God: The Ultimate Author Of Evil?

[Chris Smith]

JD,

Unfortunately, logical demonstration can only be performed in finite human language, and finite human words will always only have whatever meaning we assign to them. The assignment of meanings to words is always somewhat arbitrary; a word will have whatever meaning is assigned to it by common, cultural convention. Often, instead of having a single fixed meaning, a word will have a range of conventional meanings. The word "saved", for example, has different content when used in a Christian theological context than it typically does when used in the secular sphere. Two religious groups, moreover, might have mutually exclusive accounts of what it means to be "saved", and each might therefore deny that the other's account is true. Under such circumstances, beating each other over the head with partisan definitions obviously does not result in meaningful conversation. Meaningful conversation can occur only when both sides clarify their definitions and compare their content. Moreover, arguing about which group the word "belongs to"-- i.e. which definition is more legitimate-- is pointless. No word has a single "true" referent; its reference for a particular group is decided by that group's conventions.

I absolutely would not, therefore, claim that my definition is the one true account of what it means to "will" an action. I readily recognize that this word has a range of meaning, and that a definition that is compatible with libertarian freedom could theoretically fall somewhere within this range. But unless we are to eliminate the word from our discourse altogether, we must identify the range of its meaning for our discourse. I have identified what I mean by the term, which I think is also roughly what it means in its broader cultural usage. With this definition in mind, I have argued that the concept of "will" is incompatible with libertarian freedom. Even if I had never made this argument, one who wishes to affirm that "will" is compatible with libertarian freedom would presumably need to assign to the word some semantic content. If all Log is willing to say about the word is that it does not mean what I have asserted, then his conclusion that "will" and libertarian freedom are compatible has zero truth value, because one side of the equation has no referent. As a rebuttal to my argument, Log's negation of my definition of the word has even less value than does his assertion of its compatibility with libertarianism. This is like denying that my hair is black on the grounds that he rejects my definition of black. "Black" is a word with a fairly established referent, so unless some alternative definition of the word is offered, such a denial would amount to an aggravating word-game. I have no problem with recognizing that other groups have a right to define words like "black" or "will" for themselves, or with engaging in dialogue to increase cross-cultural understanding about the meanings of these words in other groups. What I do have a problem with is when someone refuses to show me the same courtesy, and even engages in an assault on my reasoning processes on the basis of the bare assertion that a particular word cannot have the referent I assign to it.

When I make my argument that "will" as conventionally conceived is incompatible with libertarian freedom, I do so under the assumption that all who share my conventions will agree with the argument. Of course, the argument is not itself a rebuttal of the libertarian account of reality, which says that our choices are undetermined. Rather, it is primarily an argument about language. My conclusion was that "No action that is 'willed' by me in a given moment satisfies the conditions of libertarian freedom." To arrive at a negation of the libertarian account of reality would require an additional proposition. For example, our final proposition might state that "All my actions are willed by me." In conjunction with my earlier conclusion, this would entail that "None of my actions satisfy the conditions of libertarian freedom." I have left this final premise implicit because I cannot in fact demonstrate that all my actions are willed by me. All I can do is appeal to my own experience, which is that all of my actions seem to be determined by prior states of being. I am presuming that other people have the same experience, and that they therefore will draw this inference on their own. Someone who does not have the same experience or who denies that said experience is sufficient to establish the truth of the proposition obviously would not draw the inference and therefore would conclude that although "will" as I have defined it is incompatible with libertarian freedom, our actions are not in fact willed in this sense and therefore the libertarian account of reality remains plausible. Believe it or not, I am okay with that, if that is the route Log chooses to take. But his affirmation of "libertarian free will" will remain a half-empty slogan until he assigns some semantic content to the term "will".

Best,

-Chris

[johndoe]

I absolutely would not, therefore, claim that my definition is the one true account of what it means to "will" an action. I readily recognize that this word has a range of meaning, and that a definition that is compatible with libertarian freedom could theoretically fall somewhere within this range. But unless we are to eliminate the word from our discourse altogether, we must identify the range of its meaning for our discourse.

Chris, I find Log's insistence that Ostler's argument is not circular, while yours is, inconsistent, and I still have a problem with both of the arguments. Whether or not these arguments technically beg the question or not, what we have seen on this thread is a move away from discussion of the actual issue at stake and toward a discussion of semantics and side issues.

