Is a killer responsible 100% for their actions?

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by darksidZz, Jan 28, 2015.

?

What you believe?

Poll closed Feb 17, 2015.
  1. Yes

    50.0%
  2. No

    28.6%
  3. Maybe

    21.4%
  4. Unsure

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  1. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,298
    A society should have initial responsibility for making an effort to ensure that its native youth and newcomers of all ages (via immigration, etc) are integrating and functioning properly within its system [for that society's own future well-being if nothing else]. But in some countries this falls well short due to conflicts with individual freedoms / rights, questions over how much the parental domain can be intruded upon, etc. Including the "avoid potential litigation-provoking strategies and bad publicity frays" phobias connected to treading upon the assorted sensitivities and belief-fetishes and conspiracies flourishing within the context of multicultural / ideological correctness / political affairs. As well as simply lacking the funds and resources to fulfill such an idealized level of basic responsibility.

    Aside from that, it is a person's own body / brain that generates its decisions and performs his/her actions. That individual is usually not a powerless puppet farmed-out to various external manipulators that move its appendages / mouth and provide its spoken comments / thoughts. Likewise, the mindless and non-conscious and disinterested and moral-less regulatory generalities of the universe are accordingly also unable to accept responsibility for the good / bad of what some of its particular content does. Like these autonomous, self-functioning organisms which ironically do have intellectual capacities.

    Even in the supposed absolute determinism of a block-universe, the worldline of a specific human is still an expression of following its own nature (whether unique or common). That is, still what its own constrictions would either compel or allow it to do under "this or that circumstance" if the case were otherwise one of presentism ("only this present moment is real / exists"). Such a biological being requires governing limitations in order to exist in the first place. A completely arbitrary, lawless and unprincipled "freedom" would be no organized, purposeful entity or working system at all -- just another pocket of random "noise".
     
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  3. Sylvester Registered Senior Member

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    We have to be clear, the is a thing called "justifiable homicide" and "what would a reasonable person conclude". Those two concepts are very prevalent in criminal law, specifically American law. I cannot say about anyplace else as i have not studied other systems.

    I feel those phrases i quoted go together so bearing that in mind justification is really only in matters of self defense, or even the defense of others.

    Death penalty? If someone were attacking another person and probably 100% of people out there would defend themselves up to imposing the death penalty. So IDK, dont everyone support the death penalty?
     
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  5. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,632
    Absolutely. Some people are just plain evil, and no matter how good their upbringing, will choose the darker path. Some people are just plain good and will do well no matter what life throws at them.
    Most people, of course, are influenced quite heavily by their upbringing. That doesn't mean they can't tell right from wrong - it just tempts them to choose one over the other.
    I think life in jail is a cheaper/safer option.
     
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  7. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    You do realize there is a huge, legally recognized difference between capital punishment and self defense, right? Self defense using lethal force has nothing to do with capital punishment (other than the end result.)
     
  8. Sylvester Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    467
    Yes i know that and there is imminent danger or perceived imminent danger to self defense even still the end result is the same. You took a life, the person is not coming back. Now...if we got down to the bare facts and the outcome it is kind of difficult to make the claim of not supporting a death penalty after you already imposed one...correct?
     
  9. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,632
    No. That's like saying that since you can accept that your girlfriend can die of heart disease, you must also accept if she is killed by a murderer. Same outcome, right? If you are OK with one, you must be OK with the other.
     
  10. cluelusshusbund + Public Dilemma + Valued Senior Member

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    7,983
    Are ther reasons that "some people are just plain evil"... or are they evil for no reason.???
     
  11. cluelusshusbund + Public Dilemma + Valued Senior Member

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    7,983
    In a deterministic universe... coud a person ever deserve punishment for ther actions.???
     
  12. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,632
    Evil for no discernible reason.
     
  13. cluelusshusbund + Public Dilemma + Valued Senior Member

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    7,983
    Yes... ther are always reasons whether ther discernible or not.!!!
     
  14. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,298
    Bad things happen to animals in the wilderness. The universe at large has no moral conscience for judging those events as being either deserved or non-deserved. At best, the beast may have received the cause-effect consequences of its choice of actions or just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

    There are animal social groups that may dispense primitive precursors to human forms of justice (JoJo the baboon getting exiled from her group because she didn't show proper deference to an older, matriarchal female or something). Still, "justice" would be a concept and performance that's the invention of a local biological sphere rather than being ubiquitously distributed across the cosmos.

