Would a neuroscience of violence aid in understanding legal culpability?

Defense attorneys in criminal cases are beginning to argue that their clients were biologically predisposed to committing their crimes and therefore were less responsible for their behavior. Indeed, if our brains cause our behavior, and our brains are the way they are because of genetic composition, insults, disease, and life experiences, it becomes difficult to argue that any punishment as justified retribution for behavior is cogent. In this essay, I address the question of whether understanding the neuroscience behind human behavior should alter our legal notion of responsibility. We will examine this query in greater detail, using violence as a case study, asking whether understanding the neuroscience underlying violent behavior impacts our notion of personal or legal culpability. I shall argue that it does not. I proceed by first briefly sketching what we know about human violence and the biology behind it. Then I turn to a quick discussion of psychopaths, their connections to violence, and what we think we know about the biology of their brains. Finally, I come to the question of whether we should consider violent people with specific brain abnormalities as mad or bad, which will feed into the question of whether such people are responsible for their criminal behavior. I conclude with some very general and very brief speculations on what this discussion has to tell us about nature of being human.     

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence: The abusive personality as a disordered mental state

Does the perpetration of domestic violence reflect a distinct mental disorder? This essay does not and cannot definitely answer that question. Rather it aims to prompt a discussion of the various indices for surmising a position on this issue. For example, batterer behavior and attitudes are associated with severe psychopathology. Batterers are treated in intervention programs for an unnamed condition. Ultimately, domestic violence is contextualized as abnormal behavior. This paper reviews research in the field of domestic violence to establish a forum for discussion and debate about the potential for an abnormal mental state to describe the psychology of a batterer. This review posits that at minimum, the field of psychiatry should consider a review of batterer characteristics to formally investigate the “abusive personality” as a categorization of a distinct mental disorder.     

Informed consent in psychiatric practice: The primacy of ethics over law

In recent years, concern with informed consent in psychiatry has led to an overemphasis on legal formulations of the problem and a heated debate about when physician paternalism can be justified. This paper proposes that the principle of respect for persons provides better guidance for treatment decisions than do legal guidelines based on a questionable standard of competency.     

Responsabilité Sociale, Gestion de la Diversité et Lutte Contre les Discriminations: Des Perspectives Convergentes

Signatory States of international agreements have to report regularly to international bodies on the measures and monitoring they apply to comply with and enforce their commitments on human rights and the fight against racism and discrimination. All the same, national governments do not always adequately assess the prevailing measures and practices in organisations in all sectors of society within their jurisdiction. This article discusses the accountability and social responsibility of organisations in terms of non-discrimination, which are rarely questioned despite legal obligations to comply with charters and legislation on employment equality and equity, as in Canada. The issue of the current effectiveness of rights, which underlines the legitimacy and “ethics” of institutions, companies and governments, requires that obligation in the strict legal sense fits in with a broader and normative perspective, approach and discussion. Today, this issue is prominent at both national and international levels in the social and scientific debate on “citizen companies”, indicators of respect for human rights, social and environmental reports, “ethical” investments, diversity management, equity and access to equality, and the fight against systemic discrimination.     

INTERNISTS OF THE MIND OR PHYSICIANS OF THE SOUL: DOES PSYCHIATRY NEED A PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY?

Although psychiatry is interested in what both body and mind contribute to behavior, it sometimes emphasizes one more than the other. Since the early 1980s, American psychiatry has shifted its interest from mind and psyche to body and brain. Neuroscience and psychopharmacology are increasingly at the core of psychiatry. Some experts claim that psychiatry is no longer interested in problems in living and positive goals such as mental health, happiness, and morality but rather has narrowed its focus to mental disorders addressed with psychotropic drugs. In view of this trend, psychiatry needs to confront two questions in social philosophy. If it is no longer directly concerned with health and happiness, how does it relate to these positive goals? And how does it relate as a medical institution to religious institutions, schools, and other organizations that directly promote health, happiness, morality, and the purposes of life? It is not enough for psychiatry to renounce its moral role; its practices still shape cultural values. Psychiatry should take more responsibility for developing a public philosophy that addresses these issues.     

The insanity plea: Szaszian ethics and epistemology

The traditional legal verdict of ‘not guilty by reason of insanity’ as well as the more recent verdict of ‘guilty but mentally ill’ rest on often unquestioned epistemological assumptions about human behavior and its causes, unjustified reliance on forensic psychiatrists, and questionable, if not deplorable ethical standards. This paper offers a critique of legal perspectives on insanity, historical and current, based on the altermative epistemological and ethical assumptions of Thomas S. Szasz. In addition, we examine Szasz's unique rhetorical analysis of ‘mental illness’ and its implications for forensic psychiatry.     

