Throwing dice and murder - a question about intentionality

Church

If I strap on a gun and set off across country in an attempt to kill Mark, what are my odds of success?

What? I’m just trying to figure my degree of culpability here.

Anonymous

I’d say the difference is commitment.

If you’re rolling the dice, if you’re committing anything to the roll of the dice, it’s your money. You’ve already committed yourself to the rules of the game when you laid your money down. The rules to the game are set. The money might even already be committed and be forfeit if you don’t roll. So any commitment of yourself to a deed has already been made, and all that is left to commit is (maybe) the wager.

If you’re pulling the trigger, you’re committing yourself to the possibility that the victim will die when you pull the trigger, Even at 5:1 odds against, even at 1000:1 odds against killing anyone, that’s still a big commitment.

Karan

I’d just say it’s a case of semantics – we say that the throwing of the dice automatically implies he doesn’t intend to throw a six, but really it’s our own perceptions towards dice as devices of chance and guns as devices of violence that play into this interpretation.

For example, if instead of loading one bullet in a revolver and pulling the trigger, hoping it fires, let’s say he rolls a dice, which if it comes up six, an automatic mechanism causes a fully loaded gun to fire, killing Smith.

Brown intentionally does something that exposes Smith to a 1 in 6 chance of harm in both cases, and should be deserving of the same punishment/public perception.

Rolling a die independently of this “death-mechanism” is just something that we associate more with chance, and are far less likely to assign credit/blame to Brown for when taking the chance pays off.

shadowfirebird

Some good thoughts here. But I think it might also have something to do with alternative outcomes.

If I point the gun at you and pull the trigger, it’s true I have a one in six chance of actually shooting you, but there are only two alternative outcomes: either I kill you or nothing happens. So pointing the gun at you and pulling the trigger makes my intent plain no matter the chance of a live round getting fired.

That’s not the same for the dice throw — there are six possible outcomes.

Dewi Morgan

These kind of questions usually just highlight that english can give a word multiple meanings: in this case, “intent”.

The most obvious meaning of intent is “desired outcome” – in both situations described, winning the game or killing the foe are desired outcomes.

However, if you had hoped to lose your foe’s money on the gambling, or had hoped he’d stay alive after the Russian roulette so you could torture him some more, then neither outcome would be the one you “intended” in that sense.

Another sense of “intent” is used in the Knobe effect, where it appears to mean “considered as a factor when making a decision” – once the decision to make a profit has been made, then bad side-effects to that profit are considered, but good ones are not (as they would make no difference).

In law, intent generally means cognizance (you knew the result was reasonably likely), and hence culpability. If in the kobe effect the company was sued for improving the environment and hence driving someone out of business, then they would quite possibly be culpable for that loss of business.

teapot

after I thought about it I decided that in both cases Brown intentionally did something knowing that it would have a one-in-six chance of achieving his desired outcome. Is there more to it?

That’s the conclusion I came to before reading that paragraph. Just to throw a spanner in the works – I have serious doubts about the odds of 1 in 6 for russian roulette. That statistic takes no account of the impact of the weight of the bullet in the cylinder (unless the cylinder of the gun is spun in a position like that of a centrifuge, before being clicked shut) and assumes the gun has universal non-resistance across all its parts . Coins are not 50/50. Guns are surely even less predictable.

Abelian Monoid

Oh, you can check my calculations on

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=sum+from+k%3D1+to+n+of+%28n!%2F%28k!%28n-k%29!%29%29*%28%281%2F6%29^n%29*%285%2F6%29^%28n-k%29

(beware, the loading time is quite long)

wich also provides the easier (5^n)(6^-2n)(((11/5)^n)-1).

Anonymous

If I’m going to die, let it be via a natural 20.

Church

If you’re going to die, it’s going to be a natural one.

Anonymous

Look up “malignant heart murder.” In jurisdictions that recognize this form of intention, whether the shooter specifically intended to kill the person or simply didn’t care, the result would be first degree murder. This doctrine is sort of one where super-extreme recklessness is treated as indistinguishable from intent to kill. The hypotheticals used to teach it often involve Russian-Roulette-derived scenarios.

–Beryl

Anonymous

“Intention means purpose”, as my criminal law supervisor used to say. Is it Brown’s purpose to kill Smith, even though he has just a small chance of success? If performing a magic trick, you might have the same set up with the six gun, but your purpose would be the reverse – not to kill your target, and amaze the audience. Inferring the suspect’s purpose then becomes the difficult bit. What evidence do you have apart from their actions?

Anonymous

@Abelian Monoid

You could use the same analysis for shooting a 4000 pound vehicle down the road at other drivers. There may only be a 1/10,000 chance of killing them (or a bystander), but that’s perfectly legal. You do have to carry insurance appropriate for the risks and abide by laws limiting the risk to known levels, but it is basically the same situation as spinning a bullet in a chamber and pulling the trigger.

trevcaru

“In life we make this kind of judgment all the time: every time we drive, for example.”

Heh, yes, nearly all these responses are judgments based upon a faulty assumption. No one questions that the intender may be an illusion of the mind.

Every answer here is simply an answer. Everyone is trying to prove the subjectivity… yet no one steps back to question the entire notion of the intender.

All the arrows in the world may point to something yet people, caught up in this psychological feedback loop are nearly incapable of questioning the underlying notion that the question implies.

Its kind of like a riddle, wherein the answer lies buried behind the veil of presupposed notions but the answer appears to be elusive to the linear mind.

Anonymous

Is it as simple as he pointed a loaded gun at another and pulled the trigger?

hijukal

What if Brown rolling a six is what causes Smith to die?

phillip A.