    One can claim it eventually fell out of the operations of a compact equation which the whole universe also unfolded from. But that transcendent formula itself would be devoid of any understanding and awareness of what it created (inferior in that respect to some of the particular complex patterns which it outputted). Accordingly, humans or their equivalents elsewhere and in the future would be the only intellective "deities" available for generating moral schemes. As some ancient Indian philosophies once ventured to ask, "Where the #### did the gods come from?" Apparently their gods, like mortals, were subsumed under causation rather than being overlords a priori to it, thus quite of the non-omnipotent class (OR: causation itself should be considered the ultimate abstract object or principle in such contexts).

    In a block-universe scenario, the later era of "justice" would just be a different location that was simultaneous with the earlier era of "mindless disinterest". Rather than something [at the Big Bang moment or location] yet to develop / evolve / emerge from biological activity. But a process governed by a rigidly immutable formula would still inevitably yield both eras as surely as both brutely and eternally existing (that is, minus such a flux of change engendering them over time -- this sequence of appearing / disappearing states of the world featured in the commonsense presentism view).
     
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  15. cluelusshusbund + Public Dilemma + Valued Senior Member

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    7,983
    I dont thank a person deserves punishment for actions which were beyond ther control... ie... a deterministic universe.!!!
     
  16. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    33,264
    Many people blame others for their own misfortune where in actuality it is their own fault that they are where they are.
     
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  17. cluelusshusbund + Public Dilemma + Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,983
    Do you thank people deserve punishment for actions which were beyond ther control.???
     
  18. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,632
    So in a deterministic universe, since nothing can really change, there can be no punishments or rewards for anything, since it was all going to happen anyway.
    Can we take this to mean you will never again ask for (or accept) a raise?
     
  19. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    22,910
    And where is your evidence for this assertion? Just like all your other machinations, you have no evidence. You are just blindly repeating Republican memes Rush Limbaugh and company have taught you over the years.

    The “IRS Scandal” isn’t a scandal in the sense you and your fellow Republicans want it to be as the “wrong doing” alleged by you and your fellow Republicans never occurred. Nobody lost their job because nothing untoward occurred. There were no criminals - damn minor details again! There is none so deaf and none as blind as he who will not hear and will not see.
    And how do you know the misery and suffering of the murder is more important to “liberals” than the suffering of their victims? You don’t you are just making stuff up and blindly repeating Republican memes. Liberals, tend to not like killing be they the perpetrator or victim. The death penalty is pretty final, and unfortunately too many innocent people have been convicted of capital crimes and executed. Only later after the execution was it learned the executed was innocent. Liberals don’t believe in executing innocent wrongfully convicted individuals. Republicans are much more comfortable executing individuals.
    Are you on drugs?
    Are you that ill-informed? Lawyers are policed by state bars. Physicians are supervised by state medical boards…oops! So like your other assertions, this one is wrong too. Lawyers are liable in courts just as physicians are liable for malpractice. http://www.americanbar.org/groups/lawyers_professional_liability.html

    As always, you have no idea of the subject matter you propagate. You just blindly repeat what Republican entertainment sources have taught you.
     
  20. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,298
    If they are some manner of scientific realist who considers the physical sciences' reduction of the world to dispassionate descriptions as being the true reality, then "punishment" and "suffering" are just illusory ideations of commonsense traditions, anyway. Which they should thereby avoid conceiving their body or its collective microphysical states as participating in. Or perhaps via any different route that might arrive at similar destination: "Rotsa ruck in that third-world prison, Killer Kane, in attaining as mentally an invincible state as that protesting Buddhist monk may have been in when he burned himself alive in Vietnam!" ;-)
     
  21. cluelusshusbund + Public Dilemma + Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,983
    Of course ther can be punishments an rewards... my queston has to do wit whether punishments/[rewards] can ever be deserved.!!!
    Do you agree that in a deterministic universe a person can not deserve punishment.???

    If you mean by "since it was all going to happen anyway"... that... it coudnt have happened otherwise... i agree... an no punishments or rewards are ever deserved.!!!

    No... can i take from what you just said... that when asked for... raises are always deserved.???
     
  22. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,632
    In my view of things, sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. How deserving someone is depends on how much talent they have, how they use that talent and how hard they work.
    But I asked you the question. Since you claim "i agree... an no punishments or rewards are ever deserved!" - does this mean you will never again ask for (or accept) a raise?
     
  23. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    Can you give an example?
     

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