scholarly journals Professional Judges’ Disbelief in Free Will Does Not Decrease Punishment

2020 ◽  
pp. 194855062091505 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Genschow ◽  
Heinz Hawickhorst ◽  
Davide Rigoni ◽  
Ellen Aschermann ◽  
Marcel Brass
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Past Research ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Media ◽  
Retributive Punishment

There is a debate in psychology and philosophy on the societal consequences of casting doubts about individuals’ belief in free will. Research suggests that experimentally reducing free will beliefs might affect how individuals evaluate others’ behavior. Past research has demonstrated that reduced free will beliefs decrease laypersons’ tendency toward retributive punishment. This finding has been used as an argument for the idea that promoting anti-free will viewpoints in the public media might have severe consequences for the legal system because it may move judges toward softer retributive punishments. However, actual implications for the legal system can only be drawn by investigating professional judges. In the present research, we investigated whether judges ( N = 87) are affected by reading anti-free will messages. The results demonstrate that although reading anti-free will texts reduces judges’ belief in free will, their recommended sentences are not influenced by their (manipulated) belief in free will.

scholarly journals Professional judges’ disbelief in free will and punishment

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Genschow ◽  
Davide Rigoni ◽  
Heinz Hawickhorst ◽  
Ellen Aschermann ◽  
Marcel Brass
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Past Research ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Media ◽  
Retributive Punishment

There is a debate in psychology and philosophy on the societal consequences of casting doubts about individuals’ belief in free will. Research suggests that experimentally reducing free will beliefs might affect how individuals evaluate others’ behavior. Past research has demonstrated that reduced free will beliefs decrease laypersons’ tendency towards retributive punishment. This finding has been used as an argument for the idea that promoting anti-free will viewpoints in the public media might have severe consequences for the legal system, because it may move judges towards softer retributive punishments. However, actual implications for the legal system can only be drawn by investigating professional judges. In the present research, we investigated whether judges (N = 87) are affected by reading anti-free will messages. The results demonstrate that although reading anti-free will texts reduces judges’ belief in free will, their recommended sentences are not influenced by their (manipulated) belief in free will.

scholarly journals Why neuroscience does not disprove free will

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcel Brass ◽  
Ariel Furstenberg ◽  
Alfred R. Mele
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Decision Process ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Brain Activation ◽  
Specific Pattern ◽  
Unconscious Processes ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Media ◽  
The Common

While the question whether free will exists or not has concerned philosophers for centuries, empirical research on this question is relatively young. About 35 years ago Benjamin Libet designed an experiment that challenged the common intuition of free will, namely that conscious intentions are causally efficacious. Libet demonstrated that conscious intentions are preceded by a specific pattern of brain activation, suggesting that unconscious processes determine our decisions and we are only retrospectively informed about these decisions. Libet-style experiments have ever since dominated the discourse about the existence of free will and have found their way into the public media. Here we review the most important challenges to the common interpretation of Libet-style tasks and argue that the common interpretation is questionable. Brain activity preceding conscious decisions reflects the decision process rather than its outcome. Furthermore, the decision process is configured by conditional intentions that participants form at the beginning of the experiment. We conclude that Libet-style tasks do not provide a serious challenge to our intuition of free will.

scholarly journals Civic death as a mechanism of retributive punishment: Academic purges in Turkey

2020 ◽  
pp. 146247452094174
Author(s):  
Seçkin Sertdemir Özdemir
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
Retributive Punishment ◽  
The Status ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
First Time

In an era when authoritarian governments increasingly target academics, Turkey’s 2016 purge of more than 6,000 academics and their diminution to civic death is conspicuous in its cruelty. Although unprecedented, this is not the first time that Turkish academics have been punished en masse. By looking at the tools with which academics have been expelled from educational institutions, the public sphere, and the political body, I attempt to develop a nuanced understanding of the interconnected forms of punishment directed towards academic citizens as knowledge producers. I suggest that the 1980 coup accomplished three things: it introduced new mechanisms of punishment based on a logic of retribution instead of compensation; it changed the legal system into a regime of exception; it transformed academics into patriotic worker-citizens. The latest purges have brought an additional change in the status of academics’ citizenship, rendering them as disposable citizens forever at risk of being targeted as the ‘civic dead’.

