Abstract
Cognitive neuroscience is challenging the Anglo-American approach to criminal responsibility. Critiques, in this issue and elsewhere, are pointing out the deeply flawed psychological assumptions underlying the legal tests for mental incapacity. The critiques themselves, however, may be flawed in looking, as the tests do, at the psychology of the offender. Introducing the strategic structure of punishment into the analysis leads us to consider the psychology of the punisher as the critical locus of cognition informing the responsibility rules. Such an approach both helps to make sense of the counterfactual assumptions about offender psychology embodied in the law and provides a possible explanation for the human conviction of the existence of free will, at least in others.
Full Text
The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (88.8 KB).
Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- Baird Abigail A., Fugelsang Jonathan A. The emergence of consequential thought: evidence from neuroscience. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2004 Nov 29;359(1451):1797–1804. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2004.1549. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Camerer Colin F. Behavioural studies of strategic thinking in games. Trends Cogn Sci. 2003 May;7(5):225–231. doi: 10.1016/s1364-6613(03)00094-9. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Fehr Ernst, Fischbacher Urs. Social norms and human cooperation. Trends Cogn Sci. 2004 Apr;8(4):185–190. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2004.02.007. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Fehr Ernst, Gächter Simon. Altruistic punishment in humans. Nature. 2002 Jan 10;415(6868):137–140. doi: 10.1038/415137a. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Frith Uta, Frith Christopher D. Development and neurophysiology of mentalizing. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2003 Mar 29;358(1431):459–473. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2002.1218. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Greene Joshua, Cohen Jonathan. For the law, neuroscience changes nothing and everything. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2004 Nov 29;359(1451):1775–1785. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2004.1546. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Hoffman Morris B. The neuroeconomic path of the law. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2004 Nov 29;359(1451):1667–1676. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2004.1540. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Jones Owen D. Law, evolution and the brain: applications and open questions. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2004 Nov 29;359(1451):1697–1707. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2004.1543. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Sanfey Alan G., Rilling James K., Aronson Jessica A., Nystrom Leigh E., Cohen Jonathan D. The neural basis of economic decision-making in the Ultimatum Game. Science. 2003 Jun 13;300(5626):1755–1758. doi: 10.1126/science.1082976. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Sapolsky Robert M. The frontal cortex and the criminal justice system. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2004 Nov 29;359(1451):1787–1796. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2004.1547. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]