I think there’s no conundrum here, its really obvious. There are two levels of action here:

The upper one in both cases is the agreement to play.

The lower one is being tied to the results of playing.

In both cases we can hold him responsible for playing.

On the upper level: Responsibility in the dice case means he deserves to be called a gambler (sym: an attempted winner?). Responsibility in the gun case means he deserves to be called reckless – there should be a word for someone who engages in risky behavior which endangers lives as there is for someone who engages in risky behavior which endangers monetary assets (sym: an attempted murderer?). This would be the title he earns and its earning is independent of the outcome. There is complete symmetry between these cases on the upper level. The word “sym” denotes an example of the symmetry.

On the lower level: Responsibility in the dice case means that he is given the monetary reward for winning or punishment for losing. Responsibility in the gun case means that he is given the reward for winning ( not being a murderer (if he intends not to kill)) or punishment for losing (becoming a murderer).

In both cases we hold him responsible for PLAYING the game. Not the outcome. Because the gun game is so dangerous even the upper level outcome stemming from merely deciding to play is incriminating. However, some people might say the same about the dice case – being a gambler, whether you win or lose, is often considered negative to be a gambler. In both cases, regardless of the outcome there is a labeling involved. It just so happens that the labeling in the gun case is so terrible before the lower level outcome is addressed that it seems to be hogging the focus and creating an imbalance in the way we naturally compare these activities. Also in both cases, there are consequences with attached probabilities. Other than the distributed positivity/negativity of the respective bets, these are totally identical cases.

The confusion lies only in the people who wrote the article. Mixing and comparison of what should be separate domains of interaction is obviously bound to create “contradictions” and confusing results.

brillow

Its a more interesting case when you take away the murder element. At all times we gamble with each other’s lives. There is a small but non-zero probability that I will kill someone with my car when I drive home tonight. The interesting argument comes from determining at what probability of harming-others someone becomes culpable, especially when they are unaware of the probability. These thought experiments, even the ones with seemingly obvious answers because others already thought about, answered, and codified them in law centuries ago, are why we have laws against, murder, attempted murder, negligent homicide, manslaughter, etc.

They also go beyond the validity of a charge. If my car has unintended acceleration, and I mow down a pedestrian, and its clear my act was unintentional, I could validly be charged with manslaughter and could be rationally convicted. The role of the jury is to determine if I deserve punishment for my part in this contextually unique event.

Anonymous

“The interesting argument comes from determining at what probability of harming others someone becomes culpable, especially when they are unaware of the probability.”

What you are discussing is generally charged as “negligent homicide.” The Model Penal Code (which serves as the basis for many state criminal statutes) defines criminal negligence this way: A person acts negligently with respect to a material element of an offense when he should be aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the material element exists or will result from his conduct. The risk must be of such a nature and degree that the actor’s failure to perceive it, considering the nature and purpose of his conduct and the circumstances known to him, involves a gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would observe in the actor’s situation.

“If my car has unintended acceleration, and I mow down a pedestrian, and its clear my act was unintentional, I could validly be charged with manslaughter and could be rationally convicted.”

While it may seem that way, I don’t believe that you could be convicted on those facts. The barest of minimums require that you “should be aware” that there was a substantial risk of an unintended acceleration. If, for example, your car had been subject to a recall for that exact problem, and you knew of that recall and ignored it, then you could be convicted.
MarkM

“If my car has unintended acceleration, and I mow down a pedestrian, and its clear my act was unintentional, I could validly be charged with manslaughter and could be rationally convicted. The role of the jury is to determine if I deserve punishment for my part in this contextually unique event.”

If the conditions are as you say, they wouldn’t ever charge you criminally. Because even if they did, you’d never be convicted unless they could somehow prove you knew that the car had a defect and you showed negligence by not getting the car serviced (if, say, the car maker had issued a recall). Civilly, the estate of the deceased could sue you, but they’d only be doing that in conjunction with a suit on the car maker, because again they’ll fail vs. you, whereas they might succeed vs. the car maker.

I’m not even a lawyer and I know this. Aren’t there any officers of the court in this thread? I’m sure there are useful terms of art.

zebbart

It’s an equivocation on the word ‘intentional.’ In the first case ‘intentional’ means ‘knew how to achieve a result, chose to carry out the actions that would achieve the result, and did achieve the result’; in the second case it means ‘morally culpable’.

gbmbg

I think that one thing that few people are taking into account is the fact that, in the two cases that are described here, there are actually three events taking place. In case one (the die), there is only one event taking place: the rolling of the die. In case two (the gun), there are actually two events: event one is the rotating of the gun chamber and the pulling of the trigger, and event two is the death/survival of Smith as a direct consequence of event one.

The reason people see case two as a case of intention is because of this small, but significant, discrepancy. In case one, Brown’s only controllable action is the rolling of the die; if he hopes for a six, but he gets a four, then the result is contrary to his hopes, but he already committed the act. In other words, he commits an intentional action, and then observes the consequences of this action, which are dependent on factors beyond his control. If, however, Brown’s intended action, as is explained in case two, is to kill Smith with a revolver, then the focus of intention is not the gun itself; Brown’s intended action is to kill Smith, and this is dependent on a factor beyond his control. If Brown’s revolver fails to go off, he is still guilty of attempted murder because his intention was to kill Smith, and not to shoot the gun.

I think the best way to illustrate this is to take the exercise of throwing a die/firing a gun and place it in a different context. I’ll cite D&D as an example for case one. Let’s say I’m a mage and I want to cast Magic Missile, and in order to successfully cast this spell I need to roll a six on a die. Now, I roll the die and hope for a six, but only because it will allow me to cast the spell; if I do get the six, then I can say that I intentionally cast Magic Missile. If I don’t get a six, then my intention was still to cast Magic Missile, but I failed to do so because of a mitigating factor (the die).

