I can't help but feel like these brothers are also victims here. Of course, their victimhood is nothing like what they inflicted on the people of Boston and the marathoners, but they're victims nonetheless. Humans are glorified chemical reaction vessels; somehow, they ended up going down a path that led them here. Was there any alternative? Was it the education system? Social circumstances? I'm sure the magnitude of what he's done must be setting in on Dzhozkar now. Provided that this case is how it appears, his life is over; he's committed terrible crimes. But provided that he's not a biologically-determined sociopath, somewhere down the road he become subject to forces that ended up with him hiding from FBI HRT in someone's backyard after a prolonged shootout-chase with his brother dead. Even if this is justice, it seems tragic.
EDIT: I'm not denying agency or free will, I'm just expressing the belief that you are the product of your environment. I like the saying that an individual will tend towards being the average of their friends. If all of your friends are into running, you'll probably end up being into running. If all of your friends are into music, you'll probably end up interested in music. Certain books, movies, or other cultural experiences can affect individuals in differing, significant ways. All of these forces act on people to create who they are tomorrow.
There's no statement about free will, in a strong sense, in there. It's all about social and cultural context, and brownian motion. He's still responsible for his actions. I would reserve the term "human monster" for measurable psychopaths. Those do exist, and are a different matter entirely.
This kind of thinking is very dangerous and can be used to excuse all sorts of terrible behavior. We are all responsible for our actions. I can't prove that we have free will, but I feel it's important to believe it.
I think that's looking at it backwards. I'm not saying that he should be given any kind of leniency or have anything be "excused" because of this. I'm just wondering what a society would look like that started with the hypothesis that this was a failure in developing a citizen as opposed to a failure in preventing a crime.
Obviously when you've gotten to this point, it's time to apply the law, not justify things away.
The kind of thinking that is dangerous is the line that we deserve to have these things happen - those people deserved to have their limbs blown off - because America's foreign policy is "bad." At that point, you are agreeing with people like Bin Laden and you are just about set to contribute to these kinds of attacks yourself, because you agree with the reasons.
Acknowledging that we live in a material world and there are multiple causes for things is incredibly minor by comparison, and isn't an ideological basis for carrying out terror attacks. Causes aren't the same as reasons.
Even if you don't have free will, if you set off bombs and shoot cops for no good reason, there is something wrong with the way you're wired inside. Someone might even say it's "your fault".
I don't believe that humans have free will although from time to time I doubt my believe because it is so extremely far from our everyday experience. But this kind of thinking is not dangerous; either there is free will and everybody is - at least partially - responsible for his actions or there is no free will and we are done because everything just happens and we cannot even freely discuss this.
It's important to ask how this happened, because of course our choices are themselves brought about by external reasons. We can, in many cases, do something about it. We can teach people how to make better choices, too.
But I agree, it's important not to lose sight of the fact that he did make the choice to be here today.
Many would argue[1] that “responsibility” is an entirely perfunctory concept when you admit that society should judge and control you based on the actual consequences of your actions (and expectations of similar future behaviour).
Here in Canada one of our party leaders is under fire for having an ounce of concern about what led these men to this point. For asking how a person gets so disconnected from society that they can wage war against it like this. The right-wing backlash against these questions has been immense.
Justin Trudeau, the Liberals just wrapped up their public internal vote thingy and he's the new leader. The Conservatives are trying to paint him as the dumb kid who's only in politics because of his dad.
Soon after the bombing, before anybody identified the attackers, Trudeau discussed it in an interview with Peter Mansbridge.
Trudeau said he would offer the American material support “and at the same time, over the coming days, we have to look at the root causes.”
“Now, we don’t know now if it was terrorism or a single crazy or a domestic issue or a foreign issue,” he said. “But there is no question that this happened because there is someone who feels completely excluded. Completely at war with innocents. At war with a society. And our approach has to be, where do those tensions come from?
“Yes, there’s a need for security and response,” Trudeau added. “But we also need to make sure that as we go forward, that we don’t emphasize a culture of fear and mistrust. Because that ends up marginalizing even further those who already are feeling like they are enemies of society.”
I see this argument boiling down to two trains of thought. One is that people are fundamentally good and only external forces make them do bad things. That appears to be the opinion you have expressed.
The second is that people are fundamentally bad and that external forces are required to keep them from doing bad things. I think the more you look at the world the more you find this second postulate is the right one, and your looking in the wrong direction for justification.
Reality is not so dichotomized. Human choices are influenced by both nature and nurture (i.e. environment). In psychobiology, I believe the consensus is that nurture contributes at least 50% to personality development and consequently propensity for certain choices and behavior. If inherent nature can't be changed, how could have the environment been different, to change the outcome? That was what I got from the parent comment.
