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Do The Mentally Challenged Have Free Will??

Does Free Will Include the Mentally Challenged?

  • Yes

    Votes: 10 38.5%

  • No

    Votes: 3 11.5%

  • Unsure

    Votes: 6 23.1%

  • Who cares...

    Votes: 7 26.9%
  • Total voters
    26
I guess to defend my opinion, did this person have freewill to shoot his/her first victim? Was their not a climax to which he was driven too?

I'm not condoning his actions.
 
ThePlayDrive said:
I agree, but that's not what I was commenting on. I was contesting your assertion that "insanity is no excuse." Do you concede that this is incorrect or do you stand by that assertion? If you still stand by it, why?
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I claim that it is no excuse because I don't think that there is any valid reason to excuse a person from murder. Literally.
 
Evenstar said:
Free will doesn't exist- that is, "free" will apart from all other influences. It's not possible.
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Exactly. In order to be entirely "free", the will would have to exist in a vacuum. It does not and therefore how we use our "will" is, in great part, the result of many influences.
 
ThePlayDrive said:
I agree, but that's not what I was commenting on. I was contesting your assertion that "insanity is no excuse." Do you concede that this is incorrect or do you stand by that assertion? If you still stand by it, why?
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I stand by it. There is nothing that drives them to make that choice but themselves. There are much better solutions to removing them from society, but that still doesn't change the fact that they chose to do it. There needs to be better and earlier screening to find psychological abnormalities.

You did not state this but it needs to be stated. Violence on television is not a factor. I have watched violence for years, I play video games from time to time, I do not go out and shoot people for fun. There is a distinction between reality and fantasy.
 
ThePlayDrive said:
I agree, but that's not what I was commenting on. I was contesting your assertion that "insanity is no excuse." Do you concede that this is incorrect or do you stand by that assertion? If you still stand by it, why?
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I pretty strongly agree that in the vast majority of cases, insanity is not excuse. Most of us are taught, as young children, a basic set of morals and codes of conduct. Those are some of our earliest learning experiences, and childhood teaching stays with us, even if it is somewhat repressed in the individual. You can repress, but you cannot de-program completely, at least not without extreme circumstances and outside pressure.
 
we are free to do pretty much whatever we want, but not free to escape the consequences of our actions...
 
Bodhisattva said:
I claim that it is no excuse because I don't think that there is any valid reason to excuse a person from murder. Literally.
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I agree with this. Maybe "excuse" is the wrong word to use. If one does a psychological profile on many of these monsters, it's often not difficult to understand why and where they went off the rails. But "excuse" implies excusing the behavior. And there's nothing that do that.
 
Bodhisattva said:
I claim that it is no excuse because I don't think that there is any valid reason to excuse a person from murder. Literally.
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But "excuse" in what sense? "Excuse" as in you don't think there is any way a person could not responsible for murdering someone? "Excuse" as in you don't think that a person who murders another should be immune to punishment? I don't know what you mean by "excuse."
 
UtahBill said:
we are free to do pretty much whatever we want, but not free to escape the consequences of our actions...
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we aren't free to escape the causes of our actions either which means that we aren't entirely "free" to do pretty much whatever we want.
 
Bodhisattva said:
Agreed. Insanity is not a valid excuse. I would argue that to murder somebody insanity is a requisite.
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The bolded is a point that I have believed for many years. Sane and rational people don't commit murder, even if it is *temporary* insanity, caused by high levels of emotional stress.
 
TheLastIndependent said:
You did not state this but it needs to be stated. Violence on television is not a factor. I have watched violence for years, I play video games from time to time, I do not go out and shoot people for fun. There is a distinction between reality and fantasy.
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Violence everywhere is a factor in some of the anomalous behavior we see. Movies like Hostel I, II, III -- video games -- some sick **** of a cable show called American Horror Stories (or some such) that I turned off a few days ago when it became apparent we were going to watch women be skinned alive. Combine this pervasive violence with children who are sexually or physically abused, who are denied normal love and affection, who have no outlet for the anger they harbor, and we create a powder keg.

Young children's minds are not fully cooked. They are forming their morals, learning empathy, and all the rest. No one will ever convince me that watching violence and participating in it via video games at a young age is not a part of the problem of these young men who "go postal."
 
TheLastIndependent said:
I stand by it. There is nothing that drives them to make that choice but themselves. There are much better solutions to removing them from society, but that still doesn't change the fact that they chose to do it. There needs to be better and earlier screening to find psychological abnormalities.

You did not state this but it needs to be stated. Violence on television is not a factor. I have watched violence for years, I play video games from time to time, I do not go out and shoot people for fun. There is a distinction between reality and fantasy.
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I can think of several neighborhood boys that I watched grow up with that seemed to be disturbed. I was sure that they wouldn't make it to adulthood without seriously injuring themselves or someone else. It wouldn't have surprised me to see one of them in prison. But it didn't happen to those kids. But someone I would least expect to steal, do drugs, go to prison, it did happen to him.
There are a lot of sick people out there displaying no symptoms.....none whatsoever...
 
TheLastIndependent said:
I stand by it. There is nothing that drives them to make that choice but themselves. There are much better solutions to removing them from society, but that still doesn't change the fact that they chose to do it. There needs to be better and earlier screening to find psychological abnormalities.
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Your assertion that "there is nothing that drives them to make that choice but themselves" in incorrect for some people for two reasons.

First, you falsely assume that there is a choice for everyone. That is a false premise. Some mental illnesses, disorders and disabilities remove "choice" in any meaningful sense of the word from certain behaviors.

