Abstract
Some theorists think that the more we get to know about the neural underpinnings of our behaviors, the less likely we will be to hold people responsible for their actions. This intuition has driven some to suspect that as neuroscience gains insight into the neurological causes of our actions, people will cease to view others as morally responsible for their actions, thus creating a troubling quandary for our legal system. This paper provides empirical evidence against such intuitions. Particularly, our studies of folk intuitions suggest that (1) when the causes of an action are described in neurological terms, they are not found to be any more exculpatory than when described in psychological terms, and (2) agents are not held fully responsible even for actions that are fully neurologically caused.
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Notes
Nahmias writes, “Most people do not regard psychological determinism to be a threat to free and responsible action but most people do regard reductionistic pictures that suggest `bypassing’ to be a threat to free and responsible action” (p. 233–234).
Assuming, of course, that this situation can arise. There are some who suppose that even when we have a completed neuroscience the explanations of most types of behavior will still not be couched in neurological terms (e.g. Fodor 1974).
The data was subjected to a 3 (scenario: Jennifer vs. Cliff vs. Fred) ×2 (condition: psychological vs. neurological) between participants ANOVA. There was no significant difference between the neurological scenarios and the psychological scenarios, F (1, 211)=3.1, p > .05. We did find a significant difference between the characters, F (2, 211)=4.0, p < .05. The significant difference was driven by the Jennifer vignette; participants rated her as less responsible than the other characters, regardless of whether her illness was of a psychological or neurological nature. There was no significant interaction effect between the conditions and scenarios.
These middling scores may be taken to reflect the uncertainty that the participants had about the case. However, we did allow our participants to comment on the vignettes if they cared to and we did not receive any feedback which made us think that they were particularly confused. However, this possibility cannot be ruled out. We thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing this possibility out to us.
t(58) = .05; p > 0.9
The Colombian students were students from varied majors in a critical writing class, while the New York students were business students who were either in a GMAT prep class or an introduction to philosophy class.
We used a 2 (neurological vs. psychological) × 3 (Colombia, GMAT students, Baruch students) ANOVA. There was no significant difference between the neurological and the psychological condition, F(5, 113) = 1.05, p = 0.31.There was a significant effect between the groups F(5, 113) = 3.16, p = 0.046, with the Colombian students holding the characters a bit less responsible regardless of condition. There was no significant interaction effect F(5, 113) = 0.015, p = 0.985
One could, of course, go further and claim that people actually don’t think about neurological states differently than they think about psychological states. However, although we think that this is a live possibility, we leave the question open to further investigation.
Note, again, that this wouldn’t explain the results of our third study.
Presumably, whether this type of future is seen in a positive or negative light will depend on, inter alia, whether one is a compatibilist or an incompatibilist. The authors of this paper are currently split on whether or not such a future is desirable. We thank an anonymous referee for helping us bring out this point.
Moreover, their lack of success rate is probably not due to defendants transparently pretending to be insane. If this were the case, we’d expect a high rate of felony defenses to be predicated on the insanity defense; in fact, the defense is raised less than 1% of the time, presumably because lawyers know how poorly the defense works (ibid.).
How the actual mechanisms work is the focus of our next paper, “Abstract Thought in Concrete Situations” (Mandelburn et al. in preparation).
There may well be e.g. dastardly parents or dastardly societal forces to blame; to the extent that these are present and well-understood, we might expect to see lowered responsibility judgments. But neurology alone will not put every defendant in this situation; even a complete understanding of a behavior’s neural causes could leave open the story of how the neurons came to be the way they are.
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Acknowledgments
Many thanks to the audience at the Society for Philosophy and Psychology at York University in Toronto, Canada, the audience at the 2008 Central Division Meeting of the APA in Chicago, IL, the audience at Mind, Brain, and Experience at the University of Colorado in Denver, and the audience at the tenth anniversary conference for the journal Ethical Theory and Moral Practice at the Blaise Pascal Institute in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Many thanks also to Bryce Huebner, Mark Phelan, and Jesse Prinz for insightful comments, and to Joshua Knobe for his unprecedented generosity. Thanks also to two anonymous referees for their helpful comments.
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De Brigard, F., Mandelbaum, E. & Ripley, D. Responsibility and the Brain Sciences. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 12, 511–524 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-008-9143-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-008-9143-5