Law and Neurosciences Flashcards
Mereological fallacy
Mental properties are wrongly attributed to parts of the person, meaning mental states are wrongly attributed to the brain.
NAT
Actions are not truly voluntary but rather the result of complex processes. Intentionality is composed of post-hoc realisations.
Wegner’s theory
Illusion of conscious will: illusion that our decisions and actions are made intentionally, when in reality they’re influenced by external factors.
Common law’s view of action
Individuals (AGENTS) perform behaviours for specific reasons (CAUSALITY).
Libet’s experiment
Discovered Readiness Potential: pattern of electrical activity occurring around 500-800 seconds before the individual became aware of making a move.
Libet’s experiment and NAT
Libet’s experiment doesn’t support the NAT because the RP is not a decision per se, therefore doesn’t reflect decision-making times and patterns.
Folk-psychology theory
Commonsense conception of mental states: intuitive understanding of human behavior that people develop through everyday experiences.
Determinism and Hard-Determinism
All events, including human actions, are causally determined by preceding causes and conditions, therefore free will doesn’t exist.
Compatibilism
Free will and determinism can coexist because an action can be both free and determined as long as it’s caused by the agent’s desires and beliefs.
Epiphenomenalism
Posits that brain activity precedes and determines our actions, while our conscious experience of willingness is simply a byproduct.
Forms of epiphenomenalism
Metaphysical/Philosophical: all mental states, conscious or unconscious, are causally inefficacious.
Modular: specific brain modules involved in conscious decisions don’t cause actions, which are actually initiated by other brain modules operating without conscious involvement.
Denno’s argument
Neuroscience causes issues in assessment of actus reus as it requires a voluntary act, itself requiring the conscious decision to act.
Pardo and Patterson’s argument
They reject Denno’s assessment by arguing that voluntary action does not require an internal, conscious feeling of deciding to act preceding the movement, and that to attribute decision-making to the brain commits the mereological fallacy.
Situationalism
Argues that external, situational factors exert a more powerful influence on our behavior than our internal dispositions.
M’Naghten rule
A defendant should not be held legally responsible for their actions if, due to a mental disorder, they were unable to understand the nature and quality of the act they were doing, or if they did understand, they were unable to understand that what they were doing was wrong.