Now for case two. Let’s say I have a revolver into which I place a bullet. After I do that, I spin the barrel, snap it shut, cock the hammer, aim at a random direction, and pull the trigger. If nothing happens, then that’s that; I hoped for the gun to go off, but it didn’t. However, supposed the gun did go off, and the stray bullet killed someone; the murder would not have been intentional, because I did not pull the trigger with the hope of killing someone. Of course, I would still be tried and convicted of murder, but that’s a story for another day.

tl;dr: throwing a die and firing a gun are two different acts that shouldn’t be compared to one another because their consequences are different.

YarbroughFair

If you had a fully loaded gun pointed at the manâ€™s head and said “if I roll a six I pull the trigger” then you might have an argument. My point is that the roll of the dice holds no intended consequence, so there can be no intended outcome. If you attached an outcome to a six being rolled, then you have an argument for intent.

However, rolling dice may have an argument for intent. The roller “intends” to roll a six but the result may not be what the roller intended. So let’s focus on the word “intend”. Hopes? Desires? Wishes? Prays? The word “intend” is very vague and should be defined before further argument.

fnc

“No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to live.”

RedShirt77

One cannot cause a dice to roll six by “intending to”.

Your intent has no effect on the out come of the roll.

You also can’t effect which chamber is full simply by intending one way or the other. But you have to intend to fire the gun. So he intentionally fired the gun at the man’s head, he just left the outcome of that act up to chance.

If you were arrested for gambling and tried to tell the cops that you hadn’t intended to win, wouldn’t you still be guilty of gambling.

Chrs

It also helps that, assuming you actually want to kill your opponent, the rules you’re applying are fully arbitrary, whereas the rules for any given game of dice are established, and others will stop playing if you change them.

I’m assuming that Smith would run (or otherwise “stop playing”) if he could, but given that Brown has the gun, it’s not so much his decision.

OatsandSugar

I think you’ll find that the mens rea for murder can be satisfied with “recklessness to human life”…

Taking a 1 in 6 chance of killing someone will definitely count as reckless in any court.

Further, you will find that, even with the chance that the other guy had to survive, the killer had the intention to murder, if it didn’t succeed, he would certainly be charged with attempted murder.

Camp Freddie

He intentionally threw the die and intentionally fire the gun.

He did not intentionally get the 6 or intentionally get the live round.

You could also say he intended to win the game and he intended to kill the guy, but that’s a bit more dubious.

The Kobe effect definitely comes into play as well, particularly for our initial response.

Unmutual

So if he threw the dice and got a 4, he “attempted” to throw a 6, but failed.

If the chamber was empty when he pulled the trigger, he “attempted to murder” his buddy Smith.

If only we had some way to charge people with “attempting to murder” somebody else . . .

technogeek

Seems self-evident to me: He knew the odds, his intent was to do something consistent with the odds. (He threw the die, he pulled the trigger while pointing the gun at a person). Whether he was successful or not is a separate question. We wouldn’t judge him much less culpable if the gun was fully loaded but jammed before it could fire, or if he fired and mist; the intent for object A to strike object B is still there.

Anonymous

I’d say no, there isn’t more to it. If you park your car at the top of the hill and don’t set the brake, you know what could happen, and if it DOES happen you don’t get to say you didn’t intend it.

coreymaley

Yes, there is more to it. People seem to judge intentionality partially on the moral salience of the outcome:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Knobe#The_Knobe_Effect

Anonymous

Any confusion comes from language (as is so often the case). Brown in both cases made an intentional act with a probability associated with it. Say “he hoped for…” often is the linguistic equivalent of “he intentionally acted anticipating a probabilistic result”.

Kosmoid

“…in both cases the probability of that result was the same.”

But the severity of the outcomes are vastly different.

Daemon

Because legal terminology and normal speech are mutually exclusive.

SamSam

Clearly the intent must hinge on what the perpetrator’s intended outcome was.

In the situation in which Brown spins the revolver barrel, shoots, and kills Smith, you say that he must have “intended” to kill Smith.

But would you say the same thing if I told you that the gun had been handed to Brown by a bad guy threatening to kill Brown’s kids unless he pulled the trigger, and Brown spun the barrel in the hopes of reducing his odds of killing Smith?

In that case, we would naturally say that Brown did not intend to kill Smith, but unfortunately killed him anyway. The only diference between the two situations is what Brown wanted the final result to be.

technogeek

I’m not claiming people are rational. I’m just trying to be, and wishing we they were.

Let’s combine the two. Smith rolls a die, after deciding that if it comes up 6 he will (attempt to?) shoot Jones. Arguably, this isn’t any different from the russian-roulette version of five empty chambers and one bullet. The fact that five times out of six he didn’t actually point the gun feels significant, but I submit that this is just because we have trouble documenting the point at which he committed to this and can’t directly view his mental state… whereas someone waving a gun around is hard to miss.

Skidds

The human mind can hold two contradictory statements to be true. No surprise there.

mdh

–raises hand–

um, because having a one in six chance of murdering someone is also a crime, called attempted murder. Succeeding at coupling your game of chance with you clear intent does not dilute your intent, it just means you placed a bet for someone else, and they did not get lucky.

