That suggests an important principle:
Complete understanding of consciousness is not necessary for accountability to be justifiedly
applied.
The question then becomes:
Which aspects of consciousness matter for accountability, and which aspects may remain unknown?
One way to think about it is to distinguish between explanatory aspects and functional aspects.
Explanatory aspects
These concern what consciousness ultimately is:
Is consciousness physical, nonphysical, or both?
How does subjective experience (“what it is like”) arise?
Why does consciousness exist at all?
Is consciousness fundamental or emergent?
These are profound questions, but notice something:
Human accountability practices do not appear to depend on having definitive answers to them.
Courts, parents, schools, and societies generally do not ask:
“Has the hard problem of consciousness been solved?”
before assigning responsibility.
Functional aspects
Instead, accountability tends to depend on observable or inferable capacities such as:
awareness of one’s actions,
understanding of rules or norms,
ability to foresee consequences,
intentionality,
capacity to respond to reasons,
self-control to some degree.
For example:
A sleeping person may have reduced accountability.
A very young child may have reduced accountability.
Someone acting under coercion may have reduced accountability.
Why?
Not because their consciousness ceases to exist, but because certain relevant capacities of
consciousness are diminished or absent.
Thus, if accountability is the issue, the specific aspects of consciousness that may matter most are
not necessarily its ultimate nature, but rather whether it enables:
Awareness
Does the entity recognize itself and its surroundings?
Intentionality
Can it act toward goals?
Understanding
Can it comprehend relevant information or rules?
Consequence recognition
Can it appreciate how actions affect others?
Behavioral control
Can it regulate its actions to some degree?
Responsiveness
Can it learn from feedback, reasons, or norms?
If these capacities are present to a sufficient degree, accountability may be justified even if
consciousness itself remains only partially understood.
Your sports analogy fits here too.
A child need not understand:
neurons,
qualia,
the neural correlates of consciousness,
the metaphysics of mind,
to be accountable for intentionally breaking a rule during a game.
Similarly, humanity may not fully understand consciousness yet still possess enough understanding of
these relevant capacities for accountability to apply.
So one possible answer to your question is:
Accountability may not require full knowledge of consciousness itself; it may require sufficient
evidence that consciousness supports the capacities relevant to intentional participation in shared
systems of interaction.
In that sense, accountability may depend less on solving the mystery of consciousness and more on
identifying the particular features of consciousness that enable agency, understanding, and
participation.
Is “a system based on externalized physical conduct and its associated "intent (only insofar as it
is "evidenced by or inferred from” observable conduct and circumstances, rather than treated as an
independently [without any associated correlation to an external doing, such correlation would
normally be what establishes if intent was acted upon] punishable thing)“, while categorically
excluding purely mental phenomena from accountability” better than “a system that includes
thoughtcrime and doesn’t exclude mental/internal phenomena”? (“Temporary intent” is also a factor,
for example, “I had intended to try out skydiving but I changed my mind about doing that”)
I think a system based on externalized physical conduct and its associated intent, while
categorically excluding purely mental phenomena from accountability, is better.
By “excluding purely mental phenomena,” I mean that private thoughts, imaginings, fantasies,
desires, feelings, beliefs, and similar internal mental states should not themselves be grounds for
punishment or accountability. Accountability should arise from what a person actually does in the
world and the effects their conduct has on other people.
This does not mean intent is irrelevant. Intent, motive, knowledge, recklessness, fear, and similar
mental states can still matter when evaluating conduct. However, they should be considered only
insofar as they are “evidenced by or inferred from” observable conduct and circumstances, rather
than treated as independently punishable things.
I think the world is a safer and more pleasant place when justice systems focus on what people
actually externalize into the shared world rather than what exists solely within their minds. A
system that punishes thoughts creates incentives for surveillance, mind-reading, fear of one’s own
thoughts, self-censorship, and punishment of people who have not actually harmed anyone. In
contrast, a system focused on externalized conduct provides clearer boundaries and better protects
individual freedom of thought.
I also think such a system results in less overall suffering when applied equally and without
exception. People remain accountable for intentional mistreatment, callous conduct, recklessness,
coercion, fraud, violence, and other actions that affect others, while remaining free to think,
imagine, question, doubt, fantasize, or internally struggle without fear of punishment merely for
having certain thoughts.
In short, I believe accountability should be tied to what a person brings into the shared world
through their conduct and its effects on others, not to the mere existence of unexternalized mental
phenomena.
For example, whether a killing was murder, self-defense, accidental, reckless, or intentional may
depend on evidence that allows us to infer the actor’s state of mind from what they said, did, knew,
or reasonably perceived at the time. Likewise, evidence that an assault was motivated by hatred can
be relevant because it helps explain an observable act that actually occurred.
The distinction I am drawing is between judging someone for what they did and judging someone merely
for what existed in their mind. This is about a system that holds people accountable for
externalized conduct, with intent helping to interpret that conduct, vs a system that includes
holding people accountable for thoughts, desires, fantasies, beliefs, or other purely internal
mental states even when they were never acted upon or externalized.
Intent, motive, knowledge, recklessness, fear, or similar mental states can be inferred from
observable conduct, statements, circumstances, preparations, patterns of behavior, known
information, and other external evidence. Inference necessarily involves some degree of assumption
in the sense that we never directly observe another person’s intent. The question, though, is
whether those assumptions are constrained by evidence or are merely speculative. Inferences can
still be more or less justified depending on how well they explain/"correspond with" the available
facts.
For example, intent can be inferred when someone purchases poison, researches lethal doses, secretly
administers the poison to a victim, and then attempts to conceal the act. We do not observe the
intent directly; we infer it from the conduct.
Motive can be inferred when someone stands to gain a large inheritance from a death, repeatedly
expresses hostility toward the deceased, and then engages in conduct leading to that death. The
motive is not directly visible, but external evidence may support the inference.
Knowledge can be inferred when someone receives repeated warnings that a bridge is unsafe,
acknowledges those warnings, and then continues sending people across it. Their knowledge is
evidenced by what they were told and how they responded.
Fear can be inferred when someone is cornered by an armed attacker, attempts to retreat, calls for
help, visibly panics, and then uses force against the attacker. We cannot directly observe fear
itself, but the surrounding conduct may provide evidence that fear was present.
Recklessness can be inferred when someone knowingly drives at extreme speeds through a crowded area,
fires a weapon into an occupied building, or ignores obvious and substantial risks that a reasonable
person would recognize. The recklessness is inferred from the choice to proceed despite the apparent
danger.
Suppose a person privately fantasizes about harming someone for twenty years but never threatens,
attempts, plans, encourages, or commits any harmful act. Under the system I am describing, the
fantasy alone would not create accountability.
Suppose another person secretly poisons someone and is never caught. The poisoning itself remains an
observable-type event because it is a physical action occurring in the world, even if no one
actually discovers who did it. Accountability would attach to the poisoning, not to whether
observers happened to identify the culprit.
Suppose a person accidentally causes harm while exercising reasonable care. The harmful outcome
alone would not automatically establish malicious intent, recklessness, or callousness.
Suppose a person claims an action was an accident, but evidence shows extensive preparation, prior
threats, concealment efforts, and attempts to benefit from the outcome. Those observable facts may
justify inferring intent despite the claim.
Suppose a person genuinely fears for their life and acts in self-defense. Their fear is not directly
observed, but it may be inferred from the circumstances and their conduct. Conversely, if someone
merely claims fear while the evidence strongly indicates aggression or retaliation, the claim may
not be supported.