the Principle of Expanding Culpability

To put the thought in more general, theoretical terms...

Where the actions of a free adult person are concerned:

context does-not-equal causality

—and—

causality does-not-equal culpability


So my context (all the abuse I may have suffered in my past) is not a sufficient explanation for my own misdeed; there also has to have been choice on my part, making me fully culpable for the deed.

In that sense, you can never tie a person into a strict causal stream unless you want to argue that she is not fully self-responsible (that is, not free [being coerced] or not an adult [IQ below 60 or so?])


As for the other part of the question -- what about the culpability of those who abused me in the past and thereby helped shape my past, which made me think that perhaps acting badly might be adaptive... I think Roadkill Coyote nailed it. That abuse took the form of misdeeds in the past, for which those actors are culpable.

So my misdeed may lead one to investigate my past and find there others' misdeeds to me. It isn't that the culpability for my action is spreading, it's that our knowledge of bad things that happened is expanding. The culpability was always there; now it's only being recognized.

Pax,

I was thinking of Andrea Yates as I read this. Yes, she killed her own children. But you haven't been where she was, no matter what stresses you think you've been under. Culpability implies control over one's actions; she knew what she was doing was wrong, but felt she had no control over herself even as she drowned them. It does not lessen the severity of the crime, but it should temper how we treat her.

We are not animals, but we are also not machines, and it would be just as much folly to think that we can fairly erect a system of justice that has no leeway, no consideration of culpabilty. Andrea Yate's act horrifies us. Does she deserve to be punished in the same way as Susan Smith, who drowned her kids because she thought they stood in the way of her getting a new guy? Same crime, same results, but very different motivators.

The_Antibubba said:

Does she deserve to be punished in the same way as Susan Smith, who drowned her kids because she thought they stood in the way of her getting a new guy? Same crime, same results, but very different motivators.

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Yes, in fact they both should have been executed. One killed to get a man and the other killed so that her and her kids would be "saved from Satan".

The_Antibubba said:

Culpability implies control over one's actions; she knew what she was doing was wrong, but felt she had no control over herself even as she drowned them.

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She did have control over herself. She had almost drowned her kids at least once in the past, but was able to stop herself. Then she kept the fact a secret from those around her.

Past events may make a person more likely to commit a crime, but this doesn't excuse their actions. Especially when said person knows that past events may negatively influence their actions and they don't follow through with proper treatment.

Example: Bob's father was an alcoholic and beat on his wife. This means that if Bob drinks, he's more likely to become an alcoholic; and when he gets married he'll be more apt to beat his wife. Bob decides to drink anyway and he becomes an alcoholic. One night he's drunk and ends up beating his wife to death. Should he still be executed?

Of course he should. The other factors may change how people feel about the murder, but it's still murder.

As I recall, the legal standard for criminal prosecution starts with "mens rea" meaning a guilty mind. If the person knew he was doing wrong then he meets that standard. Period. This is the origin of the temporary insanity plea and others like it. The most creative use was during the LA riots when the defense attorneys were able to persuade the juries that large crowds of enraged people negated any individual's sense of right and wrong. So despite detailed films of Reginald Denny getting hammered in the head his assailants were let off. Gross miscarriage of justice, imo.
My favorite example of what is being mentioned here is the defense "he wasn't in his right mind when he slashed 10 people to death". Well, duh. Normal people dont do that.

Are you saying that "we" shouldn't attempt to understand motive in a crime?

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Don't confuse motive with responsibility.

The motive of the mother who recently drowned all her kids was to kill her kids.

In the case I'm thinking of, "responsibility" may lie partially with the mother, and largely with the shrink who had treated her and told her husband everything was fine.

Antibubba ~

About Andrea Yates, here's a post I wrote at the time: http://www.thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?p=660188#post660188

You ask:

Does she deserve to be punished in the same way as Susan Smith, who drowned her kids because she thought they stood in the way of her getting a new guy? Same crime, same results, but very different motivators.

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Having a hard time articulating this one. Bear with me as I stumble through!

I posit that the act itself has a value, negative or positive.

I further posit that the value of the act (negative or positive) is only tangentally related to the motivation behind the act.

To put it more plainly: the murders of those children was an act of negative value.

No matter how positive the motivation behind the murders, the fact remains that the children are dead and that she herself killed them. Their lives had a positive value. The loss of those lives was a negative value. And the act of murder had a negative value of its own.

To place the motivation for the act ahead of the value of the act itself is to claim that actions have no real meaning. It doesn't therefore matter whether you murder one baby, five babies, or a whole generation of babies -- all that matters is whether you meant well when you did it.

That way lies madness. Indeed, in Andrea Yates' case, that way was madness.

In a greater sense, that way lies the ugly and bloodstained road of justifying even the most heinous acts, large and small, and excusing all of them as long as the explanation for them sounds plausible enough. That way lies the destruction of society and the end of culture. No matter who is hurt, no matter who is killed, no matter what atrocity is committed, a human being can always find some justification in his own mind for whatever evil (or good) he might commit.

