[Vision2020] Neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga: "Who’s in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain."

[Ted Moffett]

Thanks for this extensive response.  Way beyond the call of duty for
Vision2020, I think.

I thought you might be familiar with Gazzaniga's work, and if he added
anything new to the "free will" discussion with his new book on this
issue, published Nov. 2011.  But you stated if I understand correctly
you are not familiar with his work.

An hour interview with Gazzaniga regarding the new book in question is
viewable here:
http://www.booktv.org/Program/13035/After+Words+Michael+Gazzaniga+Whos+in+Charge+Free+Will+and+the+Science+of+the+Brain+hosted+by+Sally+Satel.aspx

I think it probable that neuroscience will make substantial
discoveries, and if I understand correctly you would not disagree,
that will more clearly define who does or does not have reduced powers
or capacities, assuming your compatibilist view that "free will is a
set of active powers and cognitive capacities and that these powers
and capacities are consistent with a fully determined world."

We already recognize a variety of mental (brain?) conditions (bipolar
disorder, schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder) to mitigate
guilt or full responsibility for misconduct.  People criminally guilty
of some crimes today may in the future due to neuroscience
advancements be found to have committed crimes while they were
suffering scientifically verifiable neurologically based impairments.

Indeed, in the interview referenced above Gazzaniga is quoted
regarding "neuroscience oozing into the courtroom," but he cautioned
that some of this neuroscience is not ready for this application,
though it is likely that eventually some of it will be, or at least
claimed to be.  In the interview mention of reliable lie detection
with further advancements in neuroscience is discussed, a possibility
that if scientifically validated would be a major and alarming,
perhaps, breakthrough.

Also, Gazzaniga presents studies indicating very young children
already have forms of moral reasoning manifesting in their behavior,
that in some sense is programmed into the brain (my wording). He
emphatically implied that the tabula rasa approach to the human brain
is false (my wording again).

If stating "my neurons are in control" is not a threat to your view of
free will, then with advancements in neuroscience eventually a brain
state of "free will" may be empirically defined with replicatable peer
reviewed experimental studies that offers the capacity to
scientifically detect if such a state is or is not present in the
brain.  Of course a problem applying this evidence to the commission
of crimes is that the actual state of brain when a crime was committed
is not likely to be available as evidence in a courtroom.  Someone may
at a later time display a brain state indicating free will is present,
but when the crime was committed their brain might have displayed an
absense of this capacity.  This problem was mentioned in the C-Span2
BookTV interview with Gazzaniga.  This already is a problem in trials
where there is a claim of mental impairment when a crime was
committted, though the accused appears "sane" later.

I wonder if "Will" is dependent on genetic factors, with some
possessing a strong will and others not, just as physical capacities
vary considerably based on genetics.  Actually, it seems plausible
this is the case.

I once told someone that the fact in my late 30s I ran Bloomsday at a
5:58 minute per mile average for the 7.46 mi. 12 K. race (29th out of
2900 in my age group) was nothing I should accept praise for.  My
genetics allowed me to do this, something I had no control over.  Many
others no doubt worked as hard or harder than I did, yet their
genetics limited their capacity, while truly world class runners ran
at a sub-5 minute per mile pace, only possible for the extremely
genetically blessed, thus literally impossible for me to match.  If
only I was that blessed!

If some individuals simply are weak willed, due to genetics, thus
having much less control over their impulses, while some are
genetically blessed with a strong will, and thus more capacity for
virtue, this is a questionable basis for blame or praise, it seems to
me.

Regarding environmental influences on behavior, many of which are not
under our control, especially while children, the following song at
least emotionally captures a more compassionate rather than
judgemental view of the failures of the human condition:
Joan Baez singing Phil Och's "There But For Fortune:"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4BYOJ1tc-k
---------------------------
The following book review from the "Wall Street Journal" on
Gazzaniga's "Who's in Charge?" discusses a kind of biological
reductionism, that is a basis to argue against some definitions of
free will, and objections to this view.  I'm not sure the author of
this review quite correctly understands Gazzaniga's position on these
issues, but he presents some amazing theories, and states:
---One of the founding fathers of cognitive psychology, Jerry Fodor,
has argued that to solve the puzzle of conscious experience "there's
hardly anything we may not have to cut loose from."---

Exactly.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204618704576642991109496396.html

NOVEMBER 12, 2011

Rethinking Thinking

How a lumpy bunch of tissue lets us plan, perceive, calculate,
reflect, imagine—and exercise free will.

By RAYMOND TALLIS

The world of academe is currently in the grip of a strange and
worrying epidemic of biologism, which has also captured the popular
imagination. Scientists, philosophers and quite a few toilers in the
humanities believe—and would have the rest of us believe—that nothing
fundamental separates humanity from animality.

