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From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Strange Side-effects of Responsibility and Determinism
Message-ID: <1988@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 29-Oct-85 23:27:55 EST
Article-I.D.: pyuxd.1988
Posted: Tue Oct 29 23:27:55 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 3-Nov-85 10:06:41 EST
References: <1951@pyuxd.UUCP> <1975@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Organization: Whatever we're calling ourselves this week
Lines: 198

>>  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. [ROSEN]

> Well it does if you take accountability in the sense of indicating where the
> behavior could effectively have been different.  [WINGATE]

"Could have been different"?  Given a completely different universe, may-be.
But we are talking about the universe in which what happened happened, because
of the configuration of your behavior patterning.

>>  Yet responsibility has come to mean "charged with the duty
>>of accomplishing/not accomplishing something, taking the credit for 'good'
>>things accomplished, and taking the blame for 'bad' things accomplished (or
>>'good' things not accomplished)".  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?

> Well, first one has to separate conditioning from programming.
> Advertisements are certainly a form of conditioning, but they are
> resistable.  If one goes out and buys something because of an ad, we still
> hold them responsible because they chose to believe it.

They are resistable for YOU because you are aware of what they are.  They
may not be so resistable for other people.  Just as I find wishful religious
propaganda resistable (because I have learned not to make certain bogus
assumptions), while you, Charles, do not find it so.

> Responsibility is generally connected to choice.  If one can't choose, then
> one cannot be responsible.  (I'm not concerned with legal responsibility,
> since it worries about rationality and other concerns which aren't
> immediately important.)

Odd definition of "immediate".  Are they important yet? ...  How about now?
I find the issue of paramount importance.

> at least from one point of view, a deterministic entity cannot responsible.
> On the other hand, responsibility still exists, although in a vastly
> different fashion, in a deterministic world.  In this case it is just as
> Rich says; it emanates from human feelings of guilt and pride.  It is the
> common principle behind the statements "it was my fault" and "I'm proud of
> my work", regardless of whether these feelings are "justified".  So
> discussion of responsibility is still possible, although now it must concern
> itself with the evocation of these feelings rather than with their
> justification.  Note, however, that this moves you into a curiously amoral
> grey area.  One talks about guilt as a motivating factor, and how to evoke
> it.  It ceases to become a symptom of a moral dilemma, and becomes instead a
> mere psychological tool.

You noticed!  But this is hardly an "amoral" area, for moralist are forever
concerned with the "need" for guilt and fear in certain moral systems, and
the requirement that moral systems induce such phenomena in order to be
effective (e.g., Dubuc on why morality should be religious in nature).  The
fact remains:  can we use something that we cannot justify as a reason for
"punishing" people?

>>> If your thesis of materialistic determinism is correct, it can hardly
>>> matter whether a person is capable of reason or not.

>>Oh, but clearly it does.  The person you are today exists as a result of
>>all your experience that came before.  If today you can think rationally,
>>it is because you were taught to use your brain in a maximal fashion from
>>early on in childhood, and have had that behavior reinforced by the positive
>>results it offers in interfacing with reality.

> Or because your mind naturally inclines to this mode.

Or a combination of both.  Perhaps THIS is an assumption, but I tend to
think that any reasonably intelligent human being has the ability to
interface to reality in this mode, if properly exposed to methodologies of
thought that induce this.

> As best I know, this question hasn't been adequately resolved.  One must
> also note that use of reason is invariably suspended in many circumstances,
> which suggests that things are more complicated then Rich seems willing to
> admit.

So?  I question your use of "invariably", but certainly in many reasonable
people reason is sometimes suspended.

>>  If today you are a mass
>>murderer, is it because you "made a conscious free decision" to become a
>>mass murderer?  Or because those previous experiences led you to your
>>current state?  You saw your parents behaving violently and learned that this
>>was "acceptable".  You grew up behaving violently and had that behavior
>>reinforced by the success of behaving violently.  You learned that acting
>>violently when things don't go your way is acceptable behavior.  Etc.
>>Which is it?

> Both.  One has to choose to learn, after all.  One thing which is
> characteristic of psychology is that its results (thus far) can only be
> stated in terms of statistical trends.  Correlations are almost invariably
> quite fuzzy.  Most children of violent homes do not grow up to be mass
> murderers; perhaps most do not murder at all.  The children of thieves are
> not invariably thieves.  There's clearly some process going on which often
> overrides the supposed conditioning.