Thought-stopper though it may be, no mass murder in history -- not even the very worst of them -- was committed for the sheer bloodyminded joy of killing people. Every single one of them was committed with some greater end in view, some positive good that its perpetrators meant to bring about. Whether we're talking about murderous acts on a small scale, like Andrea Yates' five dead babies, or acts on a mass scale, like the widespread genocides in Africa in recent decades, in every case the perpetrators had some "good" they intended to bring about by their acts.

Does that make the acts themselves somehow less meaningful? I somehow doubt the murdered souls would say so.

There's a fellow on this board who works in a pediatric intensive care ward. Every day, he saves children's lives -- lives that would be lost if he didn't do what he does. When he posted a story about one of his patients, several people lauded him for what he does. He responded that he wasn't worth their accolades, because he does the job only because he's an adrenalin junkie.

So what?

I bet if you asked the parents of the children whose lives he's saved, they'd tell you that his reasons for doing the job are completely irrelevant. The lives saved are worth something quite apart from his motivation for saving them.

No one in the world has motives that are completely pure when they do an act of goodness. Why should we expect that evil will be uncomplicated in a way that good is not?

When it gets right down to it, I wouldn't care if the fellow pulling me out of the burning car is doing it only because my screams hurt his ears, or because he is a complete altruist with no thought for himself. In either case, my life has value and his act in saving my life has value.

Nor would I care for the motives of a man who sought to rape, torture, mutilate, and finally kill me. He might be doing it because he wanted to drive the demons out of me so that I could ultimately go to heaven and live happily forever. Or he might be doing it because he simply enjoys watching people suffer and then die at his hands.

Would my life become less valuable, less worth avenging, just because my attacker has less of a grasp on "reality" (whatever that is!) than others do?

I'd like to think it does not.

pax

Of course, the Marxian definition of value is ridiculous. All the work one cares to add willl not turn a mud pie into an apple tart; it remains a mud pie, value zero. By corollary, unskillful work can easily subtract value; an untalented cook can turn wholesome dough and fresh green apples, valuable already, into an inedible mess, value zero. Conversely, a great chef can fashion of those same materials a confection of greater value than a commonplace apple tart, with no more effort than an ordinary cook uses to prepare an ordinary sweet. These kitchen illustrations demolish the Marxian theory of value - the fallacy from which the entire magnificent fraud of communism derives - and to illustrate the truth of the common-sense defintion as measured in terms of use. -- Robert Heinlein

Pax,
Not to disagree but to bring up the counter point,
What do you do with the 85-year old man with an equally old wife who is suffering from Alzheimer's. He cannot take care of her anymore. He has no one to fall back on and no other resources. He shoots her to death. And this actually happened, probably more than once.
It is a tough tough call.

Rabbi ~

In that case, rather than excusing him based solely upon his motivation, you and I start arguing about the actual value of the act itself.

pax

When faced with a contradiction, make a distinction. -- scholastic maxim

arguing about the actual value of the act itself.

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A whole 'nother ball game - and another thread, of maybe 200 posts - or more!

Interesting debate but I find some of the premises based on an overly simplistic view of behavior and the causality behind it. The simplicity seems to center around some folks personal philosophy and view of free will. Despite any upbringing and background, an individual, of course, as to act according the standards that the poster thinks are correct. Thus, if the actor does something which doesn't seem in accord with the poster's standards, then it is the actor's fault that they didn't act up to those standards.

Folks have committed some pretty hideous acts that by today's moral standards we would disagree with. Why did they do them? Because their culture and learning was the basis of learning how to do those acts and view them as acceptable. Should their free will have responded to a value system they weren't taught? Shall we hold them and punish them by our standards, if we could go back in time?

Also, saying someone is responsible for their actions is really a trivial argument because it ignores clear evidence that unaccetable behaviors can be driven by biological factors beyond the control of that person. There are clearly folks who have become incredibly violent because of physical entities and causes. Some studies indicate that a good number of the school shooters and sociopaths have frontal lobe abnormalities. Of course, in the abstract, they should have overcome the malfunctioning brain parts. However, one cannot ignore those factors when it comes to trial and deciding what to do with them.

Yates is a good case. Of course, she was responsible as she did the act. Can you say she did it by free choice of a correctly functioning mind? No reasonable person can.

Thus, the blog stating that in the end the responsiblity is 100% mine really doesn't add much, IMHO. Sounds good on a gun board.

Now determing correct action to protect society is a different issue. Understanding the causal nature of actions doesn't mean that we fail to protect society. That's a different issue and sometimes it gets confounded in this debate.

Also, spreading legal liability is another issue also.

As I said before, several of the school shooters had clear problems. Are their parents liable for not controlling their actions. If the parents survived, some didn't, should they be sued and or imprisoned? Some parents despair over their inability to affect their kids and they have tried, tough guy.

