Ethics of Pre-Crime (spoilers from Minority Report)

[Jon_the_Geek]

@erislover

Incidentally, I really liked that scene you mention, Jon the Geek. Clever.

Yeah. Seemingly paradoxically, that was one of the scenes that made me dislike the movie. There was so much potential there for great, deep, thought-provoking science fiction… and they blew it. Of course, we’re discussing it on a “great debates” message board, so I guess they didn’t totally blow it, but still the film itself should have been a sci-fi classic, and it wasn’t.

[Contrapuntal]

@Lamia

Well, again, if the predicted future can be averted then either the predictions are inaccurate or we’re not dealing with predestination. It doesn’t matter if the predictions are partially correct. If the predicted future can be changed at all then either it wasn’t predestined or the prediction was wrong. The ability to predict the future only implies predestination if the psychic, like Cassandra, can see the future but remains powerless to alter it. In a case like that described here the vision of the future is, at most, an image of how the future will be unless something is done now to prevent it. This is just a more advanced form of guessing what is likely to happen in the future, which is what ordinary people do every day.

If I see a child playing in the street, unaware of the speeding truck bearing down on her, it doesn’t take any special ability to predict that there’s going to be a tragic accident…unless I do something about it. If I prevent the accident from happening by grabbing the child or shouting for her to move, I’ve just proven that my “prediction” was not a vision of a predestined future. It was a reasonable guess about the likely result of allowing the current set of circumstances to continue unchecked.

Now, this scenario (or that in the movie) doesn’t rule out predestination. Maybe I swapped one possible future for another through my own free action, or maybe I merely acted out my predestined role. I could have been fated to see the child, fated to guess that she’d be killed unless I saved her, and then fated to save her. But if that’s the case, then my “prediction” was even less accurate than it was in the free-will scenario. In the free-will scenario it was at least a possible future, but in a predetermined universe it couldn’t be even that. The child was never going to be hit by the truck, because I was predestined to prevent that from happening. There’s no “if I had done otherwise” in a predetermined universe.

So the psychics in the movie were superhumanly good at guessing what was likely to happen, or their visions were of a future that never could have been. But either way, the fact that the predicted murders don’t happen thanks to psychic/police intervention is evidence enough that they are not predestined.

Maybe they wern’t good at predicting murders. Maybe the murders were not predestined. The fact remains that that they were always right when predicting non-murders, which in my book argues for predestination. As I said, or meant to, the movie did a sloppy job of handling the paradox of both knowing the future and altering it. At any rate, the premise of the movie and the OP was that the murders would have happened if not prevented. Maybe the prevention was predestined. I am not sure if 100% accuracy on the part of a psychic is necessary to prove predestination. But to answer the OP, if the murders were predestined, the question of ethics does not apply. If not, then no, it is not ethical to punish someone for what he might do.

[Lamia]

@trandallt

Maybe they wern’t good at predicting murders. Maybe the murders were not predestined. The fact remains that that they were always right when predicting non-murders, which in my book argues for predestination. As I said, or meant to, the movie did a sloppy job of handling the paradox of both knowing the future and altering it.

This reminds me, one of the ways some philosophers have attempted to reconcile causality with the idea of free will is to say that we really only exercise free will when we’re making important moral decisions. The rest of the time, we coast along merely responding to outside stimulus. Under such a system it would be possible to predict most mundane events if you had proper insight into the cause-and-effect chain. (Perfect accuracy would depend on whether or not there are truly random occurances in the universe, but that’s another topic.) However, events affected by the free-will moral choices of individuals could not be predicted in such a way.

I never cared much for this particular theory of free will, but it’s been supported by better philosophers than I and it seems consistent with the descriptions of the film here.

At any rate, the premise of the movie and the OP was that the murders would have happened if not prevented. Maybe the prevention was predestined. I am not sure if 100% accuracy on the part of a psychic is necessary to prove predestination. But to answer the OP, if the murders were predestined, the question of ethics does not apply. If not, then no, it is not ethical to punish someone for what he might do.

Agreed. If the “might” seems pretty darn likely I could perhaps see ordering state-provided counseling or a monitoring system being instituted to decrease the odds of potential crime becoming reality (sort of like a sex offender registry, I guess), but it’s unethical to punish someone for something they might or might not do.