Neurological Determinism
Thinking through the issues surrounding the Economist article cited in a previous post, I seem to be running into a question that I cannot escape: the question of neurological determinism and moral culpability. The question might be stated in this way: assuming that most if not all mental phenomena are represented chemically or otherwise physically in the brain of the subject, given that these phenomena cause (or, perhaps, are synonymous with) the experience of the subject (cf. psychoactive medication), what is the ethical status of behaviors which are neurologically determined?
A more direct formulation (which will be referred to as ND), assuming an often-reached conclusion is this:
1) The process of decision making, like all mental phenomena, is synonymous with a particular chemical mechanism in the brain.
2) Humans are not responsible for the chemistry of their brains.
: . 3) Humans are not responsible for decisions made using their brains.
One possible answer might rely upon some account of normativity regarding brain function. This would take issue with premise 2. If we are morally responsible for our actions and our actions are determined by our brain function, by extension we could be morally culpable for the chemical processes occurring in our brains. A rather obvious counterargument would be that mental disease is outside the control of the sufferer; the insane are thus not held responsible for their actions in a court of law in the same way that sane people might be. However, if there were some way that neurological normatively could be salvaged despite this objection, the solution would resemble virtue ethics. This would mean that moral excellence has something to do with the kind of mental habits that inform human action.
Another possible answer would be to deny premise 1. This might be the more appealing route for substance dualists. They might argue that human choices are not merely neurological, appealing to a non-physical element or soul as the source of genuine free choice. Or, they might specify, as one of my professors once did, that our brains normally function in agreement ND except in a few, exceptional cases of free choice.
Regardless of the objection, ND does not seem to hold.
Wednesday, 16 April 2008 at 11:20 am
A very trite observation, but isn’t an argument from ND to lack of moral culpability self-defeating?
Say you ask me not to viciously beat you around the head with a baseball bat for the sin of buying me lager and not real ale. You plea “ND”! To which I reply “ND!, if you are not responsible for your bad beer buying decisions then I am not responsible for my gratuitous and excessive violence”.
We have to assume that there is someone who can act ethically (the judge say). So “ND” cannot be universally applied. In the case of mental disease we remove the universality. They (the subject with mental disease) is not free, we are.
Wednesday, 16 April 2008 at 11:44 am
Tony,
Thanks for the comment. I would be curious to see how an argument from ND to lack of moral culpability is self-defeating. If you know of someone who has argued in this way I would enjoy reading their essay / blog post.
Also, I wanted to clarify, my original post was not offered in support of ND. Rather it was simply an effort to formalize an argument which seems to be made in more popular level work on neurology, and a response to the formalized argument. If anything it is a criticism of ND as evinced by the final line of the post.
I hope that helps clarify what I intended for the post. I appreciate your comment and visit.