Perhaps there is brain chemistry and pathological brain chemistry and the latter is associated with pathological, criminal behavior, it would be useful to the courts, I assume, to know about the defendant's brain. This is probably not possible at present and might not be admissible.
--- Frank C. Wimberly 140 Calle Ojo Feliz, Santa Fe, NM 87505 505 670-9918 Santa Fe, N On Sun, Oct 4, 2020, 10:13 AM Eric Charles <[email protected]> wrote: > During last Friday's meeting, there was a discussion about brains and > behavior. We were somehow discussing murders and Bruce brought up an > example of a friend who helps determine (using EEG and MRI) whether the > behavior of the murder had an "organic" cause. People with an organic cause > go to mental-health facilities, those would get the death penalty (roughly > speaking, obviously there in-between scenarios). Nick quickly pointed out > that was some variety of crazy dualism, because all behavior has an organic > cause. A few back and forths revealed a two things that seemed worth > capturing: > > 1) IF we are really talking about "does the behavior have an organic > cause", THEN Nick is surely correct, and all the EEGs and MRIs are doing is > telling us how obvious/easily-detectable-by-current-means the organic cause > is. In some future world, where our instruments have much, much finer > resolution, we will be able to find an "organic cause" for every behavior, > which means the whole process as currently performed is just silly. > > 2) However, if that talk of organic causes is just a useful shorthand of > some sort, the process might be perfectly reasonable, just poorly > specified. > > 3) At some point Bruce said that we were trying to determine whether the > person was capable of premeditation, and that seemed (to me) to create a > window for a perfectly reasonable process, while still acknowledging Nick's > point. > > 4) IF we were interested in "can the person premeditate" and we had > separate research showing that certain types of obvious (with current > technology) EEG and MRI results were highly correlated with an inability to > sustain behavior-directed-towards-a-goal, then we could reasonable use EEG > and MRI results to abduct whether or not the person in question was capable > of premeditation. > > 5) Of course, if we had a video of the person premeditating, none of the > brain scans would be necessary or relevant --- this would be an example of > the broader principle that, when asking questions about psychology, > behavioral evidence beats anatomical evidence. However, absent such direct > evidence, it is perfectly reasonable to look for known correlates of > behavioral patterns, including neuo-anatomical correlates. > > 6) Some weird things happen to our thinking if we forget that we are using > the anatomy to make inferences about behavior-patterns. The whole process > makes sense if the thing we are interested in is ability-to-premeditate, > and we are using the neuro-anatomy to guess at that, because that keeps us > clear that the neuro-anatomy is not itself premeditation or the lack > thereof. The whole process is incoherent if we think some mass killers kill > because of the way their brains are, but others mass killers kill and their > brains have nothing to do with it. THAT SAID, it can be a useful shorthand > to talk *as if* we are interested in the neuro-anatomy itself. The useful > shorthand is not only much quicker in a conversation or in writing, it also > adds a false sense of definitiveness to the scientific findings (which is > useful to the scientist), which in turn adds a false sense of > definitiveness to the legal proceedings (which is useful to the legal > system). Challenging the shorthand therefore feels like a challenge to the > basic functioning of science and the legal system that accepts such > science. > > > <[email protected]> > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam > un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ >
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