Biologism has two cardinal manifestations. One is the claim that the
mind is the brain, or the activity of the brain, so that one of the
most powerful ways to advance our understanding of ourselves is to
look at our brains in action, using the latest scanning devices. The
other is the claim that Darwinism explains not only how the organism
Homo sapiens came into being (as, of course, it does) but also what
motivates people and shapes their day-to-day behavior.

These beliefs are closely connected. If the brain is an evolved organ,
shaped by natural selection to ensure evolutionary success (as it most
surely is), and if the mind is the brain and nothing more, then the
mind and all those things we are minded to do can be explained by the
evolutionary imperative. The mind is a cluster of apps or modules
securing the replication of the genes that are expressed in our
bodies.

Many in the humanities have embraced these views with astonishing
fervor. New disciplines, prefixed by "neuro" or "evolutionary" or even
"neuro-evolutionary," have been invented. "Neuro-aesthetics" explains
aesthetic pleasure in terms of activity in certain parts of the brain
observed when people are enjoying works of art. A propensity for
aesthetic brain-tingles, implanted in us by evolution, causes us to
tingle to the right kinds of things, such as pictures of landscapes
loaded with food.

"Neuro-economics" can explain why we buy things we don't need or can't
afford, by identifying ancestral imbalances between the want-it center
in the amygdala, deep in the cerebral hemispheres, and the
wait-until-you-can-afford-it center in the prudent frontal lobes.
Those toxic subprime mortgages, it appears, were in fact "neurotoxic."
Conspicuous consumption and our trillion-dollar debts are due to a
desire to advertise our genetic health, analogous to a peacock
virtually crippled by its meretricious tail.

A brain in good working order is, of course, a necessary condition of
every aspect of human consciousness, from basic perception to the most
complex constructed sense of self. It does not follow that this is the
whole story of our nature—that we are just brains in some kind of
working order. Many aspects of everyday human consciousness elude
neural reduction. For we belong to a boundless, infinitely elaborated
community of minds that has been forged out of a trillion cognitive
handshakes over hundreds of thousands of years. This community is the
theater of our daily existence. It separates life in the jungle from
life in the office, and because it is a community of minds, it cannot
be inspected by looking at the activity of the solitary brain.

Biologism commands acceptance in the humanities because it is promoted
or endorsed by scientists whose prowess in their chosen field seems to
qualify them to pronounce on what are essentially philosophical
questions. Thus it is notable when two books written by
neuro-biologists of the greatest distinction are nonetheless critical
of the simplifications—both scientific and philosophical—of biologism.
Both authors look outside the conceptual frameworks upon which
biologism depends.

"Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged From Matter" by Terrence Deacon,
a professor of neuroscience and anthropology at the University of
California, Berkeley, does not deliver on its subtitle, but the author
acknowledges the depth and complexity of the problem. This mighty work
of scholarship is long, slow-moving and peppered with neologisms, but
it is infinitely preferable to the flashy tomes of the Professors of
Legerdemain who assure us that the mind could emerge from matter in
the brain "just like that" simply because "the brain is the most
complex object in the world."

Along the way, Mr. Deacon demolishes fashionable computational
theories of the brain.  Anyone in the future who is tempted to assert
that "the mind is the software of the brain" should reflect on Mr.
Deacon's observation that the apparent agency of a computer "is just
the displaced agency of some human designer." The use of simplistic
analogies to make the mind look machine-like and machines mind-like
and thereby solve the mind-brain problem should never again pass
unchallenged.

In his approach to the question of how sentience emerged from "dumb"
and "numb" matter, Mr. Deacon mobilizes some radically new ideas,
taking us back to thermodynamics to show how it might have happened.
His key argument, developed over several hundred pages, centers on
what he calls a "teleo-dynamic" system—a self-organizing system that
"promotes its own persistence and maintenance" by modifying itself "to
more effectively utilize supportive extrinsic conditions." He suggests
how such a system might spontaneously arise out of thermodynamic
processes, as predicted by chaos theory.

Living organisms are such self-organizing teleodynamic systems, and
they have a key property. He calls this the absential. An absential is
a phenomenon "whose existence is determined with respect to an . . .
absence." This sounds somewhat opaque but captures something essential
to mind. In the push-pull universe of mechanical causation, only that
which is present shapes the course of events. In our lives, by
contrast, we are always taking account of things that are no longer
present or not yet present or that may never come to pass. Thus
"absentials" include our beliefs, the norms to which we subscribe and
those great silos of possibility such as "tomorrow" and "next year."

But absentials long precede human consciousness, Mr. Deacon claims. All
"teleodynamic systems" are shaped and defined, in great part, by the
constraints placed on their development. The constraints are evident
in the directed development of organisms or the limited patterns of
behavior they may exhibit: Living matter is, as it were, "railroaded"
along certain paths. It is through these constraints that, ultimately,
"that which is not" asserts its power. Mind emerged not from matter,
Mr. Deacon concludes, but from the constraints on matter. These
constraints then shaped the emergence of brand-new "higher level"
properties—mind and thought—that are not susceptible to reduction.