The neuroscience of "free will"

Advances in neuroscience over the past 40 or more years are causing a re-visiting of an old debate: Does man possess free will over his actions, or do forces out of his control determine his behavior? Philosophers and biologists since the beginning of recorded history have taken positions on each side of the debate. Recent discoveries of brain activation prior to conscious awareness and genetic conditions that induce impulsive violent behavior are fortifying the perspective that biological determinism is basic to the human condition. But some contemporary thinkers are conflicted in this viewpoint since “free will” is a necessary element for self-determination and for attributing personal responsibility for one's actions. Hence, modifications of strict determinism have emerged which try to incorporate the features of determinism enforced by neuroscience findings with some element of “free will”, making the two seemingly opposed positions compatible. How successful this will be to rescue “free will” in the long term depends on future discoveries in neuroscience and genetics. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The non-problem of free will in forensic psychiatry and psychology

This article demonstrates that there is no free will problem in forensic psychiatry by showing that free will or its lack is not a criterion for any legal doctrine and it is not an underlying general foundation for legal responsibility doctrines and practices. There is a genuine metaphysical free will problem, but the article explains why it is not relevant to forensic practice. Forensic practitioners are urged to avoid all usage of free will in their forensic thinking and work product because it is irrelevant and spawns confusion.     

On Being Responsible and Holding Responsible

A number of philosophers have recently argued that we should interpret the debate over moral responsibility as a debate over the conditions under which it would be “fair” to blame a person for her attitudes or conduct. What is distinctive about these accounts is that they begin with the stance of the moral judge, rather than that of the agent who is judged, and make attributions of responsibility dependent upon whether it would be fair or appropriate for a moral judge to react to the agent in various (negative) ways. This is problematic, I argue, because our intuitions about whether and when it would be fair to react negatively to another are sensitive to a host of considerations that appear to have little or nothing to do with an agent’s responsibility or culpability for her attitudes or behavior. If this is correct, then theories which make attributions of responsibility dependent upon the appropriateness of our reactions as moral judges will turn out to be fundamentally misguided. I am grateful to Barbara Herman, T. M. Scanlon, and two anonymous reviewers for The Journal of Ethics for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I am also grateful to Pamela Hieronymi and the members of her Fall 2201 graduate seminar on moral responsibility at UCLA, and to the audience members at Simon Fraser University, for their valuable feedback on earlier versions of this material. My biggest debt of gratitude goes to Jean Roberts, for stimulating discussion and insightful commentary on multiple drafts of this paper.     

CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing – new and old ethical issues arising from a revolutionary technology

Although germline editing has been the subject of debate ever since the 1980s, it tended to be based rather on speculative assumptions until April 2015, when CRISPR/Cas9 technology was used to modify human embryos for the first time. This article combines knowledge about the technical and scientific state of the art, economic considerations, the legal framework and aspects of clinical reality. A scenario will be elaborated as a means of identifying key ethical implications of CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing in humans and possible ways of dealing with them. Unlike most other discussions of CRISPR/Cas9 germline editing, which are generally based on deontological arguments, the focus in this case will be on a consequentialistic argument against certain applications of germline and somatic editing that takes not only the potential benefits and risks but also socioeconomic issues into consideration. The practical need for an indication catalogue, guidelines for clinical trials, and for funding of basic research will be pointed out. It will be argued that this need for regulatory action and discussion does not stem primarily from the fact that CRISPR/Cas9 germline editing is revolutionary in terms of its ethical implications and potential for human therapy, although this is the prevailing view in the current discussion. Understanding the value and interest dependency of arguments put forward by different stakeholders and learning from past debates related to similar technologies might prove a fruitful method of reaching judgments and decisions that come closer to a consensus upon which society as a whole can agree - which after all should be the true goal of an ethical debate and of bioethics.     

What Next after Determinism in the Ontology of Technology? Distributing Responsibility in the Biofuel Debate

This article builds upon previous discussion of social and technical determinisms as implicit positions in the biofuel debate. To ensure these debates are balanced, it has been suggested that they should be designed to contain a variety of deterministic positions. Whilst it is agreed that determinism does not feature strongly in contemporary academic literatures, it is found that they have generally been superseded by an absence of any substantive conceptualisation of how the social shaping of technology may be related to, or occur alongside, an objective or autonomous reality. The problem of determinism emerges at an ontological level and must be resolved in situ. A critical realist approach to technology is presented which may provide a more appropriate framework for debate. In dialogue with previous discussion, the distribution of responsibility is revisited with reference to the role of scientists and engineers.     

Moral Luck as Moral Lack of Control

When Thomas Nagel originally coined the expression “moral luck,” he used the term “luck” to mean lack of control. This use was a matter of stipulation, as Nagel’s target had little to do with luck itself, but the question of how control is related to moral responsibility. Since then, we have seen several analyses of the concept of luck itself, and recent contributors to the moral luck literature have often assumed that any serious contribution to the moral luck debate must begin with a robust concept of luck simpliciter. I argue here that this assumption is a mistake, on the basis of three reasons: the issue was originally conceived as an issue about responsibility and control, analyses of luck tend to distort and needlessly complicate what is at issue when shoehorned into the moral luck debate, and these analyses have very little (if anything) to contribute to the discussion.     

