Should an incompetent murderer receive a lighter punishment because of his/her's in ability to carry out the murder?
Should a prankster's scheme that went terribly wrong causing death deserve serious sentence because he initiated the action though without intent to kill?
Consequences are easy for all to see after the fact but intent can be well hidden in the perpetrator's mind. How do we extend the justice system to what someone is thinking?
Is thinking badly a crime?
What about diversity of opinions for discussion. Should the mere thought or intent to question authority be subject to punishment? Should intent or planning for a criminal act be illegal if it was never carried out?
So maybe the line is beyond thinking about criminal action but drawn at the point of some action being taken.
But how far? A bank robber that stop short of entering the bank perhaps should not be arrested but what if he enters the bank with the intent to hold up the cashiers but turn around before pulling the gun out? Perhaps after he threaten the cashier but did not take any money?
Is a bank robber with cold feet innocent?
The police have been telling citizens not to be heroic and just do what the robber wanted when confronted so as to minimize the chance of getting hurt. So a bank robbery with cooperating cashiers commits less of a crime than when encountering conscientious employees that resulted in a confrontation with the robber and perhaps injury and death?
Our justice system is based on presumed innocence. How do we gather evidence on someone's intent? Does the difficulty in getting evidence on intent make the system less just?
How does probability play in this evaluation? No matter how skillful or incompetent the perpetrator is, the consequence is always subject to luck and probability. Intent is therefore a better measure, but then we are back to the thought crimes and thought police again.
For the politician that was found to have smoked pot but claimed that he did not inhale, what was his intent and how should he be judged?
Any way the wind blows...'cause nothing really matters...QUEEN
ReplyDeleteIs your discussion interested in the Micheal Bryant Book titled "28 Secounds" He poses some interesting questions about intent and recklessness. It may be worth a read and helpfull in answering some of these questions.
In my opinion, intent and motives are incredible important. I can, however, act without a motive and possible without intent. I am hardly infallible therefore this isn't an easy nut to crack. Ha-ha. Not really that amsusing especially if your not directly involved yet held responsible. YUK!
I happen to like the idea of people taking full responsibility for themselves. But I am hardly an island! I'd like to think so....but, doesn't seem possible especially when TV, Internet, and so much can influence me. Then again, I could be defending myself....I've heard that Manslaughter is a very light sentence compared to Murder 1, but I happen to be a buddhist, and, I worry about the cockroaches. Seriously, I do!
Have a good discussion!
Thanks for the comment. I wonder what is the responsibility split between the planner of the crime versus the foot solder that actually commit the crime. Should a high visibility criminal with lots of publicity be responsible for copycat crimes committed?
DeleteShould car race video games be responsible for road race accidents on city streets?
Come join the discussion!
My point is that I'd like to have ultimate responsibility but self sufficiency seems difficult at best. If people could think for themselves more, there'd be fewer crimes! (copycat's rule!)
DeleteA slick businessman could get away with murder and rack it up to a necessity. Doesn't happen everyday. Right? Rant over.
Thanks for listening! Sorry I can't make the cafe nights now, I'm living in TO. Maybe one day I'll get out that way again. Vanessa
TO is great.
DeleteLife is complicated. We wish for clean cut black and white answers but shades of grey are everywhere.
Everyone should think for themselves. It is just that the triggers for our thoughts seems to inevitably be coming from somewhere else. Our minds just seems to be so influence by what it was thinking, hearing, seeing just before the next thought.
That is why I enjoy the discussion at the cafe, it provides a lot of stimulus of ways and options for the mind to go instead of leading to some narrower and narrower path when I think of it on my own.
Thanks for your comments. Keep them coming and hope to see you at the discussion when you do make it to the West Coast some time.
(A quick comment on this week’s topic – Should intent or consequence be the basis for judging?)
DeleteI agree with the comments above. It takes a masochist to be responsible yet threat of nothing to be “one chopstick in a bundle of ten”. Professor Phillip G. Zimbardo, known for instigating the Stanford Prison Experiment, made a clear difference between “intent” and “consequence”, “individuation” and “deindividuation”, “martyrs” and “executioners” in his paper – ‘The Psychology of Power and Evil: All Power to the Person? To the Situation? To the System?’
