The proper term is "believe", not "know". Apparently you are too conceited to concede this point.
There is belief because of evidence, belief in the absence of evidence, and belief in opposition to evidence. If you insist, my use of "know" is the scientific sense, where all knowledge is tentative, and subject to better evidence. But if you wish to call it "belief", then so is the vast majority of what scientists normally would use the term "knowledge" for.
Your statement is a strawman because "both feelings are equally valid" does not mean that we can make no judgments. Understanding both sides does not mean agreeing with both sides.
So our legal system is counterproductive? Ultimately, it's a question of values: should people be held responsible for their actions? I say yes, you say no. Saying it's "unsupported" is silly.
It is your assertion that is unsupported and counterproductive. Please read what I actually wrote.
You seem to have not paid any attention to my post at all. I specifically said that we should recognize causal factors, but that we should assign blame in addition, rather than instead. Your insistence that they are mutually is bizarre, as is your insistence that people do not have the ability to choose their own actions.
Perhaps I am wrong, but it seems that your notion of assignation of blame has more to do with distancing yourself from them than with addressing the actual problem.
So it's my fault that people flew planes into the WTC?
Nice strawman. Let me try its equivalent: One day, these evil people, simply because they are evil, decided to choose a target at random and go through a great deal of trouble, including the loss of their own lives, mainly just because they are evil. There was nothing about our own national policies that made us the target, it is because these evildoers are subhuman.
See, I can build strawmen too. Isn't it fun?
I don't know what you're saying here.
You did not like "one similarity implies lots of similarities". I suggest that, being human, the "lots of similarities" is actually the case, and that you are attempting to use the same logic in another way, that "one difference implies lots of differences", to say that because their lives led to terrorist actions that they are somehow not even the same species as you, but "subhuman". The logic you complain about is the same logic you employ.
But that's not the issue. The question is not whether ordinary people can be cruel, but whether everyone is a potential terrorist. Your position seems to be "Most people can be talked into shocking someone, therefore everyone would become a mass murderer if given the right opportunity".
And is 60% "everyone"?
First, you conveniently ignore that Milgram was able to get higher percentages in other situations. Second, please recall that his experiment involved an unknown researcher and about an hour of a volunteer's time. In that context, the percentages achieved are stunning. We can look at replications and other experiments (Zimbardo's prison experiment comes to mind, but I hate him, so I'd rather not use it) to show the effect of environment far outstripping any personality variables. If you like, read "The education of a torturer" by Gibson and Haritos-Fatouros.
Interestingly, in my classes when I ask whether students think they would go all the way to the end of the Milgram experiment, there is one life experience that is the strongest predictor that a student will raise his or her hand. If they have been through boot camp, they know. My current or former military students know what their environment is capable of drawing from them.
You're the one trying to lecture me. So get off your high horse.
You claimed Milgram's experiment "did no such thing". If you only meant that there were some people who did not go all the way, I will agree with that. If you meant the stronger statement that Milgram did not demonstrate the greater power of the situation (as opposed to personality variables), I think you have no case.
You said that causation isn't onternal. That means that people are not responsible for their actions.
You are still thinking in terms of credit, blame, and individual responsibility. For you, if causation is external, the individual is off the hook. But part of external causation *is* the contingencies of the behavior--if you let the individual's behavior off the hook, you are artificially removing one aspect of the environmental control. If a behavior should be punished or reinforced, we *must* respond to it. This is a separate issue entirely from "blame" or "credit".
Yes, and one the things about the environment that we should change is we should express our outrage at their crimes, at stop making excuses for them.
I agree completely. We should also express our outrage at the conditions which contribute to their behavior, and stop making excuses for those who refuse to do anything to change these.
And part of that is making it quite clear that some behavior is simply unacceptable.
Agreed also
If you're going to claim that terrorism is not, in fact, caused by terrorists, then you are the one with the burden of proof. People can choose to be terrorists without any "causal factors", but "causal factors" can't cause terrorism without someone choosing to be a terrorist.
Your first sentence is either trivially true by definition, or meaningless. I thank you, though, for such a concise presentation of what I argue against. Your causal chain, despite what you say above, in this sentence ends at the terrorist. Your blaming of them allows you to stop here, without asking the obvious "what causes terrorists?" Your second sentence, purely assertion and circular reasoning, also sums up the counterproductivity of your view. This is belief in opposition to the evidence.
(As an aside, what percentage of terrorists do you think label themselves "terrorists"? Do you think they share your view of their "choice"?)
But if you ever are able to find what it is about their personality that predicts that someone is a terrorist instead of merely labeling them after the fact, I hope you win the Nobel.