This argument is not entirely persuasive, precisely because Mr. Deacon
sees absentials as defining properties of both life and mind, reaching
all the way down to brainless organisms, to which he, surprisingly,
ascribes sentience. But brainless complex systems do not experience
their own development, or the constraints on their development, in the
way that you or I experience the possibilities that shape or constrain
our behavior. Mr. Deacon acknowledges that the form of sentience found
in animals is different from that of humans but asserts somewhat
gnomically that it is "a form of sentience built on sentience."

The author thus takes us from matter to life, but still not from life
to mind, even less to the human mind. He asserts that specifically
human consciousness emerges from "the flux of intercellular signals
that neurons give rise to"— without making it clear how this happens.
The word "signals" jumps out: Elsewhere the author criticizes the
homunculi (little men), making quite difficult determinations, that
pervade putative neuroscientific accounts of the mind; there is more
than a hint of a homunculus in the notion of neurons that "signal" to
one another. We are back with the old ways of thinking, manifested by
a tendency to generate persons from the material world simply by
personifying what is happening in living matter.

One of the founding fathers of cognitive psychology, Jerry Fodor, has
argued that to solve the puzzle of conscious experience "there's
hardly anything we may not have to cut loose from." Mr. Deacon has not
cut loose from quite enough yet—in particular from the notion that
matter organized in a certain way must be mindful—but he has started
to reframe the terms of the discussion. His 500 densely argued pages
testify to his awareness of the intractability of the problem.

Where Mr. Deacon looks backward to thermodynamics for answers about
the mind, Michael Gazzaniga's "Who's in Charge?" suggests that we look
elsewhere—outward, to the human world beyond the stand-alone brain.
Mr. Gazzaniga is a towering figure in contemporary neurobiology. It
was he who, back in the 1970s, coined the term "cognitive
neuroscience"—with colleague George Miller—in the back seat of a New
York taxi.

Unlike many in his profession, Mr. Gazzaniga is philosophically
sophisticated. He believes that, while the brain "enables" the mind,
mental activity is not reducible to neural events. While he states
that thoughts, perceptions, memories, intentions and the exercise of
the will are emergent phenomena, he adds that "calling a property
emergent does not explain it or how it came to be."

Crucially, the true locus of this activity is not in the isolated
brain but "in the group interactions of many brains," which is why
"analyzing single brains in isolation cannot illuminate the capacity
of responsibility." This, the community of minds, is where our human
consciousness is to be found, woven out of the innumerable
interactions that our brains make possible. "Responsibility" (or lack
of it), Mr. Gazzaniga says, "is not located in the brain." It is "an
interaction between people, a social contract"—an emergent phenomenon,
irreducible to brain activity.

If the mind really were identical with activity in individual
brain-bits, which were themselves machines causally wired into the
material world, free will would be an illusion. One purpose of Mr.
Gazzaniga's book is to reveal the implications of this mistaken notion
for one of the most sinister of the neuro-prefixed pseudo-disciplines:
"neuro-law." Neuro-law aims to replace the untidy processes of the
current judicial system with something more biologically savvy. Isn't
criminal behavior the result of (abnormal) brain function? If so, the
brain, not the defendant, should take the rap.

Mr. Gazzaniga will have none of this, and he deplores "neuroscience
oozing into the courtroom." The author savages the uncritical use of
neuro-technology in court and ¬laments that juries and judges have
little idea of the shakiness of the connections ¬between minor
abnormalities on brain scans and the commission of a particular crime.
Neuro-law is not merely premature; it overlooks the fact that, as Mr.
Gazzaniga says, "we are people, not brains," and brain scans tell us
little about our personhood.

Mr. Gazzaniga's incomparable knowledge, along with his mastery of the
art of making things clear without oversimplifying them, means that
"Who's in Charge?" is a joy to read. Is his book, along with Mr.
Deacon's, an indicator that the mighty edifice of philosophically
naïve conventional neuroculture is starting to fall apart? Are these
books harbingers of a better future in which the task of trying to
make sense of what we are is not hampered by a reductive scientism
that identifies us with the activity of brains evolved to serve
evolutionary success? I hope so. While we are not angels fallen from
heaven, we are not just neural machines. Nor are we merely
exceptionally clever chimps.

