“Suppose neuroscience could reveal that reason actually plays no role in determining human behavior, suppose I could show you that your intentions and your reasons for your actions are post hoc rationalizations that somehow your brain generates to explain to you what your brain has already done”.
For the rest of the article-
http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2007/03/11/law-the-brain/
The old free will debate sparks up again, this time in the context of the emerging area of neurolaw. The idea that neuroscience research can seriously inform decision-making in law cases is a fairly contentious one. There is of course a case for such input in cases where defendents have sustained serious brain injuries resulting in disinhibition, misunderstanding of social cues, and general uncontrolled impulsivity with or without an understanding of right and wrong. However, as usual where to draw the line is the difficult question. Schizophrenia and other serious mental illnesses should of course be given dispensation, but in other cases such as anti-social personality disorder, criminality or a lack of respect for the law is in very much intrinsic to the diagnosis and the majority of prison inmates could be diagnosed as such. It is in these cases where individuals are characterised by their impulsivity, irresponsibility and disregard for safety of for laws that automaticity arguments against free will could potentially play a deciding role.
This article gives a brief introduction to work of Libet and carried on by Wegner on the "illusion of conscious will". It's an interesting debate though I would say most lawyers would lean towards the side of common sense and that of philosophers who would say that experiments which show automaticity on a time-scale of under a second are not really testing the existence of free will as this is a long term process which involves engaging in intentional projects and that specific behaviours are subsumed under the umbrella of such projects and still should be considered "free". The tendency of those who are high in impulsivity to perceive time as faster than normal, to fail to operate within the frame of intentional projects and long-term goal-striving to the same extent as those in the normal range would suggest that these people are more prone to "automatic" behaviour. But should this get them off!?
4 comments:
the eliminative materialist position in philosophy of mind associated with people like Paul Churchland is interesting here. The idea (defined in loose country brogue) is that intentional states are redundant and that in the future our language will evolve in to descriptions of neurological events - ill dig back through my philosophy notes but it struck me that a lot of what we are trying to do in econometrics involves moving away from endogenous intentional explanations to causal explanations based on biology. there is a huge literature in philosophy saying that ultimately some form of intentional state is neccesary. if nothing else, you need them to form the project to invalidate their existence! - i agree with your point about the ecological validity of some of the neuro-experiments -
"Suppose neuroscience could reveal that reason actually plays no role in determining human behavior, suppose I could show you that your intentions and your reasons for your actions are post hoc rationalizations that somehow your brain generates to explain to you what your brain has already done”.
These are intriguing suppositions but the consideration of the converse is equally valid. Suppose I could show you that "ante hoc" rationalisations from prolonged reflection and meditation are the main determinants of human behaviour.
Of course, it may also be the case that neither perspective can be the sole provider of illumination. Some individuals could be characterised by their impulsivity while other individuals could be characterised by reflection and meditation. “Every man is in certain respects (a) like all other men, (b) like some other men, (c) like no other man" (Murray, H.A. & C. Kluckhohn, 1953).
The theory of individual differences has a lot to offer here, not least the notion that there may be a neurological basis for non-impulsive behaviour. And that this neurological basis might enable something along the lines of metacognition i.e thinking about the outcomes of impulsive action through an impulsive subsconscious filter.
Even if one argues that a metacognitive learning strategy is a more feasible explanation than an impulsive subsonscious filter, surely post hoc rationalisations about past behaviour eventually feed into "ante hoc" intentions about future behaviour?
Here's Gul and Pesendorfer's neuroeconomic critique of standard economics - "The Case for Mindless Economics":
http://www.princeton.edu/~pesendor/mindless.pdf
The "Level of Personal Agency Questionnaire" (Wegner, 1989) may be useful here as it is designed to assess stable individual differences in action identification.
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