From Neuroscience to Law: Bridging the Gap

Abstract

Since our moral and legal judgments are focused on our decisions and actions, one would expect information about the neural underpinnings of human decision-making and action-production to have a significant bearing on those judgments. However, despite the wealth of empirical data, and the public attention it has attracted in the past few decades, the results of neuroscientific research have had relatively little influence on legal practice. It is here argued that this is due, at least partly, to the discussion on the relationship of the neurosciences and law mixing up a number of separate issues that have different relevance on our moral and legal judgments. The approach here is hierarchical; more and less feasible ways in which neuroscientific data could inform such judgments are separated from each other. The neurosciences and other physical views on human behavior and decision-making do have the potential to have an impact on our legal reasoning. However, this happens in various different ways, and too often appeal to any neural data is assumed to be automatically relevant to shaping our moral and legal judgments. Our physicalist intuitions easily favor neural-level explanations to mental-level ones. But even if you were to subscribe to some reductionist variant of physicalism, it would not follow that all neural data should be automatically relevant to our moral and legal reasoning. However, the neurosciences can give us indirect evidence for reductive physicalism, which can then lead us to challenge the very idea of free will. Such a development can, ultimately, also have repercussions on law and legal practice.

Neuroscience and Islamic Law: Contemporary Perspectives

“…For example, neuroscience's knowledge of the brain and mental processes can influence how to understand and deal with issues such as privacy, consent, human rights, and justice in the context of new technologies and knowledge developments. (Pernu & Elzein, 2020) For example, the Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad, which Al-Bukhari and Muslims narrated, says, "Every one of my people will be forgiven except for those who commit blatant sins." This hadith can help us understand the importance of privacy and individual rights in the context of neuroscience and new technologies, and how Islamic law can help us formulate a just and ethical response to these challenges.…”

Functional Connectivity of Moral Cognition and Traits of Psychopathy in Youth: An Analysis of the Scientific Literature

“…People with elevated psychopathic traits portray a significant impairment of social behavior, and a marked tendency for the transgression of moral and conventional norms (Dolan & Fullam, 2010;Pletti et al, 2017), aspects that generate adverse consequences for the community and deteriorate the criminal justice system and judicial practice (Pernu & Elzein, 2020). propose the category of psychopathic personality, which encompasses four areas: interpersonal (1), which involves manipulative behaviors, pathological lying, grandiosity, and narcissistic self-esteem; affective (2), which encompasses callousness, lack of care, and unemotionality, as well as a decrease in affective empathy or remorse; lifestyle (3), which involves poor risk perception, thrill seeking, impulsivity, and tendency to selfishness; and antisocial area (4), which is characterized by involvement in violent and criminal behaviors.…”

Scratching the structure of moral agency: insights from philosophy applied to neuroscience

“…Consider, for instance, the practical application of questions of free will, agency, or moral motivation in the criminal justice system. This is a field where neuroscience is becoming increasingly relevant, both from an academic and a forensic practice point of view ( Slobogin, 2017 ; Alimardani and Chin, 2019 ; Greely and Farahany, 2019 ; Noyon et al, 2019 ; Pernu and Elzein, 2020 ), precisely because the basic element of criminal responsibility is the free will, namely the freedom to decide to commit a crime, and one of the elements of the graduation of criminal responsibility rests on the moral motivation of the subject ( Pernu and Elzein, 2020 ). To the extent that the criminal justice system is designed to hold accountable people who supposedly make decisions voluntarily and freely (which of course involves elements of conscience), it is logical that some of these assumptions are being affected by findings from neuroscience.…”