Michael S. Moore

Mechanical Choices (eBook, ePUB)

The Responsibility of the Human Machine

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Mechanical Choices details the intimate connection that exists between morality and law: the morality we use to blame others for their misdeeds and the criminal law that punishes them for these misdeeds. This book shows how both law and morality presuppose the accuracy of common sense, a centuries-old psychology that defines people as rational agents who make honorable choices and act for just reasons. It then shows how neuroscience is commonly taken to challenge these fundamental psychological assumptions. Such challenges--four in number--are distinguished from each other by the different neuroscientific facts from which they arise: the fact that human choices are caused by brain events; the fact that those choices don't cause the actions that are their objects but are only epiphenomenal to those choices; the fact that those choices are identical to certain physical events in the brain; and the fact that human subjects are quite fallible in their knowledge of what they are doing and why. The body of this book shows how such challenges are either based on faulty facts or misconceived as to the relevance of such facts to responsibility. The book ends with a detailed examination of the neuroscience of addiction, an examination which illustrates how neuroscience can help rather than challenge both law and morality in their quest to accurately define excuses from responsibility.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Oxford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 352
• Erscheinungstermin: 8. Mai 2020
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780190864019
• Artikelnr.: 59399412

Autorenporträt

Michael S. Moore is Charles R. Walgreen, Jr. Chair in Law at the University of Illinois and Co-Director of the Program in Law and Philosophy.

Inhaltsangabe

* Preface and Acknowledgments
* Chapter 1: Introduction
* Part I: Criminal Law and the Morality of Ascribing Responsibility
* Chapter 2: The General Structure of Criminal Law in Terms of
Ascriptive Moral Principles
* Part II: The Criminal Law's Suppositions About the Psychology of
Persons
* Chapter 3: Human Actions at the Root of Moral Wrongdoing and Criminal
Law's Actus Reus
* Chapter 4: Intention and Belief at the Root of Moral Culpability and
Mens Rea
* Chapter 5: Further Questions About the Basic Distinction Between
Intention and Belief
* Chapter 6: The Royal Road to the Criminal Law's Concept of the
Psychology of Persons: The Insanity Defense
* Part III: The Challenges to Criminal Law by Neuroscience
* Chapter 7: The Challenging Data of Neuroscience and the Challenges
Mounted From that Data
* Part IV: The Hard Determinist Challenge
* Chapter 8: The Libertarian, Fictionalist, and Compatibilist Responses
to Hard Determinism
* Chapter 9: Rescuing the Volitional Excuses from Compatibilism (The
Overshoot Problem for Compatibilism)
* PART V: The Epiphenomenalist Challenge
* Chapter 10: The Initiation of the Epiphenomenalist Challenge in the
Work of Benjamin Libet
* Chapter 11: The Limited Compatibilism of Epiphenomenalism with
Responsibility
* PART VI: The Reductionist Challenge
* Chapter 12: "Nothing But a Pack of Neurons"
* Part VII: Neuroscience as the Helper rather than the Challenger of
the Criminal Law
* Chapter 13: The Potential Contributions of Neuroscience to our
Understanding of Addiction