Abelian Monoid

Erratum : I put a n where I should have put a k. Correct calculation :
sum from k=1 to n of (n!/(k!(n-k)!))*((1/6)^k)*(5/6)^(n-k)
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=sum+from+k%3D1+to+n+of+%28n!%2F%28k!%28n-k%29!%29%29*%28%281%2F6%29^k%29*%285%2F6%29^%28n-k%29

Jesse

I really enjoyed coreymaley’s link to the article about the Knobe effect. It pretty much sums up exactly what this issues revolves around.

Anonymous

the answer lies in the fact that “intentional” has different meaning in law and in common use.

In common use, intention means intended the outcome.
In law, intentional means intended to do the action that caused the outcome. In other words, it was not an accident. For example, trespass is an intentional tort (wrongdoing). But it is not intentional because the person actually wished to trespass, but because he intentionally took the step, that resulted in a trespass. This is differentially from an accident, for example, he was pushed onto someone else’s property or ended up there as a result of an accident.

So, at law, both the dice and the gun would be intentional.

robulus

Brown sounds like a real dick.

Flying_Monkey

On the one hand, killing someone is nothing like obtaining a 6 on a dice. The chances might be the same in each case, but in the latter case all that happens is the dice shows a 6 – this makes no difference to anyone or anything in the world other than this being a simple fact. In the former case, the person who pulls the trigger intends for someone to die and someone dies. I hope the distinction is clear, both morally and legally…

However, on the other hand, where it gets interesting are cases where a person takes an action knowing there is a rather more remote chance of someone dying, does not want this outcome, but proceeds anyway. The question is at what point is the chance of death so remote as for the action to be morally and legally acceptable? 1/6 would seem to be rather short odds. But how about 1/60? 1/6000? 1/6000000?

semiotix

The question is at what point is the chance of death so remote as for the action to be morally and legally acceptable? 1/6 would seem to be rather short odds. But how about 1/60? 1/6000? 1/6000000?

I’m guessing most prosecutors would say that even if you had some kind of million-chambered gun, if you fired it at someone knowing full well that there was even that tiny chance, you were guilty of some version of attempted murder. They might call it “reckless endangerment” or “depraved indifference,” which are murder’s watered-down cousins, but they’d try anyway. Mens rea is a big part of these things–that’s why we’re not all arrested every time we get behind the wheel of a car, even though that’s a much better “bet” to kill someone than a million-chamber gun.

Fair warning, if anyone tries to dispute this there’s a 1/6 chance I’ll go on a murderous rampage.
- brillow
  
  I think you’ve hit the purpose of the exercise. After all, there’s a small but non-zero probability I will kill someone with my car every time I drive, this applies to all drivers, and I am not aware of the real probabilities.
  
  The argument is interesting when you play with the assumptions, namely the probabilities involved, the subject’s awareness of the probabilities, and the uniqueness of the subjects actions.
AnthonyC

In life we make this kind of judgment all the time: every time we drive, for example.

Trouble is, it seems that *knowing the number* changes things. If you ask people that kind of question, it depends how you phrase it. “99.9 percent chance of safety” gets a very different response than “0.1% chance of injury or death.” And the risk of death people say they are willing to tolerate for a given payoff is often much less than what our actions in life indicate.

Similar effect: we implicitly put a monetary value on our lives all the time. We engage in risky behaviors, buy insurance, work for a certain wage, and so on. Yet once in a while when an organization computes a monetary value of a statistical life, or a year of lost life, certain groups of people go crazy with moral indignation.

Anonymous

I think the difference also has to do with what exactly is being looked at. In the first situation, he (action) threw a six to (result) win the game. In the second example, he (action) shoots the bullet to (result) kill Smith. You’re comparing the action in one example to the result in the other – you’re not making a direct comparison.

A more direct comparison would either be:

1) He intentionally threw a six vs. He intentionally shot the bullet. There each has a 1 in 6 chance to happen, and while I can see the argument for intentionally shooting the bullet, I think the comparison is a lot more direct and apt here than previously.

2) He won the game vs. He shot Smith. Here I think is the clearest case of arguing for intention – he intended to do both, and succeeded in both, with no mention of the probabilities that existed in the actions leading up to the results.

While I do think there still can be differences in what you’re talking about here, I think that you need to make sure you’re comparing the same part of the argument each time, otherwise any comparison isn’t really that valid.

Anonymous

Thank you Anon. That is exactly what I was thinking. Action is not result.

Gawain Lavers

Turn it around — because Smith couldn’t guarantee that he would roll a 6, does that mean the casino doesn’t have to pay him? There’s no difference — Smith is entitled to the winnings in both cases (the money or a life sentence). The “conundrum” confuses probability of success with responsibility for engaging in the action.

Anonymous

I agree with Anon,
I think the idea here is that probability is associated with any action even accidental ones. In these particular cases we know the probabilities in hard imaginable numbers, whereas in others there may be too many factors to consider.
It would be interesting in the murder case to consider the opposite, to say he inserted a bullet into the six shooter spun and intended not to shoot his victim. Does that mean when the archenemy is shot he is accidentally killed?
Only if we know the variable of motivation can we really say one way or another if it was intentional or accidental. Law bridges this gap by collecting evidence and attempting to construct the most plausible motivations from what can be measured.

Anonymous

RULE I: All guns are always loaded.
RULE II: Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy.
RULE III: Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on the target.
RULE IV: Be sure of your target.

I’m not aware of any such rules regarding dice. People don’t usually wind up dead in a game of craps. Regardless of the monetary wager, the stakes aren’t as high.

Anonymous

There is no conundrum. In both cases, Brown is intentionally gambling.

jackalopemonger

Brown is attempting to throw a six, and attempting to kill Smith. Brown is not intentionally throwing the six any more than he is intentionally pulling the trigger the moment the cartridge is in alignment with the hammer.