Welfare State Values and Public Service Media in the Era of Datafication

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaarina Nikunen ◽  
Jenni Hokka
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Social Solidarity ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media Companies ◽  
Data Practices ◽  
Public Media ◽  
New Public

Welfare states have historically been built on values of egalitarianism and universalism and through high taxation that provides free education, health care, and social security for all. Ideally, this encourages participation of all citizens and formation of inclusive public sphere. In this welfare model, the public service media are also considered some of the main institutions that serve the well-being of an entire society. That is, independent, publicly funded media companies are perceived to enhance equality, citizenship, and social solidarity by providing information and programming that is driven by public rather than commercial interest. This article explores how the public service media and their values of universality, equality, diversity, and quality are affected by datafication and a platformed media environment. It argues that the embeddedness of public service media in a platformed media environment produces complex and contradictory dependencies between public service media and commercial platforms. The embeddedness has resulted in simultaneous processes of adapting to social media logics and datafication within public service media as well as in attempts to create alternative public media value-driven data practices and new public media spaces.

Domestic politics and the power to punish: The case of national human rights institutions

2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 385-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan M. Welch
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Domestic Institutions ◽  
Electoral Institutions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Legal Punishment ◽  
International Pressure ◽  
National Human ◽  
National Human Rights Institutions

Why do states give institutions the ability to legally punish them? While past research focuses on international pressure to delegate authority to third parties, I argue that domestic politics plays a key role. By viewing domestic politics through a principal–agent framework, I argue that the more accountable individual legislators remain to the public, the more likely it is that the legislature will delegate legal punishment authority. I focus on National Human Rights Institutions—domestic institutions tasked with protection and promotion of human rights—to build the argument. Electoral institutions that decrease monitoring of legislator agents, or institutional makeup that allows the executive to displace the public as the principal lead to National Human Rights Institutions without punishment power. Using Bayesian logistic analyses I test four hypotheses, all of which are in agreement with the argument.

The Legal Framework for Foundations in the Habsburg Monarchy from 1750 to 1918

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-172
Author(s):  
Gabriele Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Public Good ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
The State ◽  
Habsburg Monarchy ◽  
The Public ◽  
Regulation And Supervision ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
The Law

Foundations, as permanent funds established by a certain legal act, can serve manifold purposes, but often pursue charitable goals. As such, they play an important role for the public good. Therefore, states always had an interest in fostering foundations by providing a pertinent legal framework. In Austria, this topic has not yet been the focus of scholarship. Through this study some light is shed on the implementation of the law on foundations in the Habsburg Monarchy. It focuses on the role of the state and its legal system regarding the regulation and supervision of foundations from 1750 to 1918. This period is characterized by the sovereigns’ endeavor to regulate the position of foundations via extensive legislation. In particular, a system of oversight for foundations was created in order to guarantee the attainment of their charitable goals. In fact, this system prevailed until the end of the 20thcentury.

Facets of the Irish Diaspora: ‘Irishness’ in 20th Century Scotland

1996 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph M. Bradley
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Social Setting ◽  
Population Groups ◽  
Football Club ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Arena ◽  
Public Media ◽  
The Social ◽  
Common Identity

This paper argues that Celtic Football Club has played a central organising role in establishing a common identity for Catholics of Irish descent in Scotland. Concentrating on evidence taken from discourse in the public media, it draws attention to reactions to this identity by other population groups. Such responses, which are frequently ferocious in the degree of rejection they express, highlight the effects of Celtic's role. It provides a public arena within which Irishness can be expressed; at the same time, it draws fire from hostile elements in the social setting. Tensions within the Irish community about their common identity may in part be responses to these reactions.

scholarly journals Gazali, H.M Bitcoin Investment Behaviour: A Pilot Study

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-86
Author(s):  
Haneffa Muchlis Gazali
Keyword(s):  
Factor Analysis ◽  
Pilot Study ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Basic Knowledge ◽  
The Public ◽  
Blockchain Technology ◽  
Public Media ◽  
Collection Period ◽  
Investment Behaviour

The evolution of blockchain technology that promotes decentralised peer to peer electronic cash system named as Bitcoin is becoming trending across the globe. Although the Bitcoin price is extremely volatile, the popularity of bitcoin is seemingly unambiguous. The Bitcoin trending has garnered serious attention from the public, media and academia.  Hitherto, no research has yet systematically investigated the factors influencing the intention to invest in Bitcoin. Thus, the objective of this study is to identify the factors that influence the intention to invest in Bitcoin. An online survey was distributed via the email to the target respondents, those who have basic knowledge of Bitcoin investment. After three weeks of the data collection period for the pilot study, 45 samples were gathered to be tested further. Using the SPSS programme, the data were analysed through the reliability test and factor analysis. The results of the study indicate that the items are valid and reliable. The exploratory factor analysis also discloses that the sampling is satisfactory. Being limited preliminary analysis, this study lacks the empirical evidence to confirm the relationships between the studied variables. Therefore, in future an adequate and bigger sample is needed to establish the empirical support on the associations of the studied variables

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