Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site umcp-cs.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!umcp-cs!mangoe From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) Newsgroups: net.philosophy Subject: Strange Side-effects of Responsibility and Determinism Message-ID: <1975@umcp-cs.UUCP> Date: Fri, 25-Oct-85 00:01:20 EST Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.1975 Posted: Fri Oct 25 00:01:20 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 31-Oct-85 05:31:56 EST References: <1951@pyuxd.UUCP> Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD Lines: 132 In article <1951@pyuxd.UUCP> rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) writes: > 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. Well it does if you take accountability in the sense of indicating where the behavior could effectively have been different. This bears upon the following: > 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. 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.) So 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. >> 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. 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. > 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. >> As long as you're interested in talking about motives, Rich, do you take >> pleasure in punishing people? Did your parents? You seem to have this >> strange vision of the world as an endless sea of sadistic disciplinarians. >I do? 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 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. 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). 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. >If what I say is false, regarding the way experience and >exposure to the rest of the world leads you (conditions you) to become what >you become, why do we bother with parenting, with attempting to imbue >positive values in children, guiding that conditioning process toward a >goal of a mature rational adult? Hell, by your reasoning, it doesn't >matter what we do as parents. 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? 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. 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. Charley Wingate umcp-cs!mangoe "I say this because I want to be prime minister of Canada someday." - M. Fox