[FRIAM] Shorthands for Brain-stuff

[uǝlƃ ↙↙↙]

Yes! The manipulationist conception of fault (cause) can help rescue the thread.

Progress targets a higher order intervention than justice targets. Establishing which of us machines premeditates then murders *seems* to be the first step. Then a progressive intervention attempts to mitigate with systemic intervention whereas a justice intervention acts more locally on the particular machine, hoping for some occult percolation out to other machines.

But the manipulationist conception admits that we have to intervene upstream to establish the initial categorization in the first place. The sub-thread about intent, outcome, naive cause-effect, etc. is a distraction from the main point, which is *how* to establish the category of things/behaviors you want to punish/avoid. If the "organic correlate" is a pathological "lesion" that *spans* the human body, say to the parents or being a member of the People of Praise cult, then EEG and fMRI indicators are obviously inadequate because they artificially slice the lesion into two parts and ignore the part outside the one machine. If the organic correlate is clearly, statistically, establishable by comparing individuals, then maybe EEG/fMRI type locales are adequate.

The manipulationist conception helps demonstrate category errors with cautionary tales like Minority Report <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_Report_(film)>. Justice approaches, which try to bound the lesion to being inside human skin (often artificially) avoid punishing things like "the ability to premeditate" and rightly focus on punishing actual murder. It's fine to think whatever you want. Just be careful what premeditation you *act* on. I think a useful line between progressive vs justice approaches is drawn by the *permanence* of the consequences. If an intervention is irreversible, then maybe it's best to take a small-scoped justice approach. If it's reversible, then you can try out a systemic intervention as long as you also install measures for backing out of it if it goes horribly wrong.


On October 4, 2020 9:48:35 PM PDT, Russ Abbott <russ.abbott at gmail.com> wrote:
>One obvious quibble is to ask whether "A  determines the probability
>density over ..." isn't just a way of substituting the word *determines
>*for
>*causes*.
>
>On the other hand, I like this approach. Another way to think about is
>that
>changing A results in a change in B (or a change in the probability of
>B).
>It's like A is something like a remote control for B.
>
>What's especially interesting about this approach is that one is not
>obligated to show how that change happens -- just that it does.