Hi Dicky,
I'm finding these exchanges between you and NS some of the most interesting I've seen here for some time, and I admit to being perplexed as to how any legal system, to name but one aspect of society, could function without some concept of mens rea. I don't envy the task of any social reformers committed to the philosophy of determinism 'in the depths of their being' trying to rebuild the legal system from the bottom up along the principles you advocate, nor indeed what kind of literature we might have that didn't have some concept of the good guys and the bad guys, and the concomitant sense of relief when 'good' triumphs and a sense of tragic grief when the reverse is true.
Well perhaps, but there are clues that the idea already has a foothold at least in some areas of public life. Some universities for example practice “positive action” to redress barriers to entry due to life circumstances – a set of B grades at “A” level from a sink comprehensive in a deprived neighbourhood can indicate better academic aptitude than A grades from the public school system, and so that’s reflected in the entry criteria. It seems to me that the same basic principle could also apply in mirror image – for ““A” level grades” read “crimes committed” and then consider the reverse incidence of disadvantaged young people vs public school educated people in that set. Why in other words would the factors that influence choices and opportunities about studying for exams not also apply to committing crime – and thus be taken into account by the courts as well as by universities?
Children who witness domestic abuse, drug taking, street crime etc can suffer PTSD as strongly as that experienced by war veterans (Sapolsky says), and moreover consequently they’re much more likely to be represented in the stats for teen pregnancies, drug and alcohol addiction, prison populations etc. Should the judicial system treat all people as making equally unfettered choices about undertaking crime, or should there be something in the judicial system akin to positive action in the academic system that recognises that not all people start from the same place? As I understanding it a war vet before a US court would have his PTSD taken into account as a mitigating factor, so why not a kid from the Projects also with PTSD?
Some of the Scandinavian penal systems have already gone some way along this path too – they treat convicts as people to be remediated and rehabilitated rather than to be punished, and have lower recidivism rates than ours as the result.
NS mentioned Samuel Butler's Erewhon earlier as an illustration of how a very different society might deal with matters of right and wrong. I don't remember much of the book - a re-read is needed - but I do remember being confused as to how much was a satire on his own society, or whether some might be thought experiments into the area of science fiction to imagine people with vastly different concepts on how to organise society. His idea that criminals should be treated as being ill and given medical treatment does have resonances with your own comments, but just what he was getting at when he wrote of of people who were ill (bodily ill, presumably) being treated as criminals, and ultimately lined up for execution, has led some to think he might be thinking that eugenics had something of value in it. Conversely, he might have been satirising the whole idea. Bernard Shaw had some odd ideas about criminality, too, and he likewise might have had his tongue firmly in his cheek when he suggested that incorrigible perpetual criminal offenders should be quietly taken away and shot.
I thought it was a satire – akin to Swift’s A Modest Proposal. In any case though, to get back to “free” will: the point of difference between NS and me I think is that he sees the conversation as pointless because in the deterministic paradigm what will be will be so there’s no point in bothering with it – all we can do is to take meaning and significance from the “as if”, colloquial “free” will we seem to experience and that’s the end of it.
I’m not so sure about that. Notwithstanding the deterministic model, there’s still an experiential “me” that thinks it feels love and pleasure as well as pain and irritation etc and, free choice or not, that “me” would prefer more of the first two and less of the second two. No doubt NS would tell me I’m confusing my categories here, but the same would apply I think to a SIMS game character governed by algorithms of sufficient complexity to make it think it experiences love and pain too. In other words, knowledge of the deterministic reality does not for one moment diminish the pleasure the experiential “me” felt yesterday when my daughter told me she’s expecting her first child.
I see no contradiction between finding life to be both essentially meaningless and also sometimes wonderful.
