For the law, neuroscience changes nothing and everything

[ciphergoth]

Found this fascinating paper thanks to a link in an Overcoming Bias article:

Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2004 November 29; 359(1451): 1775–1785.
doi: 10.1098/rstb.2004.1546.
PMCID: PMC1693457

For the law, neuroscience changes nothing and everything.
Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen
Department of Psychology, Center for the Study of Brain, Mind, and Behavior, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA. jdgreene@princeton.edu

Abstract

The rapidly growing field of cognitive neuroscience holds the promise of explaining the operations of the mind in terms of the physical operations of the brain. Some suggest that our emerging understanding of the physical causes of human (mis)behaviour will have a transformative effect on the law. Others argue that new neuroscience will provide only new details and that existing legal doctrine can accommodate whatever new information neuroscience will provide. We argue that neuroscience will probably have a transformative effect on the law, despite the fact that existing legal doctrine can, in principle, accommodate whatever neuroscience will tell us. New neuroscience will change the law, not by undermining its current assumptions, but by transforming people's moral intuitions about free will and responsibility. This change in moral outlook will result not from the discovery of crucial new facts or clever new arguments, but from a new appreciation of old arguments, bolstered by vivid new illustrations provided by cognitive neuroscience. We foresee, and recommend, a shift away from punishment aimed at retribution in favour of a more progressive, consequentialist approach to the criminal law.

And here's the Heider-Simmel video they discuss.

Comments

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

We foresee, and recommend, a shift away from punishment aimed at retribution in favour of a more progressive, consequentialist approach to the criminal law.

I'd recommend that too, but I'm not confident enough to bank on that actually being what happens. I can also imagine a future based more on an extrapolation of the existing trend towards ever more absolute offences where mens rea don't enter in to it - so the law gets round the ever-trickier questions about intentionality by saying "La la la don't care can't hear you doesn't matter anyway".

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

(Fascinating article and related things, btw, thanks.)

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Yes, I wish I could share their optimism on that one.

I wonder if one could campaign for it?

[a-rob-z.livejournal.com]

While I have nothing against their conclusion, I think their premise "The rapidly growing field of cognitive neuroscience holds the promise of explaining the operations of the mind in terms of the physical operations of the brain." - is on the ambitious side. It entails a pretty reductionist reading of the word "explain[ing]" if you ask me.