—Dr. Tallis's latest book is "Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis
and the Misrepresentation of Humanity" (Acumen).
------------------------------------------
Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett

On 1/2/12, Joe Campbell <philosopher.joe at gmail.com> wrote:

> Meant to post this to everyone.
>
> On Sun, Jan 1, 2012 at 10:16 PM, Joe Campbell
> <philosopher.joe at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Thanks for the very interesting post Ted. I'll have to read this a bit
>> closer and read the links but here are a few thoughts on the topic.
>>
>> 1/ I think the neuroscience research is very interesting and very
>> important. I'm familiar with some of it but I need to read more about it
>> before I can make an informed decision. There is a conference in Florida
>> State later this month and I'm toying with the idea of going to it since I
>> have a bit of travel money left for the semester.
>>
>> Whether neuroscience research tells us something new about the free will
>> debate is not clear and it depends on your views on free will and which
>> issues surrounding the free will debate are the important issues. Here are
>> are three main theories:
>>
>>
>>    - Free will skepticism (or antirealism or denialism) is the view that
>>    no one has free will.
>>    - Compatibilism is the view that free will is compatible with
>>    determinism. If you combine this with the view that we have free will
>> and
>>    determinism is true, the view is called "soft determinism."
>>    - Libertarianism is incompatibilism (free will is not compatible with
>>    free will) combined with the view that we have free will (and thus
>>    determinism is false).
>>
>> Most free will skeptics think that results from neuroscience confirm their
>> view. This is a very popular view among contemporary free will scholars,
>> and that is one reason why the neuroscience research is relevant to the
>> contemporary debate.
>>
>> Suppose you are a libertarian. Likely you're not impressed by neuroscience
>> discoveries. The reason is that all of the correlations discovered so far
>> are statistical. Since neuroscience discoveries don't entail determinism
>> and many libertarians are convinced that only determinism is threatening
>> to
>> free will (God's foreknowledge for instance is not threatening according
>> to
>> many libertarians), few libertarians think the research is important.
>>
>> I'm a compatibilist: I think that free will is a set of active powers and
>> cognitive capacities and that these powers and capacities are consistent
>> with a fully determined world. Since I don't think that determinism is a
>> threat to free will, I certainly don't think that the kinds of statistical
>> correlations established by neuroscience are a threat either.
>> To give you some idea of my view think of a simple capacity like the
>> ability to partake in means-to-ends reasoning. This I think is essential
>> to
>> both free will and moral responsibility. This is why I don't think dogs
>> have free will but some people do (small children for instance do not).
>> Note that the capacity to partake in means-to-ends reasoning is not the
>> only capacity relevant to free will. It's just one example.
>>
>> It seems odd to think that a capacity like means-to-ends reasoning can
>> only exist if determinism is false. Likewise, it is doubtful that research
>> in neuroscience will reveal that we don't really have the capacity. Rather
>> it will help us to understand how this capacity is manifested and thus
>> actually help us to understand the nature of free will. I am a naturalist
>> about free will and just as science can help us understand the natural
>> world it can help us understand its "philosophical" aspects, like free
>> will.
>>
>> My meta-project in philosophy is to promote naturalist views about
>> traditional philosophical concepts, for example self, free will, and God.
>> These are distinct from what I call "transcendental views." Examples would
>> be the self is an immaterial soul, free will is incompatible with
>> determinism, and God's existence transcends our earthly existence. I think
>> skeptical opinions result from the acceptance of some transcendental view
>> as the defining characteristic of a philosophical concept combined with
>> the
>> belief that the transcendence is not possible, or there is reason to think
>> it is false. My response all cases is to deny the first move. Free will is
>> not some spooky power that suddenly emerges in human beings a some point
>> in
>> their development. It is the collection of natural powers and capacities
>> that naturally develop during the life of the average person. That's why
>> we
>> don't (or shouldn't) hold babies responsible for anything, why we hold
>> children responsible for some but not all things, and why we hold "normal"
>> adults responsible for more things than children. As we grow we develop
>> more complex powers and capacities.
>>
>> 2/ I want to make another comment, just about the title of Gazzaniga's
>> book: "Who's in Charge?" Suppose I say, rather crudely, "my neurons are in
>> charge." How is this a threat? As a naturalist, I think that I'm a
>> physical
>> thing made up of neurons among other things. I do things in part because
>> my
>> neurons do things. You need a transcendental view of the self to get the
>> threat going.
>>
>> 3/ You're correct that there is no generally agreed upon definition of
>> free will. The one I establish in my book is that a person has free will
>> if
>> and only if some of his actions are up to him, or within his control. Then
>> you can understand the above theories as attempting to flesh out the
