Hi Madfish,
Do you think the situation I described is arbitrary as well?
Just to clear up by what I mean by 'arbitrary'... it doesn't mean "not caused", but simply that there was no ultimate reason why any specific system must be used. Others could suffice; it just turned out that circumstances in the past led to the choice of one.
OK, now on to my thoughts about your question. I do think the situation as you described is arbitrary. It happens to be a situation where I lean towards another view. I say "lean", because ... it's something I've not had to apply in practice, only in thought. And I must be honest with myself and admit that there's a large gap between believing something and actually applying it.
There's two parts. First, I believe that understanding life as consisting of "individuals" is one arbitrary way of looking at life. Another way is to look at lineages, to look at species and descendant hierarchies. Or, maybe more clearly, to look at genes. Think of people as survival mechanisms for genes. Then you can see that, although the genes change their bodies, they persist from generation to generation. The "individual" is but a transport, but a temporary carrier in the chain of a gene persisting itself. We are collections of genes, all in a symbiotic union attempting to persist themselves.
If you look at it in this way, punishment for your ancestor's deeds might make more sense. You are, in many ways, the continuation of your ancestor. And you are, in many ways, responsible for that action.
I think individuality comes from consciousness. We don't feel responsible for what is outside our consciousness. But if we let go of consciousness as the determining factor of what is "me" or "you", then the 'change in policy' that I'm describing above doesn't seem so strange. I personally let go of consciousness as determining 'me' or 'you' a long time ago. To me, consciousness holds no causal power in action; it is more like a sixth 'sense', a post-hoc review of what's going on inside, than anything else.
The second part is again about responsibility. Turns out this is the crux of the discussion of free will I've never followed through with holmes. If you believe that consciousness is not the determining factor of behavior, then I believe the best way to 'dole out' responsiblity is not by 'decisions' (i.e. conscious choices), but by actions and the possibility that they will act that way again. If you have a penchant for hurting others, whether it's due to what we call mental illness, what we call bad attitude, or what we call physical unrestraint, I think it doesn't matter. After all, your effect within the society is not measured by what's going on inside your body, but rather what your actions are. The only reason what's going on inside your body matters is simply to help predict what actions you might take in the future, and thus what effects to the society you might produce.
So, contrary to what I guess as your view, a consciousness-centered view of responsibility, I have a non-consciousness-centered view. I believe it to be much more pragmatic. I have no idea whether it's a sustainable way to live; I will learn that better as I understand people better. And without knowing if it's a sustainable way to live, it's not very fair to call your view "arbitrary"; I'm guessing. But I do believe it is a more "reasonable" or "useful" way to dole out responsiblity.
Sorry for the long post. Feel free to poke holes in the thinking; I see plenty enough reasonable objections anyway. And thanks for your thoughts; good to see you posting.
Ben
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