On 6/6/2012 9:37 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Jun 6, 2012 Brian Tenneson <tenn...@gmail.com
<mailto:tenn...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> how can we hold criminals culpable in that they had no choice but to commit crime?
It just mystifies me that someone would even ask a question like that. If you're chasing
me with a bloody ax I don't care if you had a "choice" (whatever the hell that is
supposed to mean) to do so or not, nor do I care what thoughts, be they beautiful or
ugly, are dancing around in your brain while you're doing it; all I want is for you to
stop chasing me with that damn ax and I want measures taken to discourage that sort of
thing happening in the future by you or anybody else.
The question though was what to do about him *after* he committed the crime. If he axed
you because he has a brain tumor that caused him to see you as an alien monster, we
wouldn't hold him culpable. We'd operate on him, remove the tumor, and send regrets to
your widow.
If he were coerced into axing you by a hostile government that was holding his wife and
children hostage and going to kill them if he didn't do you in, we would consider him much
less culpable and might not punish him.
If he did it on an impulse because you offended him (e.g. you told him he spoke gibberish)
we'd consider him less culpable than if you he had long planned to kill you for money.
So as actually applied "culpability" is roughly equivalent to how likely the perp or
people in his situation are to do it or similar again.
Brent
> Seems unfair to punish anyone under those circumstances.
It seems even more unfair for me to get chopped up by your ax. There are only 2
legitimate reasons to punish anybody for anything:
1) To make sure they don't continue with such crimes.
2) To deter others from committing similar crimes.
I admit there is another reason that the oldest reptilian parts of my brain can come up
with, the fun of seeing somebody I dislike suffer, but that is not a reason the newer
more evolved parts of my brain are proud of so I will not defend it. And the ASCII
string "free will" has absolutely nothing to do with any of this, or anything else for
that matter except gibberish.
John K Clark
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