If You Don't Believe In Free Will (Atheist or Not), Is It Morally Acceptable To Punish People?

Question

For instance. Say a man breaks into your home, murders your wife and kids in cold blood. If he is no more than the sum of his parts/environment, can he be held accountable for his actions. I understand that the judicial system has a purpose even in a cause/effect only interpretation of reality, but what about justice?

Does justice have any real meaning without free will?

Meat: yes, thats the functionality of in a cause/effect sense. But the term justice has always held a higher meaning to and from what I can tell most other people.

Answer 1

Yes, because doing so causes the brains of others to fear punishment, and it also removes the lawbreaker from society. That man is not really responsible for the murder because he could not have done otherwise. That doesn't mean we want him in our society, though. We remove him, and by remove I mean kill. Revenge is useless. Prevention of future crime is the relevant point.

Answer 2

Is Justice the same as 'punishment'? If someone commits a crime, Justice is that the person is apprehended and held accountable. That may or may not mean incarceration or fine or restitution for the crime. It does not necessarily mean punishment. That you are removed from society for committing crimes against society is simply an expedient for protecting society. It need not be viewed as punishment. People may be held accountable for their actions regardless of the cause of those actions. For example, someone gets a brain tumor, which causes them to become violent and kill someone else. The fact that it was the tumor that originally caused this violent action does not mean that we do not hold the person accountable. We may decide not to charge them with intentional murder, but we surely should remove them from society so that they do no more harm to others. The issue of "free will" may or may not be involved.

Answer 3

that's a trick question: If there was no free will then there shouldn't even be morals. Everything is going to happen anyways. It kind of depressing Get my idea?

justice has no meaning without free will. Everyone has different definitions for justice. For instance, George Bush has a different definition of justice than many other people.

Answer 4

Of course it is, in a judicially working and as just as possible manufactured, system.

The judicial system is only there to uphold the justice. They are closely linked whitch you can see from mere etymology.
It's basically the same word.
And I just come to think of it, it's probably true that the one term has no meaning and would not even exist without the other one. Interchangeably.

Answer 5

Yes. No matter how you look at it, you'd determine that such a person (product of environment or not) would be a menace and threat to society and to our survival. He would have to be eliminated. Our genes and environment would demand this. IF he doesn't believe he has free will we may instead take compassion for him and treat him as a victim, but that wouldn't change the fact that he needs to go (be locked up, have a new environment/parts put on him through psychiatry, executed, etc.)

Answer 6

Is it morally acceptable to punish people? The use of the word "moral" in the question implies that judgment be rendered; that is, that things be broken down into categories of good/bad, right/wrong, beneficial/harmful, acceptable/unacceptable, etc. In order to exercise such judgment, one must exercise discretion or discernment. The capacity to review information, draw an independent conclusion, and act on that conclusion implies free will. That is, judgment is an expression of free will; thankfully, love is also an expression of free will.

If one does not believe in free will, that person probably holds in disdain most authorities (other than their own) that render judgment or morality.

If you take the question out of the hypothetical arena, and restate it as, "Is is morally acceptable to punish people?" it would appear that human history, personal experience, and modern institutions provide you with meaningful answers.

Is it good for criminals be punished for doing wrong? - Probably.

Is it good for children be punished for doing wrong? - Sometimes.

Does the absence of accountability for one's actions lead to unacceptable, immoral behavior? - Extremely often.

Does justice mean anything in absence of free will? - The meaning in anything comes from those who observe it.

The more interesting question is, "Can one think without free will?" - I think not (pun intended).

Answer 7

No, man is not just the sum of his parts and environment as the mind is capable of evaluating experiences and not only learning from them but also generalizing from a given to alternatives.

Therefore, punishment does two things it removes the bad guy from society and then hopefully teaches them not to do it again.

Answer 8

Justice is immoral. Tough concept for most, but justice has "causing harm" built into it. Either flat-out eye-for-an-eye harm, or some other compensatory imposition on a human. We should keep criminals from comitting crimes...more negative things are just more negative things.

Answer 9

A lack of free would mean ALL of society is going through the motions (since none has free will). So the greater machine (society) will reprogram (punish/rehabilitate/whatever) the little machine.

Answer 10

"Justice" is another one of those terms that vary in connotation according to the perceiver. My perception of "justice" is holding someone back (however is necessary, within my limited ability with the whole compassion thing) from causing another person harm or suffering.

Beyond that, "karma" takes care of the rest IMO.

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