Mon, 13 Dec 2004

Are We Puppets or Free Agents?

Oh, boy! The insanity reaches new levels! My question about this has always been: why does it matter if the perpetrator is nuts? Did he do the crime or not? That's the only standard of guilt or innocence a rational civilization can have. Because, by definition, if you got around killing people for fun, you're crazy!

Once you get into the insanity plea, it's a very short step the "the devil made me do it" ... and where would that lead?

Interpretations of the insanity plea have changed through the ages, but advances in neuroscience promise to redefine free will and personal responsibility, and change the way we think about punishment. By Rowan Hooper.

(link) [Wired News]

/Politics | 0 writebacks | permanent link

comment...

 
Notes: If you put a <mailto:> link in the URL field your address will not be mangled: this could be a bad idea as your email address could be easily harvested by bots designed for SPAM. The comments field should now format correctly for line feeds and carriage returns: when you hit the 'Enter' or 'Return' keys in your comment it should break to a new line. The text should wrap cleanly. Please let me know if it doesn't. No HTML tags will pass through - entering links seems to be the main cause of comment SPAM. Also, please be sure that Javascript is enabled in your browser before attempting to post a writeback. Sorry for any inconvenience, but this really helps cut down on the amount of comment SPAM I have to deal with.
 
 Name:
 URL:(optional)
 Title: (optional)
 Comments:  
Save my Name and URL/Email for next time