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by During times of war or extreme stress can we be held liable for our actions? According to a new article from the Cornell International Law Journal there are fundamental differences in how the conscious and sub-conscious processes information. Our conscious mind is influenced by such factors as morality, emotion, and accountability ... while our sub-conscious seems to rely on training, motive, and pure spontaneity. The real question is - is the total sum of who we are contained in our physical brains? Also, how much influence does the world around us have on the decisions we make?
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Obviously, the Cornell International Law Journal is asking this question in the context of the legal system. The idea is to try to clarify the circumstances in which someone is to be considered unaccountable for their actions.
Within the legal system, there are lots of attempts - often successful - to get a defendant declared unaccountable... abused as a child, under the influence of mind-altering drugs, and there's a general assumption that we should only be held accountable for those actions we "really" control.
But to me, that seems nonsense. We create laws to delineate acceptable vs unacceptable behavior. For me, it should go without saying that with rights come responsibilities. In western democracies, we're granted a wide range of fundamental rights - and those must come with some responsibilities. The individual should be responsible for their own actions - even if those actions aren't under their direct control.
We have a rule - no murder. But sometimes, we decide that, say, an abused spouse shouldn't be held to that standard - they were "driven" to the murder. I personally don't think that's an adequate excuse. The whole point of the law is to say, "don't do that" - to the extent that you, as a free person, have the responsibility to figure out how to not do that.
You don't get to punch somebody in the mouth just because he spit on your car. You don't get to shoot other drivers - regardless of how much "road rage" you feel.
It's part of being a free adult. It's your subconscious - you get to figure out how to keep it under control.
Anyway, that's my two cents. :)
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Some Thoughts by VnutZ :: NR8 :: on 02 May 2008
For simplicity (because I don't want to keep typing the word), lets call the conscious mind the C engine and the subconscious mind the S engine. Using their findings, you could define the S-Decision as f(S) and the C-Decision as f(C) where f() is some function of experience, memory, teachings and instinct. The overall decision is then Decision = f(f(S) + f(C), t). "t" will be a time factor that I'll discuss further down. So let's use that framework to establish common language reference points to think about it a little.
Let's make the scenario such that Bob is threatening to rape Alice in a dark alley, but she has just enough time to reach into her purse and pull out a gun. What does Alice do?
Looking at her S-Decision, let's imagine that her fight or flight instinct leans 75% fight and 25% flight. Her f(S) function quickly evaluates what she knows about her environment and deems escape not only difficult but not likely of success either. Combine her innate tendency towards fight and its clear f(S) resolves to shoot Bob.
Let's look at her C-Decision. This could go all kinds of ways so we'll establish her background as having been raised in a very peace-loving, nurturing environment by loving parents and a heavy Christian background (a practicing one ... not a generic, hey I go to church on Sundays but can't wait for it to be over one). Soooo, given that, her f(C) function would be very different than someone that grew up in an abusive household, locked in an incestuous dungeon, etc. etc. Her f(C) function actually might lean towards not shooting Bob but say it creating a response to scream loudly for help, fire the gun in the air followed by pointing it at Bob and reasoning with him to "not do this and just walk away".
Now, for this practical example, it's obvious f(C) and f(S) are creating different responses which lend themselves well for your question. What drives her final decision? Are her actions the sum of what's in the physical brain?
I'm speculating, but I think the t I alluded to in f(f(S) + f(C), t) is the factor. The more time she has before being forced to act, the more likely she is to go with f(C). But I think the smaller "t" is, the more likely she is to go with f(C). So the final decision is a sliding function of time where the % weighting on either source function begins to tip towards the conscious decision the longer she has to think about it.
So what differentiates two people? I think the experientially learned attributes of behavior and instinct drive f(S) and ultimately affect how strongly it's weighted at small values of t. For example, somebody that's been burned on a stove as a child will have a strong f(S) aversion to hot things and will be virtually 99% likely to act as f(S) for even large values of t. Whereas someone who's only been told they'll be burned by a stove and has never felt a burn will have an instinctual f(S) avoidance of hot things, but ultimately might weight that evaluation as 50% against f(C) and for short durations of "t" will quickly value the determination of f(C).
So I think who we are is almost entirely driven by the brain as a function of experience, teachings and time to react. Then again, I might simply be a level 50 paladin whose dexterity, intelligence and THAC0 were determined by a 20-sided die whose f(S) and f(C) functions are driven by subsequent rolls of the dice.
RE: Some Thoughts by anthonyanthony :: NR5 :: on 02 May 2008
Dang! You killed that one VnutZ. Beautifully executed.
RE: Some Thoughts by VnutZ :: NR8 :: on 02 May 2008
I saw this line in your nerd profile, "I am endlessly arrested at the idea that I am a piece of machinery equiped with the ability to communicate (at best fuzzily) with other moving, speaking machines."
I assume that means to some degree that you must think our cognitive process is very function oriented ... a simple process made complicated only by the sheer number of associated functions and the variable weights assigned to their importance.
Ultimately, I am disturbed by the idea because it really does take away an essence of poetry from being human, or even animal. There's not much exciting or whimsical in the notion that we are just complex, variable state machines.
What I really wonder is whether there is a measurable "clock speed" to the human brain that could be used deterministically with the conscious vs. subconscious decision making theory. But I especially wonder if such a measurable indicator of brain speed would correlate to people of subjective intelligence and be a factor in determining whether "slow kids" are simply slow geniuses or actually cognitively retarded.
RE: Some Thoughts by NomadSoul :: NR5 :: 6 days ago
I think you got it pretty close Vnutz; there is a time differential between the pre-frontal cortex (the part of the brain responsible for conscious action), and the amygdala (the part of the brain that decides fight or flight and anxious responses). The thing is, the prefrontal cortex takes a lot longer to make decisions, because it processes information so deeply, whereas the amygdala has to make snap judgements geared toward our basic survival in an evolutionary context.
So, when confronted by an emotionally charged situation, you have about a quarter of a second before your amygdala takes over and drives you to do something that might not otherwise do if you had time to reason the situation through.
This comes up often in psychological studies of Buddhist meditation--the idea being that meditation increases your likelihood of "catching" yourself before the amygdala takes over--thus leading to a calmer assessment of a situation and more consciously directed actions. Of course, there are still situations where a fight or flight reaction is called for, but the hope is you'll have more conscious choice in what you do without sacrificing reaction time. This is the "no mind" state talked about in the Zen tradition and in the martial arts, but which comes in handy in any emotionally charged situation--like in preventing you from saying something hurtful when you have a fight with your wife, etc.
That's the bit about the "monk" class that never made it into the Player's Handbook...