Consider those who have demonstrated through their actions that they are best kept excluded from society at large. John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer would be prime examples. Many people write these villains off as evil and give their condition not a second thought. But it is quite possible that they actually suffer from some sort of mental illness and are thus not fully responsible for their crimes. In fact, there is evidence that the brains of serial killers are measurably different from those of normal people. Far enough in the future, it might be possible to “cure” them. However, they will still possess toxic memories and thoughts that would greatly distress them now that they are normal. To truly repair them, they would likely need to have many or all of their memories erased. At that point, with an amnesic brain and a cloned body, are they even really the same person, and if not, what was the point of cryopreserving them?
For a sufficiently advanced civilization all brains are measurably different from each other. I think you should reconsider or at the very least expand on by what you mean by “fully responsible”. As it is used by Western legal systems and implicitly most people it is not a coherent concept. Neither is sick or healthy or even cure for that matter. To prime you on this and perhaps dissolve some confusion, I recommend reading this article.
Perhaps not being fully responsible means not being responsible for acting under a sufficiently false map or even a false map at all, because we can’t infer revealed preferences from that or perhaps because of the golden rule. Perhaps not being fully responsible means someone who has values sufficiently different from most people to peacefully coexist, perhaps different values from yourself or someone to whom you outsource your moral autonomy. Perhaps not being fully responsible means a brain I can’t yet change with technology so it will promote my values and I must thus waste by imprisonment or destruction.
As you can see I can’t tell you neither can I tell what you meant here. :)
By “not fully responsible” I was trying to sidestep a free will debate. My point was that “bad” people might just have “bad” brains; perhaps they were exposed to too much serotonin while in the womb or inherited a bad set of genes, and that plus some trauma early in life might have damaged them in such a way that they were willing to commit unspeakable acts that “normal” people would not. I think it’s not unlikely that whatever makes a serial killer a serial killer will eventually be identified, screened for and cured. But what to do with existing serial killers is different problem.
For a sufficiently advanced civilization all brains are measurably different from each other. I think you should reconsider or at the very least expand on by what you mean by “fully responsible”. As it is used by Western legal systems and implicitly most people it is not a coherent concept. Neither is sick or healthy or even cure for that matter. To prime you on this and perhaps dissolve some confusion, I recommend reading this article.
Perhaps not being fully responsible means not being responsible for acting under a sufficiently false map or even a false map at all, because we can’t infer revealed preferences from that or perhaps because of the golden rule. Perhaps not being fully responsible means someone who has values sufficiently different from most people to peacefully coexist, perhaps different values from yourself or someone to whom you outsource your moral autonomy. Perhaps not being fully responsible means a brain I can’t yet change with technology so it will promote my values and I must thus waste by imprisonment or destruction.
As you can see I can’t tell you neither can I tell what you meant here. :)
By “not fully responsible” I was trying to sidestep a free will debate. My point was that “bad” people might just have “bad” brains; perhaps they were exposed to too much serotonin while in the womb or inherited a bad set of genes, and that plus some trauma early in life might have damaged them in such a way that they were willing to commit unspeakable acts that “normal” people would not. I think it’s not unlikely that whatever makes a serial killer a serial killer will eventually be identified, screened for and cured. But what to do with existing serial killers is different problem.