Minority Report offers several topics for moral debate in the realm of crime and justice. Primarily, of course, is the question of the legitimacy of a precog's prediction of a crime as compared to the predicted criminal's realized line of action.
These predictions alienate the supposed perpetrators as murderous monsters. The "justice" perpetrators receive actually removes their ability to provide legal defenses for themselves. What the precogs offer the police can be thought of as conditional surveillance—looking into their visions is similar to watching footage from a security camera, but it's a security camera in the future that might be at a different angle than you think, or that won't capture the whole story, or that is capturing something that ends up not occurring.
The precogs' predictions (accusations) are like a futuristic version of red-light and speed cameras that record when we break automobile laws. In both scenarios, the accused is found guilty only through surveillance, which is not sufficient enough evidence to convict someone of wrong-doing. There is an added level of injustice in the Minority Report scenario, though: the surveilled event may be a complete fabrication that is not the least bit actualized.
This brings me to Terri Murray's "Our Post-Moral Future?" which describes new technology capable of "reading" brains to determine if a person is likely to commit a crime. Hello, science fiction in the real world. She also brings up how our society likes to think of criminals as "ill" people who can be cured of an inherent inclination to commit crime. Absolute tomfoolery, if you ask me. Most people have felt hatred for another person before, and some of us have thought about how nice it would be to kill a person we hate; but hardly anybody decides to go the immoral route. Most of us take the time to think rationally and make the decision that we are not going to murder our high school disciplinarians, our exes, our in-laws, or our roommates.
Murderers have that option to, the option to not commit murder. Even if a man has his hand on a trigger and is ready to fire at his boss, he can still decide to not shoot. Hell, even if he does shoot and immediately comes to his senses, he can call for help or try to give first aid assistance. That would save his boss's life and get him stuck with a charge of simply attempted murder. The point is that he has options.
In Minority Report the supposed criminals have no options. The whole concept of freedom is neglected, and the society fully embraces a type of mechanistic world view, that everything that will happen directly results from everything that is happening, and the future cannot be changed. Free will then doesn't exist, and morality becomes an illusion.
Very thoughtful blog. You need to get your work in on time to get full, or any, credit.
ReplyDelete