>> consequences of what it means to say that actions are within the control
>> of
>> persons. Can we have control over our actions if determinism is true, for
>> instance? I think "yes." Of course, not all people have control over their
>> actions and control often comes in degrees. On my view, control is a
>> function of active powers and cognitive capacities. Diminished or
>> underdeveloped capacities suggests a kind of lack of control and that
>> suggests a diminished level of responsibility.
>>
>> I think it is debatable whether we hold animals "responsible" for
>> anything. But you can't infer that we do just because they suffer
>> sanctions. We might kill a dog for having rabies but we'd do it whether or
>> not we think his getting the rabies was within his control. The important
>> concepts behind moral responsibility are praiseworthiness or
>> blameworthiness. Is a dog blameworthy for biting an individual? I think
>> sometimes a dog might be responsible for such an action, so it is possible
>> that we do hold animals responsible. But what about insects? When you
>> spray
>> some ants with a can of raid certainly you are punishing them. But do you
>> blame them in anyway? And if you did blame the ants, would they be worthy
>> of the blame? That seems a little odd. Ants are not morally responsible
>> for
>> anything, though perhaps they have active powers.
>>
>> 4/ Singleton was a monster. I remember the case well. I'm generally
>> against capital punishment but not because I feel sorry for people like
>> Singleton. It strikes me as wrong to kill people (generally speaking) and
>> two wrongs don't make a right. But this is a complex issue of course.
>> Nonetheless, of course Singleton deserved to be incarcerated and for a
>> longer time than he was prior to his initial release. As you say, that can
>> be justified for purely pragmatic reasons. But was he responsible for his
>> actions? Was worthy of blame? That is less clear to me. I don't have
>> enough
>> about his psychological makeup to make a valid judgement about this. It
>> says below that he might have had a "bad brain" and was unable to inhibit
>> his naturally aggressive tendencies." Depending on whether this is true
>> and
>> whether his inability to inhibit his actions was a result of diminished
>> cognitive capacities, it might be that he was not blameworthy for his
>> heinous crimes. The issue of blame can rest on the awful nature of the
>> crimes. If a child dies in a hurricane that is a horrible event. But it
>> would be silly to blame the hurricane. Hurricanes don't have the kind of
>> stuff one needs to be blameworthy. It might be that monsters like
>> Singleton
>> don't either. (My own view, based on what I know, is that he is
>> blameworthy. But I don't know enough about the facts here.)
>>
>> I think moral responsibility comes in degrees. So it isn't so much that
>> folks like Singleton can never be blamed. A better thought is that there
>> might be mitigating circumstances. We hold children responsible but not
>> fully responsible for some of their actions. And perhaps we should do the
>> same for psychopaths. And for the same reason. The capacities needed for
>> full free will are diminished. My own view is that active powers play a
>> big
>> role in free will. So most people are at least somewhat responsible for
>> the
>> things they do. As long as we can act, likely we have some degree of
>> control over our actions.
>>
>> But you can justify Singleton's incarceration even if he was not morally
>> responsible for his actions, for pragmatic reasons if nothing else. There
>> is no one-to-one correlation between theories of moral responsibility and
>> theories of incarceration. But it is correct to note that free will
>> skepticism does not necessarily undermine our criminal justice system. (I
>> have separate criticisms of our criminal justice system that I'll save for
>> a different time.)
>>
>> One reason I believe in free will is I think some people are clearly out
>> of control while others are clearly not. Free will skepticism would not
>> allow us to distinguish these folks in any relevant way. You might say
>> "Why
>> not just switch to the word 'control' and get rid of the word 'free
>> will'."
>> But that is to confuse concepts with words. It is the concept that is
>> important. Sure you can dispense with talking about free will but you
>> can't
>> dispense with distinguishing the difference between folks who have no
>> control of their actions from folks who do; you can't get away from the
>> fact that some people are blameworthy and some are not.
>>
>> 5/ A completely utilitarian justification of punishment will not work.
>> Note that punishment and incarceration are not necessarily the same thing.
>> punishment seems to imply blame. Suppose you are a free will skeptic and
>> think that Singleton's punishment is justified because it leads to the
>> greatest good for everyone. Why then does it matter whether he actually
>> committed the particular crime for which he was arrested? If we agree that
>> he's a scumbag, wouldn't that alone justify us in his incarceration if all
>> we cared about was the greatest good for everyone? Why shouldn't police
>> just round up the worst people we can find whenever a crime is committed.
>> This would seem to be justified by a purely consequentialist view. It
>> seems
>> to me that an important fact in the incarceration of Singleton was that he
>> was the one who did the heinous act. But if he had no control over his
>> actions, it isn't clear that he was the one who did it.
>>
