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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Strange Side-effects of Responsibility and Determinism
Message-ID: <2051@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 1-Nov-85 09:28:37 EST
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.2051
Posted: Fri Nov  1 09:28:37 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 3-Nov-85 14:35:46 EST
References: <1975@umcp-cs.UUCP> <1988@pyuxd.UUCP>
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
Lines: 126

In article <1988@pyuxd.UUCP> rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) writes:

>> 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?

Sure.  Everything is now a conditioning stimulus, so the question is not "is
it moral?" but "does it acheive the results I want?"  It's all a question of
whether you resist the moral conditioning of others.

>>>[Rich asks whether mass murderers become what they are through choice or
>>> conditioning.]

>> 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.

A nice bit of speculation-- utterly ungrounded in experimentation.  Consider
the hypothesis that these conditioning stimuli are fed into the mind/brain,
which is a randomizing process, and that THIS is what produces the
distributions.  One can of course mix the two, but a) it quite apparent that
in our present state of knowledge either represents the data and b) the data
rules out neither.  Personally, considering the omnipresence of apparently
random behavior at every scale, especially at the cellular level, I tend to
prefer the second.

>> 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).

>  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.

Well, first of all, in your ignorance of the whole story you have
manufactured a lot of untruth.  In the original story, Darrow's defendant
was plainly guilty.  This wild nonsense about lynching is just a fabrication
having nothing to do with the matter.  The argument is "You have no moral
argument against me, because I was conditioned;" and the only possible reply
is "we are conditioned too, and so YOU have no moral argument either."
There simply is no way for you to absolve the criminal without at the same
time absolving the judge, regardless of whether the judge is acting rightly
or wrongly.  There is a consistent iconsistency in Rich's position here, as
though we who are educated (or however priveleged) have free will, and can
be held responsible, whereas those such as criminals or the masses he lords
it over lack free will.  I thought there was no free will up here either,
according to Rich's system.

>> 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?

Because it fails to work so often! :-)  (You have asserted that we don't
listen to you, haven't you Rich?)

>2) When did I say anything about being "free" when applying reason but not
>   free otherwise?

One gets the opinion that we should listen to your arguments, even though
you are forced to believe in them by your previous conditioning.  Is there
really any reason why we should take that as truth?  (THere's a trap in that
sentence, by the way.)

[Concerning parents and children, and manipulation as the true nature of
 argument]

>"This week"?  One can't swear off something one doesn't engage in, Charles.

Oh, but you do.  The argument you are making is a conditioning stimulus, and
therefore represents a conscious effort on your part to manipulate my mind.
Anyway...

>  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.

It's the same cycle.  Information and learning are, again, manipulative
stimuli for the purpose of altering the minds of others.  The fact that we
now engage in it consciously doesn't matter much, especially since the
unconscious stimuli continue (and indeed, one solid result of psychology is
that clashes between the two types are in themselves a most powerful
stimulus).

Charley Wingate