Yes, OTHER conditioning, other opportunities.  Cause and effect is very simple,
but often the number and configuration of causes that produces an effect
is very complex (some assume that in such a case, the "supernatural" is
involved, or "acausality"...).  PLUS each person is different (even child from
parent), and the exact same circumstances may be reacted to very differently
by two people.  BOTH because of innate genetic differences AND learned
behavioral differences.

>>Obviously the people who formulate such notions as societal rules
>>see things that way.  Look at the Christian motif of "man is fallen, we are
>>all evil and need to be regulated and controlled, and if we're not good
>>we should be punished".  The sea isn't endless, but I still haven't seen the
>>other coastline yet.  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 discplinarians", but it hardly sounds
>>like the actions of rational people to me.

> Once Clarence Darrow made the mistake of making this kind of argument in
> court, to which the judge replied that if you take away responsibility for
> the crime, you also take away responsibility for the punishment too
> (althoug, being wise and learned, he said much more pithily).

And obviously you missed the article I posted months ago rebuttinng this
judge's notions and showing what a piss-poor judge he was.  (When someone
else---was it you?---posted the same story.)  Simply put, the very idea behind
having a system of justice in the first place is to administer fair treatment.
If we have knowledge of what fair treatment is, it is up to the system of
justice to provide it, otherwise it is not performing its function.  To
deliberately not do this is exactly equivalent to a judge allowing and
supporting lynchings, because "it's in people's nature to do it".  Darrow
was absolutely right, but true justice would not have been to set his client
free, but to assist him in leading a non-criminal life.

> And once again I will only note upon Rich's gross misconception of
> christianity as whatever Jerry Falwell (or pick your favorite Fundamentalist
> demagogue) believes in.

And what you seem to believe in as well, Charles, as evidence by your very
actions and statements here.  As always, you assert "me, I'm not a
fundmentalist", which makes it all the more scary.

> But to return to the first point: there is almost
> invariably an inconsistency in this sort of argument; Rich acts as if we are
> free when we apply reasoning (what ever that is) and not free when, for
> instance, we do something conditioned.  Under Rich's assumptions, reasoning
> is just another conditioning force (and a poor one at that, by his own
> admission).

1) When did I admit that reasoning is a poor conditioning force?  2) When did
I say anything about being "free" when applying reason but not free otherwise?
I think that's Torek's belief, but it's not mine.

> Why should we be concerned with the truth of reason?  The only
> argument which to my mind holds any water here is (I believe it was suggest
> by Paul Torek) that it is evolutionarily advantageous for reasoning to be
> true.  One could then quite reasonably ask why all the non-rational and
> irrational modes persist, unless they too are somehow advantageous.  Either
> way, truth becomes a much less precious commodity.

Nonsense.  The best adaptive traits survive better than those less adaptive
traits, not "to their exclusion".  Reasoning is evolutionarily advantageous
for precisely one reason:  it works in giving us an accurate picture of
the world we live in and the means to deal with it, when applied thoroughly.

>>If what I say is false, regarding the way experience and
>>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?  It wasn't OUR fault
>>that the kid is now a delinquent, or a failure, or a murderer, or a hacker...

> Well, if what you say is true, then we have no choice but to do whatever we
> do as parents, so you can hardly fault the bad ones, or praise the good--
> unless of course you want to consider it in terms of manipulation, something
> you swore off of just this week.

"This week"?  One can't swear off something one doesn't engage in, Charles.
However, you are always free to do so yourself at any time.  I fail to see
any point being made here by you.  You're absolutely right, we have no
choice but to do whatever we do.  That goes for parents, too.  So no
"blame" or "punishment" is in order.  Does this mean we have a vicious
cycle?  Possibly.  But vicious cycles have been broken before, through
dissemination of better information and learning, especially when it comes
to learning about parenting.

> From my point of view, their's plenty of 
> blame to spread around.  The bad parents have some responsibility, but,
> given that many kids overcome such disadvantages, some of the responsibility
> has to hew to the kid too.

Ah, the old saw:  I (or "he/she") "overcame" all this, so why can't these
other people do the same?  For a very good reason:  if they could, they would,
but their circumstances are simply very different from other people (even
those who did "overcome"), and you can't boldly assert that "I/he/she did it,
therefore..."  That is a fallacy, especially when you lack all the data
necessary to make such a judgment.
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