>> On Sun, Jan 1, 2012 at 4:23 PM, Ted Moffett <starbliss at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I listened to an interview recently with neuroscientist Michael
>>> S. Gazzaniga, author of the new book, "Who’s in Charge?: Free Will and
>>> the Science of the Brain."  Publish Date: November 15, 2011:
>>>
>>> http://ebookstore.sony.com/ebook/michael-s-gazzaniga/who-s-in-charge/_/R-400000000000000529963
>>>
>>> Given the recent return to Vision2020 of a local scholar who has
>>> considerable expertise on this subject, perhaps he can expound on
>>> whether he thinks Gazzaniga has added anything new to the discussion
>>> of this subject.
>>>
>>> The interview was fascinating, though as I noted before on Vision2020
>>> regarding "free will," I find the concept confounding, do not claim to
>>> know how to define it; and Gazzaniga has not resolved this lack of
>>> clarity.
>>>
>>> I started this post several days ago.  But today I discovered that at
>>> 6 PM PST tonight, on BookTV C-Span2, Gazzaniga will be interviewed
>>> regarding the very book referenced in this post:
>>>
>>> http://www.booktv.org/Program/13035/After+Words+Michael+Gazzaniga+Whos+in+Charge+Free+Will+and+the+Science+of+the+Brain+hosted+by+Sally+Satel.aspx
>>>
>>> What is especially amazing, it seems to me, is that so many
>>> people are confident they know what free will is and that most everybody
>>> definately possesses this capacity, most every moment of our waking, at
>>> least,
>>> lives, thus justifying revenge and retribution of various cruel kinds
>>> for misconduct.  For most everyone to understand the complexities
>>> involved in the concept of "free will" is perhaps like saying most
>>> everyone has PhD. level understanding in nuclear physics!
>>>
>>> Note I am not suggesting abandoning assigning responsibility and
>>> mitigation for misconduct, regardless of any deficiencies in the
>>> understanding of free will.  How many people think dogs possess "free
>>> will?" But if a dog is inclinded to bite or has bitten humans, the dog
>>> is often held "responsible," and either trained not to bite (domestic
>>> violence counseling, as a human parallel), be muzzled or sequestered
>>> (jail, prison), or executed, often without an intention to take
>>> revenge for a canine moral failing based on "free will."
>>>
>>> The following article by Gazzaniga explores some of these issues:
>>>
>>>
>>> http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2011/11/neuroscientist_michael_s_gazzaniga_explains_why_some_people_may_be_born_criminals_.single.html
>>>
>>> Not Guilty by Reason of Neuroscience: Some people’s brains may doom them
>>> to
>>> a life of crime.
>>>
>>> By Michael S. Gazzaniga
>>>
>>> http://www.slate.com/authors.michael_s_gazzaniga.html
>>>
>>> Posted Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011, at 11:17 AM ET
>>>
>>> From the book "Who’s in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the
>>> Brain", by Michael S. Gazzaniga. Copyright © 2011 by Michael S.
>>> Gazzaniga.
>>> Reprinted by permission of Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
>>>
>>> On Feb. 19, 1997, a house painter called 911 in Tampa, Fla. He had
>>> returned
>>> unannounced to a client’s house and through a window saw what appeared to
>>> be a naked man throttling a naked woman. When the police arrived, they
>>> learned the man hadn’t just strangled Roxanne Hayes; he had stabbed the
>>> mother-of-three multiple times, killing her.
>>>
>>> The murderer’s name was Lawrence Singleton; he was 69 years old, and he
>>> was
>>> notorious in California, where 19 years before, he had raped a
>>> 15-year-old
>>> hitchhiker, Mary Vincent; hacked off her forearms; and left her in a
>>> canyon
>>> to die. Two vacationers came across her the next morning, walking naked
>>> toward the interstate, the stumps of her severed arms raised to prevent
>>> further blood loss. Vincent’s description of her attacker was so vivid
>>> that
>>> it resulted in a police artist’s drawing that his neighbor recognized.
>>>
>>> Singleton was tried, found guilty, and given what was the maximum
>>> sentence
>>> at the time in California of 14 years. He was released on parole,
>>> however,
>>> after eight years of “good behavior,” even though shortly before his
>>> release a prison psychiatric evaluation read, “Because he is so out of
>>> touch with his hostility and anger, he remains an elevated threat to
>>> others’ safety inside and outside prison.” Mary’s mother, Lucy Vincent,
>>> said that Mary’s father would carry a .45-caliber pistol and often
>>> contemplated killing Singleton.
>>>
>>> Because Singleton had written letters to her lawyer threatening her while
>>> he was in prison, Mary was terrified after his parole. So were
>>> Californians. Residents of every California town that prison authorities
>>> tried to settle him in staged angry protests. He was finally settled in a
>>> mobile home on the grounds of San Quentin prison until his parole was up
>>> and he moved to Florida.
>>>
>>> In 2001 Singleton died of cancer while on death row in Florida. Mary
>>> Vincent told a reporter that his arrest and death had given her a
>>> “tremendous feeling of freedom,” but that she still had such vivid
>>> nightmares (during which she had actually dislocated her shoulder,
>>> cracked
>>> ribs, and smashed her nose) that she was afraid to go to sleep. Divorced,
>>> with prostheses that she has modified with spare parts from broken
>>> refrigerators and stereo systems, she is now an artist struggling to
>>> support two sons.
>>>
>>> While you read this, what were your gut feelings and thoughts about Larry
>>> Singleton? Did you want him to be locked up and never released
>>> (incapacitation)? If you had been Mary’s father, would you, too, have
