The human soul

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If a baby is born with a blank slate of a mind, as per B F Skinner's tabula rasa idea, then what makes an adult out of that blank slate? What writes on that slate, so to speak? It is certainly life experience, for as adults even, we know only that which we have experienced in some form. And, in this stormy ocean of life, we have but little, if any, control over what we will come to experience. So, in reality, our souls are built by our environment, and augmented as we continue to have experiences. So, what does this say about morality? How much is a criminal morally culpable, and how much culpability should be attributed to the criminal's unfortunate life experiences, which were beyond his control?

They're not.


Here is something you can read:
The Lucretian swerve: The biological basis of human behavior and the criminal justice system

You just took a flying leap from Behavioral Science to Religious Studies. There is no empirical evidence for the 'soul'.The choice to commit a crime is up to the person who commits the crime. Given the choice between continued employment as an accountant or embezzling millions and risking prison, most people seem to choose employment. Morality is determined by community standards -- it is an artificial construct, approved by consensus. Ethics is how well a person adheres to those standards when no one is watching and when no reward or punishment will result.

But if it's true that no one is responsible for the acts they commit, owing to their upbringing and environment, then who gets to claim the Olympic Gold Medals, the Nobel Prizes, the Cum Laude degrees, or the Electoral Victories? Why allow the winners any rewards at all, when you can put it all down to 'Life Experience'? Why even bother to have a civilization if no one can be held responsible for right or wrong behavior?

True. But I mean 'soul' in the sense of 'mind', or that which makes you you. I'm saying that your experience makes you you.



Yes, but there are reasons behind a person's choices, and those reasons are based in that person's experience. So, in the end, our life experiences drive our choices deterministic-ally. The mechanism of 'free will' has never been defined. There is no empirical evidence for 'free will'. What can possibly make one's will free of all of the influences one has experienced during his lifetime? It can't be that way. People don't make random choices, even when they try to.

So there's a morality question that grows out of this. The criminal is not morally culpable for his crime, although by social contract, certain behaviors require restricting the malefactor's freedom or some such, and that is as it must be. But it does not make the malefactor morally culpable for his crime. He is just socially guilty for it. I'm not saying that we should do away with the legal system. I'm just saying that the society bears the responsibility for creating the criminal. As such, the criminal is society's scapegoat.

The criminal is guilty, period—if he/she committed the crime.

Here it comes...... and those reasons exist in the person's own mind. A criminal may rationalize his or her crime in any way possible ... "The Devil made me do it", "My drunk daddy whipped me", "My momma was a crack-whore", "I didn't like the way they looked at me", "They made me feel bad" ... but their rationalizations are almost always subjective, and their actions are their own choice.

Now, while a person's experiences may mitigate their sentence, their conviction is entirely upon them.

The final decision is always the criminal's. It is not his parents' fault. It is not his teachers' fault. It is not society's fault. It is the criminal's fault only.

So, what crimes have you committed that you want others to swallow this lame "historical cause" excuse of yours?

When you believe that you are not really responsible for your actions because 'it's all conditioned', that is a condition. It's a condition that inclines some to absolve themselves of any sense of responsibility for their lives. They blame their parents, bullying, abuse, society, whatever injustice or trauma for all the terrible things they say and do, and all the good things that they never will. That is negating agency while preserving the agent. If you understand total conditionality to also imply 'no agent', then who or what is there to blame or absolve? If there is no you and there is no other, who or what other than you could be responsible for your life? The fact that something is not ultimately real or true does not negate its function. On the contrary, it is because choices occur without agency that the experience of accountability and the sense of moral agency are necessary, meaningful, and consequential. It is because all choices are conditioned that it is important that you choose wisely, and that you do your best to instill in your friends, family, and neighbors a sense of what it means to do so, by your own example.

... and then they put on a ballistic vest, pick up an AK-47, and blow away a dozen or so people at the nearest school before they commit suicide.

First the trauma, then the rationalization, then the decision, then the crime.

The OP is currently at the rationalization stage.

People have their own will. Individuals (above the age of about 6 or 7) are morally culpable for their actions. Don't deflect the blame onto others.

There are exceptions to this rule, of course. A person starving would be have more of a "justification" for theft than a rich person would, for example.

But I would follow the above credo as a default.

People are responsible for their acts.
But somehow violent crime or suicide rates differ greatly in different nations and societes - which indicates the society has huge impact on decisions of individuals.

I kind of believe in trying to build a better society while holding individuals responsible for what they decide to do.

Yep. I agree.

Yes, the final decision is the criminal's. But the point is, is that it is not a free will decision. Every experience that the person has had, was foisted upon him by his environment. His environmental experience has determined how his choices will fall out. Yes, it is his will, because that is what his experiences have taught him to will, but there is nothing free about his will. That same criminal who was born an innocent little baby. That baby was never in charge of what it would turn out to be; that depends on what experiences were provided to the baby by the environment in which it is raised. So if the baby turns out to be a villain, whose fault is that? Is it the fault of the innocent babe, that he was raised in an environment which turned him into a villain? Or is the environment (society) in which the child was raised responsible for producing villains?

And genetic inheritance plays on the individual, in a similar manner. Does a schizophrenic show moral turpitude in breaking the law, or is he morally innocent of breaking of the law albeit legally guilty, due to inherited brain abnormalities?



You are asking what prompted me to believe as I do. It is the way we treat criminals in my country. We say 'he must be punished' or 'he must pay his debt to society'. In other words, we heap up all the blame for what he has become, upon the innocent little baby, when the blame actually should be assigned to the society which allowed the baby to become a malefactor. We, as a society, should feel guilty when we have to lock someone up, not spiteful or revengeful. Because we as a society have ignored the child who is forced to grow up in an environment where he learns to act in harmful ways towards that society.

Then you are forever stuck with being what you are at this very moment, up until the day you die. You cannot deviate from routine, and you are doomed to commit the same acts over and over again, even when those acts cause harm to you and others. You cannot receive an education. You cannot improve on your skills. You cannot increase your talents.

Sucks to be you.

As a counterpoint, when you believe that another individual is solely responsible for hurting you, you are placing total blame for being hurt on that individual. You are absolving yourself and your society from any culpability for your misfortune, and you pour all the burden of blame onto an unfortunate individual who was handicapped by his society and/or genetics; his nature and nurture.






I am not saying that there is no one to blame. Quite to the contrary, I believe that everyone is to blame for everyone else's failures. Why? We need to share the blame. Because we live together in a multi-leveled society, where we all bend and shape each other's souls through our various and sundry means of communication. In a word; we are all in this together. We all affect each other's lives. Maybe not directly, but, as Tolstoy said, your every action is like throwing a stone into a still pool. The ripples of actions continue forever. And when we look at society, we are looking at ourselves too. EG: "What sin of mine could have ping ponged and ricocheted down through time to cause a current misfortune?"

I do not believe that any such magic happens around the age of 6 or 7. But I agree with you that it is despicable to deflect blame onto others. In fact, that is much of what motivates me to speculate on the culpability of legally guilty parties. What right have I, to find that criminal solely responsible for what he did. Surely he had bad influences. Perhaps he has mental instabilities. So we may have to lock up some people to keep society safe. But, as members of the society which produced that criminal, we should shoulder the blame ourselves, instead of feeling all 'goody two shoes, while pointing in derision at a criminal.

Then you are to blame for the suicide of Socrates, the shooting of Abraham Lincoln, and the collapse of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge.

Now let's see how fast you can pedal backwards...