I’m writing here for the first time so I’m not sure that writing my thought here is correct. Anyways, I got a ‘problem’ for you guys if I can call it a ‘problem’.
So I asked myself: 'For example here’s a serial killer. He was killing people and etc. One day he absolutely lost his mind, his character from psychopath changed to the kind and helpful person. From this moment, he won’t remember anything from the past life, he would never kill anyone, basically a new person in another body. Everybody (I mean society) knows about his changing, they know that he wouldn’t kill anyone, they know that he doesn’t remember anything, they know that he’s a good person.
So, from this moment, is it right to jail him? Is it right to blame him? Is it right to hate him? Does he deserve jail or being hated? I guess, the best way to think about this question is making an example where this guy killed the closest person to you in the past. I want to hear your answers guys.
Tricky dilemma for sure, amnesia could be justification for justice to be weighed for him… perhaps his sentencing should reflect it and be carried out under diminished responsibility or maybe manslaughter rather than murder but I’m no lawyer.
It’s hard to justify blame or hatred directed at the new person if the transformation is genuine and total.
Those attitudes presuppose continuity of agency. It may still be permissible (or even required) to impose some legal consequences because the body carries a history that society cannot simply ignore, and because victims and the public have legitimate stakes in the matter. But pure retributive imprisonment “because he deserves it” becomes difficult to defend.
We already deal with this in small ways. Take dementia, for example. Demented people can say or do things that a fair society must forgive. I see this as roughly analogous to murder.
In that episode the murderer has her memories removed and personality altered and is released.
In reality, the situation is often different. In Stargate the murderer was not recognisable to her victims families and was presumed dead so there was no risk that people might feel that wrongs had not been redressed.
I have become less sensitive about the concept of retribution in recent years. It may seem harsh amd it may seem to add to the damage wrought by a crime but its very human and it has the effect of closing difficult episodes.
If the person who murdered your family had their memory wiped and then continued their life in public. Does that constitute settlement? I think many people would not think so.
That is not to say that we need an eye for an eye. I dont believe that but without a process of reckoning we risk seeing a deepening spiral of violence and revenge.
Excuse my progressiveness, but do you know that the charge of murder does less than one would expect to dissuade crime, even when the penalty is death?
This implies punishment is an inadequate fit for human nature when taken in extremes.
Love all your thoughts. Anyway, when I asked this question my mom she said that he needs to be jailed no matter what. In example she put herself as a victim (homicide victim) and asked me this question. My problem is that I’m too stupid to imagine this situation on practice, but, I guess, I would forgive through the pain, maybe. I really like that you guys discuss about my post, lovely.
Short answer:
It would be justified to dislike him, but jailing would be wrong.
Long answer:
The person that committed the murders is the person you can and should dislike. It is two persons in the same body, but not at the same time or interchanging. It is not the body people should hate, but the person behind the acts (the “mental” person, or soul). Jailing him would be to jail the innocent person, because it is the body you put in a cell.
Actually whether or not he remembers is irrelevant. What is of importance here is state of being. Since his state of being is now truly good, he is no longer a danger to society which is the reason for removing him from society in the first place. Effectively he is a different person.
As an aside, it is this concept that forms the foundation for Jesus’s views on forgiveness, repentance, being born from above, good trees cannot bear bad fruit, etc. To make sure there is no mistake, there is an extremely wide gulf between Jesus’s views on this and the views of Christianity as a whole.
This is - and i promise, to anyone who is skeptical I am being forthright, and honest here - not an attempt to litigate the underlying issue I am taking for granted. If you disagree with my premise, that’s fine, but the problem involves these issues so my take rests on my position on those issues…
It depends if you’re male or female. Morally, the new person is blameless. There is nothing of the criminal left (unless you take a further fact approach to identity - because a bodily approach to identity has nothing to do with intent, or blameworthiness unfortunately) in the new person. They are, for all intents and purposes, blameless. They wouldn’t even understand hte charges. They would be considred mentally defective to stand trial for the charges.
However, in the real world, this differs whether you are male or female. If you are female, it is much more readily accepted that your mental state can off-set your criminal culpability. For males, while this is still true, it is far, far, far more lightly weighted and often completely ignored.
So I guess the question can be answered those two ways: I think they are blameless. The world seems to think a male would be blameworthy, but not a female.
The more you’re trying to shift towards the cycle of suffering, then yes he needs to be hanged regardless. If you’re moving away from it, it’s the opposite. Every in-between truth is there as well including removing yourself from the equation by refusing to answer this question because it possibly exposes you’re character legally speaking under oath where lying is a possible punishable offense.
