Should we try to keep our eyes open to this?
Okay my droogs, we've got a pretty uncontroversial thought experiment this week based on a popular book and movie. See what you make of this:
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The Home Secretary had been told in no uncertain terms that his plan was "politically unacceptable." But just because it was similar to something a well-known novelist had described in a work of dystopic fiction, that was no reason to dismiss it out of hand.
Like the Ludivico process in Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, the new Crime Aversion Therapy programme took repeat offenders through an unpleasant, though not lengthy, treatment that left them repulsed by the very thought of the types of crime they had committed.
To the Home Secretary it seemed not so much a win-win situation, as a win-win-win one: the taxpayer won, as treatment was cheaper than prolonged and repeated imprisonment; the criminal won, as life was better outside than inside prison; and society won, because previously troublesome blights on the community were turned into law-abiding citizens.
And yet the civil liberties brigade bleated on about "brainwashing" and denying the essential liberty and dignity of the individual—even though the programme was entirely voluntary. What, thought the Home Secretary, was there to object to?
Source: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, 1962.
Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 235.
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As a reminder, we're told by philosophers that the rules for their thought experiments demand that we have to suspend concern about the likelihood of something happening, and that we must consider the events depicted as long as there is even a slim chance that the events in the thought experiment could occur. It seems to me that the development of a scientific treatment that could strongly influence the future behavior of people is at least theoretically possible. But would it be objectionable? Why or why not? What parameters or situations might be required to think about before going ahead with such a plan? I'll be back on Friday to discuss.
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The Home Secretary had been told in no uncertain terms that his plan was "politically unacceptable." But just because it was similar to something a well-known novelist had described in a work of dystopic fiction, that was no reason to dismiss it out of hand.
Like the Ludivico process in Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, the new Crime Aversion Therapy programme took repeat offenders through an unpleasant, though not lengthy, treatment that left them repulsed by the very thought of the types of crime they had committed.
To the Home Secretary it seemed not so much a win-win situation, as a win-win-win one: the taxpayer won, as treatment was cheaper than prolonged and repeated imprisonment; the criminal won, as life was better outside than inside prison; and society won, because previously troublesome blights on the community were turned into law-abiding citizens.
And yet the civil liberties brigade bleated on about "brainwashing" and denying the essential liberty and dignity of the individual—even though the programme was entirely voluntary. What, thought the Home Secretary, was there to object to?
Source: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, 1962.
Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 235.
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As a reminder, we're told by philosophers that the rules for their thought experiments demand that we have to suspend concern about the likelihood of something happening, and that we must consider the events depicted as long as there is even a slim chance that the events in the thought experiment could occur. It seems to me that the development of a scientific treatment that could strongly influence the future behavior of people is at least theoretically possible. But would it be objectionable? Why or why not? What parameters or situations might be required to think about before going ahead with such a plan? I'll be back on Friday to discuss.
