Sal Paradise wrote:
So every decision you make is so straight forward you do not require you to use your brain,
Eh? How did you leap the almost infinite chasm from "Virtually everything we do in life requires subjectivity," which I dispute, to that?
Weird.
Leaving that aside, yes
every decision you make requires you to use your brain.
Sal Paradise wrote:
you are effect an automon -
Here's the interesting thing; what if you actually are? (I presume, automaton)
We all like to think that we are in control, and that we make reasoned choices about stuff, but do we?
First of all, whilst it is a subject of debate as to the precise percentage, your SUBCONSCIOUS brain deals with well over 90% of your activities. Indeed, many of the scientists at the cutting edge of research into consciousness suggest that your subconscious mind is really in charge, to all intents and purposes, and that your conscious mind is not much more than an interface with the outside world, it sort of learns and detects new outside stuff, but then handles it only for so long as it takes the subconscious mind to learn it, and after that, its role in that is finished, the subconscious has assimilated it, like some sort of Borg.
Now, we each are built according to our genome, and that includes our brains. Each decision must result in a yes or a no, so a simple binary system. I appreciate that if you have a complex decision to think about, the ultimate result may be the product of a zillion different matters being processed until eventually you arrive at a decision however ultimately when you have it figured out, that last synapse will then fire either a yes or a no, a zero or a 1, and you'll either do it, or you won't. What if, genetically, that signal, or the route of signals, was pre-disposed to a couple of 1 branches instead of a couple of zero branches, and so because you were made that way, you are ultimately bound to decide the other way?
This is if you believe, as I do, that the decision making process is just a complex neural physical activity. I don't believe there is anything else, i.e. nothing "non-physical" making an input.
Therefore it may be that every single thing you do, or don't do, is the inevitable result of your genetic make-up; for any given decision, because of how your genes are arranged, the pinball of decision CAN ONLY take one route, and whilst you think you "chose" X, it was, in fact, physically impossible for you to choose Y. Of course, you might "learn" from that, and next time, because of teh consequences, your brain might hae easioly re-arranged the synapses and the connections so that if given the same decision to make it would now be the opposite - but that is the equally a blueprint, and not a "decision" in the sense you have a true choice.
Sal Paradise wrote:
How do you explain Judicial law changes?
That's straightforward, there are many areas where either there is no statute, or else the situation is novel, or else on occasion a statute does turn out to be ambiguous, and in those sort of cases obviously we get what is usually termed "judge-made law". The point is that they can only do this if there isn't, in effect, a law passed by Parliament for that particular circumstance. If there is, they can't countermand it.
Sal Paradise wrote:
and how do you explain the diversity of sentencing for very similar offences if the decision does not include some degree of subjectivity from the judge? If it were not the case you would only need the judge to ensure legal protocol and on conviction the sentence would already be known.
I think you're unnecessarily introducing subjectivity into the sentencing concept. The judge HAS to be objective and the whole system is predicated on precedent, and consistency in sentencing.
No two offences and no two offenders are the same. The judge needs to decide where, within the range of sentencing options for that offence, it falls, and needs to decide where, within the scale of criminality, the defendant lies, both in terms of that particular offence, and his previous character and antecedents. Further, the judge has to give due weight to the mitigation put forward. How I would answer your question is that I believe most judges would carry out this complex analysis with objectivity, that is, doing their best to pass an appropriate sentence based on these objective guidelines etc. It is trite to say that the actual sentence itself must be subjective, from the perspective of the offender - it could hardly be anything but, as it is tailored only to him - but that does not mean the judge didn't act objectively.
And you could easily have a system where the sentence was already known. All parliament would need to do is prescribe fixed sentences for any given offence. The reason you might get a variation in sentence from one judge to another may lie in their genome (see above) more than any lack of objectivity on their part.