What are the best refutations of these common arguments regarding human behavior?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Inevitably in any conversation concerning human behavior, nature or wrongdoing someone will always try to explain why people are the way they are or why they perform certain actions and in response someone always responds with one of two arguments. They either say the suggested reason for someone’s wrongdoing is “no excuse” for it or the classic “I was/am XYZ and I never/don’t do [insert immoral behavior or action].”

My question is since these two rebuttals get used regularly what would be the best refutation in your opinion and are the two refutations offered below reasonable?

My refutation for the “That’s no excuse” response is to say it (whatever it may be) isn’t an excuse for wrongdoing but it is a reason. Whether or not you believe in free will and what kind it’s obvious people do things for reasons even if those reasons aren’t explicitly known to themselves at the time. Someone who did the most random things for no discernible reason at a moment’s notice would be an extremely mentally ill person that couldn’t function in society. Saying that someone for example stole money because they were poor or attacked someone else because they were angry doesn’t excuse their behavior or make it okay. It’s simply a matter of fact explanation that doesn’t necessarily carry any kind of exculpatory power. A reason you don’t like doesn’t magically stop being a reason.

My refutation for the second argument would be more nuanced in that although for example most people who live in poverty don’t commit crime the state of systemic poverty itself is naturally and logically conducive to behaviors and actions we disapprove of which includes crime. If you give 100 average people a choice between right and wrong inevitably some number of them will choose to do the wrong thing for one reason or another. Humans aren’t perfect angels and even people who are good and upstanding citizens aren’t necessarily like that every moment of their life. Temptation and weakness are very powerful forces whether it’s mundane like failing a diet or serious like committing a crime or betraying someone. It doesn’t necessarily make the ones that choose to do the wrong thing intrinsically evil, psychopaths, monsters etc. The number of people who choose to do wrong in any hypothetical scenario only increases if they’re in a suboptimal situation or environment that leads some people to do wrong or break the law for some kind of gain whether financial or otherwise. To use the poverty analogy people living in poverty and horrible environments tend to commit far more street crimes than people who live in gated communities and suburbs and frankly it would be bizarre from a sociological perspective if this wasn’t the case. People aren’t perfect robots that are identical to each other in every single way after all. As mentioned in the previous paragraph this isn’t an attempt to say it’s okay to do bad things in certain circumstances but an attempt to explain why people do the things they do and how their environments influence their decisions.

2

You’re shifting goal posts, not giving a refutation. You’re moving the conversation backwards for no apparent reason other than pedantry. A conversation usually isn’t a debate, and your response would be met with hostility.

Here’s one specific scenario where your response would be unreasonable, and the reasons why.

When someone asks why you did something bad, sometimes he’s only really interested in whether or not you have a good enough excuse. Sometimes you can read his intent from context, sometimes you can’t. If you know he is asking for an excuse you don’t have, don’t get pedantic.

So you think he’s interested in your rationale. You give your reasons, and he says “that’s no excuse”. That’s the entire response, perhaps delivered tersely - he doesn’t follow up with constructive criticism of your rationale. Now you know he wanted to see if you had an excuse, and isn’t interested in your reasons for acting. Do not try to shift the goalposts back to “why”. It’s counterproductive to the conversation. If you don’t have an excuse, say you don’t have an excuse. If he’s too hostile for you to handle cooly, then quit the conversation.

Unless you are implicated in something really bad, in which case say nothing at all and ask for a lawyer.

~Max

3

This isn’t an argument. This speaker is presenting anecdotal evidence. The only way you can refute it directly is to call him or her a liar.

The statement is probably made in the context of an argument; it is likely part of a counterargument. You will probably want to refute the argument, not the specific anectdote. And that’s what you did.

Your response is tailored towards a person who argues that “criminals are intrinsically evil, psychopaths, and monsters”. It would fail horribly if someone’s position is that racism is the major cause of high crime rates in poor neighborhoods.

~Max