Some Philosophical Ponderings

Rating: 8/10 (20 March 2006)

The Philosophical Problem: arrest and detention of "criminals" before they committed any crime - the future is certain, as the crime is divined by three "gifted" humans who lie submerged in a tank of neurotransmitters at the Precrime center. They feed visions of future murders to the police, who prevent the commission of the crime.
In a word: We have the arrest and imprisonment of "criminals" absent the actus reas, although the guilty mind is certainly at work.
Result: The crime rate plummets - pre-meditated murder is obviated. Only the odd "crime" of passion remain.
Philosophical Assumption: we live in a deterministic world; time is a running reel, each effect determined by its antecedent cause.
Caveat: when we are made aware that we will commit a crime of passion -the film gives the agents a choice to execute or avoid.
Problem: its incoherent to have a vision of a future if that future is in any way alterable. Assuming determinism, there is one future, a still shot of the running reel.
Problem: if the crime is prevented, the future "crime" reported by the precogs is impossible - the future is the prevention of the "crime" - and then it really becomes confusing.
Solution: the precogs report likely futures, taking into account the antecedent circumstances, they report a highly probable occurrence, that for any number of reasons focus on violence and crime. They could just as well "see" the apple falling from the tree and landing in the bush.
Problem: the intervention of the probable act renders that event highly unlikely - now we're in the land of contradiction, and absurdity. If the precogs predict highly likely occurrences, and the crime is going to be prevented, so it has a zero chance of occurrence.
I would have to conclude from the above nonsense that knowledge of the future is impossible. And this irks me.
Problem: is it moral to incarcerate people who have committed no real act of violence - only the formation of intent to commit the crime. There is a case for incarcerating those who haven't committed the crime. An analogy would be the husband who wishes to kill his wife, but hires an assassin to do the dirty work. The husband has clearly acted immorally, yet his shirt is clean of blood.
The assassin is prevented to kill the wife, however. There is no murder, no actus reas. Everyone lives. One would have to have a very high standard of morality to condemn mere thoughts in the absence of harm.
There's a lot of dirty work to be done to sort this out, and I am already in over my depth. Incidentally, Minority Report is a pretty entertaining flick.