>>> wanted to kill him (retribution)? Or did you want to forgive him, to tell
>>> him that it is too bad his brain was unable to inhibit his naturally
>>> aggressive tendencies and that perhaps with some treatment he could be
>>> more
>>> prosocial (rehabilitation)?
>>>
>>> Incapacitation, retribution, or rehabilitation are the three choices
>>> society has for dealing with criminal behavior. When society considers
>>> public safety, it is faced with the decision about which perspective
>>> those
>>> making and enforcing the laws should take: retribution, an approach
>>> focused
>>> on punishment of the individual and just desserts; or consequentialism, a
>>> utilitarian approach that what is right is what has the best consequences
>>> for society.
>>>
>>> Neuroscience is beginning to challenge some people’s notions about
>>> criminal
>>> behavior and what we should do about it. Determinism—the belief that all
>>> current and future events, actions, decisions, and behavior are caused by
>>> preceding events combined with the laws of nature—disputes long-standing
>>> beliefs about what it means to be responsible for one’s actions; some
>>> scholars assert the extreme view that humans are never responsible for
>>> any
>>> of their actions. These ideas challenge the very foundational rules
>>> regulating how we live together in social groups. Should people be held
>>> accountable for their behavior? If they aren’t, it seems that it would
>>> change behavior for the worse, just as studies show that merely reading
>>> about determinism results in increased cheating on tests. Is
>>> accountability
>>> what keeps us civilized? Neuroscience has more and more to say about
>>> these
>>> questions and is already slowly oozing into the courtroom—prematurely, to
>>> the view of most neuroscientists.
>>>
>>> Californians thought that Singleton should not have been paroled, and
>>> they
>>> didn’t want him in their communities. They also thought that certain
>>> behavior warranted longer incarceration. They were right, and the parole
>>> board was wrong. More recently, the legal system has been looking to
>>> neuroscience to provide answers in several different arenas: predicting a
>>> person’s future threat (recidivism), determining for whom treatment is
>>> possible, and deciding what level of certainty about these determinations
>>> is acceptable. Are some crimes just too horrendous to contemplate
>>> release?
>>> Neuroscience is also illuminating why we have the emotional reactions
>>> that
>>> we do to antisocial or criminal behavior.
>>>
>>> This leads us to the question that if we understand our reactions that
>>> have
>>> been honed by evolution, can or should we amend them? Are these emotions
>>> the sculptors of a civilized society? We have our work cut out for us!
>>>
>>> The philosopher Gary Watson has pointed out the simple fact that as we
>>> come
>>> to think about ourselves, we shape the rules that we decide to live by.
>>> Primatologists Michael Tomasello and Brian Hare have argued that we have
>>> been domesticating ourselves over thousands of years through ostracizing
>>> and killing those who were too aggressive, in essence removing them from
>>> the gene pool and modifying our social environment. If they’re right,
>>> then
>>> we have been making rules for groups to live by and enforcing them
>>> throughout our evolutionary history. If neuroscientific findings lead us
>>> to
>>> think differently about ourselves, our behaviors, and motivations, about
>>> the nature of man, about what we are, and about how we should interact;
>>> then we *may *decide to reconstruct our social framework—and our legal
>>> structure.
>>>
>>> Is our natural inclination for retribution necessary, or is utilitarian
>>> accountability sufficient? Is punishment justified? These are questions
>>> that haven’t in any way been answered, but they are brought to the fore
>>> by
>>> research on the brain and what it tells us about who we are. We are going
>>> to see that our current legal system has emerged from innate intuitions,
>>> honed by evolution, just as our moral systems have been.
>>>
>>> Who Done It: Me or My Brain?
>>>
>>> Legal systems serve as a social mediator of dealings between people. We
>>> should keep in mind the niche construction dynamic when attempting to
>>> characterize the law and our concepts of justice and punishment, formed,
>>> as
>>> they were, by the human brain, mind, and cultural interactions. Legal
>>> systems elaborate rights and responsibilities in a variety of ways. In
>>> most
>>> modern-day societies, the laws made by these systems are enforced through
>>> a
>>> set of institutions as are the consequences of breaking those laws. When
>>> one breaks a law, it is considered to be an offense against the entire
>>> society, the state, not an individual. Currently, American law holds one
>>> responsible for one’s criminal actions unless one acted under severe
>>> duress
>>> (a gun pointed at your child’s head, for instance) or one suffers a
>>> serious
>>> defect in rationality (such as not being able to tell right from wrong).
>>> In
>>> the United States, the consequences for breaking those laws are based on
>>> a
>>> system of retributive justice, where a person is held accountable for his
>>> crime and is meted out punishment in the form of his “just desserts.” But
>>> new research raises the question: Who do we blame in a crime, the person
>>> or
>>> the brain? Do we want to hold the person accountable or do we want to
>>> forgive him because of this determinist dimension of brain function?
>>>
>>> From today’s vantage point: It is all about the brain—what it does and
