The Promise of Neuroscience for Law: Hope or Hype?
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
2018
Abstract
This chapter addresses the potential contributions of neuroscience to legal policy in general and criminal justice in particular. The central question is whether neuroscience is relevant to legal policy. The chapter begins with speculation about the source of claims for the positive influence of neuroscience. It then turns to the scientific status of behavioral neuroscience. The next section considers the two radical challenges to current policies that neuroscience allegedly poses: determinism and the death of agency. The penultimate section addresses the question of the specific relevance of neuroscience to legal doctrine, practice and institutions. The final section points to some areas warranting modest optimism. The general conclusion, however, is that neuroscience is scarcely useful at present but may become more relevant as the science progresses.
Keywords
Criminal justice policy, behavioral neuroscience, philosophy of action, responsibility, free will, determinism, folk psychology, mental states, mens rea, culpability, competency, functional magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI
Publication Title
The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Public Policy
Repository Citation
Morse, Stephen J., "The Promise of Neuroscience for Law: Hope or Hype?" (2018). All Faculty Scholarship. 2020.
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/2020
Publication Citation
In The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Public Policy 77-96 (David Boonin ed., 2018)