He doesn’t go into this in the book, but I am fairly sure that Harris would agree with your consequentialist take of “acting as if they had free will”. I have heard him speak on this matter in a few of his podcasts around “the hard problem of consciousness” with Dennett, Chalmers and a neurosurgeon that I can’t find the name of (I remember him being british).
As I understand him, his view is to not view criminals (or anyone) as “morally bad” for whatever they have done, but to move directly on to figuring out the best possible way to avoid bad things happening again, to their future potential victims and to themselves. I think he sees this is as an important starting point in order to be able to be consequentialist about it at all.
For example, if the best way to avoid criminals re-offending turns out to be to put them into a cushy, luxurious rehabilitation program, then in order to even consider this as an option, we must remove our sense of needing to punish them for being morally reprehensible.
So long as it doesn’t increase the number of people committing crimes once to gain access to cushy luxurious rehabilitation programs, sure!
In my personal life, I do notice a tendency that when I do categorize people as being “morally wrong”, this is more normally associated with wanting them to become morally right than wanting them punished for being morally wrong. The latter seems just one (probably ineffective) way to achieve the former. I don’t seem to see this tendency in many other people around me, so I suspect I’m in a minority.
I don’t think this relies on any particular position in the free will discussion though. I’ve seen some people “punish” objects for adversely affecting them by yelling or striking at them, and certainly not for reasons of the object having free will. It seems more of an innate urge than any philosophical belief.
He doesn’t go into this in the book, but I am fairly sure that Harris would agree with your consequentialist take of “acting as if they had free will”. I have heard him speak on this matter in a few of his podcasts around “the hard problem of consciousness” with Dennett, Chalmers and a neurosurgeon that I can’t find the name of (I remember him being british).
As I understand him, his view is to not view criminals (or anyone) as “morally bad” for whatever they have done, but to move directly on to figuring out the best possible way to avoid bad things happening again, to their future potential victims and to themselves. I think he sees this is as an important starting point in order to be able to be consequentialist about it at all.
For example, if the best way to avoid criminals re-offending turns out to be to put them into a cushy, luxurious rehabilitation program, then in order to even consider this as an option, we must remove our sense of needing to punish them for being morally reprehensible.
So long as it doesn’t increase the number of people committing crimes once to gain access to cushy luxurious rehabilitation programs, sure!
In my personal life, I do notice a tendency that when I do categorize people as being “morally wrong”, this is more normally associated with wanting them to become morally right than wanting them punished for being morally wrong. The latter seems just one (probably ineffective) way to achieve the former. I don’t seem to see this tendency in many other people around me, so I suspect I’m in a minority.
I don’t think this relies on any particular position in the free will discussion though. I’ve seen some people “punish” objects for adversely affecting them by yelling or striking at them, and certainly not for reasons of the object having free will. It seems more of an innate urge than any philosophical belief.