Healthcare,Responsibility and Golden Opportunities

When it comes to determining how healthcare resources should be allocated, there are many factors that could—and perhaps should—be taken into account. One such factor is a patient’s responsibility for his or her illness, or for the behavior that caused it. Policies that take responsibility for the unhealthy lifestyle or its outcomes into account—responsibility-sensitive policies—have faced a series of criticisms. One holds that agents often fail to meet either the control or epistemic conditions on responsibility with regard to their unhealthy lifestyles or their outcomes. Another holds that even if patients sometimes are responsible for these items, we cannot know whether a particular patient is responsible for them. In this article, we propose a type of responsibility-sensitive policy that may be able to surmount these difficulties. Under this type of policy, patients are empowered to change to a healthier lifestyle by being given what we call a ‘Golden Opportunity’ to change. Such a policy would not only avoid concerns about patients’ fulfilment of conditions on responsibility for their lifestyles, it would also allow healthcare authorities to be justified in believing that a patient who does not change her lifestyle is responsible for the unhealthy lifestyle. We conclude with a discussion of avenues for further work, and place this policy in the broader context of the debate on responsibility for health.

     

Evolutionäre Psychiatrie

In contrast to mainstream psychiatry which mainly focuses on the proximate causes of human behavior, evolutionary psychiatry tries to elucidate the ultimate causes of the systems involved in generating specific behavioral patterns. Thus, it is in contradiction to the tabula-rasa model commonly used in social sciences. Using this explanatory approach, it is shown that behavioral sciences like human ethology initiated by K. Lorenz and I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt provide an important scientific basis for modern psychiatry.     

Mental illness and the mind-brain problem: Delusion,belief and Searle's theory of intentionality

Until recently there has been little contact between the mind-brain debate in philosophy and the debate in psychiatry about the nature of mental illness. In this paper some of the analogies and disanalogies between the two debates are explored. It is noted in particular that the emphasis in modern philosophy of mind on the importance of the concept of action has been matched by a recent shift in the debate about mental illness from analyses of disease in terms of failure of functioning to analyses of illness in terms of failure of action. The concept of action thus provides a natural conduit for two-way exchanges of ideas between philosophy and psychiatry. The potential fruitfulness of such exchanges is illustrated with an outline of the mutual heuristic significance of psychiatric work on delusions and philosophical accounts of Intentionality.     

Morality and Interpretation: Commentary on Jonathan Glover's Alien Landscapes?

What is required of the interpreter of disordered minds and what can we learn from the process? Jonathan Glover's book focuses on human interpretation and its role in psychiatry. His hope is that a more careful and sensitive exploration of minds that are very different from our own, will assist us to answer a range of important questions about human agency, identity and responsibility. In this commentary I will focus on the process and purpose of interpretation and expand on some of the moral issues that arise out of the interpretive challenges posed by mental disorders.     

Free will and mental disorder: Exploring the relationship

A link between mental disorder and freedom is clearly present in the introduction of the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV). It mentions “an important loss of freedom” as one of the possible defining features of mental disorder. Meanwhile, it remains unclear how “an important loss of freedom” should be understood. In order to get a clearer view on the relationship between mental disorder and (a loss of) freedom, in this article, I will explore the link between mental disorder and free will. I examine two domains in which a connection between mental disorder and free will is present: the philosophy of free will and forensic psychiatry. As it turns out, philosophers of free will frequently refer to mental disorders as conditions that compromise free will and reduce moral responsibility. In addition, in forensic psychiatry, the rationale for the assessment of criminal responsibility is often explained by referring to the fact that mental disorders can compromise free will. Yet, in both domains, it remains unclear in what way free will is compromised by mental disorders. Based on the philosophical debate, I discuss three senses of free will and explore their relevance to mental disorders. I conclude that in order to further clarify the relationship between free will and mental disorder, the accounts of people who have actually experienced the impact of a mental disorder should be included in future research.     

Begutachtung bei sozialrechtlichen Fragen

Expert opinions in social law are extraordinarily frequent. The expert opinion is the decisive basis for a decision whether a social benefit has to be granted. The importance of social legal assessment for those affected and for society in general is substantial and psychiatric experts carry a high responsibility for the expert opinions in social law. In order to be able to justify this responsibility, psychiatric experts must possess expert knowledge with respect to the current scientific debate in the respective field as well as the individual fields of social law and the various problems associated with them. This article describes the examination and structure of expert opinions. The problem of the so-called critical examination of the will and the problem of malingering are discussed. The important fields in social law are described.