The point here is to call attention to the shutting down of an important conversation surrounding the misbehaviour of this man. I am not requesting immediate forgiveness of his transgressions, but an appreciation of the value of humanity. I do not believe in treating humans who act appallingly like malfunctioning tools. Even with defective items, we would attempt to fix them! With humans, we are willing to throw them away, discard them like so much rubbish.
Read moreFree Will Emergentism
Free will emergentists are those who recognise the very real and important distinctions between the levels on which one can discuss free will. It is analogous to trying to define the fluidity of water by looking at each hydrogen and oxygen atom and assuming we can learn everything we need to know from that micro-level of examination.
The flaw in the comparison is that we do not ascribe a mystery or ethereal significance to the fluidity of water as is often explicitly or implicitly done with free will. We understand that water will behave reliably under controlled conditions and so it is also with mechanistic predictions of human behaviour were all of the information known.
The example of weather forecasting is used to paint a picture of the importance of the levels of description when discussing determinism and whether “one could have done otherwise”. While it is true that the macro level study of meteorology currently proves the most useful in understanding weather patterns, this does not mean that an ever improving understanding of the micro-level wouldn’t supersede this prediction power.
This conversation is most consequential within jurisprudence. When considering how we should treat a murderer a free will emergentist would argue that we rightly ascribe agency to the murderer and punish him accordingly. This is where the rubber meets the road in what I see as the dangers of “emergentism”. This so-called agency is usually understood not to apply in a scenario in which a person is suffering from a brain tumour because this can be medically corrected and is accepted as a case of misfortune. What I struggle to understand is why sensible people are recognising that on an atomic level free will is deterministic, but as we currently lack the technology to address the tinier and more complex discrepancies in the brain which would cause somebody to murder it is therefore fine to assume “evil character” and move on. Were we to develop a way to alter the brain physiology, as we can now do in removing tumours, wouldn’t these people suddenly realise how reliant their argument was on the lack of medical competence rather than on what is true?
This Jussie Smollett Case Has Bothered Me
Jussie Smollett staged an attack and has recently taken a "sweetheart deal" wherein forfeiting his $10k bond and having done 16 hours of community service was deemed good enough for having wasted police time and causing an immeasurable amount of cultural damage.
Why he was offered such an unreasonably perfect deal nobody has yet worked out. How he was allowed to still feign innocence after the fact I also can't fathom. What is clear is that, despite what his hoax aimed to pretend, his skin colour is not a hinderance to his success. It seems fame trumps even "white privilege" when it comes to being treated favourably.
I wouldn't want to see Jussie harshly punished, but his lack of remorse upsets me. If he had stated that he was utterly embarrassed by his actions and that would be seeking psychological help I would be fine with his walking away relatively unscathed, but his doubling down on his faux-victimhood is hard to swallow.
The damage done to the way society will now approach claims of hate crimes cannot be easily repaired. Maajid Nawaz was a victim of a genuine racist attack around the time that the story originally unfolded, and he was met with far more skepticism as a result of this shambles - that isn't okay.
Finally, I want to clumsily try to articulate this feeling that there appears to be a tactic of casting "just enough doubt" such that those biased in one direction can believe they were right, while those biased in another can do the same. The judicial system and the media reporting come together to be incapable of unequivocally saying that something is true. I know why it is this way, and I don't know how it could be otherwise, but it's bloody annoying.