Campion

I think everyone agrees that playing the scenario in which Brown kills Smith is “intentional” and therefore, murder, with a strong case for attempted murder if he fails.

I think that the apparent contradiction comes from the premise that firing the gun and committing the murder are one in the same act. Firing the gun is like rolling the dice, it will happen 1 in 6 times and it is therefore an act that cannot strictly be said to be intentional.

Committing murder, is actually a group of acts and decisions, only one of which is holding the smoking gun. Like someone pointed out earlier, if Brown is coerced, he neither fired the gun intentionally, nor would we say he is guilty of murder.

cory

Campion has a big part of it right: murder is more than just a primer igniting powder to expel a piece of metal; there’s also the reason for his decision and the series of actions, as Campion pointed out.

More simply, though, a dice game isn’t over when he rolls a 6. In both cases he has an intention: His intention was to win the dice game, not to roll a 6 on that particular toss. He may still lose the game if he keeps playing. But a murder is over when the victim is dead. So in one case, he is necessarily at the end of the causal chain, and in the other, the outcome of his intention is as indeterminate as the outcome of the next roll.

This is not merely semantics; what I’m saying is that you think of your own intentions in ways more abstract than merely the outcome of a single simple action. Therefore you assign them to others on a more complex basis as well. Murder is far more complex than a die roll, so we observers assign “intention” to one, but not the other.

Sagodjur

I think the significance is in the intention of which particular actions he took.

He wanted to throw a die and have it come up with a six. He took a chance and it happened to come up the way he wanted. This wasn’t intentional unless he cheated somehow.

He wanted to shoot Smith, and with that intention, he pointed it at Smith. Regardless of the fact that what he did was take the one in six chance that the bullet was in the appropriate chamber when he fired the weapon, the fact that he pointed the gun at Smith is where the intention lies.

He could have unintentionally shot Smith by taking the one in six chance of pointing the gun at a thin wall behind which Smith was standing. Taking the chance is not the action of intent.

MarkM

“… with a strong case for attempted murder if he fails.”
huh? airtight case. it’s called “depraved indifference” and its an aggravating factor in an assault or homicide.

what’s salient is not that there’s a lack of certainty about whether a bullet is chambered for this particular shot; it’s that there is a certainty that a round is chambered at all.

the only way you’d “get away” with this is if you argue you honestly thought it was unloaded and even then you’d still possibly get manslaughter since even a “reasonable person” doesn’t aim and shoot an unloaded weapon at a human being.

mdh

too bad that Zippo didn’t light.

Anonymous

@ mdh: “too bad that Zippo didn’t light.”

Roald Dahl reference FTW!

vintermann

One of many Anons said: “No one would say someone ‘intended’ to roll a 6 on a dice, even though they did, because really it’s the outcome you are interested in.”

In fact, in games such as Backgammon, saying you “intended” to roll a certain number makes a good deal of sense. Your previous actions would have depended on what you “intended” to roll this turn (ideally, what you intend to roll is something that you’re likely to roll, but sometimes hoping for an unlikely result is the best you can do).

In this academic book, “Power, Freedom and Voting”, I saw an interesting article discussing what it means to have the power to do something. It contained an impressive array of assassins, poisoned water bottles, deserts, and pushing cars across cliffs. Highly entertaining, and also somewhat enlightening. I recommend it as prior reading for this discussion.

Kosmoid

Can we ever really discern what someone’s intent was?

Because intent can be enigmatic, the court system can’t guarantee a fair trial, only a just trial (due process). Somehow the public must be protected, and sometimes people are wrongly punished.

This story mentions that Smith is Brown’s archenemy, so there must be a backstory that might illuminate Brown’s motivation.

bardfinn

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.

The theory that distinguishes the two acts is foresight, and foresight means being able to consider all reasonably foreseeable outcomes of an action.

The person throwing the dice /intends/ to throw the dice – he intends for there to be a result, and accepts that one of those results could be a one, one could be a two, one three, one four, one five, one six. In place of intending to roll a six (because he is normally not capable of influencing the roll) he is intending any of six possibilities.

The person loading one cartridge in the gun, randomising, aiming and firing the gun also /intends/ to fire the gun. Because he has foreknowledge that a live round is in the gun, and that there’s a significant (1/6) chance that the round will be under the firing pin, no matter what is /actually/ under the firing pin, he /intends/ to fire the gun at someone.

The same theory applies to a person balling a fist, cocking their arm, and forcefully hurtling their fist towards someone’s face. No matter what occurs between the impetus and the end of forward motion of that fist, the person /intended/ to hit the other in the face. Even if it’s Chuck Norris or Bruce Lee who is being aimed at, where there can reasonably be foreseen that the punch would not actually connect — there is still /intent/. The person can’t argue that Chuck Norris is a badass and the punch never would reasonably connect.

If someone is coerced into such an act, however, no matter what their intent is, it is over-ridden by the imposed intent of the coercer.

Anonymous

I think Chrs got it in the first post. Consider the context: if you’re playing a dice game, there are rules to go by. If you don’t get a 6 (even though you want to), you lose and play moves on. If a 6 comes up, you win and play still moves on. If you violate the rules and just keep rolling a die until you get a 6, then of course you’re doing it intentionally.

Now turn it around: if you’re playing Russian Roulette — by the rules — you point a gun at your head and pull the trigger. You either lose, or play moves on until someone does. In this case, you’re not trying to actually *kill* yourself, you’re just trying to win a game. On the other hand, if you violate the rules and just keep squeezing the trigger, then of course we’d say you’re trying to die.

