To what extent can the trial and execution of Ruth Ellis 1955 be Outline

To what extent can the trial and execution of Ruth Ellis 1955 be considered a turning point in approaches to the punishment of criminals in Britain in the years 1830-1965 - Outline Example treadwheel) but also the use of crank machines, shot drills, and picking oakum1, 2. With the purpose of â€Å"grinding corn, pumping water, and other prison purposes†, the criminals had to work between 8 to 10 hours a day manually revolving the mill by stepping on the 16 feet wood cylinder3. In 1865, the number of days wherein the prisoners will have to use the treadmill or crank was limited to only 3 months of their entire sentences4. The penal transportation is referring to the process of transporting convicted criminals to a separate colony (i.e. Van Diemen’s Land in Australia)5. Since the 1820s, there was a false belief that the act of transporting convicted criminals to a separate colony could help decrease the crime rate in Britain. In 1837, the group of penal transportation committee was finally convinced that this particular penal punishment was not effective and has to be removed immediately. Eventually, the Penal Servitude Act 1853 became the substitute for penal transportation6. As a correctional facility, convicted male offenders were kept in Pentonville Prison since 1842 whereas the female offenders were kept in the Brixton Prison since 1852. In 1857, the British government officially abandoned the use of the â€Å"prison hulks† which are old sailing ships7. Between 1877 to 1878, all prisoners in Britain were being managed by the British government. Other form of punishment includes hanging in public which officially ended in 18688. Ellis used a .38 revolver to shoot David four times yet she remaind calm after committing the crime. During the trial, Ellis boldly stated that â€Å"it was obvious that when I shot him, I intended to kill him†9. Specifically the facts presented in the court gave the jury the false idea that Ellis was â€Å"a cold-blooded killer†10. Even though the use of hanging as a form of capital punishment has officially ended in 1868, Ellis became the

A critical response to Donald Davidsons views of self-deception Essay

A critical response to Donald Davidsons views of self-deception - Essay Example Such event, according to the theory, will "permit" the idea that an individual may at any given time cling to incongruous viewpoints and ambiguous judgments about her/him or about a given state of affairs. The concept, Davidson contends, is that if parts of the mind are, to some degree or level, independent, we can comprehend how they are able to entertain and embrace inconsistencies, contradictions and variations, and to intermingle and cooperate on a causal level. This, I beg to disagree. If we take a cursory glimpse, Davidson's account offers a fascinating depiction of self-deception. It seemed to naturally and readily settle the absurdity and the irony of the concept. Nonetheless, if we investigate seriously the sketch of this phenomenon on the "divided-mind" paradigm, grave doubts and opposing protestations will come to our mind.However, before explicitly elucidating my disagreement, let me first discuss another angle that runs parallel to Davidson's idea of the divided-mind occ urrence - Freud's embodiment of the human mind consisting of an ego, super-ego, and id. To the Freudian picture, the ego matches up with the conscious part of the mind, while the super-ego and the id, to the unconscious. The id is steered by impulses, cravings and desires; as the super-ego flushes out the "undesirables" conceived by the id, the ego puts things into action. A Freudian version of self-deception, then, would justify for the absurd possession of diametrically opposed beliefs. The unconscious id discerns and understands that p, but is compelled by a desire to believe that not-p, so it "cooperates" or "works together" with the super-ego to deceive the ego. In this scenario, the agent may deliberately and knowingly assumes a belief this same agent instinctively knows to be false, but the fact that this belief is false is one way or another "concealed" from such agent. In this manner, self-deception becomes unequivocally comparable to interpersonal deception, with two agent -like structures misleading/deceiving a third into believing something they know to be false. Though desisting to succumb to the Freudian concepts of ego, super-ego and id, Davidson concurs with Freud that particular facets of the mind must be put forward in order to explain self-deception or absurdity of any kind: [First,]the mind is to be regarded as having two or more semi-autonomous structures. [Second, we assign] a particular kind of structure to one or more subdivisions of the mind: a structure similar to that needed to explain ordinary actions. [Third,]certain mental events take on the character of mere causes relative to some other mental events in the same mind. [I]n order to accommodate [this feature] we must allow a degree of autonomy to parts of the mind (Davidson 1982) As Davidson puts it, one psychological event can be a cause of but not a sufficient reason for another mental event. Certainly, this framework can be a probable occurrence in interpersonal interaction. For instance -- I yearn for Mr. X to be inside my bedroom, so, I positioned a hundred scented candles of different sizes and colors in strategic places, allow some erotic music to reverberate inside the room and open the door a few inches apart just enough for Mr. X to have a wondrous peek of what's inside and what he can expect if he gets in. As he saw what's in store for him inside that room, he then craves to enter and will want to