Free Will

[pErvinalia]

I know there's a free will thread or ten around here somewhere, but I can't find it (and I freely don't care). I'm not going to go straight into the usual arguments. Thought I'd post something interesting I came across last week and see what people have to say about it. What peaked my interested was a report about a man who was acquitted of murdering his mother and father in law on the grounds that he did it while asleep (i.e. sleepwalking). Scans and test subsequently showed that he does sleepwalk quite actively and has no conscious awareness of what is going on. So he was acquitted as he wasn't "himself" when he did it. The interesting thing for the concept of "free will" is that we are arguably never "ourselves" and are acting in a deterministic way based on all past interactions we've had (and our genetics). However, I still think there is a difference in terms of sentencing and legal responsibility between sleepwalking crime and conscious crime. I see if anyone comments on the distinction before mentioning it.

Sleepwalking crime seems as though it might be pretty common: https://www.google.com.au/search?sclien ... TlOo&pbx=1

[JimC]

Conscious acts have purpose and motivation, whether or not they are ultimately traceable to a chain of mechanical processes. Conscious criminal acts have a purpose involving selfish benefits to the perpetrator, and usually harm to the victim, and the instigator knows this to one degree or another. So, for deterrence if nothing else, it is pragmatically useful to society that such acts be punishable. Even without philosophical concerns about free will, the law recognises that there are degrees of diminished responsibility for psychologically impaired individuals. Personally, I draw the line at granting diminished responsibility to people who have chosen to impair themselves via drugs or alcohol. There was an interesting recent case in Victoria when a driver who killed 2 members of a family by incompetent driving had his initial jail sentence revoked when an appeal court judge found that his low IQ gave diminished responsibility for his actions. My question would be why the fuck was he able to have a driving license?

[pErvinalia]

I don't think "purpose and motivation" are relevant where we assume there is no such thing as free will (the ability to act intently and independently from what came before). But yeah, the deterrence effect is the critical distinction. Deterrence forms part of the causality chain leading up to a person acting in one way as opposed to another in the case of criminal behaviour.

[piscator]

pique

pēk
verb
past tense: piqued; past participle: piqued
1.
stimulate (interest or curiosity).
"you have piqued my curiosity about the man"
synonyms: stimulate, arouse, rouse, provoke, whet, awaken, excite, kindle, stir, galvanize

"his interest was piqued"

[JimC]

I don't think "purpose and motivation" are relevant where we assume there is no such thing as free will (the ability to act intently and independently from what came before). But yeah, the deterrence effect is the critical distinction. Deterrence forms part of the causality chain leading up to a person acting in one way as opposed to another in the case of criminal behaviour.

To me, their relevance lies in assessing the culpability of 2 criminal actions, one carried out fully conscious, the other when genuinely sleepwalking.

[pErvinalia]

If there is no free will, then there can't be any real culpability. It becomes a legal fiction.

[piscator]

It's well within a lawmaker or jurist's purview to make an argument from consequence. viz "Hard determinism" is incompatible with the law's historic presupposition of "free will" in that it can be construed in all cases to eliminate culpability for an act or tort. This would create an unmanageable situation with regard to a nation of law, and the negative social consequences of a fundamental systematic revision preclude hard determinism as a presupposition of a legal system.

Moreover, assumptions in law are not necessarily accurate descriptions of the mechanisms of human behavior. The legal necessity of assuming free will to hold an agent legally responsible for his acts is no testament to the existence of free will itself.

[pErvinalia]

It doesn't create an unmanageable situation in law. Deterrence still fits with hard determinism.

[piscator]

It is rational for courts and legislatures to skip convoluted logic in favor of the simpler assumptions they inherited.

[pErvinalia]

The logic isn't convoluted. And essentially the point I was making in the OP is that the courts have inadvertently got it right anyway. If courts were simply about punishing people who commit crimes, then the sleepwalkers would be convicted too.

[piscator]

Deterrence is convoluted, and it's a slippery slope.

[pErvinalia]

How do you mean?

[piscator]

Changing state variables, like removing degrees of "freedom" to deter an unwanted act by a determined agent, for example.

You'll have to short circuit a person's ability to commit an undesired (but determined) act. That's just not what I want my legal system doing for me.

[pErvinalia]

I don't understand any of that, not least the picture.

[JimC]

The logic isn't convoluted. And essentially the point I was making in the OP is that the courts have inadvertently got it right anyway. If courts were simply about punishing people who commit crimes, then the sleepwalkers would be convicted too.

I would replace "inadvertently" with "pragmatically". Deterrence works because at least a reasonable number of people who want to commit a criminal act for selfish reasons are forced to balance that against the risk of getting caught and suffering nasty consequences, and reluctantly decide not to do the crime.

This avenue of decision making is not available to a somnambulist, and so it is rational not to apply the same consequence...