Law, Responsibility, and the Brain
Abstract
Archaeological discoveries of traumatic injuries in primitive hominid skulls strongly hint that our species has a long history of violence [1]. Despite repeated attempts throughout history, including efforts to eliminate violence through the imposition of criminal sanctions, we have yet to dispel our violent nature. Consequently, criminal violence remains a common feature of most societies. As policy-makers seek deeper understandings of criminally violent and anti-social behaviour, many contemporary neuroscientists assume that the essential ingredients of the human condition, including free will, empathy, and morality, are the calculable consequences of an immense assembly of neurons firing. Intuitively, this view opposes Cartesian dualism (i.e., the brain and mind are separate, but interacting, entities) and assumes that violence and antisocial behaviour emanate from a mechanistically determined brain (see Box 1).
Additional Information
© 2007 Mobbs et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. We thank Cindy C. Hagan, John Monaghan, and Joshua Buckholtz for their helpful comments.Attached Files
Published - journal.pbio.0050103.PDF
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Additional details
- PMCID
- PMC1852146
- Eprint ID
- 85079
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20180302-153342815
- Created
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2018-03-05Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-15Created from EPrint's last_modified field