#breivik

Minority Report philosophy

Minority Report (2002) is a film centred on free will, crime, and punishment. It features Tom Cruise as Chief John Anderton, who works for the PreCrime police. Anderton’s job is to arrest people who are going to commit crimes before they act, as predicted by specialised mutated humans, ‘precogs’. So much for ‘innocent until proven guilty’ . . .

The film’s narrative is predicated on the thesis of determinism: that all events are causally determined by past events. Would-be criminals are arrested to prevent their crimes from occurring as opposed to just dealing with the consequences.

Could this happen in real life? Well, the Universe seems to exhibit quite a lot of uncertainty when we probe it (e.g. quantum events are indeterminate). And reliable predictions would require extensive resources given the complexity of the human mind and our many interactions with our external environments.

Nonetheless, Minority Report may not be far away. Traditionally, justice has roots in the idea of retribution (i.e. punishment). But, in many countries today (e.g. Norway), rehabilitation is valued highly as a means to prevent crimes already.

Many philosophers also believe that there is no such thing as free will (e.g. because our actions are governed by the laws of nature). In such a case punishment should cease to be a thing because people wouldn’t be responsible for actions the Universe determined for them. Society would be an interesting place. How would you feel seeing criminals, like Anders Breivik in his ‘humane prison’, unpunished?

As Derk Pereboom argues, if people can’t be held morally responsible for their actions, we should relinquish reactive attitudes, moving from resentment to sadness, from blame to a will to learn about others, from guilt to regret, and from gratitude to thankfulness.

amen