I recently heard about a story that reminded me about our discussion on free will and responsibility. The story occurred in 1975 concerning Patty Hearst. Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army and brainwashed into robbing banks. Despite claiming to have been brainwashed, Hearst was sentenced to 7 years in jail. After 2 years, President Carter commuted her sentence and she was pardoned for her offenses. I would say that in this scenario, Hearst had free will but due to brainwashing this free will was taken away. However, determinism follows that all of our action are pre-detemined, essentially we don’t have free will. Does this mean that decision making under determinism is the same between someone going through everyday life and someone who had been brainwashed? Wouldn’t this mean that the act of brainwashing is, in essence, useless? Hearst was pre-determined to rob the banks?
The complete story can be found here: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/famous-cases/patty-hearst-kidnapping
This is a really interesting situation. I agree with you that if determinism were true, then brainwashing would essentially be useless because Hearst was predetermined to rob those banks. However, this seems intuitively wrong; it seems natural to blame the brainwashing for her decisions to rob the bank, not to say it was predetermined. One way to get around this could be to say that Hearst was predetermined to get brainwashed, and therefore she was predetermined to commit the robberies, but I don’t know if this is a comprehensive solution.