If you really want to grow brain, pick up a book on a subject you have little interest in. Get interested in it. Study it. I've done this a bunch of times. I was surprised that I could switch from disliking something and feeling all the drain and boredom that I felt in high-school math class, to thoroughly enjoying the material and feeling like I was actually gaining something. Amazing!
Somebody should be paying us to house these images in our brains. Phenomenal representation of form through the neural architecture of the brain is not a low-cost endeavour. The brain is the single most energy consuming organ in the entire human body. Now, I have to maintain this adspace in my cranium representing "Adzookie.com" and they aren't paying me for it. In-fact, they are paying this family to put the idea in my head, pretty much without my permission at all. I would like advertisers to begin paying me to look at their ads and housing it in the adspace inside my head.
Metaphors We Think With: The Role of Metaphor in Reasoning Paul H. Thibodeau, Lera Boroditsky* Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States of America http://www-psych.stanford.edu/~lera/papers/crime-metaphors.pdf
I couldn't find the book I promised, I had closed it I guess. But there is another here that address the issue more directly:
Doing Justice Better: The Politics Of Restorative Justice by David J. Cornwell
And finally, the paper For The Law Neuroscience Changes Nothing and Everything by Jonathan Cohen and Joshua Greene http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~jgreene/GreeneWJH/GreeneCohenPhilTrans-04.pdf
"Free will as we ordinarily understand it is an illusion generated by our cognitive architecture. Retributivist notions of criminal responsibility ultimately depend on this illusion, and, if we are lucky, they will give way to consequentialist ones, thus radically transforming our approach to criminal justice."
The absence of free-will as a belief is common among neuroscientists, however there are a few exceptions, such as Michael Gazzaniga. Some of these men, lawyers and other justice official organized by the Dana Foundation attempted to rebut the consequenalist view.
For more proponents from science of the view that free-will is false and or our justice systems flawed see:
Brain, Mind and Consciousness (conference) http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4831204601412295941
Neat, I just have some thoughts on the word infinite. In-finite, not-finite. Everything in the picture and the picture itself are all bounded, therefore finite. Only one is infinite.
Dang, my favorite lines from Shakespeare's As You Like It is not there.
"All the world's a stage And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts." (Act II, Scene 7)
"All the world's indeed a stage And we are merely players Performers and portrayers Each another's audience outisde the gilded cage." (Limelight by Rush)
"Somebody said all the world is a stage and each of us is a player that's what I've been trying to tell you" (The Greatest Man That Ever Lived by Weezer)
Come to think of it also, I had a modern criminology book on my desktop at home that specifically addresses the influence of public perception on criminal justice system. Most of which proves to be negative to the over-all reduction of crime and recidivism rates.
This book also lead me to research on the influence metaphorical-framing on public perception of crime which is very interesting.
And I can direct readers to Johnathan Cohen and Joshua Greene, Criminologists, Psychologists and advocates of a consequentialist approach to criminal justice.
I'll follow up when I get the title of the other documents.
Also, details of the case of Leopold and Loeb and statements given by Darrow in their defence can be viewed at the excellent website http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/famous/loeb/5c.html
"What is a mitigating circumstance? Is it youth? If so, why? Simply because the child has not the judgment of life that a grown person has...
"Here are two boys who are minors. The law would forbid them making contracts, forbid them marrying without the consent of their parents, would not permit them to vote. Why? Because they haven't the judgment which only comes with years, because they are not fully responsible...
"I cannot understand the glib, lighthearted carelessness of lawyers who talk of hanging two boys as if they were talking of a holiday or visiting the races..."
Darrow then looked at Judge Caverly and his voice hushed in respect, "I don't believe there is a judge in Cook County that would not take into consideration the mental status of any man before they sentence him to death."
"They call it a cold-blooded murder because they want to take human lives....This is the most cold-blooded murder, says the State, that ever occurred....I have never yet tried a case where the state's attorney did not say that it was the most cold-blooded, inexcusable, premeditated case that ever occurred. If is was murder, there never was such a murder...Lawyers are apt to say that."
"This is a senseless, useless, purposeless, motiveless act of two boys....There was not a particle of hate, there was not a grain of malice, there was no opportunity to be cruel except as death is cruel -- and death is cruel."