IMO, both arguments start off with a controversial assumption, then arrive at conclusions through logical manipulation which is sound, but ultimately irrelevant. Rather than advance understanding, this approach encourages that we be distracted by the logical manipulations rather than the core issue at hand, which is:

What is required for moral responsibility?

Neither argument really addresses this question. The portion of your post that I have retained above illustrates that for me. Your argument feels to me more like a *** for tat response to Log's than an attempt to draw a conclusion that puts the issue under debate to bed.

[Deborah]

What is required for moral responsibility?

Neither argument really addresses this question. The portion of your post that I have retained above illustrates that for me. Your argument feels to me more like a *** for tat response to Log's than an attempt to draw a conclusion that puts the issue under debate to bed.

I agreed and I pretty much stopped reading when it turned into a debate essentially on semantics.

To me the issue of moral responsibility is quite simple: it is the ability to choose, and that requires options from which to choose. We do not expect a mentally handicapped individual or a small child to have the same moral responsibility as a normal adult. They simply don't have the ability to make choices except within a limited parameter; but even then small childrem for example can make choices. We can give them options within their capacity. These however will not be choices of right and wrong but choices of which shirt do you want to wear, this or this. Much like the choice in the Garden of Eden.

[Jason]

I reject that consciousness is emergent. Per LDS doctrine, it would seem that consciousness is tied to the uncreated intelligence. Therefore, I do not believe that consciousness can be recreated through technology. The hypothetical robot, while it may very effectively imitate self-awareness, cannot actually be self-aware. In that sense, the robot cannot be blameworthy. Only conscious entities can be praiseworthy/blameworthy, and only to the extent that their volition is not constrained by external factors.

Alright. So instead of building a robot, I hire a hitman. The hitman has the desires, prefrences, and beliefs necessary to kill someone for money, and is self-aware. The hitman kills my wife.

Is the hitman blameworthy/praiseworthy?

If so, then how does this really differ from the robot example? Either way I am the person who started the chain of events that led to my wife's death. The only difference is that I found a weapon that suited my purpose (a hitman) rather than constructed one (a robot). The hitman performed exactly the same task, with the same result.

[Chris Smith]

JD,

While I still don't think the two arguments are on the same footing, I think the objection that both are merely semantic is fair enough. I'm willing to attempt an argument that addresses the question more directly, though of course any argument made with words has the potential to fall into the same kind of semantic quibbling in which we have been engaged.

Consider:

1) When an agent has chosen an event from a range of options, only the chosen event may follow from the agent's choice (barring constraints).

2) An event may be said to be determined if it is the only event that may follow.

3) Ergo, when an agent has chosen an event from a range of options, the chosen event may be said to be determined by the agent's choice.

(To this point, I think even our libertarian friends will track with us. At issue is not what happens after the moment of choice, but rather what happens at or before the moment of choice. What follows is one way I think we can arrive at something like the first premise of my former argument.)

4) To be morally responsible for a choice-event, I must be a cause of that choice-event.

5) All causes temporally precede their effects.

6) Ergo, to be morally responsible for a choice-event I must temporally precede it.

7) That which temporally precedes a given event must be temporally existent and/or extended.

8 ) Ergo, to be morally responsible for a choice-event I must be temporally existent and/or extended.

9) That which is temporally existent and/or extended can be said to exist as a state at any given moment within its temporal extension.

10) Ergo, to be morally responsible for a choice-event I must be said to exist as a state at any given moment within my temporal extension.

11) When an effect follows from a cause, any state within the effect's temporal extension can be said to follow at the macroscopic level from any state within the cause's temporal extension.

12) Ergo, to be morally responsible for a choice-event, any state within the choice-event's temporal extension must be said to follow at the macroscopic level from any state within my temporal extension. [Follows from 1, 10, and 11.]

13) States at the macroscopic level follow one another deterministically.

14) Ergo, to be morally responsible for a choice-event, any state within the choice-event's temporal extension must be said to follow deterministically at the macroscopic level from any state within my temporal extension.

In combination with # 3 above, this tells us that for us to be morally responsible for our actions, our actions must follow deterministically from our prior states-of-being. I'm certain that objections will be raised to one or all of the premises above. But not, I think, without considerable violence to our experience of reality. I'm also certain that there are other ways to arrive at something like the same conclusion, though I have too much to do to let this consume another second of my time! (Auggh! German quiz in three hours!)

