The Abuse Excuse - a justification for violent acts?

When I researched the case of the brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez, who according to their defense lawyer, killed their parents out of fear and as a result of being sexually abused by their father for many years, it made me wonder if there is a justification for someone’s violent actions. Did the Menendez brother intentionally kill or did they act out due to the years of alleged abuses they had suffered?
I have no doubt that prior sexual or other physical abuse can cause some sort of emotional instability or even mental disorder but can this lead to violent acts by the victim against their abuser and make the abuser not be responsible for their actions? Does the abuse excuse claim that it was necessary for the brothers to kill heir own parents because they were just innocent victims of their environment and thus not responsible.

This brings up the question: To what extent are we responsible for our own actions? Is there a cause of forces that makes us do things or do we really have a choice in life? Do we have free will? I do believe that experiences form us and we are indeed a product of our environment. But what dictates our beliefs, morals, emotions, values and thus influences our actions?
There seems to be a broad source of influences beginning with the time we were conceived. It starts with our genetic make up, one set of biological parents decide (or do not intentionally decide) to produce life (us). And parental influence doesn’t quite stop there in most cases. They raise us and enforce their own beliefs and values on us, in most cases with good intentions of course. It continues with social influence/experiences, education and all sorts of life experiences throughout our entire life. We are constantly introduced to new experiences and most people change or at least re-consider previous views over time in light of these experiences.

In philosophy, the view that every event has at least one cause is termed determinism. It claims that we do not have free will, because our choices and actions are caused by prior experiences.
Hard determinism is the belief that there is no free will. Everything happens because of a previous experience that influenced it. According to hard determinism, environment, heredity, and other influences determine people to act the way they do and because of that, they are not responsible for their actions. But if people are not free and thus responsible for their actions, then why do we even attempt to hold them responsible? Does this mean we do so only to influence future behavior? Some theories support the claim that human beings are free and can be held responsible for their actions. In contrast to hard determinism, soft determinism says that we are determined and are nonetheless still free. According to the soft determinist, it is an individual’s desire or belief that forms the basis for the choice of his or her actions. Libertarianism is the viewpoint based on the idea that there are many caused events in the world. The human choices, however, are NOT caused and these are seen as the free actions.

Aristotle’s view is very consistent with soft determinism it seems like. He said this about free will/free choice: “We are free insofar as we are responsible for our actions, and we are responsible only for those actions that we do voluntarily (that is, as a result of our choices). Insofar as our habits or dispositions are the result of choices we have made in the past, any choices or actions based on them are voluntary and are our responsibility. We are responsible for any action that results from our "culpable" ignorance or negligence if any reasonable person in our circumstances could have avoided such ignorance or negligence. We are also responsible for learning how a "reasonable" person thinks, and that means not allowing ourselves to become selfish or lazy. Ultimately, we are responsible for developing through our actions the character and personality traits that form the foundation on which our actions are based. We are not responsible for involuntary actions, that is, those actions over which we have no control and which result from coercion, constraint, or justifiable ignorance.”

If the Menendez brothers didn’t have a moral obligation to do right because of their bad circumstances, why do the courts have a legal permission to understand their bad circumstances and exercise leniency?
My personal believe is that our decisions are NOT fully dictated. Though determinism is true, it does not rule out freedom and responsibility. As for the Menendez case, let’s assume they were sexually abused by their father and this had a great psychological effect on them and their behavior, I still would have to argue they were in the position to make choices, including the choice to kill their parents. They knew what they were doing, even though they were abused as children

If we are only the products of our environment, then all of us are just machines and can’t be held responsible for doing what we are programmed to do. We wouldn’t have souls anymore and merely respond to the pushing of certain buttons. I don’t think we are machines. People are in part products of their environment but they still possess something like human dignity which to me would have to include “free will” and also responsibility for one’s own actions.

What is truth?

Truth is one of the central subjects in philosophy. It is also one of the largest. A huge variety of issues in philosophy relate to truth. So since I am writing this blog for my philosophy class I think I should dedicate a least one blog entry to this question “What is truth?” This seems like the same kind of elementary question I once asked everybody when I was only 14 “What is the purpose of life?” No one could really answer that question and in fact seemed rather disturbed by me even asking so I tried to define the purpose of life for myself which of course changed while I was going through different phases of my life.
But what is truth and why do philosophers search for truth? Why is truth so important?

Truth is often defined as a “conformity with fact or reality”. But what is fact or reality? The problem of truth is in a way easy to state: what truths are, and what makes them true. I think very often we tend be persuaded by information or “proof” of science about what truth is and what not. I suppose this is a good thing, information and knowledge can empower us but it can also abuse and manipulate us. Of course we can be manipulated by given false information but even supposedly true information can manipulate us. If we are given the information that there is now a reliable vaccination against H1N1 and everybody is “adviced” to get it, this piece of information may certainly influence the action of people who are afraid of illnesses. It’s pure manipulation. We think we are free to make our own decisions but we are constantly being manipulated by information (true or false) which influence our decision-making process.

I believe the choice for truth exists within us. Truth is really a matter of perspective for me. What might be true for me might not be true for someone else. Aren’t we all influenced by our own subjectivity? I know I am. I have my point of view about things and sometimes I change it and a lot of times I don’t. Once again depending on the information I am getting from the outside world. I believe we all have our own ability to find our own reality. Thus we create our own reality, our own truth.
I looked up the word reality and found this definition: “Reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or may be thought to be. In its widest definition, reality includes everything that is and has being, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible.
This to me sounds like a contradiction: Reality is the state of things the way they actually are, rather than as they appear. But it in the same sense it includes everything whether it is observable or comprehensible or not. I think this already shows that it is almost impossible to define an absolute reality.
I think one of the messages Plato tried to bring across with his “allegory of the cave” was that enlightenment and free thinking can be found by using our own mind and the goal is to do this by reaching objectivity through knowledge. We are typically not in a place of wisdom and are narrowed down by our own opinions. Plato believed that mind was the only source of true knowledge and immortal? What does that mean immortal in this case? Does that mean we are bringing knowledge into this life already, or we might be connected to some type of universal knowledge? A universal source of knowledge that can be accessed by everybody?
The only good thing about this whole confusion about truth and reality is that we are free thinking human beings and have a choice. We have a choice of what kind of knowledge we want to attain, what kind of truth we want to pursue and what we want our reality to be. I have always believed that we create our own reality, and yes this is my truth.
To me personally Philosophy is the process of free thinking, mainly, although I understand that we tend to guide our “free thoughts”. As a person who is trying to make sense of the world – at least to a certain degree – I am obviously in search of plausible positions and explanations. After I have contemplated about the question “what is truth?” for a while I can only come to one conclusion for myself. Different people have different beliefs, different perspectives, different point of views. I believe that facts do not automatically equal truths. Someone can hold beliefs quite different from my own. The way I understood the allegory of the cave by Plato was the he thinks “knowledge is truth”. I can’t agree completely. I think truth is something that guides us. The absence of guilt maybe? Well if I believe I have found my truth which feels right to me and I act accordingly it gives me the feeling of being authentic, of being truthful, of acting and thinking morally according to my own truth, thus I don’t have to feel guilty about anything. My actions and thoughts were “pure”. I don’t believe there is an absolute truth because truth will always be interpreted differently by different people with different experiences and belief system. An interesting thought though that has crossed my mind while I was debating this question with myself: “Does there have to be a fixed truth for the universe to function properly?”