The analogy doesn’t really work because games aren’t really like the rest of life. Actions taken in games aren’t performed because they will help you achieve a certain, immediate goal — it’s because they’ll help you achieve a distal goal — winning the game — *given restraints* (hence no ladders in basketball). If a game introduces chance or an action like throwing dice, this just adds to the obstacles standing in front of the goal. In real life, chance just frustrates our immediate goals, and there are no arbitrary rules saying we have to abide by its whims.

jtropp1

A look at some philosophical analysis of “moral luck” might help clarify your thoughts on the issue.
I’d start here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-luck/
Nagel’s article is available here.

Gawain Lavers

“A look at some philosophical analysis of [...] might help clarify your thoughts on the issue.”

As someone with a degree in Philosophy, let me be the first to say that this is almost never true.
- Dewi Morgan
  
  Win!
  
  Perfect summation of philosophers, if not philosophy itself :)

skeletoncityrepeater

The die was thrown intentionally, and the trigger was pulled intentionally. Both results were intentional. If he had not thrown the die, there would be NO chance of him getting a six. So, he intentionally gave himself a chance of getting a six.

In the same way, he aimed and pulled the trigger intentionally, knowing there was a one in six chance that he would be successful.

He is guilty of murder. He knowingly aimed a ‘semi-functional’ gun at the victim. He would be guilty if there were 1,2,3,4,5, or 6 bullets in the gun.

trevcaru

“The die was thrown intentionally, and the trigger was pulled intentionally. Both results were intentional. If he had not thrown the die, there would be NO chance of him getting a six. So, he intentionally gave himself a chance of getting a six.”
-skeletoncityrepeater

As you can see, many of these responses, thus far, are dependent upon criticism. Intention, in the common sense, can be subjective. What if you were to switch the tables skeleton? The man for some reason intended to get anything except a 6, but was forced to throw the dice… was his intention to get a 6? And what if he was forced to shoot, hoping to not kill his child with the 1 bullet that was chambered? Is he intending to kill his child?

This is why i have proposed the previous stated comment… see above.

The intender may be an illusion, and there are many invisible arrows pointing to this proposal. :)
Not to be discounted simply because the vast implications that are laid on the table, here, now…

trevcaru

Intention implies an intender. What if there was no intender?

This might sound silly, initially, but then there is the idea of necessity, which over-rides desire. If something is necessary, it is ‘unable to be moved’. For example, i burn my hand in the fire and there is no conscious choice of removing my hand; it happens before choice comes into play.

Action, it seems, can be boiled down to 2 types, one that is born of necessity, and one that is born of fear. Although, the former can encompass the latter.

Control, although it may exist, it may exist as an illusion. If control is an illusion, then intention would be the inevitable result of the universe and must be combined with common, ‘inanimate’ actions as well as those executed by what we deem as ‘feeling based’ organisms. Kind of like the hand being taken away from the fire; there is no choice… the action happens before choice comes into play.

Kind of like coreymaley was saying regarding the knobe effect… ‘intention’, as we commonly use the term, implies a judger of action. But if there is no judger, then wouldnt intention be undivided (as in judger vs the judged)? We must then, in this case, consider that very action as being necessity. Similar to a tree falling from old age, or a rock rolling down the side of a hill. The truth lies beyond opinions of what we consider ‘individuality’, and therefore beyond our judgement. But apparently we may consider and contemplate the essence of individualism and what it means, as well as the scope in which individualism encompasses; as we are doing here. :)

The implications of this inquiry…. :D

Campion

I feel like this problem is really being misread. He OBVIOUSLY intended to kill.

The question is, why would the same man be laughed at if he rolled a six with a die and said “I rolled that intentionally.”

Anonymous

Personally I think that the main difference is the amount of control which Brown has over the outcome. Brown has no control over how the die comes out (unless, like a child, they just tip it out of their hand). This is not only true of the first roll, but all future rolls as well. It is possible (if unlikely) for Brown to roll a die all day and not get a six despite all of their efforts. Thus Brown cannot have the “intention” to roll a six. You cannot intend to do something which you have no control over.

On the other hand, if you take a six-shooter with one bullet loaded and pull the trigger six times, a bullet will eventually come out (barring very rare error conditions). Brown didn’t have to pull the trigger more than once in this particular scenario, but if the first shot didn’t do the trick Brown could have kept pulling. Killing Smith was a guaranteed outcome if Brown made the proper effort (six pulls of the trigger) so Brown most certainly could have “intended” to kill Smith. You can intend to do something which you can control fully.

Anonymous

You make an interesting point. Brown had discretion as to how many times to pull the trigger; there was a maximum and minimum number of times Brown would have to pull the trigger to get the shot off. However, if he spins the barrel, Brown intends to give Smith a chance to escape unharmed. There is a second element that ties to this point I’d like to explore separately, but I think there is another major at play.

Deciding to deprive somebody of something requires more intention than attempting to acquire something for “oneself” (everybody is essentially trying to provide something for themselves or the collectives to which they belong e.g. family, company, country, religion). I posit intending to better “oneself” is requires no more intention than being, because being in a chaotic universe requires acquisition.

Intending to prevent somebody from bettering themselves requires intention because bettering oneself doesn’t require it, unless it’s a zero-or-less sum game or . Intending to deprive somebody would require much more intention than to prevent betterment of another. The only mitigating factor would be the detriment/betterment of the third party observer.

Finally, returning to the actual example, Brown also has to deal with aim. You cannot aim dice that are properly formed. Malformed dice would be the only way that a dice throw would be intentional. Shooting a gun has more random parts (the gun, the bullet, the holder) than a die (the dice, the holder).

pinehead

If you need someone to explain the difference between shooting dice and shooting a living thing, I’m not sure the explanation would be of much help to you in the first place. That’s the sort of question you’d expect from someone who’s either really stoned or really autistic.