Best,

-Chris

[johndoe]

Alright. So instead of building a robot, I hire a hitman. The hitman has the desires, prefrences, and beliefs necessary to kill someone for money, and is self-aware. The hitman kills my wife.

Is the hitman blameworthy/praiseworthy?

Yes. And so are you. I think compatibilists and libertarians would agree on that.

If so, then how does this really differ from the robot example? Either way I am the person who started the chain of events that led to my wife's death. The only difference is that I found a weapon that suited my purpose (a hitman) rather than constructed one (a robot). The hitman performed exactly the same task, with the same result.

The difference is that the hitman is a self-aware person who has the ability to resist your desires. The hitman would not be blameworthy if you had coerced him in such a way that he was unable to actuate his own desire not to kill your wife. But that is not the case in the example above. The robot example is different in that you were positing a self-aware robot who was nonetheless subject to your programming. The major difference between that case and the case of the coerced hitman is that the hitman's desires have their source in his consciousness/nature, and that nature is not set by any other self-aware entity on my view. The robot was programmed by you in the other case, so the robot's nature was selected by a self-aware other.

To a certain extent I dodged your question by asserting that a created robot cannot be self-aware. I think not all compatibilists would agree with that assertion. If it were possible for a programmed robot to have the same type of consciousness that we enjoy, then I would say that yes, the robot is blameworthy. And so are you.

Cksalmon's view, as applied to God, isn't really the same as your simple example. There is no possibility of a surpassing good being accomplished by the robot's murder of your wife in your example.

[Jason]

Yes. And so are you. I think compatibilists and libertarians would agree on that.

The difference is that the hitman is a self-aware person who has the ability to resist your desires.

Does he? But what if I administered sufficient tests to my hitman to determine his nature before I gave him the task, and knew that it was not in his inherent nature to resist my desire to kill my wife?

If I knew he would not resist then how is he different from the self-aware robot?

The only difference seems to be that I found a weapon as oppsed to creating one. You seem to be saying that because the weapon was found rather than created that the weapon shares the blame for carrying out the task that I gave it.

[johndoe]

JD,

While I still don't think the two arguments are on the same footing, I think the objection that both are merely semantic is fair enough. I'm willing to attempt an argument that addresses the question more directly, though of course any argument made with words has the potential to fall into the same kind of semantic quibbling in which we have been engaged.

Thanks.

Consider:

1) When an agent has chosen an event from a range of options, only the chosen event may follow from the agent's choice (barring constraints).

2) An event may be said to be determined if it is the only event that may follow.

3) Ergo, when an agent has chosen an event from a range of options, the chosen event may be said to be determined by the agent's choice.

(To this point, I think even our libertarian friends will track with us. At issue is not what happens after the moment of choice, but rather what happens at or before the moment of choice. What follows is one way I think we can arrive at something like the first premise of my former argument.)

4) To be morally responsible for a choice-event, I must be the cause of that choice-event.

5) All causes temporally precede their effects.

6) Ergo, to be morally responsible for a choice-event I must temporally precede it.

7) That which temporally precedes a given event must be temporally existent and/or extended.

8 ) Ergo, to be morally responsible for a choice-event I must be temporally existent and/or extended.

9) That which is temporally existent and/or extended can be said to exist as a state at any given moment within its temporal extension.

10) Ergo, to be morally responsible for a choice-event I must be said to exist as a state at any given moment within my temporal extension.

11) When an effect follows from a cause, any state within the effect's temporal extension can be said to follow at the macroscopic level from any state within the cause's temporal extension.

12) Ergo, to be morally responsible for a choice-event, any state within the choice-event's temporal extension must be said to follow at the macroscopic level from any state within my temporal extension. [Follows from 1, 10, and 11.]

13) States at the macroscopic level follow one another deterministically.

14) Ergo, to be morally responsible for a choice-event, any state within the choice-event's temporal extension must be said to follow deterministically at the macroscopic level from any state within my temporal extension.

In combination with # 3 above, this tells us that for us to be morally responsible for our actions, our actions must follow deterministically from our prior states-of-being. I'm certain that objections will be raised to one or all of the premises above. But not, I think, without considerable violence to our experience of reality. I'm also certain that there are other ways to arrive at something like the same conclusion, though I have too much to do to let this consume another second of my time! (Auggh! German quiz in three hours!)

