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Letters
Letters
Philosophy Fought the Law • Remembering a Great Philosopher • Failure to Relate • Logic & Logos • I-DNA? I Do Not Agree • Rossen’s Universal Knowbots • Thinking About Thinking About Thinking
Philosophy Fought the Law
Dear Editor: If caught by the police, Luke Tarassenko (short story in Issue 134) couldn’t claim he had done no wrong by knocking the escapologist out with a heavy weight, to carry out his instruction to make it ‘as hard as possible’ to escape from the water tank. Hitting him over the head is not a reasonable compliance with his wishes; and the law requires that actions should be ‘reasonable’. Clearly what Tarassenko did was not reasonable (and the court is the judge of what is reasonable). Neither could he claim he couldn’t help himself, that he was a slave of determinism. The law assumes free will – that people can do or not do harmful things.
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