"They had a weird, almost impossible relationship. Leopold, with his obsession of the superman, had repeatedly said that Loeb was his idea of the superman. He had the attitude toward him that one has to his most devoted friend, or that a man has to a lover. Without the combination of these two, nothing of this sort probably would have happened....all the testimony of the alienists....shows that this terrible act was the act of immature and diseased brains, the act of children.
"Nobody can explain it any other way.
"No one can imagine it any other way.
"It is not possible that it could have happened in any other way."
BTW, the defense attorney representing Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb was the world-renowned American Civil Liberties Lawyer Clarence Darrow. Darrow was most famous for representing John Scopes in the Scopes Monkey Trials and is portrayed as Henry Drummond in the 1960 film Inherit the Wind by the actor Spencer Tracy. The film is a dramatization of the Scops Monkey Trials.
The reason I bring up his name is that he came to defend Leopold and Loeb because of his metaphysical beliefs and how they pertain to crime. These can be learned from his 1922 book Crime: Its Cause and Treatment. Which I think gives a clear insight into why the justice system doesn't serve to reduce or prevent crime.
The book can be viewed on project gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12027)
The comments here are rather representative of the sentiments of the general population and constitutes the reason we do not have a justice system.
Interestingly enough the general idea and naming of "penetentiaries" was penance; remorse for past conduct. And that is the stated goal of the current prison system, otherwise given as rehabilitation.
There are a couple of high-profile cases that I think can be considered when evaluating this one. The first is that of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold who were convicted of the murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks. They abducted him because he appeared vulnerable and not because of anything personal between them. They then killed him and left his body in the woods. After killing Franks, Leopold and Loeb attempted to get ransom money from the parents. In hindsight this behavior was odd because Leopold and Loeb were both from wealthy families and could have just about anything they wanted. Certainly more than the Franks would be able to pay.
A clue to their motives came with the confession of Richard Loeb. He accidentally said something like "I planned it so well, you won't figure it out." to the cops. So what was the reason? Loeb had an IQ rating of 210 and Leopold's was rated at 180. Psychoanalysts called into the case determined that Loeb planned the murder as a test of his intelligence and ability to out-smart police investigators. Leopold on the other hand was more enamored by Loeb and had requested homosexual congess with Loeb. Loeb agreed if Leopold would help him carry out his plan to commit the perfect crime. Ironically, investigators were led to Leopold when a pair of eye-glasses were retrieved from the crime scene, the bridge piece came from a local retailer who recognized them as belonging to Leopold.
What is interesting about this case is the particular kind of neuroses that led to the murder. Both Leopold and Loeb were "model prisoners" inside the United States prison system. Leopold even founded one of the first libraries and schools in a prison. Perhaps Loeb continued to fancy himself smarter than the police, more than likely however, his delusion was shattered when he was caught.
The second case was much more recent and it is that of Stanley "Tookie" Williams. Williams was credited as a co-founder of the Crips, a South Central Las Angeles street gang. He was convicted on several accounts of murder and armed robbery. Williams was sentenced to death and lived the remainder of his life on death-row. What is particularly interesting about Williams is that he was the model of a reformed inmate. He became deeply religious and remorseful for his past offenses. In 1997 during an apology he said that he would "spend the rest of my life working toward solutions." Williams penned several books aimed at youth and the laudable "Protocol for Peace" which I recommend reading. Williams filed for Clemency with Schwarzenegger, then Governor of California. While considering the case a large support group built up around Williams to support his application, but an even larger group rose up to see to it that he was executed. Interestingly, a split occurred in the victim's families, some wanted him executed, but just as many wanted him to spend the rest of his life in prison (the result of getting clemency) writing to troubled youth inerested in gang culture.
If there was ever the possibility of the most heinous criminal being reformed, Stanley "Tookie" Williams certainly seemed to fit our expectations. Still, there is some vengefulness in the general population that ensured Schwarzenegger's decision would be a negative to Williams.
