Here's an incredibly rambling collection of thoughts about justice and free will. The first bits are most relevant to other people's comments.
dbergan said:
How can anything be evil if there is no choice? Jean-Jacques Rousseau: "to remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his acts."
You are suggesting that we should choose your criminal system because it recognizes the reality that we have no choice... Absurdity upon absurdity...
Bang on again. Morality is based on free will: if you deny free will, you must also remove all moral judgement of people's actions. Guilt is a moral judgement of one's own actions. With no free will we should not feel guilty.
We do feel guilty, but this is not evidence or free will, because humans are fallible creatures, and we could conceive of free will and feel guilt even though we are wrong. So I don't agree with dbergan's original argument either.
As for responsibility, is one responsible if the actions come out of one? That is, if I have no choice and no free will, do I still have responsibility for my actions simply because I was the one who did those actions? Or, do I need to have been able to act differently? Or, do those actions need to come from me, rather than 'through' me (as in did causes act on me to make me act the way I did, or was I an ultimate cause)? These three questions are very important for discussing moral questions regarding free will.
when it comes to free will in current legal systems, people do indeed blame the environment, and it's an argument that angers me somewhat. Free will is something one accepts or does not. If you had influences, you must still accept that either you have responsibility or not. If you claim no free will then you must be punished because we have no free will either. If you do have responsibility then no matter what the influences it was still your decision.
This attitude of 'the gun is evil and must be punished: people are naturally innocent and only do evil with evil influences' is sickening. People are not naturally nice, whether they have free will or not. If we accept the concept of responsibility at all we must accept that responsibility carries to the last free agent involved and no further.
I can trace a bullet penetrating a patient to a gun. A gun is not a free agent, so I trace the gun being fired to a gunman. A gunman is a free agent (under our current system) and therefore bears full responsibility for the killing. A person who ordered the gunman to perform the killing will be fully responsible for the crime 'incitement to murder', but will have no responsibility for the killing itself. Responsibility can be carried to free agents, but not through them, in the same way that if we accept free will we say that cause and effect goes on up until our thought processes, but then a different cause emerges. Responsibility directly follows cause and effect.
When someone freely decides on murder and commits it he is responsible for both the 'incitement' part of the killing, and the killing itself, and therefore receives a larger punishment.
If free will does not exist and he commits the crime then it continues not to exist for the judge, who will claim that he has no choice but to condemn the criminal.
Suffering is a very bad way of imagining justice. Justice is not about reducing suffering. It consists of two parts: compensation and retribution. Retribution is integral to justice, but is not about directly reducing suffering. Justice is about maintaining balance. If someone upsets the balance of behaviour then it is only just that the balance is restored by inflicting the same upset apon the criminal. Further to this, because it is unfair that the victim should suffer from the criminal's choice, there is compensation. Thus a criminal should receive twice the suffering that he inflicts; once for balance, and once for compensation to the victim. This principle can operate with or without free will. We can still set up a system (entirely deterministic, in the absence of free will) that strives to achieve balance, and we can also set up a system whereby rulebreakers receive no benefit from their actions. However, the justifications behind such a system will be solely deterrent/economic model ones, rather than moral justifications.
An example will illustrate the point. Imagine an isolated cattle-herding village in which there are three bulls. These bulls are necessary for keeping the herd reproducing. Two are owned by one man (man A), and the third by man B. Man A kills man B's bull! How rude.
The wishy-washy principle of justice would say that rehabilitation is necessary. Man A is educated about reducing the cattle gene pool whilst at the same time making money from having a monopoly on bulls.
Compensation dictates that man A gives one of his bulls to man B. However, this is not sufficient. Man A has committed a crime, but the net effect is as though he has simply killed one of his own bulls. He had one spare, so he has not lost much. Punishment is, in my opinion (and it's not a popular opinion at the moment), a vital ingredient in justice. Man A's other bull must be killed. If the village elders decide that having one bull for the whole village is too risky, they may confiscate the bull rather than kill it, but man A must suffer, so that his crime was not a zero-sum-gain act, but a negative gain.
The two (compensation and punishment) are not the same, and not can they both be achieved by the same action (in this example, giving man B one of the bulls). Compensation is solely compensation, and not punishment as well.
Both are necessary.
Why is punishment necessary? Why not? Are we really obliged to reduce suffering, even of criminals? If we are, what of the criminals themselves? Have they not put themselves outside of this law and 'said' (through their actions) that it is right to inflict whatever suffering they have inflicted?
If they have, then is it not fair for us to act as the criminals suggest, and inflict on them the suffering that in their opinion is acceptable? Not only this, but we must also demand (because of the duties of our moral system, to which we still subscribe) of them the compensation to right the wrong, and alleviate the suffering of the victim.
This is a fundamental point. Compensation does not rely on responsibility for it to be justified. It is simply an economic bias in the system; it is justified from within our moral viewpoint, and therefore can be part of a system that has one aim (in this case, reducing possible suffering). Having one aim is possible in a system without free will: e.g a thermostat. Punishment is often seen as another economic bias, solely in place as a deterrent. This is how people attack it; they claim that it is wrong to do wrong solely to prevent wrong. However, I see it as a moral necessity following from the attribution of responsibility to the criminal. Punishment attacks the criminal on his own ground (outside of the aims of the system), and as part of this one must assume that he had the choice to decide that he is outside of the system of law. Bleeding hearts who hold that the gun is evil therefore often consider punishment to be wrong because both views follow from a lack of belief in free will.
Justice has this two-pronged approach. It gives to the criminal what he apparently thinks people should receive (the suffering he has caused), which is fair. It also gives to the victim compensation for the crime so that the victim's suffering is alleviated (as the victim can be taken to believe is appropriate, from obeying the laws). Thus justice truly is 'giving each his due', as the dictionary defines it. Any other concept of justice (such as rehabilitation) must be either an addition to this or else incorrect.
On a different note.
Arguments that have as their only basis the degree of suffering are tricky ones to justify because suffering is a subjective, changeable thing. Is it wrong to cut the foot off a leper? He doesn't feel it. He suffers nothing. If I say that I suffer incredibly when you don't give me money, should you give me money instead of giving to a charity helping starving Africans? We cannot base a reliable system on subjective ideals. The best you can do is to decide in which situation you would suffer most.
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