| Again, that is not the logic of the notion of responsibility. You are responsible only for those things that you can control, and where the choice was reasonably informed. For example, one is not responsible for being natively intelligent, only for what one does with it. One is not responsible for actions consequent upon deception, as long as the lies were credible, for example, if in a tense situation someone yelled "he has a gun", causing one to shoot the alleged assailant. You do have an interesting point about the difficulty of discerning the truth of subjective states, however, and it is certainly true that there should be a category "nuts but sane", to cover those who clearly have a screw loose, but meet the criterion of appreciating the nature of their actions, so that special treatment is mandated in a correctional setting...... |
