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From: baba@spar.UUCP (Baba ROM DOS)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Materialist Moral Philosophy & Brain Death
Message-ID: <618@spar.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 25-Oct-85 03:44:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: spar.618
Posted: Fri Oct 25 03:44:07 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 26-Oct-85 06:54:43 EDT
References: <1663@pyuxd.UUCP> <1820@umcp-cs.UUCP> <1907@pyuxd.UUCP> <609@spar.UUCP> <1951@pyuxd.UUCP>
Organization: The Institute of Impure Science
Lines: 81

>>       What's the rosenist definition of "responsibility"?  Does it require
>> a soul or something?  Responsibility is accountability, a measure of 
>> participation in a causal chain.  Don't you believe in causality?  [BABA]
> 
>                  Responsibility has come to mean two things.  First, as
> Baba says, there is the "measure of participation in a causal chain".
> X is responsible for Y if X caused Y to happen.  But then Baba adds in
> "accountability", which really has nothing to do with THIS definition of
> responsibility. [Rich Rosen]

Personal accountability and causality are very much related, if you
think about it.  Can we not describe personal accountablity as the 
participation of a *mind* in a causal chain?

>                                      If perchance we were able to create
> a sentient machine, and we conditioned/programmed it to kill someone, would
> the machine be "responsible" for the death of the person?  NOT just in that
> first sense of "participation in a causal chain", but in the second sense
> of taking the blame for what occurred?  How can you impose blame on a
> non-self-determining entity?

Quite simply. It makes *no* difference from a descriptive point of view,
nor from a practical/ethical point of view, whether a person's decision
is predetermined or not.  All that matters is that the decision was
made.  Consider for a moment two of your "sentient" machines.  One of
them is programmed to stomp on puppies, and takes out a prize pekingese.
The other has a sensor failure and treads fatally on a miniature poodle.
Which machine needs reprogramming (punishment)?  Which one can reasonably
be otherwise expected to do the same thing again?

>                                   Of course, you get some people who work
> backwards from a desired conclusion:  well, humans ARE self-determining
> entities, otherwise how could we blame/credit ourselves and others for the
> things that are done...

Well, who are these people?  I for one find the notion that the assignment
of credit/blame is an end in itself to be pretty weird.  It's just a
philosophical tool that one uses when organizing the activities of human 
beings, including one's self.  It provides a predictor for future behavior
as well as an indication of the appropriateness of reward/punishment. And 
it is useful whether humans are self-determining or not.

>                       This notion permeates a good deal of western law:
> you do something wrong, YOU are a bad person who should be punished.  That
> may not be the hallmark of "sadistic disciplinarians", but it hardly sounds
> like the actions of rational people to me.

If you seriously think that the reward/punishment of credit/blame is
irrational, you ought never to be trusted to raise a child.  Or a dog,
for that matter.

>Yes, I go around killing people, and I don't want to be blamed for it.
>Whatever the truth of the matter (I haven't killed or maimed in years...),
>the facts are this:  we have human beings whose experiences lead them to
>become what they grow up to be.  To tag them with "responsibility" when
>they do something wrong (i.e., punishment) strikes me as extremely shortsighted
>and vacuous.

To assert that human beings are incapable of learning new behavior patterns
(or unlearning old ones) beyond some tender age strikes me as obviously and 
demonstrably false.

>                If we smoke in front of our kids, if we show violence and anger
>as acceptable behaviors, if we act dishonestly or hatefully when we serve
>as examples to our children, they are still "responsible" for what they do
>as adults, right?

Absolutely.  That's what adulthood is all about.  If our parents botch their
job, it just means that it is going to be harder.  The assignment of 
credit/blame and reward/punishment by social institutions is done in part
to guide those who weren't properly oriented as children.  (Another part 
is to be an enticement/deterrent.)
 
> If you want to believe the latter idea about people, then the ball is in
> your court to show how such thinking contrary to experience and learning
> can (and does) occur.

But that's not the point.  The point is that experience and learning
are not static!

						Baba