Best,

-Chris

It will take me a bit more time to fully digest this.

Initial thoughts:

4) is open to interpretation. I think this premise is the starting point for source incompatibilism. Consider that in a purely materialist deterministic universe, what we are is completely determined by prior states as well. IOW, we did not exist as conscious entities at a point t in the past, and our existence, including our natures, is completely determined by external prior causes. Therefore, how could we be considered the true source of our choices? This is along the lines of the consequence argument or the principle of transfer of non-responsibility.

I'm not so sure about 11) and 12), and I think libertarians would really object to 13).

Good luck with the German exam!

[johndoe]

Does he? But what if I administered sufficient tests to my hitman to determine his nature before I gave him the task, and knew that it was not in his inherent nature to resist my desire to kill my wife?

If I knew he would not resist then how is he different from the self-aware robot?

The only difference seems to be that I found a weapon as oppsed to creating one. You seem to be saying that because the weapon was found rather than created that the weapon shares the blame for carrying out the task that I gave it.

The hitman still desires what he desires. You didn't cause that desire to replace something other that was his own. He is blameworthy, and so are you.

He is different from a self-aware robot in my view exactly as I stated before, the source of the hitman's nature is uncreated, while the robot is created. The hitman's nature is simply a fact of the universe. The robot's nature was designed. Therefore, there may be an additional blameworthy party in the case of the robot.

[Chris Smith]

Hi JD,

4) is open to interpretation. I think this premise is the starting point for source incompatibilism. Consider that in a purely materialist deterministic universe, what we are is completely determined by prior states as well. IOW, we did not exist as conscious entities at a point t in the past, and our existence, including our natures, is completely determined by external prior causes. Therefore, how could we be considered the true source of our choices? This is along the lines of the consequence argument or the principle of transfer of non-responsibility.

I will amend # 4 to read "a cause" rather than "the cause". Notice that the argument does not require that this be the only condition for moral responsibility, but only that it be a condition for moral responsibility. I think both sides can probably agree that it is. Fair enough?

I'm not so sure about 11) and 12), and I think libertarians would really object to 13).

Good luck with the German exam!

Yes; I suspected that further demonstration might be required to demonstrate # 13, but I ran out of time and I wanted to see which premises Log chose to take issue with before I attempted further justification. I do think that a reasonable case can be made that # 13 must be true given the premise that moral responsibility exists. I shall attempt that this evening.

-Chris

[Jason]

He is different from a self-aware robot in my view exactly as I stated before, the source of the hitman's nature is uncreated, while the robot is created. The hitman's nature is simply a fact of the universe. The robot's nature was designed. Therefore, there may be an additional blameworthy party in the case of the robot.

So, given the premise that an uncreated "fact of the universe" is blame worthy while a purpose-built tool is not, suppose my wife is killed by a landslide that no conscious individuals were involved with (making it effectively uncreated).

Is the landslide blame worthy?

[johndoe]

So, given the premise that an uncreated "fact of the universe" is blame worthy while a purpose-built tool is not, suppose my wife is killed by a landslide that no conscious individuals were involved with (making it effectively uncreated).

Is the landslide blame worthy?

You misunderstood my post. I intended to indicate that if the robot is self-aware, then the robot is indeed blameworthy if the robot has acted in accordance with its designed (programmed) nature. The difference is that the designer of the robot may also be blameworthy, depending on the particulars of the case. The universe itself, not being self-aware, cannot be blameworthy.

I would like to stress the importance of self-awareness in my view - a landslide is not self-aware, and cannot be blameworthy.

[cksalmon]

So, given the premise that an uncreated "fact of the universe" is blame worthy while a purpose-built tool is not, suppose my wife is killed by a landslide that no conscious individuals were involved with (making it effectively uncreated).

Is the landslide blame worthy?

Hi Jason--

Are you suggesting that landslides have a nature? johndoes certainly wouldn't argue such (just based on his prior posts in this thread). Your example, then, is just not

[Jason]

You misunderstood my post. I intended to indicate that if the robot is self-aware, then the robot is indeed blameworthy if the robot has acted in accordance with its designed (programmed) nature. The difference is that the designer of the robot may also be blameworthy, depending on the particulars of the case. The universe itself, not being self-aware, cannot be blameworthy.