Second, even if choice is involved, it is just completely incorrect to conclude that those with certain mental illnesses, disorders and disabilities that "nothing drives them to make the choice but themselves." In fact, the pillar of some mental illnesses, et al. is that things entirely outside the control of the person with the problem are compelling them to make the choices that they do. For example, if you have a mental illness that give you delusions that everyone around you is trying to kill you or is your enemy in some way, then those delusions - delusions that are entirely out of your control - may "drive" you to make a violent choice.
 
lizzie said:
I pretty strongly agree that in the vast majority of cases, insanity is not excuse. Most of us are taught, as young children, a basic set of morals and codes of conduct. Those are some of our earliest learning experiences, and childhood teaching stays with us, even if it is somewhat repressed in the individual. You can repress, but you cannot de-program completely, at least not without extreme circumstances and outside pressure.
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Most mental illnesses, disorders and disabilities are indifferent to what "most of us are taught as young children." Now, the people who have those illnesses, et al. along with violent impulses may be able to use their moral principles as inspiration, for lack of a better word, to stop themselves from acting out. However, some people may not and those are the people I'm talking about.
 
For the record, I think that this thread kind of illustrates the stigma that people with mental illness, disorders and disabilities have to deal with - this idea that they're choosing their behavior as much as those without it are, or at least enough to be held responsible for it. I think what a lot of people don't get about mental illnesses, et al. is that it can, oftentimes, have just as significant an impact, if not more, on "choice" as physical illnesses.

A person with Parkinson's disease cannot stop his body from moving and nobody would dare chastise him for knocking a glass over at dinner. Imagine having that same kind of lack of control in your mind - the one place where you're supposed to be able to have total control - and then being told by others that that lack of control doesn't exist and that your behavior is all your fault. That attitude is a problem. I'm not saying that nobody with a mental illness, disorder or disability can control how they express what their brain is making them feel or think. Many people can control it, but some cannot and even those who can often have significant barriers to doing so - more than those without such problems.

Moreover, just because we might stop caring about the causes and explanations for murder and similarly violent acts doesn't mean that those causes and explanations actually go away. It just means that we're ignoring something because we feel like it.
 
My dog has free will. Tico uses his judgment makes choices and acts. Usually acceptably, but sometimes errors are made by him, me or both. My computer acts like it has free will, but I don't think it actually has free will. Its designers had free will, but many times didn't know the consequences of their decisions and designs. My 11 month old grandson has some free will but acts w/o understanding all the consequences of many of his actions. He is essentially learning about free will. When we understand the limitations of our judgment we can exorcise more detailed and deeper judgment and use it to guide our free will.
 
According to science free will is an illusion and that everything is a result of cause and effect, action and reaction. Though since we can't see all those variables it appears to us as random choices. We may actually make unknowable (quantum like) decisions but they're based on a plethora of interacting forces of which we can't possibly be aware. And some of us don't have the mental capacity to make the best decisions due to defect, immaturity, lack of experience, knowledge and information. Even your basic criminal is not operating at a mentally effective level.

Many people that are mentally ill don't have the facility to even imagine the crimes they'll commit without the outside input from other sources, like entertainment (Joker). It's not an easy fix and part of a larger social issue, that includes indifference.
 
grip said:
According to science free will is an illusion and that everything is a result of cause and effect, action and reaction. ....
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What science are you referring to exactly. Thanks.

There is science that informs us that the chances of a certain particle disintegrating into other mater and energy are a certain percentage of over a certain time. No action and reaction needed.

sorry for the late edit.
 
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I think that depends what you would classify as mentally challenged, because in my opinion there are varying degrees of it...

Either way, I think that it's a bit bigoted to say that they have no free will. My opinion is that they have free will, it's just harder to come to a decision, or maybe they're more impulsive due to their disability.
 
I’m mentally challenged. Everyone can describe a mental ability that would exceed what they have. I have several areas that could use significant improvement.
 
Bodhisattva said:
How and why?
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Staying away from the "all actions are cause effect and therefore determined" line of logic, this was a random act of evil. If it could have been predicted, as in a bus arriving in the morning, then it cold have been prevented. It was the result of an individual making bad choices and causing bad things.

I have been taken by the number of instances when acts that are just plain evil seem to be occurring with increasing frequency in our globalized village. Watching the first 15 minutes of any news cast in any larger city is just depressing.

The folks who settled our country were very superstitious and this seems to stand in contrast to the Age of Reason and so on. It could be that in their villages, they were aware of seemingly normal people who suddenly did things that were just evil. Lizzy Borden types of things. Our current comparative anonymity, like this posting forum as an example, insulates us from this kind of craziness.

It could be that the superstitions they clung to were simply the best explanation of what they were seeing.
 
Of course they have free will. Everyone does. They may be working with a different set of perceptions and urges, but they still have free choice whether or not to act on them.
 
Bodhisattva said:
What say you?
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It depends on the degree of consciousness. The less cerebral brain matter a being has, the less free will it has. That being said, even a dog has a certain amount of free will and everyone but God can be said to be "mentally challenged" to some degree or another. Thus, being "mentally challenged" should not excuse us from immoral choices or immoral actions. In regards to the CT massacre, Lanza certainly was exercising some degree of free will and conscious choice, even if he was "mentally challenged."

Of course, the real question in regards to criminal culpability should be "What degree of threat does the guilty party pose to society, regardless of his state of mental health or mental capacity?"
 
molten_dragon said:
Of course they have free will. Everyone does. They may be working with a different set of perceptions and urges, but they still have free choice whether or not to act on them.
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-A choice to act on urges that was/is influenced by environmental and genetic influences beyond the person's control.
 
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