Memory, identity, and responsibility

Rufio, if you believe all that, and you can provide a package of evidence to back you up, there is a very 'profitable' book in your future, that will be highly acclaimed, and ruthlessly criticized!

I'm going with Shakespeare on this argument. Kill the lawyers, and there's no problem. Okay, I paraphrased. Remember 'Mob Rules' by Black Sabbath? Yeah, that's the ticket.

Well, let me ask again. If a person isn't a sum of their actions and memories, what are they? Certainly not a physical body, which remains after death. If you're trying to make a case for a higher soul of some sort, I think you have the most to prove.

To whom? For what purpose?

Whoever bogowo thinks I'm supposed to prove it to....

What sort of incontrovertable evidence would convince you?


It is relevant in two respects:

1. As I mentioned previously, if we are to punish Felon, we must determine what is a suitable punishment. But some of the traditional justifications for punishment (e.g. rehabilitation, incarceration, deterrence) don't quite seem to be appropriate in Felon's case, specifically because of his memory loss.

2. Furthermore, if we punish Felon, we do so because we have implicitly determined that the amnesiac Felon is responsible for the actions of the pre-amnesia Felon. More to the point, we also determine that the amnesiac Felon is identical to the pre-amnesia Felon. Otherwise, any punishment would be unjust. Yet as rufio has suggested, should we be so hasty to conclude that the two Felons are identical, given that the current Felon cannot remember the past Felon?



Incontrovertible to us, certainly. But as you yourself have admitted, what may be enough to convince others of your guilt may not be enough to convince you.


Since you were chosen to sit on Felon's jury.


Take it however you like.

Joe, I misread your original question and thought that Felon had only lost his memory of events leading up to and including his heinous crime, which would have left his self and personality basically unchanged. This should not be sufficient to absolve him of the crime. (If those who could not remember their crimes were presumed innocent of them, someone could read an article in their morning paper about a drug that would prevent any memories of the day it was ingested from being stored in long term memory, speculate about who they would kill if they could get away with it, plan the murders, obtain the drug, kill the people on the list and then take the drug before going to bed. The next day they would wake up with absolutely no memory of committing the murders nor of forming the intention to murder anyone. Would they then be innocent of the crimes?)

If Felon has lost all of his conscious memories, then I agree that he is a different person since conscious memory is responsible for a large part of the Self. But the neural pathways are still there even if they cannot be accessed consciously. He will probably react in the same way to spiders, have the same likes and dislikes for food and music, and be as insensitive and aggressive as before his memory loss. The hormone and chemical levels in his brain have not changed. His unconscious reaction to stimuli has not changed. His inability to control his emotions has not changed. The conscious triggers for anger no longer exist, but the unconscious ones do. Loss of memory is not going to make him a nice person, it only takes away his excuses for being a bastard. Felon's brain and body are incontrovertibly responsible for the crime, even though the mind currently being generated by the brain was not. There is no way to punish the brain and body without also punishing an innocent mind.

No one is identical to the person that they were when the crime was committed by the time they are actually punished. Some change very little, some incur radical changes due to their post-crime experiences. Are they still guilty even though they repent of their evil ways? Yes.

I agree with Terry here absolutely. I already said this, but i will repeat : a total amnesia is only science fiction. This would require total rewiring of the whole brain, in which case there would be no more mr Felon - we could say he was already killed and thus punished for his crimes. Instead, before jury a completely different man (a baby) is sitting; he can't speak or walk.

Your requirement : selective amnesia (only conscious memory) is not possible; for the whole world of experience is hardwired into brain on a subconscious level, just waiting to get out and back, in some form of holographic projection. It is impossible to separate 'just conscious memories' from the other 'data' - which together makes a person.

When we are convicting a murderer, we are not doing it for retribution (here in Slovenia anyway) but for prevention and example. Let's face it : either we are dealing with a partial memory loss (the murder only), and for this we already have a solution(guilty). If not, then comlete amnesia makes a man a different person altogether, but this is not by the puzzle set-up, so I believe the puzzle set-up is impossible.

Relative.

Terry, the issue isn't that he forgot the crime, it is that he forgot EVERYTHING. A person is only memories, a personality is shaped by actions and the memories of those actions. When someone forgets all personality-shaping incidents in their life - REALLY forgets, so that they don't have latent memories waiting for something to trigger them - than they are a different person as they effectively never had those experiences. What you are talking about is when people do not forget entirely, because, as relative said, that's pretty impossible. But that's not what the question was asking about.

But, of course!


I'll look forward to your summation once/if you decide to take a position.

Thanks so much for the topic.

joeblow

(nick change is only temporary...I hope).

I'm glad you made this point explicitly, Terry, since it, in effect, addresses the question I had previously posed to cavfancier: "Aren't you setting up a standard where the punishment is inflicted on the body of the perpetrator, regardless of his state of mind?" If I read your response correctly, I believe your answer would be "yes." Is that correct?

As I mentioned previously, I am dealing here with "soap opera amnesia;" i.e. the kind of amnesia that only afflicts characters in preposterous melodramas. But since this is a hypothetical, I can create diseases with as little effort as I can create the people who suffer from them. Just be satisfied that we have yet to address fishin's hypothetical brain transplant case.


I sincerely doubt that.


The hypothetical may posit a completely impossible situation, but then that's what makes it a hypothetical. It is more in the nature of a thought experiment than an exercise in judicial decision-making. If you are uncomfortable with that level of conjecture, then you are excused from further participation in the exercise.