Restoring Responsibility: Promoting Justice, Therapy and Reform Through Direct Brain Interventions

Criminal Law and Philosophy 8 (1):21-42 (2014)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Direct brain intervention based mental capacity restoration techniques-for instance, psycho-active drugs-are sometimes used in criminal cases to promote the aims of justice. For instance, they might be used to restore a person's competence to stand trial in order to assess the degree of their responsibility for what they did, or to restore their competence for punishment so that we can hold them responsible for it. Some also suggest that such interventions might be used for therapy or reform in criminal legal contexts-i.e. to make non-responsible and irresponsible people more responsible. However, I argue that such interventions may at least sometimes fail to promote these responsibility-related legal aims. This is because responsibility hinges on other factors than just what mental capacities a person has-in particular, it also hinges on such things as authenticity, personal identity, and mental capacity ownership-and some ways of restoring mental capacity may adversely affect these other factors. Put one way, my claim is that what might suffice for the restoration of competence need not necessarily suffice for the restoration of responsibility, or, put another way, that although responsibility indeed tracks mental capacity it may not always track restored mental capacities.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,221

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Neurolaw and Direct Brain Interventions.Nicole A. Vincent - 2014 - Criminal Law and Philosophy 8 (1):43-50.
Direct Brain Interventions and Responsibility Enhancement.Elizabeth Shaw - 2014 - Criminal Law and Philosophy 8 (1):1-20.
Responsibility, Desert, and Justice.Carl Knight - 2011 - In Carl Knight & Zofia Stemplowska (eds.), Responsibility and Distributive Justice. Oxford University Press.
“Do You Have a Healthy Smile?”.Jos V. M. Welie - 1999 - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 2 (2):169-180.
Common morality and moral reform.K. A. Wallace - 2009 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 30 (1):55-68.
Obesity and Health System Reform: Private vs. Public Responsibility.Y. Tony Yang & Len M. Nichols - 2011 - Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 39 (3):380-386.
Hurley on Justice and Responsibility. [REVIEW]Peter Vallentyne - 2006 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 72 (2):433 - 438.
Rethinking neuroethics in the light of the extended mind thesis.Neil Levy - 2007 - American Journal of Bioethics 7 (9):3-11.
Justice and the Grey Box of Responsibility.Carl Knight - 2010 - Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory 57 (124):86-112.

Analytics

Added to PP
2012-05-25

Downloads
67 (#219,030)

6 months
4 (#315,466)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Nicole A. Vincent
University of Technology Sydney

References found in this work

Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility.John Martin Fischer & Mark Ravizza - 1998 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Mark Ravizza.
Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments.R. Jay Wallace - 1994 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility.Harry G. Frankfurt - 1969 - Journal of Philosophy 66 (23):829-839.
Neuroethics: Challenges for the 21st Century.Neil Levy - 2007 - Cambridge University Press.

View all 38 references / Add more references