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Running head: MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 1

Human Behaviour Is Not Pre-Determined and Therefore Criminals Should Be Held

Responsible for Their Actions

Name

Institution
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It has been argued that the science of observation undermines the principle that

individuals may deserve discipline and that the criminal justice structure should, in this way,

be radically transformed. These statements lose their power if the moral responsibility and the

desert are not based on the cause of the action, but the decision of the agent. One problem is

solved in support of the criminal justice system, but another one is created; If the moral

responsibility is based on the choice of the criminal, it can be hard to determine the extent of

his or her responsibility (Eshleman, 2014). The basic human routine of being responsible for

their action contains elements of character evaluation and a sober spirit. In the same way,

there a possibility that individuals can be ethically responsible for what they do in the idea

that they deserve to be praised for commendable activities and be accused of terrible acts, and

also to be punished if the action is awful (Feltz & Cova, 2014). Many academics and legal

scholars who believe that the primary objective of fairness in criminal matters should be the

anticipation of crimes, rather than the management of adequate compensation, always argue

that the criminal serve as a restriction of what people can do to avoid crimes (Smith, 2015).

No one should receive more discipline than they deserve. Given that no system is impeccable,

it is inevitable that this directive is sometimes violated. However, people must move towards

a structure that allows them to evaluate this ideal perfect reliably. In any claim, if no one

were ethically responsible for their actions, all disciplines would be underserved and the

formation of criminal justice difficult to legitimize morally (Knobe & Nichols, 2013).

Some legal theorists and philosophers of law deny this premise; Knobe and Nichols

(2013) argue that the law, in its current state, allows punishment of perpetrators when they

can make reasonable choices. There is nothing wrong with the law at this point; The theory

that perpetrators may deserve discipline for what they have done can be protected from

philosophical arguments. Many Kantian thinkers argue that activities can be viewed from two

different points of view (McFee, 2014). First form a theoretical perspective, in which it is
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clarified why someone has done what they have done when indicating the causes and

practical approach and there is focus on their decision and their objectives to choose one

option instead of another. The claims made from these alternative points of view do not

contradict each other. Even though someone was ethically responsible for the action and had

the right to be punished, blamed or praised is based on the decision made and not on the root

causes. This proposal can be called “Practical Perspective Compatibilism " or PPC (McKenna

& Pereboom, 2016).

According to the PPC, many guilty parties are ethically responsible for what they

have done and, therefore, have the right to be punished because several perpetrators have

committed illegal acts. In the same way, the PPC can explain why the guilty, calm or indeed

mined maniacs should be forgiven: in these states, they could merely be expropriated from

the decision. On the other hand, due to real risk, the criminal may have intentionally

committed the least horrible in extreme circumstances (Monroe, Dillon & Malle, 2014).

Regardless of whether this decision was made from an ethical point of view, humans can

judge that the offender did nothing wrong because of stealing an item if, for example, a

person committed the crime because his or her children could have been killed. In such a

claim, the offender ought to go without punishment. It is evident that these reasons are not the

responsibility of all the guilty parties (Miles, 2015). It is still true that many perpetrators

commit illicit acts and no progress in neurobiology or other experimental sciences will

undermine this claim. Their decisions may have had causes, but they were decisions anyway.

The PPC, in this sense, faces a problem for the moral defence of criminal justice, but makes

another; If the moral responsibility is based on the decision of the offender, it can be difficult

to find out to what extent they were responsible (Nahmias, 2011).

Participating in a significant liner between agents who deserve discipline for

misbehaviour and who should be rehabilitated entirely will probably not pose too many
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problems. However, if the ethical responsibility and abandonment are based on the activities

of selection of the offenders, it will be difficult to express a judgment when the feeling of

guilt deserves less discipline due to the reduction of one's responsibility towards one's faults.

At random, the ethical responsibility is based on the decision of the guilty party, which

mitigates the conditions merely because they influence the decision. When the criminal chose

fewer options, he was less able (Nichols, 2011). This claim is instinctively conceivable. As

humans choose what to do, they try to find an alternative that they have lost or possibly a

sufficient motivation to look for, from their point of view of the reasons (Dennett, 2015).

criminals often think of some options or quickly make the necessary decisions without

thinking about alternative actions in any way, because it is soon evident that this alternative is

still adequate. offenders sometimes do not consider unparalleled options, such as their very

personal ideas about the reasons for the choice they have chosen, just because these different

options, in one way or another, did not seem like real options. They refuse to choose what to

do in the end. If the ethical responsibility is based on the decision; Someone who has not

chosen entirely is not necessarily responsible (Schulz, Cokely & Feltz, 2011).

