Maeve Roughton asks if it’s becoming a crime to think the wrong thoughts.
You are what you eat, but are you also what you think?Most legal, philosophical, and psychiatric minds would say no; but in the wake of hacking scandals that have exposed everything from politicians’ sexual indiscretions to flesh-eating fantasies, public perception nips at the contrary.
For proof of this, we needn’t look any further than the case of former NYPD officer Gilberto Valle, dubbed the ‘Cannibal Cop’ by New York City’s ever-creative bold-face journalists. After public outrage demanded the criminal prosecution of an imagination that was wholly bizarre but hardly unlawful, he was convicted in 2013 of conspiracy to kidnap and for illegally accessing NYPD databases to engage in graphic online communications about kidnapping, killing, and eating women, crimes that he had never acted upon. In December 2015, the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that Valle’s actions weren’t criminal, overturning his conviction, and declaring, “We are loath to give the government power to punish us for our thoughts and not our actions. That includes the power to criminalize an individual’s expression of sexual fantasies, no matter how perverse or disturbing. Fantasizing about committing a crime, even a crime of violence against a real person whom you know, is not a crime.”
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة June/July 2017 من Philosophy Now.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
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هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة June/July 2017 من Philosophy Now.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
The Two Dennises
Hannah Mortimer observes a close encounter of the same kind.
Heraclitus (c.500 BC)
Harry Keith lets flow a stream of ideas about permanence and change.
Does the Cosmos Have a Purpose?
Raymond Tallis argues intently against universal intention.
Is Driving Fossil-Fuelled Cars Immoral?
Rufus Duits asks when we can justify driving our carbon contributors.
Abelard & Carneades Yes & No
Frank Breslin says 'yes and no' to presenting both sides of an argument.
Frankl & Sartre in Search of Meaning
Georgia Arkell compares logotherapy and atheistic existentialism.
Luce Irigaray
Luce Irigaray, now ninety-two years old, was, among many other things, one of the most impactful feminists of the 1970s liberation movements - before she was marginalised, then ostracised, from the francophone intellectual sphere.
Significance
Ruben David Azevedo tells us why, in a limitless universe, we’re not insignificant.
The Present Is Not All There Is To Happiness
Rob Glacier says don’t just live in the now.
Philosophers Exploring The Good Life
Jim Mepham quests with philosophers to discover what makes a life good.