor the practice of taking a lion and tiger, or other combination of large predators, and making them fight to the death for entertainment as the North Koreans seem to enjoy doing. But would I watch it. Hell yeah! The experience is intensely emotional, although disturbing, and that’s probably what makes it fascinating.Same with boxing. I love watching it but wouldn’t mind if it were banned.
” After all, they had no choice about what they did.”
Right.
Please define “choice”.
If the same individual was presented with the same situation and the same knowledge about the situation multiple times, they would always make the same decision.
That’s your definition of choice?
Not working for me.
If one makes a decision, one makes a choice.
How about:
“the opportunity or power to choose between two or more possibilities”
Yes, that’s more like it.
But, apparently criminals (and perhaps the rest of us as well) have none of that.
No opportunity?
No power?
No possibilities?
None of these?
Let me put it this way.
Imagine sitting at a restaurant and looking at the menu. You have a number of choices but you will only ever order one thing when the server comes for your order.
When you place your order, the decision you made at that place in that time is the only one you actually would have made based on the information you had, no matter how much you might have thought about something else. If you went back and replayed that scenario 100 times and never added any new information (in other words, each time was the first time again), you would always make that same choice every time.
That’s what determinists mean when they talk about the lack of free will.
OP says “…they had no choice…”
microraptor says “…you have a number of choices… “…the decision you made…” “…make that same choice…”
You’re trying to explain how we have no choice using words that suggest we do.
If we have choices and make decisions and make choices, we are exercising free will.
The act of making a decision changes things from potential to actual, so clearly that cannot be changed. But that is not the same thing as saying we have no choice.
That’s because of the limitations of the English language. I could have used scare quotes every time I typed choice, but would that really have improved anything?
The point is that any time you, or I, or anyone else makes a choice, there’s a bunch of different things occurring in the brain that the conscious mind isn’t aware of. We think that we’re coming to one of several possible conclusions at any given point, but we never would have reached a different conclusion. Free will is an illusion produced by our brains.
“..limitations of the English language. I could have used ‘scare’ quotes…”
I dont think it’s the language, and all the quotes would have added is ambiguity. The correct words are out there – it’s just a matter of finding them.
“Free will is an illusion produced by our brains.”
No more so than our entire experience of life is an illusion produced by our brains, so how does that assertion (whether it’s true or not) make any practical difference?
We should still hold each other accountable for our behavior.
No one is suggesting otherwise. We’re just saying that the current method of doing so is flawed due to its lack of understanding of human behavior.
Okay, let’s take a step back.
OP: “But I still think we need to invest more resources in figuring out how to rehabilitate criminals, and at least to treat them more humanely. After all, they had no choice about what they did.”
So the suggestion here seems to be that the basis (reason) for treating criminals “humanely” is that they cannot be held responsible for their actions. Doesn’t this also suggest that if “we” choose not to treat criminals humanely we also cannot be held responsible for that action since we really had no choice?? We can’t even take credit for doing the opposite. So what’s the difference? What’s the point? Where does the “should” in the words “need to invest” come from if our freedom to do otherwise is just an illusion?
It’s like John Mellencamp said (facetiously): “Nothing matters and what if it did”.
And now you’ve crossed over into teenage nihilism.
Lack of free will means that in any given situation there’s only one actual choice that a given individual will ever make. It does not mean that individuals are incapable of learning and making different choices based on that learning.
A puppy doesn’t urinate on the floor to make you mad, it does so because it hasn’t been taught not to. Is any of this making sense?
“…crossed over into teenage nihilism.”
Let’s be clear on this, @microraptor: I have not “crossed over” into anything. All I’ve done is followed OP’s and your statements and logic where they lead.
“Lack of free will means that in any given situation there’s only one actual choice that a given individual will ever make.”
Did you notice that you used the future tense there? “Will make” means “hasn’t made yet”. Can we agree on that?
And can we agree that what makes any choice “done” is the deliberate, intentional act of making the choice (and simultaneously rejecting all other, known alternatives)?
And can we agree that humans have self-awareness, the ability to understand and monitor their own behavior and predict the consequences of their own actions? (If we can’t, then I see no point in discussing this further.)
“It does not mean that individuals are incapable of learning and making different choices based on that learning.”
There again, you make a statement that includes “making” choices (even though we supposedly have no way of doing this). Whether or not we use education as a way to influence behavior is not the issue. Of course there is value and good reasons for encouraging certain behaviors (choices) and discouraging others. But those reasons are based on the assumption that we actually have the ability to make choices. If we take away that assumption, then the rest is meaningless.
“A puppy doesn’t urinate on the floor to make you mad, it does so because it hasn’t been taught not to.”
First of all, we’re not talking about “puppies” nor even their human equivalents. We’re talking about mature adult humans, who presumably have already been taught (have had the opportunity to learn) the basics of right and wrong, or at least better and worse, from a human perspective, based on the assumption that these things can actually be taught/learned and will have an actual effect on the choices mature (self-aware) adults will make in their (future, not done yet) lives.
Second, I fully understand that certain puppy (or immature human) behaviors are not intended to make me (or anyone) angry. However, after that puppy (or immature human) has grown into an adult, all the while being taught what “acceptable” behavior is, if those behaviors (or other, new unacceptable behaviors) should be exhibited, it isn’t unreasonable for us to conclude that the actor (behave-er) is either incapable of learning due to some sort of flaw in the necessary machinery) or is intentionally choosing to ignore or defy the efforts at education. (But again, this is not the issue.)
I object to the assertion that humans “have no choice” in the behavior they exhibit, or as you say, have no free will. The only way this could be true is if humans have no self-awareness, no real understanding of their own behavior and that of others, no ability to project the future and monitor their own thinking. If this is true, then humans are reduced to the equivalent of (more or less) sophisticated robots, which simply need a little tweak to their software whenever they exhibit unacceptable behavior. And if that is true, none of this matters because none of this is actually happening.
Tell you what, why don’t you go read up on the subject yourself rather than arguing about my word choice. You can start by looking up “free will” on this website’s search function.
Yes, I will certainly (choose to) do some (more) reading on the subject, on and off this website, bearing in mind that there is no consensus, so at this point it’s a matter of who presents the argument I happen to like best.
I disagree that “they had no choice”, and that “they lack free will”.
correct, but it is sometimes confused with fatalism:
“No matter what happens the outcome is unavoidable”
With determinism the choices you make do matter. F.i. Stop smoking can lengthen your life.
The only fated thing is the heat death of the universe.
Source:
Alex Rosenberg: The atheist guide to reality.