Biology is Destiny?

Yes, things happen on there own all the time. For instance me responding to this question of yours by my own free will AND by your rules. No one is making me do it.Why is this such a mystery? I don't get it.There certainly is free will but not total free will. Free will is still limited to some extent.Im not sure where you're going with this but i'll await your responce before I (cautiously) proceed.Edited by Chuck77, : No reason given.

I don't no. I don't think Fred had a whole new set of morals due to his brain tumor just like I don't think someone who goes on and off antidepressants for depression all the time wakes up every new day with a total new set of morals to guide them each and everytime some physical ailment threatens them.It messed with Freds brain chemistry, not his moral compass.

Where do people get their moral compass from?It is bound out in the way we are conditioned. Affect the brain and this conditioning can be altered.Simple.

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It messed with Freds brain chemistry, not his moral compass.

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I think you're in an impossible position here.Until he was 40 Fred behaved normally. He then had the tumour and his behaviour changed. To take just one element of how it changed, he started looking at child porn - something he had not previously done and something we must suppose he found abhorrent both before the tumour grew and after it was removed.So we know for sure that his brain made him do it. This very strongly suggests that his moral compass (whatever that is) changed along with his brain - how else could it have happened. If his morality did not change ie he knew that the thing he was doing was wrong but he did it anyway, why? And how?In psychopathy, we know that they don't have whatever it is that makes normal people empathise, this results in them not understanding why it could be wrong to murder someone and eat their liver. Compass pointing exactly due South?

Chuck77 responds to me:You were the one who brought up Satan with regard to the tumor as if the tumor were caused by divine forces rather than biology. So I wanted to know if you thought it were possible for anything to happen via mere biology or if we need to invoke the supernatural for every occurrence.Since you seem to agree that there are things that happen without any need for zap-poofing to take place, the question then becomes why you doubt that this is one of them and how you can tell that a tumor that affects a person's ability to distinguish right from wrong is somehow of supernatural origin.You've agreed that a line is to be drawn. Now we're only arguing about where.

Says who? Where is your justification for separating the brain from various cognitive processes such as will? Not really.Jon

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Says who.

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Says the law. Being 'of sound mind' or more exactly for criminal law, acting with intent and 'men's rea' is at the centre of our law.

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Mens rea is Latin for "guilty mind".[1] In criminal law, it is viewed as one of the necessary elements of a crime. The standard common law test of criminal liability is usually expressed in the Latin phrase, actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea, which means "the act does not make a person guilty unless the mind is also guilty". Thus, in jurisdictions with due process, there must be an actus reus accompanied by some level of mens rea to constitute the crime with which the defendant is charged (see the technical requirement of concurrence). As a general rule, criminal liability does not attach to a person who acted with the absence of mental fault. The exception is strict liability crimes.

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Mens rea - Wikipedia

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Where is your justification for separating the brain from various cognitive processes such as will?

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I'm doing the opposite. I'm saying that because the brain is the source of cognitive processes (if not, where else?) then how it is wired is likely to influence those processes.

You said that the "brain, beyond our own will, is responsible for our behaviour". I took that to reflect an opinion that there is a separation between the two; perhaps I was interpreting it wrong. Getting off for insanity isn't a clean wiping of the slate. Such folk are often required to undergo mandatory therapy, drugs, and even hospitalization.Even if you are 'not guilty', you're still getting punished, and that's a clear sign of being held culpable.Jon

What is punishment and what is treatment? That is the rub. Obviously, you can not have a person lacking the ability to discern right from wrong running free in society, especially when they have already harmed others (or themselves) because of this ailment. Also, you can not punish them because they are not culpable for their actions.Treatment is treatment. It is an attempt to cure the person of their psychosis. If I remember correctly, Brinkley (attacked Reagan) may be let loose in the near future. Doctors consider him cured of the psychosis that caused him to attack Reagan. People are put in this same type of treatment even if they have not committed any crimes. If the judge deems that a person is a threat to themselves or others then they can be put into mandatory treatment.

Well... I would consider a forced 'treatment' to be a sort of punishment.Obviously from an outsider's perspective, the individual is hopefully being made better off and so we might say it is all well and good and reserve labeling as punishments things that are generally perceived as negative (prison time, fines, etc.).I mean, if you are just being yourself one minute, rape someone the next minute, and are then stuck on mandatory drugs and therapy afterwords; I think we could consider your treatment as something of a punishment for your crime.Jon

I'm really trying to get beyond Fred and the extreme position he represents. He shows, in an obvious way, how the brain affects personality and behaviour. And we already accept that drugs - and their absence - change personality and behaviour.What I'm trying to get to is that there must be a gradient between someone much more saintly than me (not hard) and Fred at his worst. And that gradient must be how the brain is wired, both at birth and as we grow. So we're not born with equal 'free will'.If that's the case then the entire concept of absolute morality falls flat on it's arse and with it goes sin and evil and basically everything at the core of most religions - including Christianity.

Pretty much.But when people plan their actions (in whatever mental state they are in) those actions seem logical to them.I once worked with a guy who believed that people were comming into his home (somehow) and moving his shoes around. Seems crazy but his rationale for this belief was that dust had been disturbed on them ergo someone had crept into his house and moved them around.From this piece of evidence he contruction a pretty consistant set of beliefs that were internally consistant (if his conclusion about the dust was correct).This lead to all kinds of paranoid anti social behaviour that ended with him being sectioned.All the time he had 'free will' but his actions were based off faulty reasoning from his disorder.It was his dodgy logic that was the problem, but once he accepted his conclusion his subsequent behaviour is what almost anyone would have done (if the guys fear were real).Someone who is schizophrenis interprets things differently and but then reacts (within their frame of reference) pretty logically.If one subjects anyone to gaslighting they pretty soon start behaving irrationally. Is that their fault?

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Pretty much

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Then neurology is going to make a bigger dent in the Abrahamic religions than Darwin did. 'All' Darwin did was show that we don't have to invoke a God to explain how species got here.Demonstrating that Free Will isn't actually free or equal and is mutable removes religion's claim on morality, kills original sin and does not require a saviour to sacrifice himself to save us from it.Pretty much game over for theism I'd say.

Its not for me. In my view, the mind is a gateway from the spiritual to the physical, and it stems from the brain. Damage the gateway, and the spirit doesn't come through the same way. Brain damage affecting behavior doesn't negate the spirit, for me.I was gonna reply to an earlier post a couple days ago but didn't get around to it... I'm not gonna go fish it out now, and my respose was gonna be somewhat flippant... regarding the issue with not know where culpability lies because of the way that behavior is affected by the brain, I was gonna say something along the lines of how having a dualistic nature does get you around the conundrum, doesn't it?Whether or not dualism can work, is beside the point that its can act as a band-aid for the problem, no?

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Its not for me. In my view, the mind is a gateway from the spiritual to the physical, and it stems from the brain. Damage the gateway, and the spirit doesn't come through the same way. Brain damage affecting behavior doesn't negate the spirit, for me.
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Whether or not dualism can work, is beside the point that its can act as a band-aid for the problem, no?

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Sheesh. Well you can, of course, just make stuff up to fill the yawning gap, but really, no, it doesn't solve the problem.The problem being that the main argument is not about damage - that just proves the fact that brain configuration affect moral behaviour - it's the fact that our brains are not identical that's the problem. We must all have different starting positions in dealing with moral problems, for some of us it will be easier than others to behave morally. That is plainly unfair if we are later to be judged on it. (You now have to make up a God that compensates).