The Inevitable Mind in the Age of Neuroscience
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
2016
Abstract
This chapter argues that free will is not a presupposition of criminal law, or any other area of law, and thus causal determinism about mental states and actions (whether illuminated by neuroscience or not) does not undermine legal responsibility. Hence, people who question whether there can be free will in a causal world are simply making a mistake. The chapter thus defends a ‘compatibilist’ position for law (in which free will and causal determinism can coexist). It argues that legal responsibility depends on the degree to which we are responsive to reasons. Because of this, the chapter concludes that neuroscience does not pose any global challenges to legal responsibility and is unlikely to undermine the law’s conceptions of mind, mental states, and action any time soon.
Keywords
free will, criminal law, causal determinism, mental states, compatibilism, compatibilist approach to law, legal responsibility
Publication Title
Philosophical Foundations of Law and Neuroscience
Repository Citation
Morse, Stephen J., "The Inevitable Mind in the Age of Neuroscience" (2016). All Faculty Scholarship. 2684.
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/2684
Publication Citation
In Philosophical Foundations of Law and Neuroscience (Dennis Patterson & Michael S. Pardo eds., Oxford 2016)