>>> does
>>> not do. We are born with an intricate brain slowly developing under
>>> genetic
>>> control, with refinements being made under the influence of epigenetic
>>> factors and activity-dependent learning. It displays structured—not
>>> random—complexity, with automatic processing, with particular skill sets,
>>> with constraints, and with a capacity to generalize. All of these traits
>>> evolved through natural selection and provide the foundation for a myriad
>>> of cognitive abilities that are separated and represented in different
>>> parts of the brain. These parts feature distinct but interrelated neural
>>> networks and systems. In short, the brain has distributed systems running
>>> simultaneously and in parallel. It has multiple control systems, not just
>>> one. It appears to be a determined, finely tuned biological machine.**
>>>
>>> Neuroscience Oozing Into the Courtroom
>>>
>>> The law is complicated and takes into consideration more than just the
>>> actual crime. For example, the intention of the perpetrator is also part
>>> of
>>> the equation. Was the act intentional or accidental? In 1963, Lee Harvey
>>> Oswald had the intention of killing President Kennedy when he took his
>>> concealed rifle to the building along the parade route, waited there
>>> until
>>> the president’s motorcade was passing, and shot him. In an Australian
>>> case
>>> the following year, however, Robert Ryan was judged not to have had the
>>> intention to murder when he killed the cashier of a store he had just
>>> successfully robbed. While leaving the store, he tripped, accidentally
>>> pulled the trigger of his gun, and shot the cashier.
>>>
>>> While movies, books, and television portray crimes ending up in a
>>> courtroom
>>> where intention and many other circumstances are examined, very few
>>> criminal cases actually go to trial, only about 3 percent; most are plea
>>> bargained out. Once we step into the courtroom, the laboratory of
>>> judicial
>>> proceedings, neuroscience has an enormous amount to say about the
>>> goings-on. It can provide evidence that there is unconscious bias in the
>>> judge, jury, prosecutors, and defense attorneys; tell us about the
>>> reliability of memory and perception with implications for eyewitness
>>> testimony; and inform us about the reliability of lie detecting. Now it’s
>>> being asked to determine the presence of diminished responsibility in a
>>> defendant, predict future behavior, and determine who will respond to
>>> what
>>> type of treatment. It can even tell us about our motivations for
>>> punishment.
>>>
>>> Robert Sapolsky, professor of psychology at Stanford, makes the extremely
>>> strong statement: “It’s boggling that the legal system’s gold standard
>>> for
>>> an insanity defense—M’Naghten—is based on 166-year-old science. Our
>>> growing
>>> knowledge about the brain makes notions of volition, culpability, and,
>>> ultimately, the very premise of a criminal justice system, deeply
>>> suspect.”
>>> The M’Naghten rules arose after the attempted assassination of British
>>> Prime Minister Robert Peel in 1843 and have been used to determine (with
>>> a
>>> few adjustments) criminal liability in regard to the insanity defense in
>>> most common law jurisdictions ever since. The British Supreme Court of
>>> Judicature, in answer to one of the questions posed to it by the House of
>>> Lords about the insanity law, responded:
>>>
>>> “the jurors ought to be told in all cases that every man is presumed to
>>> be
>>> sane, and to possess a sufficient degree of reason to be responsible for
>>> his crimes, until the contrary be proved to their satisfaction; and that
>>> to
>>> establish a defence on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved
>>> that, at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was
>>> labouring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not
>>> to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or, if he did
>>> know
>>> it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong.”
>>>
>>> The question that Sapolsky raises is: Given determinism, given that we
>>> are
>>> beginning to understand mental states, given we can track down which part
>>> of the brain is involved in volitional activity and that it may be
>>> impaired, and our growing knowledge that we can be specific about the
>>> existence of an impairment and what is causing it, will we view the
>>> defendant differently?
>>>
>>> At stake in the arguments is the very foundation of our legal system,
>>> which
>>> holds a person responsible and accountable for his actions. The question
>>> is
>>> this: Does modern neuroscience deepen our ideas about determinism, and,
>>> with more determinism, is there less reason for retribution and
>>> punishment?
>>> Put differently, with determinism there is no blame, and, with no blame,
>>> there should be no retribution and punishment. This is the simmering idea
>>> that people are worried about. If we change our mind about these things
>>> as
>>> a culture, then we are going to change how we deal with this unfortunate
>>> aspect of human behavior involving crime and punishment.
>>> ------------------------------------------
>>> Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
>>>
>>> =======================================================
>>>  List services made available by First Step Internet,
>>>  serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
>>>               http://www.fsr.net
>>>          mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
>>> =======================================================
>>>
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