On that final note; I've spent some time studying the interviews given by Charles Manson and the man has a surprising amount of insight into the vengeful-hateful nature of the average human being who resides outside of prison and who would readily latch onto the labels "Patriot" or "Do-gooder". He claims there is a drastic decrease in the appearance of dishonesty inside of prison, where a single lie can get you killed. Outside of prison, falsehoods predominate, people are far removed from the reality of their own self-hood, which in prison they are forced to recognize. So perhaps, we should all spend a year or two in prison to get to know ourselves.
I used to think I did stuff for myself. I used to think I cared about how I look entirely for myself. But I did this meditative experiment where I concentrated on up-rooting all of my emotional attachment to the people of this world, including my closest friends and family. As I began to mute these processes in my mind it became increasingly apparent to me that pretty much everything I considered myself to be was dependent on someone in particular, if not a nebulous and vague conception of the "out there" looking at me, or what I look like from outside (someone else). The more I attempted to uproot my psychological attachment to the evaluation of others, the less I cared about looking good/different, acting appropriate to social convention (out of fear of disapproval) and a variety of other habits and psychological barriers put up when I was a child. Specific to this case; I identified a latent desire to be tattooed as essentially appearing some way discrete to the outside world. A part of me pined to show another and say "Hey, look what I've got, isn't it cool?". Besides that there are some neutoanatomical and functional reasons why I think this is true as well.
Rare mutation of insect-borne infectious disease transmitted to wife by sexual intercourse = Research Paper
Metaphors We Think With: The Role of Metaphor in
Reasoning
Paul H. Thibodeau, Lera Boroditsky*
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States of America
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/~lera/papers/crime-metaphors.pdf
I couldn't find the book I promised, I had closed it I guess. But there is another here that address the issue more directly:
Doing Justice Better: The Politics Of Restorative Justice by David J. Cornwell
And finally, the paper For The Law Neuroscience Changes Nothing and Everything by Jonathan Cohen and Joshua Greene
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~jgreene/GreeneWJH/GreeneCohenPhilTrans-04.pdf
"Free will as we ordinarily
understand it is an illusion generated by our cognitive
architecture. Retributivist notions of criminal responsibility
ultimately depend on this illusion, and, if we are
lucky, they will give way to consequentialist ones, thus
radically transforming our approach to criminal justice."
The absence of free-will as a belief is common among neuroscientists, however there are a few exceptions, such as Michael Gazzaniga. Some of these men, lawyers and other justice official organized by the Dana Foundation attempted to rebut the consequenalist view.
For more proponents from science of the view that free-will is false and or our justice systems flawed see:
Brain, Mind and Consciousness (conference)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4831204601412295941
Beyond Belief
http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/beyond-belief-science-religion-reason-and-survival
Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0
http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/beyond-belief-enlightenment-2-0
Here is a teaser; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdRZk4NRgYs
"All the world's a stage
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts."
(Act II, Scene 7)
"All the world's indeed a stage
And we are merely players
Performers and portrayers
Each another's audience outisde the gilded cage."
(Limelight by Rush)
"Somebody said all the world is a stage
and each of us is a player
that's what I've been trying to tell you"
(The Greatest Man That Ever Lived by Weezer)
This book also lead me to research on the influence metaphorical-framing on public perception of crime which is very interesting.
And I can direct readers to Johnathan Cohen and Joshua Greene, Criminologists, Psychologists and advocates of a consequentialist approach to criminal justice.
I'll follow up when I get the title of the other documents.
"What is a mitigating circumstance? Is it youth? If so, why? Simply because the child has not the judgment of life that a grown person has...
"Here are two boys who are minors. The law would forbid them making contracts, forbid them marrying without the consent of their parents, would not permit them to vote. Why? Because they haven't the judgment which only comes with years, because they are not fully responsible...
"I cannot understand the glib, lighthearted carelessness of lawyers who talk of hanging two boys as if they were talking of a holiday or visiting the races..."
Darrow then looked at Judge Caverly and his voice hushed in respect, "I don't believe there is a judge in Cook County that would not take into consideration the mental status of any man before they sentence him to death."
"They call it a cold-blooded murder because they want to take human lives....This is the most cold-blooded murder, says the State, that ever occurred....I have never yet tried a case where the state's attorney did not say that it was the most cold-blooded, inexcusable, premeditated case that ever occurred. If is was murder, there never was such a murder...Lawyers are apt to say that."