Well, let's take a step back then.

If the robot that is self-aware is blameworthy, but the robot that is not self-aware is not, then what is it about being self-aware that makes one blameworthy?

Both robots had the same designer, both were designed to accomplish the same task, and both carried out the same actions. What makes one culpable where the other is not?

[cksalmon]

I hope I'll be forgiven a pop culture reference.

Jason's robot analogy called to mind a recent episode of the television series Bones. Spoiler alert.

Forensic antropologist Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan is, of course, sent to investigate a presumably murdered corpse. We soon learn that the victim was actually killed by a dog. Via some creative plotting, Brennan and company find the dog whose bite marks match that on the victim. As it turns out, the dog had been intensively trained by his master to kill on command. The trainer had commanded his dog to kill his victim and so was was arrested for murder.

Obviously, the trainer was culpable for the murder. Was the dog? Certainly the canine was immediately responsible for the victim's death. But, culpable? It doesn't seem so. The dog was euthanized, not because he was inherently predatory, but because he had been "programmed" to kill on command. Absent the kill command issued by his master, it is very unlikely that he would choose to kill randomly. Still, he was considered a danger and was put down.

Why is the dog not culpable? My answer would be that, while he did kill the victim, he did so (presumably; just roll with me here) out of a desire to please his master. The killing was not motivated by the dog's desire to kill the victim—a stranger to the dog—but by the "desire" to obey and please his trainer. I would posit that the fictional dog had no intrinsic "desire" or motivation or preference to attack and kill the victim. The desire, motivation, and preference for the death of the victim belonged solely to the trainer who, while a mediate agent in the affair, was nonetheless primarily responsible for the murder.

I'm sure most can see that this scenario fails analogically to represent human agency (with God as the trainer and the human agent as the dog). For compatibilists hold that the human murderer, unlike the dog in this episode, just does act on his own intrinsic desire, motivation, and preference to kill his victim(s).

I'm not entirely sure how this interfaces with the sentient robot analogy, but I believe there are significant overlaps.

johndoe—wait, are you are a scifi buff? I'm interested in how you would approach the blame/approbation question anent the apparently "moral" actions of a sentient AI. But, now, I fear, I'm derailing the thread LOAP created in my honor.

Oh well, carry on.

Chris

[cksalmon]

Well, let's take a step back then.

If the robot that is self-aware is blameworthy, but the robot that is not self-aware is not, then what is it about being self-aware that makes one blameworthy?

Both robots had the same designer, both were designed to accomplish the same task, and both carried out the same actions. What makes one culpable where the other is not?

Self-aware, intrinsic intentionality.

[Chris Smith]

Johndoe,

My attempt to demonstrate premise # 13 follows. Before I proceed further, I should note that I adhere to the inherently-deterministic B-theory of time. Einstein's famous theory of relativity, in my opinion, demands a B-theory of time. The issues there are complicated, however, so I will not pursue the subject by arguing for B-time. Rather, I will (for the sake of argument) assume the A-theory of time that characterizes the views of most or all proponents of libertarian freedom.

---

Let's take the case of two successive temporal states, the former we shall call "A" and the latter we shall call "B". I think we can posit three possibilities as to the relationship between the two states. According to the first possibility, state B follows deterministically from state A. According to the second possibility, state B is only partially determined by state A. According to the third possibility, state B is not at all determined by state A. Presumably the third possibility can be rejected without objection, since we can all observe that there appears to be a logical, causal relationship between any two successive states. Deciding between the other two possibilities, however, may be more difficult. There is also the question of whether one possibility might be true for some states, whereas the other is true for other states. This, I think, would be the case according to many advocates of libertarian free-will: successive states follow deterministically from one another except in the case of "choosing", in which case the usual determinism is mitigated by a mysterious indeterministic factor. So how do we arbitrate between these possiblities? I think that the premise of moral responsibility can aid us here.

I have already argued that if I am morally responsible for a given choice-event, I must be said to exist as a state at any given moment within the boundaries of my temporal extension. (Under an A-theory of time, the final moment of my temporal extension would be the present, since the future does not yet exist.) So, for the purposes of my argument I will let A refer to the state at the present and B refer to the (not-yet existent) future state that will immediately succeed A. The question I wish to ask is, to what extent am I at point A culpable for what I become at point B? Let us examine this question in light of the two possibilities I described earlier.