Is it right to blame anyone, even if they remain a serial killer? What exactly does blame do for us?
“deserve” and “hated” - personally I am not keen on such categories even for people who harm others.
So he remains responsible for causing harm and, from one perspective, should still be sentenced.
Do we know whether this change is permanent? Could he “lose his mind” again and revert to a violent or dangerous state? What are the risks?
I am reminded of young men who committed atrocities during the Second World War but later resettled, became pillars of their communities, raised families, became valued elders and caused no further harm. Do people remain responsible for their former selves? I’d say yes. Does not remembering the past, and effectively becoming a “new person”, absolve someone of guilt? From some philosophical perspectives, perhaps. From a criminal justice perspective, perhaps not.
A man who murders multiple people in cold blood needs to pay for his crime, no matter what he claims about his mental state. He and no one else was responsible for the fear, pain, and deaths that ensued. He never offered any chance to the people he killed and the just ought to return the favor.
Your question is, of course, a thought experiment; in reality, such a scenario is hard to envision. It is difficult to imagine memories of experiences and events being detached from the personality itself, or to conceive of “erasing” memories without affecting everything else… These are questions for science, not philosophy.
However, from a purely philosophical standpoint, something else is interesting. What is it that truly matters to us about a person? What part or trait of their personality leads us to conclude that they must be isolated or punished?
Your thought experiment touches—in my view—on the idea that we have sufficient grounds to believe a reformed individual will not commit crimes in the future. This is a crucial point. In this sense, our perception of a person is linked to our conception of their future self.
Consider this thesis: agency is the tension between the “I” of the present and the “I” of the future. It is the very fact of caring about this—caring about who I will be a moment, a minute, an hour, or a day from now. It is not merely a matter of “who I am in myself,” but “who I am in the eyes of others in the future.” After all, this construct effectively explains why a person refrains from certain actions; maintaining one’s horizon of futurity—as seen through the eyes of others—is essential.
For instance: I will not steal now because, tomorrow, I still want to be someone who lives among these people, maintains relationships with them, holds a certain reputation, and is capable of continuing the project of “self.”
Does this mean that a person’s future can be significant in defining who they are right now?
Returning to your example, I would say this: if we have guarantees that the person with the erased memory will—by tomorrow—become someone for whom their “future project” in the eyes of others (aligned with shared values) matters, then they should be released and forgiven. Perhaps therein lies the power of repentance (even though it is unrelated to amnesia). Perhaps the power of all-forgiving death lies in this: the certainty that the deceased will no longer cause harm.
Yet, there is no such guarantee. But that is a completely different story.
Another aspect of the question is whether such a person deserves hatred. But who is it that deserves hatred? Is it the person who committed the crime, or—having lost their memory—have they ceased to be that same individual? It would seem, then, that a person’s identity depends on what they know about themselves; after all, with the loss of memory, only bodily continuity and a certain legal or biographical identity remain.
I believe it is precisely these questions—rather than the technical ones—that are of philosophical interest.
People hate or do not hate things because of their past experiences.
No child can help nor has any control at all, over where and when they were born and in what culture they were brought up in.
No.
To me, it would not matter if it was the closest nor further person to me.
No, but if he does it again he would have a higher punishment because it would be a repeated offense - basically no, but kept on record so if he does it again its worse.
What if this person as you say murdered many people and the parents of one of the vctims seeks revenge.
Are you now going to claim that the parent of the victims ought to go to prison for first degree murder because they have ended the life of a good person.
Isn’t it possible that the parents have been denied justice. Does Justice not have to be seen to be done.
If the person becomes good ,and society sees it, the question is after this change. While when someone will know he is a serial killer it straight jail without living sometime to know he changed, while if I suddenly know someone living in neighbourhood is a killer while he is still good to me, it doesn’t anywhere shows he is not a killer. The question is little unrealistic and non-occurable. Because if killer information exists he go to jail straight,while if we don’t know yet and other image of a kind man exists later when knowing he is a killer ,it doesn’t change the killer image because he might kill his family but love his friends or so .even if it is bypassed , there’s no proof that while in the kind man state he hasn’t killed anyone.
While it is hard to imagine what I might actually feel in this scenario, I do think there is a strong chance that I’d want him punished. One could argue that he’s not a new person, he’s the same person with a new personality and that doesn’t negate his past actions.
I also wonder, do we tell him exactly what he had done? Do we make him look at the case files that show the explicit nature of the murder he committed? And if so, does he himself think he should go free?