"This is a senseless, useless, purposeless, motiveless act of two boys....There was not a particle of hate, there was not a grain of malice, there was no opportunity to be cruel except as death is cruel -- and death is cruel."
"They had a weird, almost impossible relationship. Leopold, with his obsession of the superman, had repeatedly said that Loeb was his idea of the superman. He had the attitude toward him that one has to his most devoted friend, or that a man has to a lover. Without the combination of these two, nothing of this sort probably would have happened....all the testimony of the alienists....shows that this terrible act was the act of immature and diseased brains, the act of children.
"Nobody can explain it any other way.
"No one can imagine it any other way.
"It is not possible that it could have happened in any other way."
The reason I bring up his name is that he came to defend Leopold and Loeb because of his metaphysical beliefs and how they pertain to crime. These can be learned from his 1922 book Crime: Its Cause and Treatment. Which I think gives a clear insight into why the justice system doesn't serve to reduce or prevent crime.
The book can be viewed on project gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12027)
Interestingly enough the general idea and naming of "penetentiaries" was penance; remorse for past conduct. And that is the stated goal of the current prison system, otherwise given as rehabilitation.
There are a couple of high-profile cases that I think can be considered when evaluating this one. The first is that of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold who were convicted of the murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks. They abducted him because he appeared vulnerable and not because of anything personal between them. They then killed him and left his body in the woods. After killing Franks, Leopold and Loeb attempted to get ransom money from the parents. In hindsight this behavior was odd because Leopold and Loeb were both from wealthy families and could have just about anything they wanted. Certainly more than the Franks would be able to pay.
A clue to their motives came with the confession of Richard Loeb. He accidentally said something like "I planned it so well, you won't figure it out." to the cops. So what was the reason? Loeb had an IQ rating of 210 and Leopold's was rated at 180. Psychoanalysts called into the case determined that Loeb planned the murder as a test of his intelligence and ability to out-smart police investigators. Leopold on the other hand was more enamored by Loeb and had requested homosexual congess with Loeb. Loeb agreed if Leopold would help him carry out his plan to commit the perfect crime. Ironically, investigators were led to Leopold when a pair of eye-glasses were retrieved from the crime scene, the bridge piece came from a local retailer who recognized them as belonging to Leopold.
What is interesting about this case is the particular kind of neuroses that led to the murder. Both Leopold and Loeb were "model prisoners" inside the United States prison system. Leopold even founded one of the first libraries and schools in a prison. Perhaps Loeb continued to fancy himself smarter than the police, more than likely however, his delusion was shattered when he was caught.
The second case was much more recent and it is that of Stanley "Tookie" Williams. Williams was credited as a co-founder of the Crips, a South Central Las Angeles street gang. He was convicted on several accounts of murder and armed robbery. Williams was sentenced to death and lived the remainder of his life on death-row. What is particularly interesting about Williams is that he was the model of a reformed inmate. He became deeply religious and remorseful for his past offenses. In 1997 during an apology he said that he would "spend the rest of my life working toward solutions." Williams penned several books aimed at youth and the laudable "Protocol for Peace" which I recommend reading. Williams filed for Clemency with Schwarzenegger, then Governor of California. While considering the case a large support group built up around Williams to support his application, but an even larger group rose up to see to it that he was executed. Interestingly, a split occurred in the victim's families, some wanted him executed, but just as many wanted him to spend the rest of his life in prison (the result of getting clemency) writing to troubled youth inerested in gang culture.
If there was ever the possibility of the most heinous criminal being reformed, Stanley "Tookie" Williams certainly seemed to fit our expectations. Still, there is some vengefulness in the general population that ensured Schwarzenegger's decision would be a negative to Williams.
On that final note; I've spent some time studying the interviews given by Charles Manson and the man has a surprising amount of insight into the vengeful-hateful nature of the average human being who resides outside of prison and who would readily latch onto the labels "Patriot" or "Do-gooder". He claims there is a drastic decrease in the appearance of dishonesty inside of prison, where a single lie can get you killed. Outside of prison, falsehoods predominate, people are far removed from the reality of their own self-hood, which in prison they are forced to recognize. So perhaps, we should all spend a year or two in prison to get to know ourselves.