NEUROETHICS | Responsibility and Brain Function

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Responsibility and Brain Function

The idea that behavior is determined by physical causes is hard to reconcile with the intuitive notions of free will and moral agency on which our legal systems are based. Although many people believe that, in principle, human behavior is the physical result of a causally determined chain of biophysical events, most of us also put that aside when making moral judgments. We don’t say “but he had no choice—the laws of physics made him do it!”

However, as the neuroscience of decision-making and impulse control begins more>>

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Grafton, S.T., Sinnott-Armstrong, W.P., Gazzaniga, S.I. & Gazzaniga, M.S. (2006). Brain scans go legal. Scientific American, December.

Greene, J. D., and Cohen J. D. (in press) For the law, neuroscience changes nothing and everything. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B, Special Issue on Law and the Brain.

Hall, W. Carter, L., and Morley, K.I. (2004). Neuroscience research on the addictions: a prospectus for future ethical and policy analysis. Addictive Behaviors, 29: 1481-1495.

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*Raine, A., Meloy, J.R., Bihrle, S., Soddard, J. LaCasse, and Buchsbaum, M.S. (1998). Reduced prefrontal and increased subcortical brain functioning assessed using positron emission tomography in predatory and affective murderers. Behavioral Science and Law, 16: 319-332.

*Rogers, R.D. and Robbins, T. (2001). Investigating the neurocognitive deficits associated with chronic drug misuse, Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 11: 250-257.

Roskies, A. (2006). Neuroscientific challenges to free will and responsibility. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10 (9): 419-423.

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*Teicher, M. H., Anderson, S. L., Polcari, A., Anderson, C. M., Navalta, C. P., and Kim, D. M. (2003). The neurobiological consequences of early stress and childhood maltreatment. Neuroscience and Behavioral Reviews, 27: 33-44.