If B follows deterministically from A, then A is culpable for B in the sense that B is inherent in A even before it is actualized. B proceeds quite inevitably from the very essence of A.

If B is partly undetermined, A cannot be said to be entirely culpable for it. Recall that we said that A is a state. In other words, it is static, fixed, and incapable of "action", per se. B, however, is variable. It could take one of several forms, depending on the amount of indeterminacy that we allow. To the extent that B is undetermined, A is capable of doing exactly nothing that will decide the outcome of B. A therefore has control of what it will become in the next moment only to the extent that the deterministic factor predominates; to the extent that the indeterministic factor predominates, I at moment A have no control over what I will become at moment B.

I therefore posit that I can have control over my own destiny only to the extent that my destiny follows deterministically from the present. To the extent that indeterminism holds true, I cannot be held accountable for what I will do in the next few moments. At the present moment I exist statically; the next moment, however, is a variable potentiality. Since a static entity cannot move, act, or change, it is unable to decide the outcome of a variable potentiality except to the extent that the actualization of that potentiality follows deterministically from it. All of this is to say that I am morally culpable for my future actions only to the extent that they are determined.

Of course, the advocate of libertarian freedom might in fact deny that I can be culpable for future actions. After all, they haven't happened yet; how can I be culpable for them? But I am not convinced that this resolves our problem. Let's move the referents for A and B to my personal past. A and B are now both equally real successive past moments in which an actual, fixed state obtains. I would like to modify a proposition of mine from a previous post, and posit that "I am morally responsible for a choice-event to the extent that I was a cause of that choice-event." I also previously posited that "all causes temporally precede their effects." If these statements are true, then I am morally culpable for what occurred at moment B precisely to the extent that it was caused by moment A. In other words, even in retrospect, I am culpable for the state that obtained at moment B only to the extent that I was culpable for it at moment A. Our argument against my culpability for future actions, therefore, applies also to past actions.

In my opinion, the advocate of libertarian free-will can get around this problem only by denying that "all causes temporally precede their effects." Incidentally, I was for a while strongly drawn to open theism-- the Wikipedia article on John E. Sanders was written by me-- and I experimented at some length with ways around this proposition. One possibility I explored was that of present or future causation. Could there be a sense in which my present self determines my present actions simultaneously with them? I ultimately rejected this option, both because my present self exists as a state and therefore cannot make such decisions, and also because it does not accord with my experience of making decisions prior to acting on them. Could there be a sense in which the future is ontologically prior to the present and determines it? Perhaps so, but if that is the case then we can hardly say that the future is undetermined! The other major possibility I explored, which seems considerably more promising, was to posit an extratemporal self that somehow interfaces with the present moment of my temporal existence and makes the final determination. This is the only model by which I have ever been able to make libertarian free-will work in any meaningful sense. However, this model has problems of its own. For one thing, an extratemporal self could not itself change or evolve. It also would not be in any way identical with my temporal self. The only sense in which an extratemporal self is more helpful in introducing indeterminacy than is randomness is that the extratemporal self might act based on some consistent principle that is beneficial to my finite self-realization, whereas subjecting my self-realization to the aimless whims of randomness is hardly a comforting prospect. In both cases, the indeterministic element is an alien principle and not really integrated with the finite self; the "freedom" it offers therefore does not belong intrinsically to the finite self, but rather to something outside it.

Whew; what a mouthful! But I hope that clarifies my position some. Thanks,

-Chris

[Jason]

Self-aware, intrinsic intentionality.

Okay, how does "self-aware, intrinsic intentionality" make one robot culpable for its acts but it's absence excuse the other robot?

[cksalmon]

Okay, how does "self-aware, intrinsic intentionality" make one robot culpable for its acts but it's absence excuse the other robot?

Because knowledge and intention are necessary conditions of culpability. At least in this case. The second robot, for example, is certainly not acting recklessly or negligently.

Actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea.

"An act does not make guilty unless the mind is guilty."

cks

[Jason]

Because knowledge and intention are necessary conditions of culpability. At least in this case. The second robot, for example, is certainly not acting recklessly or negligently.

Actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea.

