Paul Sheldon Davies | College of William and Mary (original) (raw)
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Where Biology Meets Psychology
The project of restorative neurointerventions has the ambitious aim of restoring specific compete... more The project of restorative neurointerventions has the ambitious aim of restoring specific competencies to some baseline. This includes the restoration of capacities integral to practical reasoning, and thus to various form of legal responsibility, that are deficient in some way. The goal is to restore such persons so they may legitimately be held legally responsible for future actions. The thesis of this chapter is that this project faces serious skepticism. This skepticism derives not from doubts that relevant capacities can be restored. It derives rather from the apparent fact that at least some of the capacities we intuitively take as integral to legal responsibility are capacities that human beings in general do not possess, including humans not afflicted by any statistically aberrant incapacity. This apparent fact—that humans in general do not possess capacities that are taken to be integral for responsibility—derives from the integration of findings in affective and cognitive ...
Being human while trying to scientifically study human nature confronts us with our most vexing p... more Being human while trying to scientifically study human nature confronts us with our most vexing problem. Efforts to explicate the human mind are thwarted by our cultural biases and entrenched infirmities; our first-person experiences as practical agents convince us that we have capacities beyond the reach of scientific explanation. What we need to move forward in our understanding of human agency, Paul Sheldon Davies argues, is a reform in the way we study ourselves and a long overdue break with traditional humanist thinking. Davies locates a model for change in the rhetorical strategies employed by Charles Darwin in On the Origin of Species. Darwin worked hard to anticipate and diminish the anxieties and biases that his radically historical view of life was bound to provoke. Likewise, Davies draws from the history of science and contemporary psychology and neuroscience to build a framework for the study of human agency that identifies and diminishes outdated and limiting biases. Th...
In this Essay, we consider the contribution of a startling new book, Law & Neuroscience (L&N), by... more In this Essay, we consider the contribution of a startling new book, Law & Neuroscience (L&N), by Owen Jones, Jeffrey Schall, and Francis Shen. It is a law school course book (a genre not often the focus of a scholarly review essay) that supports fundamental inquiry into the relationship between emerging neuroscientific insights and doctrinal conceptions in the law. We believe that the book shifts the paradigm and so may profoundly affect the course of normative evaluation of law. In this Essay, we trace and evaluate the “argument” of the book and suggest ways in which its contribution to the normative analysis of law may impact students and legal scholars for years to come. We believe that L&N is that rare work that will, quite literally, change the way people think. The book’s power rests, securely, on two premises: (1) legal doctrine derives mainly from our folk psychological intuitions (based on our inferences about others’ beliefs, desires, and intentions) concerning human agen...
Southwest Philosophy Review, 2016
Neuroscience and Legal Responsibility, 2013
Comparative Philosophical Perspectives, 2009
Consciousness & Emotion Book Series, 2012
Philosophy of Science, 1994
Noûs, 1994
Theories of functional properties have long been popular, but those that import the theory of evo... more Theories of functional properties have long been popular, but those that import the theory of evolution by natural selection have been especially popular in recent discussions. Wright (1973) appealed to the theory of evolution by natural selec-tion, at least in explicating the functions of ...
Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 2011
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2002
In the past decade, evolutionary psychology has emerged as an important theoretical perspective i... more In the past decade, evolutionary psychology has emerged as an important theoretical perspective in psychology. Evolu-tionary psychology is a methodologically rich field that could be applied to a variety of interesting questions (eg, phylo-genetic analysis of psychological and ...
Where Biology Meets Psychology
The project of restorative neurointerventions has the ambitious aim of restoring specific compete... more The project of restorative neurointerventions has the ambitious aim of restoring specific competencies to some baseline. This includes the restoration of capacities integral to practical reasoning, and thus to various form of legal responsibility, that are deficient in some way. The goal is to restore such persons so they may legitimately be held legally responsible for future actions. The thesis of this chapter is that this project faces serious skepticism. This skepticism derives not from doubts that relevant capacities can be restored. It derives rather from the apparent fact that at least some of the capacities we intuitively take as integral to legal responsibility are capacities that human beings in general do not possess, including humans not afflicted by any statistically aberrant incapacity. This apparent fact—that humans in general do not possess capacities that are taken to be integral for responsibility—derives from the integration of findings in affective and cognitive ...
Being human while trying to scientifically study human nature confronts us with our most vexing p... more Being human while trying to scientifically study human nature confronts us with our most vexing problem. Efforts to explicate the human mind are thwarted by our cultural biases and entrenched infirmities; our first-person experiences as practical agents convince us that we have capacities beyond the reach of scientific explanation. What we need to move forward in our understanding of human agency, Paul Sheldon Davies argues, is a reform in the way we study ourselves and a long overdue break with traditional humanist thinking. Davies locates a model for change in the rhetorical strategies employed by Charles Darwin in On the Origin of Species. Darwin worked hard to anticipate and diminish the anxieties and biases that his radically historical view of life was bound to provoke. Likewise, Davies draws from the history of science and contemporary psychology and neuroscience to build a framework for the study of human agency that identifies and diminishes outdated and limiting biases. Th...
In this Essay, we consider the contribution of a startling new book, Law & Neuroscience (L&N), by... more In this Essay, we consider the contribution of a startling new book, Law & Neuroscience (L&N), by Owen Jones, Jeffrey Schall, and Francis Shen. It is a law school course book (a genre not often the focus of a scholarly review essay) that supports fundamental inquiry into the relationship between emerging neuroscientific insights and doctrinal conceptions in the law. We believe that the book shifts the paradigm and so may profoundly affect the course of normative evaluation of law. In this Essay, we trace and evaluate the “argument” of the book and suggest ways in which its contribution to the normative analysis of law may impact students and legal scholars for years to come. We believe that L&N is that rare work that will, quite literally, change the way people think. The book’s power rests, securely, on two premises: (1) legal doctrine derives mainly from our folk psychological intuitions (based on our inferences about others’ beliefs, desires, and intentions) concerning human agen...
Southwest Philosophy Review, 2016
Neuroscience and Legal Responsibility, 2013
Comparative Philosophical Perspectives, 2009
Consciousness & Emotion Book Series, 2012
Philosophy of Science, 1994
Noûs, 1994
Theories of functional properties have long been popular, but those that import the theory of evo... more Theories of functional properties have long been popular, but those that import the theory of evolution by natural selection have been especially popular in recent discussions. Wright (1973) appealed to the theory of evolution by natural selec-tion, at least in explicating the functions of ...
Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 2011
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2002
In the past decade, evolutionary psychology has emerged as an important theoretical perspective i... more In the past decade, evolutionary psychology has emerged as an important theoretical perspective in psychology. Evolu-tionary psychology is a methodologically rich field that could be applied to a variety of interesting questions (eg, phylo-genetic analysis of psychological and ...