Tom Clark
(1960?-)
Tom Clark is founder and director of the Center for Naturalism and developer of
Naturalism.org, a leading web resource on the worldview naturalism, its implications and applications. He is also author of
Encountering Naturalism: A Worldview and its Uses and many articles on naturalism, science, free will, consciousness, addiction, and criminal and social justice.
Clark's naturalists deny that individuals have
ultimate responsibility for their actions (in the sense of
origination - being the
self-caused authors of their actions) and assert that free will is an
illusion. Nevertheless, the Center believes that individuals should be held
morally responsible for their actions, and should be given appropriate rewards or sanctions, to help control behavior. So their moral responsibility position is similar to that of
David Hume, and perhaps to
John Martin Fischer's
semicompatibilism, although Fischer is
agnostic on the free will question, and Hume's free will is
compatible with
determinism.
We agree with Clark that
retributive punishment is never justified, even if, as we believe, agents
freely choose their actions.
Consequentialism, the idea that some combination of punishments, re-education, and possibly even rewards can lead to changes in the agent's future behaviors that make the agent a better member of society, is far superior to the idea that negative punishment is a "just desert."
Clark applied his theory to
mitigating the blaming of an addicted person for their addiction, seeing that multiple causes beyond their control have likely been responsible.
He recently edited and republished an early essay on
compatibilism by his son Peter,
The Compatibility of Free Will and Determinism.
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