Here is the Link: http://www.prisonexp.org/pdf/powerevil.pdf
Professor Zimbardo emphasises the insidious tendencies to predilect the “individual disposition” – that is, the personally pathological mentality and “free-will” culpability over situational determinants – the cosmic perspective of casual socio-economic, geo-political, and historical networks; social psychologist Lee Ross termed this phenomena the ‘Fundamental Attribution Error’. Systemic imperatives such as an emergent group ideology, symbols of power, stereotyping, and labelling, camaraderie identity, authority, and role playing, group modeling, exit costs, and diffusion of liability are tenets of both destructive and positive psychology. When these situational variables and behaviour mechanisms are designed into destructive - psychology experiments, such as the Stanford Prison, Milgram Obedience, and Bobo Doll Experiments, aggressive symptoms of sociopathy, antisocial attitudes, authoritarian and fascist personalities, and suspension of “moral” cognitive controls is self - reinforced over time with increasing pleasure in the sense of resource dominance, hostile and dehumanizing imaginations, disengagement in reprehensible conduct, and the façade of a “Broken Windows Theory” anonymity. When principles of such “external consequences” is mindlessly overlooked, as the exculpation of pivotal higher levelled military and political institutional responsibility in the trails of Abu Ghraib and Bagram Prison (beautifully portrayed in Taxi to the Dark Side, 2007); like the Malleus Maleficarum Inquisitions for the source of evil, the dispositionally induced naïve realism of “blaming the victim” will continuously perpetrate ineffective individualistic treatments against if risks and prospective vulnerabilities is to be modified.
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DeleteAt the other side of the coin, is what Professor Zimbardo described as “mindful” and “sensible” killings of young Palestinian suicide bombers. In Dr. Stephen Diamond’s commentary on the suspected psychosis of James E. Holmes – ‘Making Sense of the Batman Massacre: Is Suspect’s Behaviour Motivated by Madness or Manipulation?’, Dr. Diamond discusses “intention” in insanity / diminished capacity defences as both malingering psychopathy and genuine psychosis along preventive diagnosis and prophylactic intervention.
DeleteHere is the Link: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evil-deeds/201207/making-sense-the-batman-massacre-is-suspects-behavior-motivated-madness-or-ma
Dr. Diamond illustrates the strange and bizarre paranoia, impulsivity, subjective discomfort, dissociated reality and often debilitation, of the psychotic disorder genus, as a manifesting etiology of repressed anxiety, anger and rages whereas pressurizing and insufferable stress or trauma is inundated and euphemized by “fantasy” syndromes of delusional ideas, perception abnormalities, and disorganized communication.
(I am very sorry for the multiple posts!)
From a personal view point, considering the context of dualism between intent and consequence, I do not think either should be a raison d'être for critical judgment per se. One allegory would be faith in the profound “beauty” of symmetry and simplicity, welcomed by mathematicians, scientists, philosophers and art patrons alike. As according to George Birkhoff’s ‘aesthetic measure’: M (aesthetic value) = O (order) ÷ C (complexity), wherein for a given degree of complexity, the aesthetic measure is higher the more order the object possesses, and as Newton’s exponent on the radial distance “r” that accounts for his law of universal gravitation, is stated to be exactly “2”; symmetry and simplicity has motivated academia for centuries. Yet, the truth is not so orderly or unified. Birkhoff himself knew well the intricacies of aesthetics could not be précised to a mere formula, and on closer examination in the 20th century, the idealism of Newton’s simplicity was found to be only approximate. Like the Quantum ‘fundamental probability’ – where computations of “exactly” what happens in the subatomic world is beyond calculation, differs from the ‘probability of ignorance’, in our condensed, “middle world” (as coined by Richard Dawkins) – where “exact” outcomes can be calculated, if given the ‘initial conditions’; life alternates and revolves around layers of order, chaos, symmetry, asymmetry, complexity and simplicity. To specify a position on intention or consequence would be to experience, as said by the perceptual psychologist Rudolph Arnheim: “on one extreme…the stiffness of complete standstill; on the other…the equally terrifying formlessness of chaos”. The aim I believe is to find intuition and balance in between, as Arnheim muses, “Somewhere at the ladder between the two extremes, every style, every individual, and every artwork finds its own particular place”. As well, both Diamond and Zimbardo delineate the universally good’s immunity and impermeability to aberrant evil as a myth, in what Diamond characterized as an intrapsychic “latent psychosis” and Zimbardo expressed, paraphrasing Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “the line between good and evil lies in the center of every human heart”.