That's my two cents. The world is complex. Gun boards sometimes are stuck in a black/white, dichotomous view of free will and morality. I don't think it works that way. Sounds good, though, as I said before.

Animals not having the ability to reason are influenced solely by their surroundings. Pavlov's dogs.

Humans having the ability to reason are influenced by their surroundings but have the ability to choose their behaviour. That is why the rule of law is superior to the rule of man.

unless this board forbids religious references, i would suggest looking to what Jesus says about sin and redemption in the New Testament...

I read somewhere (Romans3:23) "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus"

... hence the GOOD NEWS.

Grampster said:

Animals not having the ability to reason are influenced solely by their surroundings. Pavlov's dogs.

Humans having the ability to reason are influenced by their surroundings but have the ability to choose their behaviour. That is why the rule of law is superior to the rule of man.

No time to write a lecture - but that's too simple also. Again, you folks are assuming that people have perfect free will according to your standards of behavior. That's simply not true.

Also modern learning theory and studies of animal cognition are quite far beyond Pavlov.

GEM said:

Again, you folks are assuming that people have perfect free will according to your standards of behavior. That's simply not true.

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That's one very absolute statement with which I disagree 100%. Explain Please...

It would be interesting to know why humans do not always have the ability to choose.

Even in the most dire of circumstances - for example - a gun pointed at your head and you are given the choice to die or commit some unspeakable act it may seem that one doesn't have a choice but one does. One could choose to die. OR - commit the unspeakable act. Choice exists - though some might deny it does if one considers the choice to die no choice at all.

In the absence of mental defect (and I'm not even sure about that) human beings always have the ability to choose. When the disparity of result between consequences of choice is great it is human nature to say "I had no choice". That is little more than a defence mechanism to soften the blow of - for example - choosing the lesser of two evils.

Choice is undoubtedly influenced by past experience but still choice always exists.

I can think of an example that would invalidate that. (Though I will admit it's extreme )

Torture.

If humans were always in position to have absolute free will, then torture would never work. Same goes for "brainwashing", (to use the popular term).

On a different, but similar note you can put four people in a situation that all have equal amounts of training, but you have a fairly good chance that they would react differently. Humans are pretty unique individuals.

But there are many many examples of where torture did not work. It does not invalidate the proposition of free will. And I happen to think people do have absolute free will, even if they dont always exercise it.

Depends on the individual. But the act of torture itself is pretty much the process on stripping free will from a person. That's why it's so morally repugnant.

Here's a perfect example of this that I witnessed firsthand. I was going through Basic training at Lackland AFB. It was about 3 weeks in, and I was doing pretty well too. I'm getting ready for a locker inspection and I hear some commotion a couple of lockers over. One of my classmates just snapped. He was sitting hunched up against his locker and being non-responsive. Now, I'm 99.9% certain that this guy wasn't faking. And he was out of the AF just like that. Couldn't hack it. And Basic wasn't really a big deal. Simple rules to follow.

The question was that guy a fully operating agent of free will at that moment? I'd say no. (But an element of it is there.)

Free will depends on a certain level of rationality. Just like your example, someone with advanced Alzheimer's does not have free will anymore either.

Nehemiah Scudder ~

http://www.presenceofmind.net/GSW/Dragons.html

He says it better than I could.

pax

Human behavior can only be initiated by an act of will originating within the person acting. It cannot be caused or controlled from the outside. If you refuse to cooperate with the tyrant, he cannot cause your cooperation. He can push you around, even kill you, but he cannot cause you to initiate any purposive action. -- Greg Swann

I was in a store and a person started to yell weird stuff. Free will or

Tourette Syndrome is an inherited, neurological disorder characterized by repeated and involuntary body movements (tics) and uncontrollable vocal sounds. In a minority of cases, the vocalizations can include socially inappropriate words and phrases -- called coprolalia. These outbursts are neither intentional nor purposeful. Involuntary symptoms can include eye blinking, repeated throat clearing or sniffing, arm thrusting, kicking movements, shoulder shrugging or jumping.

?

Thus the statement about behavior is incorrect. Someone is producing a behavior and they don't have free will about it.

I'll say again, these philosophical musing about the causes of behavior speak more to the philosophical position of a section of society and not to reality of what are the causes of behavior. It sound good on a gun list where we are rough and tough, law and order, right or wrong, black or white, etc. but they are just not factual true. Typing it in bold doesn't make it so.

With other behaviors, there are mixtures of compulsions and delusions that might produce socially inappropriate behavior and these clearly are not subject to pure free will.

Some forms of epilepsy cause individuals to perceive casual social interactions as attacks on you. The person responds violently. I could on but examples like this clearly prove my point that the absolutist view is incorrect.

No, your examples don't contradict an absolutist position on behavioural choices.

A physiological or neurological disorder is completely different than a psychologically influenced choice.

Apples and oranges.

Carebear beat me to it...