Victoria, Martin David R.

Sir Donny Dagondon

12 Arts and Design Track October 16, 2019

The Future that stays a Dream

The film “Minority Report” produced in 2002 portrays to us how a company named
“Precrime” made it possible for criminals to be imprisoned even before they commit their
crimes. The film opens an idea of a world without crimes, thanks to Precrime. In the film,
Precrime imprisons the criminals who do not have even know that they would commit
crime sooner. These implications might be questionable in terms of freedom of the “future”
criminal who has no knowledge that he or she is going to be imprisoned for a crime they
had not yet committed. I do not agree much with the concept of Precrime.

Their concept of imprisoning people before the execution of the crime is quite unfair.
Following the Libertarian Free Will theory, Precrime may be free to imprison the future
criminals because of their choice to do so because they know that the person would
commit a future crime or murder. Still aligned with libertarianism, one of the goals of
Precrime is to avoid event causation of those who would commit the crime in the future,
in terms of the physical aspect, because there wouldn’t be a crime if they are there in the
first place. We could also take in perspective agent causation as a primary reason why
Precrime imprisons these future criminals. Both of these points of view may agree with
Precrime; however, to look into the perspective of hard determinism theory, things could
have been different for Precrime. What if Precrime never existed in the first place? Would
these crimes still happen without their power of predicting it? Would those people be
imprisoned if their crimes weren’t predicted? Would these crimes happen in the first place
if they weren’t predicted? Hard determinist finds that all events are caused by past events.
Taking it into perspective, the people who would commit a crime, as predicted by
Precrime, had their backgrounds and stories as to why they would commit that crime in
the future; however, Precrime tries to breaks that chain of events. Precrime changes the
fate of these people who no longer had the choice to decide. They took their freedom of
choice away and that is what makes it unfair. Precrime would never have truly known if
the action would take place because these individuals still have their choice because it
hasn’t happened yet. If we would look at the situation in the compatibilism theory, these
people still have the choice to change and decide their actions. The crimes could have not
happened at all; however, Precrime takes that free will away and determines the future of
the person to be imprisoned. At the end of the film, it showed that Precrime had its errors
and failed to predict a crime properly that came from the past, from the founder of
Precrime itself. Precrime had its errors, legally and morally.

Precrime is legally wrong on the part when they arrest the people who have not yet
committed those future murders or crimes; however, they become morally wrong when
they take the freedom of choice of those people who are unaware of their future
imprisonment for a crime they haven’t done yet. Legally, the crime has not yet happened
and only the prediction of Precrime is their evidence, and therefore they should not
imprison the person for the future murder. With their goal of cleaning the streets from
crime, they tend to forget and disregard the freedom of the person to choose. These people
shouldn’t be arrested for a future that hasn’t happened yet, why? Because legally, the law
should not arrest the person for a crime he or she hasn’t committed. They could and
should only be arrested when the crime is done, and when there is sufficient evidence.
Victoria, Martin David R. Sir Donny Dagondon
12 Arts and Design Track October 16, 2019

Legally, they, the future criminals, wouldn’t be accountable for these future murders since
it hasn’t happened yet. Morally, they are also not accountable for future murders since
they do not know that they would be doing it in the future. If so, Precrime would be held
morally accountable for these murders if they did happen because they are aware of it,
based on the predictions; however, legally, when the murder does happen, those who
would have committed the murder are legally accountable for the future murders. Also,
these people who have committed the crime would be morally responsible for their
actions if taken into the perspective of compatibilism. In another perspective, this is
mostly based on the future, something that hasn’t happened yet, so does it mean that we
should consider who is accountable for something that hasn’t happened yet? The future
would not be as it is until we choose to make it happen that way. We have a choice to
change that future, but are we free? Or do we just feel free?

The future is something that we cannot say that is definitely as we see it. Grounding
from the hard determinist theory, one could say that the future would happen
predetermined to what has happened before. In other words, the future is caused by what
happened in the past. The future would always be indefinite and we may never truly know
what the future holds until it happens. The future would determine who you are. It would
determine your past, and how it shaped your identity as a person. It’s our actions and
decisions that bring us to the future we never saw coming, but does the future exist? For
me, it would be yes and no. The future exists but would exist indefinitely. Indefinitely,
meaning that we can never tell exactly how it will go. That future, wouldn’t exist until we
decide to make that future exist based on our actions. With the future existing indefinitely,
we could say that our actions are not determined based on the future, but rather on what
we choose in the present; however, to take it into perspective, the physical world is
deterministic as to natural causes and effects of our actions. So would that mean that our
actions are indeed deterministic of what our future will be? That we are not free to decide
our future at all? What then are the causes of our actions and decisions?

Freedom is a concept we all admire and pursue, but are we free? That is the question.
Our actions are determined by different causes, both external and internal factors.
Sometimes, our actions just feel free, but we are not. We are not free because everything
that we do is caused by a combination of different factors that influences our minds to do
that action. We could consider our beliefs, desires, and temperaments as some of those
main factors as to why we choose to do an action. So would this mean that all our actions
are not free? Do our actions and decisions still matter? Do we still even have a choice, if
everything is determined? Would we have a future that we dream of? Grounding on the
hard determinist theory, I think that we may never truly say that we are free because of
factors we may never truly identify. We were never free, and we only felt like it that we are
free. Every action has a motive, an influence, that would slowly shape the future. What
about tomorrow? Our dreams and aspirations? It’s all on us. We don’t know what the
future holds, but I think that we can still choose to shape the future we have always
dreamed of. One would never truly know the future until it happens until we choose to
make that future happen, the future that we unconsciously brought to ourselves. At the
end of it all, I believe that the future we dreamed of might never be the future we would
have, the future that would only stay a dream.