ReplyDeleteIf it is appropriate on the tangent of ‘positive psychology’ and community building, I think it would be delightful to share a segment from one of my beloved books on the art and practice of mindfulness: Moment by Moment (Jerry Braza, Ph.D) – Ten Principles for Developing a Mindful Organization (that has so far helped keep me sane):
ReplyDeleteLet Go.
Let go of any attachment to one system of working or managing in order to learn and rediscover what is best for everyone.
Open Your Heart.
Develop sensitivity to and compassion for the difficulties and pain of others. What affects one, affects all.
Simplify.
Eliminate the clutter besetting your body, mind, and spirit.
Forgive.
Do not hold on to anger, resentment, and negativity, as it leads to personal and professional disharmony and creates unfinished business.
Be Mindful.
The best gift you can give to others is your true presence.
Breathe!
Use Mindful breathing to return to the present moment and regain composure, peace, and understanding.
Speak from Your Heart.
Use truth as the basis of your communication. Become aware of how your words affect the spirit and morale of your colleagues and you organization.
Think Health.
Develop and follow a plan to cultivate personal and organizational health.
Appreciate Others.
Recognize, respect, and support the good work and accomplishments of others.
Look Deeply.
Continuously examine your daily words and actions to be sure they are in harmony with your core values.
(A short note on last week’s topic – Is attractiveness a valid reason to discriminate?)
ReplyDeleteA Taste for “Beauty” –
Even though I metamorphose between various forms of dermatitis and health concerns, when it comes to fashion, I am a bona fide prima donna. If the Qing Dynasty’s on pain of death Manchu styles were brought from the grave, women wearing jeans should be a heinous crime (No, really. Ah, those American Feminists~!). What we value is often impermanent – even health; that is the agonizing and tedious truth. We are young, fragile, old, and broken. Yet, isn’t it for that very terrible reason, life’ S wonderful, S marvelous, S awful nice, S paradise? (Sorry, too much Gershwin) Like Charles Baudelaire’s Je t'adore à l'égal de la voûte nocturne / I Adore You as Much as the Nocturnal Vault:
Je t'adore à l'égal de la voûte nocturne,
Ô vase de tristesse, ô grande taciturne,
Et t'aime d'autant plus, belle, que tu me fuis,
Et que tu me parais, ornement de mes nuits,
Plus ironiquement accumuler les lieues
Qui séparent mes bras des immensités bleues.
Je m'avance à l'attaque, et je grimpe aux assauts,
Comme après un cadavre un choeur de vermisseaux,
Et je chéris, ô bête implacable et cruelle!
Jusqu'à cette froideur par où tu m'es plus belle!
I adore you as much as the nocturnal vault,
O vase of sadness, most taciturn one,
I love you all the more because you flee from me,
And because you appear, ornament of my nights,
More ironically to multiply the leagues
That separate my arms from the blue infinite.
I advance to attack, and I climb to assault,
Like a swarm of maggots after a cadaver,
And I cherish, implacable and cruel beast,
Even that coldness which makes you more beautiful.
There is the old Japanese saying – you can not get water from the moon; is not the scarce always the sacred? As Baudelaire advises, “Extract the eternal from the ephemeral”, and “Always be a poet, even in prose”.
I wish everyone a lovely discussion, I am sorry I could not join in for the last few weeks, hopefully I will come soon~! Have a splendid week!
Kind Regards,
Sandra Zhou
I really hope the talk went well. The comments above are very thoughtfull. I wish I could attend the discussions. Here's my two cents worth!
ReplyDeleteI suppose I place too much emphasis on intent, as consequentialist thinking can be difficult when thinking about existential questions...Which I confess to. Here's a question. Do you believe in a teleological suspension of the ethical? Answer: NO. So, that makes my existential quest really "Out there" or am I getting further away? To quote Led Zeppelin: "There are two paths you can go down, but in the long run, there's still time to change the road you're on"-cheers! VS