Antinous / Moderator

Does it matter if they’re both on a treadmill at the time?

Anonymous

Interesting. I get what this is trying to say… But I think it could be put better. I think in the example given it’s more a question of linguistics and view. No one would say someone ‘intended’ to roll a 6 on a dice, even though they did, because really it’s the outcome you are interested in. The ‘intention’ behind it doesn’t really matter. Intending to throw a 6 has no outcome on actually getting a 6.

Now this is the same story with the gun example. Obviously, the outcome is the most important part. However, murder is more heavily severe than just rolling a six in a game, so the context in which it is committed in is taken into account more seriously. Even though both cases intended to get a certain outcome and got that outcome, if someone attempts to kill someone with the intention of killing or doesn’t actually intend to kill anyone but kills them, this is something that would be taken into account into consideration.

So, basically, I think we say Brown intentionally killed Smith, but didn’t intentionally roll a 6, because in the previous case it is far, far more important to take into account the context of murder than it is to consider the trivial matter of the dice outcome. We care about if someone intended to kill someone, but not if they intended to win a game, because we know already that they are intending to win, or roll a 6, without having to state it.

3lbFlax

If Brown turned his back on gun violence and decided instead to throw a poisoned shuriken at Smith from thirty feet away, what then? Assuming Brown isn’t a ninja, and admittedly I’m basing this largely on his surname and seemingly undisciplined behaviour to date, there’s a fair chance he’ll miss due to a number of factors. He’s a grown man, he knows this, it’s a windy day etc. Even if he sticks with the gun and loads ever chamber, he knows there’s a chance of a jam or a misfire. What if he deliberately uses the world’s least reliable firearm, but still fully loads it? What about the chance that the bullet will glance off Smith’s shoulder blades or pass through him without hitting any major organs? Brown knows these are possibilities when he fires. Is it not wilful defamation, in the face of this evidence, to call the poor man a would-be murderer?

coreymaley

@jtropp1: This isn’t an issue about moral luck at all.

@pinehead: The puzzle here is precisely the puzzle of the Knobe effect that I linked to above. Of course there’s a difference between shooting dice and shooting a living thing. That’s not the question. The question is, why does whether someone did something intentionally or not, even if it’s improbable that the person will succeed, depend upon the moral salience of the outcome?

Presumably if you *intend* to do something, it doesn’t matter what the outcome is. But this shows that our judgments about whether someone did something intentionally or not depends upon the kind of outcome. There have been many experiments showing this, although Knobe was the first.

tomrigid

Morality doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it only lives where the actions of one person have predictable consequences for another. The gunshot is therefore an action with a moral dimension while the die-roll is not.

The Knobe effect is consistent with this analysis. When a CEO chooses a course of action which will profit his company at the expense of the environment, he is blamed because environmental harm has consequences for everybody, and therefore a broad moral dimension. If the CEO’s decision would have helped the environment he gets less “credit” because the benefit is the secondary effect of an action he might have taken anyway, and therefore people rightly judge the moral dimension irrelevant, more or less.

Bill Beaty

> If Brown hopes to throw a six in a game of dice and succeeds, we wouldnâ€™t say he threw the six intentionally

Sure we would!

But the problem is with two shaded meanings of “intentionally.”

If “did it intentionally” means “took actions to carry out a decision,” or “did it on purpose,” then no, he did not take actions to force the die to display only a six.

If “did it intentionally” instead means “rolled die with intention to get a six,” then yes, he intended to throw a six. Whether he randomly succeeded is irrelevant, since we’re only asking about his intention in this case.

Examples:

“I intend to win” is the second definition above, since simple intention is no guarantee of success.

“He won intentionally” is the first def. of intentional, since it implies guaranteeing the win through carrying out purposeful actions such as cheating.

Anonymous

Without getting too bogged down in the technical details, if I remember correctly, the reason is this: In most jurisdictions, a person can be found guilty of second degree murder (still an intentional homicide) if it is proven that the person acted with extreme recklessness. This generally means that the person was aware of a substantial risk, and consciously disregarded that risk in a way that no reasonable person would.

Judging from the comments above, most of us (myself included) are perfectly comfortable calling this an intentional homicide.

Anonymous

This is very simple actually: dice don’t generally kill people. Pointing a gun at one’s head just might.

dr

Well, this is freaky.

This problem was actually originally posed by R. Butler in 1977 as the ‘competition’ problem in the journal [i]Analysis[/i], which ran regular competitions seeking the ‘best’ solution to problems like this. Years later Katz reprinted both the question and the winning solution, which happens to have been by me (and was my first article in an academic journal). I confess it was a bit of a shock to just stumble across this in BB!

For what it’s worth, my entry had the title “He loads the gun, not the dice.” I cannot explain or defend my solution, which I do not remember. (32 years ago, after all, and I’m now a mathematician, not a philosopher.)

I’m pleased to see Katz’s book is still in print; it is full of delightful attempts to apply bits of entertaining math and logic to law.

David R.

Anonymous

In either case Brown accepted responsibility for the consequences of his actions by playing the game. If you donâ€™t want to fail rolling a 6, then donâ€™t pick up the die. If you want to not kill someone by playing Russian Roulette, then donâ€™t point a loaded revolver at someone.

jfrancis

Coincidence is fine in a screenplay as long as it helps neither the writer nor the protagonist.

xzzy

I’d say intention doesn’t matter at all in the example given. Society has chosen that if you harm or kill a person (or even threaten to harm them), you’re liable for it. Intention only matters when choosing the severity of the punishment.

