Death Penalty: Report From Canada

[Max Sawicky]

> >> Arguments for the death penalty take a form of retributive
> >justice that _assumes_ free will and  that human behavior is not
> >causally determined. >
> >
> >Just so.  People are held responsible for their own actions.
> >They are not dumb brutes manipulated by their environment.  Which
> >is the more humanistic view?
>
> I would go along with B.F. Skinner, who held that what distinguishes the
human species is not the possession of an "autonomous self" endowed with
Free Will but rather, is the development of a culture, a social environment
that contains the contingencies that generate the behaviors that we call
self-knowledge and self-control.>>

Yecch.


>  What Max labels the humanistic view, neglects the role of the social
environment in favor of a concern with the inner determination of conduct.>

I'd say a balanced view of both is the point, but to neglect the 'autonomous
self' altogether, or whatever you'd like to call it, seems to me profoundly
nihilistic.  There is also the ominous potential of relating a behavioristic
view to totalitarian modes of social control, though it would be an unfair
stretch to find that in anything you have said.

mbs