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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: A little story
Message-ID: <1061@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 31-Jul-85 20:59:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.1061
Posted: Wed Jul 31 20:59:56 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 2-Aug-85 07:06:12 EDT
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Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
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As the free will battle rages on, I am reminded of an anecdote from
John Krumm's _The Moral Climate_ (unfortunately out of print).  He says:

     The autonomous self-- presupposed in moral exhortation-- is discovered
     by these new behavioral sciences to be nowhere near nearly so
     autonomous as had been imagined.  The late Clarence Darrow argued
     from this discovery that punishment of criminal acts was, in most cases,
     grossly unfair since the criminal was so largely a product of socio-
     psychological factors.  The difficulty of applying the sciences of
     sociology and psychology is illustrated by the story of a judge who,
     having heard Mr. Darrow make such a plea, retorted that since the
     judge and jury also represented socio-psychological conditioning,
     although of a different sort, they must be expected to mete out drastic
     punishment to the criminal-- and Mr. Darrow could scarcely object if
     they did!  Obviously, the impact of the sciences of sociology and
     psychology can be more devastating for morality than even Mr Darrow
     realized.

In light of Rich's dedication to determinism, I find his highly moralistic
attacks to be rather amusing, for reasons that should be obvious.

Charley Wingate   umcp-cs!mangoe

"Better get used to those bars, kid."