Philosophy Now Forum

You know how technology keeps progressing so let's say we have this scenario.

We have a serial murderer who normally would be executed or punished for his crimes. Let's say that the people he killed can be restored back to life and that the restored people suffer no lingering effects from the murders. Let's further say that through an operation, the murderer can be changed so that he doesn't go around hurting or killing people anymore, in effect just as if the murders never happened.

Now it's true that the murders did occur. Yet they can be erased from the record books based on what I just said. Should the guilty be punished? What do you think?

PhilX

Your scenario has about as much impact as the act of deleting a file, and replacing it with a copy.

Philosophy Explorer wrote: What do you think?

PhilX

I think you are mental.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

Philosophy Explorer wrote: What do you think?

PhilX

I think you are mental.

You think?

PhilX

Somebody will have to break it you, Phil. Dead people cannot come back to life except in the confused minds of people like Immanuel Can.

Obvious Leo wrote:Somebody will have to break it you, Phil. Dead people cannot come back to life except in the confused minds of people like Immanuel Can.

Pretend it can happen just like the thought experiments of Albert Einstein.

PhilX

Whether a society believes that dead people are resurrected and that their experience is not permanently harmful has no bearing on its response to crime. (See Christian nations through history.)

Our attitude is based, not on the effect on the victim, but on entirely different factors: our perception of human nature, our idea of the citizen's place in society, our relative desire for revenge, social order, preservation of the power structure, the level of collective vindictiveness and blood-lust, and our assessment of the state and role of science.

A mind-wipe or homocidectomy - its very existence, the resources invested in its development - points to a society that doesn't want revenge or to hold grudges, but to fix a technical problem. If that works, the subject is no longer the original killer and can be redeployed in a different societal function. (Whether the victims stay dead or not is irrelevant.)

A society that wanted to fix these problems could find ways far short of your fanciful one. Some communities place more emphasis on prevention - not only of crimes, but of raising criminals. Some communities treat criminals as dysfunctional citizens who need help. Some societies wait with bated breath for a spectacularly violent crime, so that they can weep on camera and waste thousands of flowers, opine all over the airwaves about why this happened and what should be done, put the perp through interrogations, trials, appeals, imprisonment and paradings before the public for years before finally offing him; argue in courtrooms and legislative assemblies over what-all can't be done and why... wallow and revel and make tons of money... It's all about attitude, dude.

Philosophy Explorer wrote:

Obvious Leo wrote:Somebody will have to break it you, Phil. Dead people cannot come back to life except in the confused minds of people like Immanuel Can.

Pretend it can happen just like the thought experiments of Albert Einstein.

PhilX

Well, I'm a firm believer in the power of a solid thought experiment. Not much else, though...

Dalek Prime wrote:

Philosophy Explorer wrote:

Obvious Leo wrote:Somebody will have to break it you, Phil. Dead people cannot come back to life except in the confused minds of people like Immanuel Can.

Pretend it can happen just like the thought experiments of Albert Einstein.

PhilX

Well, I'm a firm believer in the power of a solid thought experiment. Not much else, though...

Solid to you may be mush to someone else.

PhilX

Most mush contains solids, if you sift through it, Phil.

Dalek Prime wrote:Most mush contains solids, if you sift through it, Phil.

Regardless of its contents, does mush have a definite shape or does it take on the shape of its container?

PhilX

Philosophy Explorer wrote:

Dalek Prime wrote:Most mush contains solids, if you sift through it, Phil.

Regardless of its contents, does mush have a definite shape or does it take on the shape of its container?

PhilX

Depends on the temperature. We are talking frozen mush, no?

Anyways, I'm trying to figure out why you would dismiss a well considered thought experiment. Would you explain?

Dalek Prime wrote:

Philosophy Explorer wrote:

Dalek Prime wrote:Most mush contains solids, if you sift through it, Phil.

Regardless of its contents, does mush have a definite shape or does it take on the shape of its container?

PhilX

Depends on the temperature. We are talking frozen mush, no?

Anyways, I'm trying to figure out why you would dismiss a well considered thought experiment. Would you explain?

Just the opposite Dalek. I don't know where you got that impression from.

PhilX

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Phil,

If it were possible to edit life/lives as you suggest, living would cease to have meaning. The finite-ness of living, and the irrevocability of the past, makes for the meaningful striving in the here and and now, with a mind to shape the future. Easy editing or revision of the past, easy resurrection, these terminate the need to strive, to impart meaning, to hope.

There'd be no need to punish, no need to self-direct or -defend, no need to 'try'.

Absolute power, in this circumstance, doesn't corrupt, but enforces stasis by way of unlimited malleability.