"An act does not make guilty unless the mind is guilty."

Nice Latin. Can you make a case for it now? Why are knowledge and intention necessary conditions of culpability?

[cksalmon]

Hi Jason--

Nice Latin. Can you make a case for it now? Why are knowledge and intention necessary conditions of culpability?

Interesting choice of words. The legal definitions and ranges of culpability in murder cases in America, particularly, and in the West, generally, are a casuistic inheritance from common law, clarified here in America by the 1962 draft of the American Law Institute's Model Penal Code.

But, that aside, your question in context strikes me as absurd on its face.

Your hypothetical robot, which lacks self-awareness, lacks intentionality, lacks conciousness, is merely a machine. I'd dare say that, in the entire history of law, no machine has ever been deemed culpable of murder (or, indeed, of any other legal or moral infraction). Your hypothetical machine could no more be culpable of any crime (or moral infraction) than could Poe's pendulum.

In what possible sense would you suggest that your non-self-aware, non-intentional, non-conscious machine might be culpable for anything?

My argument (that knowledge and intent [in which the former obviously follows from the latter] are necessary conditions of culpability) is definitional in nature, btw.

Can you perhaps rein this tangent in a bit so that it addresses the OP?

Best.

cks

[Jason]

But, that aside, your question in context strikes me as absurd on its face.

Your hypothetical robot, which lacks self-awareness, lacks intentionality, lacks conciousness, is merely a machine. I'd dare say that, in the entire history of law, no machine has ever been deemed culpable of murder (or, indeed, of any other legal or moral infraction). Your hypothetical machine could no more be culpable of any crime (or moral infraction) than could Poe's pendulum.

In what possible sense would you suggest that your non-self-aware, non-intentional, non-conscious machine might be culpable for anything?

My argument (that knowledge and intent [in which the former obviously follows from the latter] are necessary conditions of culpability) is definitional in nature, btw.

I wouldn't suggest that the non-self-aware, non-intentional, non-conscious machine might be culpable for anything. In fact, I would argue that such a thing isn't culpable - because it has no capacity to chose to not fulfill its orders. A robot that has no real choice cannot be culpable.

So the key point for me is the ability to chose something other than what was programmed into it. If the second robot is self aware enough to go against its programming and chose not to kill my wife, then it is culpable if it kills my wife anyway.

So not only knowledge and intent are required for culpability, but also choice. We cannot blame the robot unless it had the capacity to do otherwise and had some knowledge to know it should have done otherwise. That is the point at which blame attaches.

I could also argue that the entire history of law recognizes this - that the person is only culpable if he could reasonably have chosen some other alternative. If he had no real choice in the matter then he is no more culpable than Poe's pendulum.

[cksalmon]

Hi Jason--

So not only knowledge and intent are required for culpability, but also choice. We cannot blame the robot unless it had the capacity to do otherwise and had some knowledge to know it should have done otherwise. That is the point at which blame attaches.

Well, of course, the concept of "choice" figures prominently in compatibilist theories of moral agency. (I obviously assume knowledge and intent.) Compatibilists have consistently argued that a moral agent can be viewed as blameworthy or praiseworthy for his actions because he chooses to do what he most wants to do at any given time.

So, I assume you mean something more specific, specifically, contra-causal freedom. Yet, it is precisely that proposition that compatibilism rejects and precisely that proposition that is under debate.

Best.

cks

EDIT: And "real" (as in your "real" choice) is one of the slipperiest words in the English language. If by "real" choice you mean merely contra-causal freedom, then your argument appears to be circular. But, if you mean by "real" choice that the moral agent actually does make choices, then, of course, the compatibilist would agree.

[Log]

So not only knowledge and intent are required for culpability, but also choice. We cannot blame the robot unless it had the capacity to do otherwise and had some knowledge to know it should have done otherwise. That is the point at which blame attaches.

Psst - here's a resource you can use. Good luck!

[staccato]

I have read most of the pages on this thread, but not all. I am wondering if the following scripture has been discussed.

Mosiah 3: 19

19 For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.

It would appear that God created man from the onset as something bad. So bad in fact that the moment He created him, He was so repulsed and could not stand to be in man's presence. God, in His omniscence, KNEW that he was creating something bad when he did it. And yet he set the ball rolling anyway.

Doesn't make much sense to me. Unless the creator was evil.