Philosophy and Critical Thinking

ASSIGNMENT
Minority Report

Submitted to,
Hector Andrade

Submitted by,
Hiral Dodia
FSB1 - 60226
Human Freedom is the state of being free. It can also be described as a right of every individual
to think and act in any situation according to his/her own will.

Question-1 : What is the position taken on this issue in the movie "Minority Report."

Ans : In the movie there can be seen two sides of Pre-Crime system in the context of human
freedom.

i) If we see from the public point of view, it provided them safety and freedom in literal sense.
It gave them the mental peace and crimeless city for several years (6 years) allowing people to
sleep peacefully in night even if their children were out till late, women to safely travel
anywhere during day or night, preventing rapes, murders, thefts etc.

ii) If we see from the point of view of the persons being caught up for the crime they had not
yet committed but were going to commit, it's a huge question on human freedom. At every
point every individual have choice. The people whose previsions of committing any crimes were
seen by precognitives were arrested before the crime happened. There were three
precognitives who were kept to see the predictive crimes. Sometimes one of the precogs' vision
differs from the other two which is called the minority report, which shows that every crime
might have an alternative of occurring or not.

When John Anderton – chief officer of pre-crime saw himself killing a man whom he even didn't
know, he escaped the system to find out the reason for it and the man. When he found out the
man he also realized that he must kill him but as he knew what was going to happen and one of
the precogs- Agatha also warned him that he had a choice not to kill him, he chose to arrest
him instead of killing him. This proved that every individual who is committing a crime might
change the future by controlling his/her emotions and taking decision after thinking if he/she is
aware of the future of such happening.

Also in the movie Agatha was kept in the system as one of the precogs against her mother Anne
Lively's will. She was killed by Lamar Burgess, the Head of Pre-Crime system, to prevent her
taking her daughter back from pre-crime. He used the system itself which was created to
prevent crime to cover up his own crime. He also used the system to plot John Anderton when
John got to know more than he should have known about Anne Lively and the minority reports
being deleted when they occur.

These all incidents in the movie showed that pre-crime was catching the people based on only a
higher probability of them committing the crime.
Question-2 : What is your personal position on this issue.

Ans: According to me human freedom is about an individual's free will to make decision knowing the
consequences. Firstly the concept of catching and imprisoning the person before he/she even commits a
crime is not fully authenticated because the previsions were based in higher probability of the event
occurring. Whenever the prevision is generated the future criminal should be warned about it and still if
he/she proceeds to commit the crime they must be caught when moving ahead but before he/she
commits it.

In the movie the way John Anderton made a decision of arresting Leo crow, a man who abducted and
killed his son (as he said initially) and not killing him because he knew that it was going to happen and he
decided it after thinking instead of rationally pulling the trigger in emotional trauma. In a same manner in
the end Lamar made decision of not to kill John instead he committed suicide.

The way the concept of minority report is shown in movie, whenever the minority report is created the
individual must be given a chance of making a decision instead of just catching him and imprisoning him.
The reports should not be just deleted, because they show the probability that crime might not happen,
which can save some one from being caught and imprisoned for the crime they might not have
committed.

So, according to me, pre-crime might be a true success if minority report are taken into consideration
before catching the future criminal by giving him a chance of making decision.