The theory of diminished responsibility of PPC has the necessary resources to explain

not only why some drugged, but psychotic or even offenders who have been threatened

should also be excised completely. Humans can think that a young criminal in a very

repressed neighbourhood is less responsible for their offenses and, therefore, deserves less

discipline than a young delinquent who had everything for him but then committed offenses

(Shepherd, 2012). One could count on the criminal of the terrible neighbourhood to commit

reprehensible acts because they may have internalised these desires and neglected to consider

self-esteem as an option, even if a legitimate life would have seemed desirable if they

considered it (Christians et al., 2015). Therefore, it can be argued that they did not choose to

become criminals entirely and, therefore, their responsibility should be reduced. These
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explanations about why a hard situation is moderate are, of course, more conceivable than

anything else that can give a cause-effect hypothesis, since it is not and it seems to be the

situation in which the causal influences one’s choice, therefore, rendering them less

responsible (Sommers, 2010).

However, humans should realize that similar conditions do not affect everybody in the

same way. It is conceivable that a young delinquent from a degraded and very reprehensible

neighbourhood may think about the problem and make an informed decision about becoming

a criminal instead of participating in legitimate work (Björnsson & Pereboom, 2016).

Therefore, it is conceivable that two young thugs in a comparable way, who exercise their

actions under similar conditions, one will be fully responsible for what he did and, therefore,

deserves a cruel discipline, whereas the other has a reduced moral responsibility and it

deserves leniency. The same can be said of any situation regularly considered as a relief

(Waller, 2015). It does not matter if it reduces the responsibility of that particular crime or

not; it depends on how this has influenced his decision. It seems complicated, no doubt, to

know how much discipline the perpetrators deserve specifically in claims where the moral

responsibility and the desert are based on their decisions (Bartel, 2015). Judges can try to

make sure that they do not give some offenders more discipline than they deserve by

receiving a generally tolerant approach while when condemn. Potentially, to be cautious, they

must be lenient to the extent that they oppose the offenses. However, the theory that if

individuals are convinced that they are not responsible for what they have done is not

inappropriate, it is a temporary belief that encourages them to seek attraction instead of

making effective decisions (Widerker, 2017)

If the ethical responsibility is based on the decision of the agent rather than on the

correctly caused action, it is not necessary to emphasize that the findings in neurobiology or

other observational sciences undermine the fact that people may be responsible for what they
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do ethically. This might seem like a new elevation for the criminal justice system since it is

based on the assumption that criminals may have the right to be punished for their decent

defence. If the dimension of a perpetrator's ethical responsibility is ultimately based on how

he did what he did, he discovered how ethically he was responsible for his mistake and, in

this way, the discipline they deserve could be difficult.

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References

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Information Technology, 17(4), 285-293.

Björnsson, G., & Pereboom, D. (2016). Traditional and experimental approaches to free will

and criminal responsibility.

Christians, C. G., Richardson, K. B., Fackler, M., Kreshel, P., & Woods, R. H. (2015). Media

Ethics: Cases and Criminal Reasoning, CourseSmart eTextbook. Routledge.

Dennett, D. C. (2015). Elbow room: The varieties of free will worth wanting. mit Press.

Eshleman, A. (2014). Criminal responsibility.

Feltz, A., & Cova, F. (2014). Criminal responsibility and free will: A meta-analysis.

Consciousness and cognition, 30, 234-246.

Knobe, J., & Nichols, S. (Eds.). (2013). Experimental philosophy (Vol. 2). Oxford University

Press.

McFee, G. (2014). Free will. Routledge.

McKenna, M., & Pereboom, D. (2016). Free will: A contemporary introduction. Routledge.

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Troubador Publishing Ltd.

Monroe, A. E., Dillon, K. D., & Malle, B. F. (2014). Bringing free will down to Earth:

People’s psychological concept of free will and its role in criminal judgment.

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Nahmias, E. (2011). Intuitions about free will, determinism, and bypassing.

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Schulz, E., Cokely, E. T., & Feltz, A. (2011). Persistent bias in expert judgments about free

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Shepherd, J. (2012). Free will and consciousness: Experimental studies. Consciousness and

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Smith, R. (2015). Free will and the human sciences in Britain, 1870–1910. Routledge.

Sommers, T. (2010). Experimental philosophy and free will. Philosophy Compass, 5(2), 199-

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Waller, B. N. (2015). The stubborn system of criminal responsibility. MIT Press.

Widerker, D. (2017). Criminal responsibility and alternative possibilities: Essays on the

importance of alternative possibilities. Routledge.

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