By the way, if we're talking about "fundamental" qualities of a person -- from a biological standpoint, there is some evidence for a genetic propensity toward 'good' (e.g. altruism) or 'bad' (e.g. violent) behavior. But the vast majority of people land somewhere in the middle.
A third train of thought is that we evolved to live in groups, able to show great empathy--the source of most "good" actions--for members of our group, and no empathy at all for anyone else. That would acknowledge our natural tendencies to be helpful and loving, selfish and destructive, depending on worldview and circumstances.
If the allegations are true (they murdered women and a child and blew off the limbs of innocent men women and children) then they are not victims, they are criminals.
Saying they are victims and suggesting that pity be given them is wrong. It insults the real victims in this tragedy.
Yes, the increasing frequency of these homegrown attacks and school shootings should raise questions about our culture.
And explanation is not the same as moral justification.
I think compulsory public schools and undergraduate classroom-based colleges are very repressive against individuals, without fluid and free avenues for grievances to be aired and needs to be met. Sit up and shut up. The answer has been to use psychiatric drugs, punitive incarceration and behavior modification against individuals, rather than addressing broader social issues.
Partisan bickering between politicians about short-term reactionary policies sidetracks us. Gun control, enhanced interrogation, etc. -- those are not addressing the real underlying issues, and are just kicking the can further down the road until there's another attack.
I do not find it a coincidence that most of these young people accused of mass shootings or acts of terrorism, are current or recent members of our school system. I would absolutely explode and probably go to prison if I had to deal with today's zero-tolerance school systems.
There is something about mass public education which diminishes the individual, and makes small local corrections impossible because there are no outlets for grievance or ways to meet existential needs. As a result, anger, anxiety and depression build up in a person until s/he has no other outlet than to hurt others, no matter what the personal costs.
I find it very sad that media focus on whether suspects are members of certain "groups", or whether suspects have been labeled with pseudoscientific psychiatric labels, or whether their parents were "good" or "fit", when really, it's a much larger social context, and public institutions, which lead to the behavior.
I can see where you're coming from and we probably won't know until he gives a statement. Whether it was a religious, nationalist or anarchist attack, it will be interesting to see why he thought he needed to do what he did.
I think you've asked an interesting, reasonable question here, but you should have looked for a way to avoid any suggestion of sympathy if you hoped to see answers to the former as opposed to reactions to the latter.
Denying people agency for their actions is just as dangerous and dehumanizing as vilifying them as inhuman monsters. They are human monsters who are responsible for their own actions.
Isn't free will he flip side to determinism? I am able to generate truly random numbers which are completely non-deterministic by any number of methods (deck of cards, pick a number 0|1 over and over, muscle twitches, etc). Doesn't that imply that I have, at some basic level, free will?
In the interview one of their uncles said that the older brother called around 2009 or so and started babbling about Islam and "holy war". So this uncle shut him off pretty quickly by saying it is a complete nonsense.
The younger brother's "V Kontakte" page has some stuff that shows him in a bit different light compared to his twitter account. Perhaps because it was in Russian he was a bit more revealing. There he was a member of several Islamic groups (not exactly extremist ones, just in general Islam oriented). He also posted few comments and even a joke that sort of indicated how Chechens have been treated, the joke goes like this: "The Question: Chechen, Ingush and Dagestani are in the car, who is driving the car? The Answer: police".
What I think happened is that the older brother could not adjust quite well, and had some beef with his relatives as they were not too close. So these two brothers were sort of marinating in their own insanity. The older one could not fit in, probably felt like a failure and was a good candidate for a brainwash. The younger was another good candidate, their parents are still in Dagestan, both brothers lived alone.
I think it is a very complicated case and I think they acted alone, because they lost it alone at some point. Left to themselves they were easy prey to propaganda machine. I personally think it is extremely sad case for every single person involved including victims, their families, bombers and their families. The only winners are those who are spreading hate and brainwashing vulnerable people at the lowest point of their lives.
EDIT: I'm not denying agency or free will, I'm just expressing the belief that you are the product of your environment. I like the saying that an individual will tend towards being the average of their friends. If all of your friends are into running, you'll probably end up being into running. If all of your friends are into music, you'll probably end up interested in music. Certain books, movies, or other cultural experiences can affect individuals in differing, significant ways. All of these forces act on people to create who they are tomorrow.
There's no statement about free will, in a strong sense, in there. It's all about social and cultural context, and brownian motion. He's still responsible for his actions. I would reserve the term "human monster" for measurable psychopaths. Those do exist, and are a different matter entirely.