Actions, not for bad preferences and desires. So then the question is, how do we take account for preferences and desires that may be outside of your control . That may be things like gray matter lighten kent showed us that showed us that people like psychopaths have decreased gray matter in particular regions of their brain. It could be Something Like the guy who he was talking about out of virginia who had the large tumor in his brain and chose to act on but didnt have control over having the tumor in his brain. How do we take account for that in law . Thats, i think, the interesting struggle that neuroscience presents us with, but it doesnt change the issue of free will. In fact, we have just as robust of evidence from neuroscience that supports this concept of action which is what we punish for in law to begin with. And, doctor, would you like to comment on that last . No. [laughter] i would like to raise an issue. Theoretically, that may all be true. There is a problem in distingu
Should we have better sentencing schemes or get rid of incarceration and come up with different models of trying to deal with punishment once we understand people have wrong selections. I think those are all interesting questions, but is there free will . Well, the fact that almost everybody in the audience raised either their right or left hand contemplated it and were quickly able to act and respond. That to me says, yes, there is. Now what do we want to do about it . Now that we understand that those of us in the audience or up here that like chocolate cake may not have control over it, how do we want to account for that if at all in the criminal Justice System . To date, we havent. In the future, we may wish to. I agree with that. I think that, first of all, the fact that everybody in the audience could control themselves raising their hands gives me some comfort as i walk out the door, but one of the problems with the disconnect that i was alluding to earlier between how science d
You can. The law has a bright line. It says if you engage in a wongful action, there is a defense called the insanity defense which never works as most of us know because we dont recognize it. Should we recognize it, thats an interesting question. Should we have a more robust concept of diminished responsibility in light of the understanding that some people have less control over their preferences and desires or should we have better sentencing schemes or get rid of incarceration and come up with different models of trying to deal with punishment once we understand people have wrong selections. I think those are all interesting questions, but is there free will . Well, the fact that almost everybody in the audience raised either their right or left hand contemplated it and were quickly able to act and respond. That to me says, yes, there is. Now what do we want to do about it . Now that we understand that those of us in the audience or up here that like chocolate cake may not have con
Left hand contemplated it and were quickly able to act and respond. That to me says, yes, there is. Now what do we want to do about it . Now that we understand that those of us in the audience or up here that like chocolate cake may not have control over it, how do we want to account for that if at all in the criminal Justice System . To date, we havent. In the future, we may wish to. I agree with that. I think that, first of all, the fact that everybody in the audience could control themselves raising their hands gives me some comfort as i walk out the door, but one of the problems with the disconnect that i was alluding to earlier between how science deals with this question and how lawyers deal with this question is that you actually get a fundamental disconnect between the two systems. So you mentioned that lack of emotional control or lack of ability to control your preferences might lead to insanity, but, in fact, in most jurisdictions as you know, thats not true. After hanky was
Incarceration. Are there certainly people who we actually think would be better off in prison than not being in prison . Those types of decisions, i think, are going to be much more useful coming out of the neuroscience in the near term. In the long term, maybe we can get to the point where we make individualized decisionmaking, but so far it hasnt actually panned out. To all of you, do you think that it would be appropriate to keep this out of the courtroom, for instance, until there is a lot more certainty, or should we be using it now and run the risk that were reaching potentially wrong conclusions . Ill jump in first on that and say its already here. So the idea that we should wait for the science to get better, i think, is just, its too late for that. So the cat is already out of the bag. The question is what do you do now that its in the courtroom. Well, we have dualing experts. We have judges sitting in a gate keeping role who have to decide whether or not the evidence should b