Posts tagged brain science

Guilty, but not responsible? Any scientific developments that threatened our notion of free will would seem to put the ethics of punishing people for their bad behaviour in question. In Free Will Harris debates these ideas and asks whether or not, given what brain science is telling us, criminal justice, in focusing on retribution, rests on an entirely false basis. An example he gives is a murderer who kills because of a brain tumour. This person is a victim, not a criminal. The tumour is the cause of his crimes. People imagine that the normal brain is a different story. But in fact the study of any criminal brain, says Harris, is the equivalent of finding a tumour in it – the wrong genes being transcribed, the brain being dictated by events over which he has no control. Human choice, says Harris, “…is as important as fanciers of free will believe. But the next choice you make will come out of the darkness of prior causes that you, the conscious witness of your experience, did not bring into being.” Clearly we need to lock up dangerous people. But there is no sense to the idea that they somehow deserve it. Retributive justice is like requiring us to hate, as well as shoot, a wild animal who escapes from the zoo.”  When we say lock up, are we still talking about punishment?  Inside the forensic hospitals I have visited, there is a brick-solid tension between staff and inmates/patients as to how to treat them. A common dilemma the staff struggles with is should they been treat the prisoners as medical patients and deliver care since they are generally not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI) or should they be treated like as captured monsters, since dangerous behavior IS what landed them there? Staff safety is a major concern obviously.  Taking a tip from Norway, a novel change would be a path toward first treating them like humans- since no matter what they did/how heinous it was - that’s all they are.

Guilty, but not responsible?

Any scientific developments that threatened our notion of free will would seem to put the ethics of punishing people for their bad behaviour in question. In Free Will Harris debates these ideas and asks whether or not, given what brain science is telling us, criminal justice, in focusing on retribution, rests on an entirely false basis. An example he gives is a murderer who kills because of a brain tumour. This person is a victim, not a criminal. The tumour is the cause of his crimes. People imagine that the normal brain is a different story. But in fact the study of any criminal brain, says Harris, is the equivalent of finding a tumour in it – the wrong genes being transcribed, the brain being dictated by events over which he has no control. Human choice, says Harris,

“…is as important as fanciers of free will believe. But the next choice you make will come out of the darkness of prior causes that you, the conscious witness of your experience, did not bring into being.”

Clearly we need to lock up dangerous people. But there is no sense to the idea that they somehow deserve it. Retributive justice is like requiring us to hate, as well as shoot, a wild animal who escapes from the zoo.” 

When we say lock up, are we still talking about punishment?  Inside the forensic hospitals I have visited, there is a brick-solid tension between staff and inmates/patients as to how to treat them. A common dilemma the staff struggles with is should they been treat the prisoners as medical patients and deliver care since they are generally not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI) or should they be treated like as captured monsters, since dangerous behavior IS what landed them there? Staff safety is a major concern obviously.  Taking a tip from Norway, a novel change would be a path toward first treating them like humans- since no matter what they did/how heinous it was - that’s all they are.

“Direct Brain Interventions to “Treat” Disfavored Human Behaviors: Ethical and Social Issues”  - H.T. Greely. [via] Where ought we to draw the line? As neuroscience learns more about the causes of human behaviors, it will give us new ways to change those behaviors. When behaviors are caused by “brain diseases,” effective actions that intervene directly in the brain will be readily accepted, but what about direct brain interventions that treat brain-based causes of socially disfavored behaviors that are not generally viewed as diseases? Neuroethics, you big studded masked beast..you just keep pulling me back in.

“Direct Brain Interventions to “Treat” Disfavored Human Behaviors: Ethical and Social Issues”  - H.T. Greely. [via]

Where ought we to draw the line?

As neuroscience learns more about the causes of human behaviors, it will give us new ways to change those behaviors. When behaviors are caused by “brain diseases,” effective actions that intervene directly in the brain will be readily accepted, but what about direct brain interventions that treat brain-based causes of socially disfavored behaviors that are not generally viewed as diseases?

Neuroethics, you big studded masked beast..you just keep pulling me back in.

Oh, remember when we were all talking about brain-computer interfaces? No? Ok, if your just tuning in, the thing above is what we are talking about. Neat, right? These things are able to “listen to regions of the brain that control speech”. Via It’s surgically implanted and used to analyze the frequency of brain wave activity and a computer program translates it. For instance in this study, the participant would say, or just think a sound (like a vowel sound) and the computer would understand that frequency and respond accordingly.   The full article, Using the electrocorticographic speech network to control a brain–computer interface in humans is available here. Yay for open access! The researchers explain “We want to see if we can not just detect when you’re saying dog, tree, tool or some other word, but also learn what the pure idea of that looks like in your mind,” he says. “It’s exciting and a little scary to think of reading minds, but it has incredible potential for people who can’t communicate or are suffering from other disabilities.”  Via And you know how the people just love when science says we can read minds. Welcome to it, and get ready to love it even more.

Oh, remember when we were all talking about brain-computer interfaces? No? Ok, if your just tuning in, the thing above is what we are talking about. Neat, right? These things are able to “listen to regions of the brain that control speech”. Via It’s surgically implanted and used to analyze the frequency of brain wave activity and a computer program translates it. For instance in this study, the participant would say, or just think a sound (like a vowel sound) and the computer would understand that frequency and respond accordingly.  

The full article, Using the electrocorticographic speech network to control a brain–computer interface in humans is available here. Yay for open access! The researchers explain “We want to see if we can not just detect when you’re saying dog, tree, tool or some other word, but also learn what the pure idea of that looks like in your mind,” he says. “It’s exciting and a little scary to think of reading minds, but it has incredible potential for people who can’t communicate or are suffering from other disabilities.”  Via And you know how the people just love when science says we can read minds. Welcome to it, and get ready to love it even more.