Law and Neuroscience (original) (raw)
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MORAL INTELLIGENCE: MIND, BRAIN AND THE LAW
This paper discusses several issues at the impact of cognitive neuroscience have to do with the current theoretical and methodological edifice of juridical science. Localizing the brain correlates related to moral judgments, using neuroimage techniques (and also studies on brain lesions), seems to be, without doubt, one of the big events in the history of the normative social sciences. The best neuroscientific model of normative judgment available today establishes that the ethical-cerebral law operator counts on, in his neural evaluative-affective systems, a permanent presence of requirements, obligations and strategies, with a "should be" that incorporates internally rational and emotional reasons, that are constitutively integrated in all the activities at the practical, theoretical and normal levels of every process of exercising the law.
Moral Intelligence: Mind, Brain an the Law
This paper discusses several issues at the impact of cognitive neuroscience have to do with the current theoretical and methodological edifice of juridical science. Localizing the brain correlates related to moral judgments, using neuroimage techniques (and also studies on brain lesions), seems to be, without doubt, one of the big events in the history of the normative social sciences.The best neuroscientific model of normative judgment available today establishes that the ethical-cerebral law operator counts on, in his neural evaluative-affective systems, a permanent presence of requirements, obligations and strategies, with a "should be" that incorporates internally rational and emotional reasons, that are constitutively integrated in all the activities at the practical, theoretical and normal levels of every process of exercising the law.
A Neuroscientific Approach to Normative Judgment In Law and Justice
… Transactions of the Royal Society B: …, 2004
Developments in cognitive neuroscience are providing new insights into the nature of normative judgment. Traditional views in such disciplines as philosophy, religion, law, psychology and economics have differed over the role and usefulness of intuition and emotion in judging blameworthiness. Cognitive psychology and neurobiology provide new tools and methods for studying questions of normative judgment. Recently, a consensus view has emerged, which recognizes important roles for emotion and intuition and which suggests that normative judgment is a distributed process in the brain. Testing this approach through lesion and scanning studies has linked a set of brain regions to such judgment, including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex and posterior superior temporal sulcus. Better models of emotion and intuition will help provide further clarification of the processes involved. The study of law and justice is less well developed. We advance a model of law in the brain which suggests that law can recruit a wider variety of sources of information and paths of processing than do the intuitive moral responses that have been studied so far. We propose specific hypotheses and lines of further research that could help test this approach.
Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine, 2015
Background: Moral philosophy and psychology have sought to define the nature of right and wrong, and good and evil. The industrial turn of the twentieth century fostered increasingly technological approaches that conjoined philosophy to psychology, and psychology to the natural sciences. Thus, moral philosophy and psychology became ever more vested to investigations of the anatomic structures and physiologic processes involved in cognition, emotion and behavior-ultimately falling under the rubric of the neurosciences. Since 2002, neuroscientific studies of moral thought, emotions and behaviors have become known asand a part ofthe relatively new discipline of neuroethics. Herein we present Part 2 of a bibliography of neuroethics from 2002-2013 addressing the "neuroscience of ethics"studies of putative neural substrates and mechanisms involved in cognitive, emotional and behavioral processes of morality and ethics. Methods: A systematic survey of the neuroethics literature was undertaken. Bibliographic searches were performed by accessing 11 databases, 8 literature depositories, and 4 individual journal searches, and employed indexing language for National Library of Medicine (NLM) Medical Subject Heading databases. All bibliographic searches were conducted using the RefWorks citation management program. Results: This bibliography lists 397 articles, 65 books, and 52 book chapters that present (1) empirical/ experimental studies, overviews, and reviews of neural substrates and mechanisms involved in morality and ethics, and/or (2) reflections upon such studies and their implications. These works present resources offering iterative descriptions, definitions and criticisms of neural processes involved in moral cognition and behaviors, and also provide a historical view of this field, and insights to its developing canon.
Toward a better understanding of the relationship between neurosciences and law.
Law & Neurosciences ejoural
Neurosciences and Law as an interdisciplinary field of science, has recently attracted attention of many scholars by distinct motives. Hopes that brain mapping could be of help for court decisions at one side, are contrasted with ethical concerns about using neurosciences tests for evaluating liability at the other side. Despite its impressive development in the last half century, Neurosciences lacks well supported and formalized theories to guide experimental studies about complex cognitive tasks. This limits the impact any contribution of this new interdisciplinary area may have in the present and near future. Therefore, it is necessary to start to build a solid formal knowledge that will correctly guide future work in this new and very important area of research. The purpose of the present paper is to contribute to the development of this formal knowledge, by discussing how knowledge provided by neurosciences may contribute to the understanding of some concepts such as action adequacy and fairness; altruism and selfishness, personal and social conflict, etc. that are at the core of any law system. In addition, the study of brain activity associated with vote decision in Brazilian Firearm Commerce Prohibition carried out by Rocha et al (2010) is discussed to illustrate the present proposal.
Normative Moral Neuroscience: The Third Tradition of Neuroethics
Neuroethics is typically conceived of as consisting of two traditions: the ethics of neuroscience, and the neuroscience of moral judgment. However, recent work has sought to draw philosophical and ethical implications from the neuroscience of moral judgment. Such work, which concerns normative moral neuroscience (NMN), is sufficiently distinct and complex to deserve recognition as a third tradition of neuroethics. Recognizing it as such can reduce confusion among researchers, eliminating conflations among both critics and proponents of NMN. This article identifies and unpacks some of the most prominent goals, characteristic assumptions, and unique arguments in NMN, and addresses some of the strongest objections NMN faces. The paper synthesizes these considerations into a set of heuristics, or loose discovery principles, that can help overcome obstacles in and attenuate resistance to NMN. These heuristics may simultaneously help identify those projects in NMN that are most likely to be fruitful and help fortify them.
Journal of Neurology and Neuromedicine
Neuroethics is a relatively new, yet ever expanding discipline, which focuses on the "neuroscience of ethics" and the "ethics of neuroscience". In this essay, we discuss the literature describing the "neuroscience of ethics". Current approaches to employing neuroscientific techniques and tools to elucidate brain processes serving ethical decision making has evolved from prior psychological studies of how and why humans believe and act in ways deemed to be moral. While a number of neuroanatomical pathways have been defined as participatory in certain types of decision-making, it appears that none are exclusively dedicated to moral cognition or actions. Moreover, attempts at enhancing morality through neurological interventions are plagued by differing constructs of what constitutes moral action in various contexts. Herein, we review developments in neuroscientific studies of morality, and present a rational view of the capabilities, limitations and responsibilities that any genuine neuroethical address and discourse should regard.