Confusing the issue with some clever wording doesn’t change that, it’s the philosopher’s equivalent of an optical illusion. They make you see an impossibility as a possibility, and act smug when you can’t figure it out.

benher

…so where can I get one of those lego dice?

TooGoodToCheck

re: …so where can I get one of those lego dice?

Lego makes games now. they’re pretty cool, because you can tune the rules and the layout. There’s a minotaur’s maze game where you actually build the maze out of lego. There’s a predefined config, but you’re encouraged to experiment.

Anyway, the lego games generally come with lego dice. You can see them here
http://games.lego.com

Anonymous

The analysis is flawed.

The person who throws the dice, hoping for a six, is shooting crap, i.e. hoping to win and exposing only himself and the loser to harm (or loss).

The person who shoots the revolver is guilty of a crime, regardless of his intent or his hope. (He could be hoping that the bullet is not discharged, or, perhaps, he does no care.) The crime is one of acting in a wanton manner. Under our law, wanton disregard for the impact of our actions on others is the equivalent of intent, and there is no need to prove intent.

HJB lawman

Abelian Monoid

From a mathematical perspective:
there is one chance that the gun shoots. There are five chances that the gun doesn’t.

Let x be the action of pulling the trigger and E(x) the expected outcome. 1/6 * murder + 5/6 * nothing (or 0) = murder/6

Therefore, by pulling the trigger, the shooter expects on the average the sixth of a murder. To determine how guilty he is, we have to quantify the “value” of murder. If we believe that a murder is totally unforgivable (value = infinite) than I suppose that the sixth of a murder is also unforgivable and should be punished in the most sever way the legal system permits. Otherwise, if a finite value is given to murder, then the culprit should be punished accordingly to the sixth of the punishment for murder.

phillip A.

But if that’s the case, what if I follow you around with a 1/6 loaded gun, knowing that I have a chance to kill you and only have to server 1/6 sentence?? (i mean hypothetically of course! no death threats! :) )
- Abelian Monoid
  
  Easy ! if you shoot six times without rolling the barrel, then you get a full sentence because the odds are 6/6. If you reroll each time, then the odds of actually shooting me are:
  n = number of shots (with reroll)
  odds = sum from k=1 to n of (n!/(k!(n-k)!))*((1/6)^n)*(5/6)^(n-k)
  
  So the more you try to shoot me with 1/6 chance, the more chance you have to really shoot. As the number of shots tend to infinite, the chance of me getting shot gets really close to 1.
  
  And then you multiply the sentence by the odds to get the accurate sentence.
  
  It also solves the problem described by Anon in comment number 59 stating :
  “If you make it a finite punishment, what’s to stop someone from devising a situation that makes the improbable death an infintesimal, non-zero, chance? If the chance is so remote that you can’t feasably punish them proportionally, they could repeat this until they got lucky, and then you’re back at the first problem of punishing equal actions inequally!”
  
  Also, on the same comment he says that sneezing and driving should be considered felonies if we follow that logic. I agree completely. Since the chance of killing somebody by sneezing is infinitesimally small, so should be the punishment. Since the cost of putting somebody to jail for a tiny fraction of a second would be really expansive, it is easier to consider death penalty and look at the culprit die a little bit by being a second older. For the driving part, insurance companies make sure that we pay monthly the price of killing. All is fair !
  
  Oh wait… The sooner I die the lighter the sentence… That is a problem that is also stated by Anon in comment #59 by pointing out that if the bullet is triggered, the culprit would probably get the full sentence. It is unfair but otherwise it creates a gap in my reasoning…
  
  Help somebody !!!
Anonymous

@#36:

If you set the value to infinite, pulling the trigger on a hypothetical gun with a billion empty chambers and 1 bullet would have to be punished at the same rate as a gun with zero chambers, as would any action that had a non-zero chance of killing someone. Driving a car would be a felony, as would sneezing in a crowded area.

If you set the value to finite, there’s two problems. Firstly, should the “lucky” attacker get the full sentence, while the “unlucky” get a sixth of the same punishment? On average, that tallies up to an average punishment of 1 5/6ths punishments for each murder, which seems wrong. On the other hand, should the “lucky” attacker have the same punishment as the “unlucky”, even though the “unlucky” never actually hurt anyone? That seems also wrong.
If you make it a finite punishment, what’s to stop someone from devising a situation that makes the improbable death an infintesimal, non-zero, chance? If the chance is so remote that you can’t feasably punish them proportionally, they could repeat this until they got lucky, and then you’re back at the first problem of punishing equal actions inequally!

Anonymous

What’s the question here. In the first case, there was no possibility of killing someone, in the second case, there was.

At the very least, the second case is premeditated torture and first degree manslaughter.

The first case is just bad gambling.

RedShirt77

Would you say he intended for the round to be the chamer fired?

If you did it would imply the spin was somehow rigged.

Anonymous

Isn’t this just an inaccuracy in the statement of the problem? Brown did not intend to kill Smith. Brown intended to put Smith in danger of being killed. Likewise, Brown did not intend to roll a six, he intended to roll a die. Intentions, probabilistically speaking, are actions taken to cause particular outcomes that have a higher than random chance of occurring. A particular outcome of a random process cannot have intention behind it; only an intention to cause one of several random outcomes. If, for instance, Brown threw a weighted die it is accurate to say that he intended for the most likely number to come up. If Brown could spin the chamber in his gun accurately enough to predict whether or not a bullet would be under the firing pin, he would intend a particular outcome.

Throwing dice and murder - a question about intentionality

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