The Effect of the Drug War

Increasingly, the young murder suspects coming to the station for questioning seem to lack basic morality, said Sgt. Tim Nolan, who has been investigating Oakland homicides for 17 years.

"There are more and more families where there's less and less structure," he said. "Talking to these suspects day in and out, there's a higher percentage today with no sense of right and wrong. It's frightening, but we are creating super-criminals."

- http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/09/MNS1RBLQ5.DTL

Morality is woven into the fabric of a society, creating a structure of normative rules. Morality is functional. When society changes, those rules change, within range of certain biological limits...

An Important Paradox

Sometimes it seems like philosophy is, or at least has been, largely a study of intractable paradoxes. The greatest of these is certainly not the paradox of God -- that is a paradox based upon a fictional, contradictory concept, so it's no surprise that it is paradoxical.

A more important paradox is the illusion of free will in a deterministic world. Yet at a closer glance this does not seem to be a real paradox either -- it is based upon another fiction; that is, that people have free will. People can "choose" on a whim to act a certain way.

I haven't heard any convincing arguments resolving this paradox. There is no easy answer. Compatibilism essentially says that lack of ultimate freedom to choose "doesn't matter", but clearly when you are morally blaming people for actions which they were completely compelled to do, it does matter. It's hard to understand why the compulsion of a gun to the head is more meaningful than the compulsion of Hard determinists hit closest to the truth -- and the main argument against them is seemingly that they are "too pessimistic".

People should be held morally responsible for their underlying nature (perhaps genes) rather than their actions because their genetics are at the core of who they are. That means that those who are by their nature criminal (that is, genetically) are more blameworthy than those who are driven into criminal behavior through environmental pressures, such as, perhaps, child molesters. Neither should be regarded as "evil" -- both are "bad" from the perspective of the . They should be regarded with pity. The former is a flawed human being from the start while the latter's potential has been (seemingly irrecoverably) destroyed. If their guilt was sufficiently proven (that is, zero doubt) I would have zero trouble with their execution.

The the perpetual "free will" illusion has a pragmatic, self-fulfilling - when everyone believes that everyone has free will and that people who commit wrong acts do that willfully, it imposes a deterrence on immoral and criminal acts. Lifting the veil could potentially revoke that deterrence and allow people to act even worse than they currently do, if you can imagine that. But is that really likely? I don't think so. The deterrence does not seem to be very effective. The veil, as an obvious fiction, is already under subtle attack and has been since the beginning of human history. The distorted view of responsibility confuses people. The first step to recovery is to stop denying.

Some people may think Social Darwinism when I say genetics. While that may be a concern twenty or thirty years down the road, I don't mean to endorse that view at all. The study of how genes affect behavior seems like it always be an imperfect science because of all the variables. Furthermore, if someone is told that they are genetically dishonest or sociopathic -- is it possible for them to then consciously overcome that? I don't know.

Some may notice that this argument is essentially just a secular repacking of Calvinism. Just as Calvinists felt heavy pressure to prove themselves as God's chosen, so people today may feel the pressure to prove themselves as good genetically.

The Murder Experiment

I thought this was a fascinating story. I have no idea what drove the kids to do it, but I honestly think a lot of people would feel little guilt - they are just too afraid.

Does the fact that many people would do something like that but feel no guilt mean it's not wrong? Of course not. (Though I wonder what it would feel like, too.)

Determinism&Moral Responsibility

If the world is completely deterministic, then what does moral responsibility amount to?

The Measurers of Art

As I read through reviews at Metacritic, I wondered - why are these opinions valid? Often they are contradicted by the values of the masses, yet people still let these "critics" evaluate art. Is it because -- these few are better at measuring what is "objectively" valuable? Either that or they are -- nonsensical? (Disjunctive syllogism.) Could these people, then, be more valuable than the masses?

The interesting question: would any of these people truly believe in treating other people differently under the law because of it currently? How about in the past?

Let's consider a very outlandish scenario. You, a Thinker, and a Barbarian are alone on one large island, with one human. You are the last humans on the earth. The Barbarian treats you contemptuously, but doesn't kill you. You are beneath him. He is strong, but not good. The woman is attracted to him, but you know that if you kill him, she will come to you and she will respect you. She knows that if the positions were reversed, the Barbarian would immediately kill you. You think that this man will populate the Earth with dumb but strong legions. The utilitarian question in the state of nature: do you kill him, perhaps even in his sleep? Do you even have any qualms about killing him?

This elaborate story is perhaps a little exaggerated. I could apply the question to anyone in the state of nature: do you sacrifice your ideas in your weakness? If someone bullies you and takes your money, what do you do? What sort of morals really exist in the state of nature?

And is our current state so much different than the state of nature, with its infinite power struggles?