The other day I listened to a Philosophy Bites podcast involving an interview with neuroscientist David Eagleman entitled Morality and the Brain. The opening scenario involves one man who shoots another and is then apprehended. It is normal for many to think that the form punishment will take will depend on how much the killer is to blame. Presenters Edmonson and Warburton take it to be obvious – though this is not in fact the case – that blame rests on the notion of free will. That is, with respect to the killer it might be reasoned that he had a choice, that he could have chosen not to shoot.
Eagleman argues that the more we understand the brain – “a three pound alien computational device” - the more we understand how choices are made and the more the notion of free will is undermined and hence of blameworthiness. Clearly, this has massive implications for how we should think about punishment.
Eagleman sees people as having a variety of intuitions as to what they mean by morality. He starts his own line of reasoning by considering the effects of brain injury or degenerative brain conditions, observing that these can generate completely different views to morality.
Eagleman cites the famous example of Phineas Gage. Gage was a 19th century American railroad construction foreman who survived an accident in which a large iron rod was driven completely through his head. A large part of his frontal cortex was removed by this accident. His personality changed radically as a result.
Eagleman refers to a paper concerning a married man who had started to become a paedophile. He began collecting child pornography, then made an inappropriate move on his wife’s step-daughter who left the house and pressed charges on him. At the same time he complained of serious headaches. A brain scan revealed he had a massive frontal lobe tumour. Once this tumour had been removed it is said that his sexual appetite returned completely to normal. But strangely, six months later he began to turn to paedophilia again and it turned out the surgeons had missed a part of the tumour which was regrowing. When this was removed then again his sexual appetite became completely normal.
Eagleman moves from such extreme cases to the everyday effects on the brain of ingested chemicals, alcohol, nicotine and drugs of all sorts. In many of these instances people ingest such substances to change the way they feel and their decision-making behaviour. So Eagleman thinks that when we talk about morality we have to talk about the narrow basis of it since “when the brain changes you change.”
The point is made that most of the changes that occur in the brain are inaccessible to us. Lifting one’s arm seems effortless but “there is a lightning storm of activity that underpins that.” Eagleman asserts that the same is true of one’s sense of what is moral, ethical or the right thing to do in a situation. “All we ever get is the end result… the conscious mind is really the smallest bit of what’s happening in the brain.” We just get fed up to us an intuition as to what is right or wrong.
In the case of the man who turned to paedophilia there was a direct link to a brain tumour. But this was something happening in his brain that was inaccessible to him. Since the brains of normal people are also inaccessible to them the question becomes whether ordinary human beings can ever be said to be fully culpable for their actions.
Eagleman regards this as a tricky legal situation. He argues that if free will exists it is but a bit player in what is going on in the brain. You don’t choose your genes nor your environment, including your in utero environment and childhood experiences. It is such things that come together and make one’s brain the way it is, defining a lot of one’s trajectory in life. If free will exists then at best it can only modulate that which already has a lot of momentum and direction.
Eagleman asks us to look at a criminal who has done something heinous. You might say, “I wouldn’t have used my free will to make that decision.” Eagleman tells us our brain and his are not comparable. We can’t stand in his shoes. Imagine his set of genes, in utero cocaine poisoning, childhood abuse and lead paint in the home, etc. This means his brain and ours are not the same.
We are inseparably linked to our biology, including things we did not choose. The legal system continues to ask the question: Was it his fault or was it his biology’s fault? But, Eagleman argues, this question doesn’t make sense anymore because it is not possible to separate these things out.
Eagleman believes there is only one solution out of this conundrum: we need the legal system to be forward looking instead of looking back and trying to do the impossible, to untangle this crazy network of genes and experiences. He says the forward looking question to ask is: What are we going to do with the brain from here?
Eagleman insists that culpability is the wrong question for the legal system to be asking. He says it doesn’t matter how the criminal got to where he is. If he was abused as a child it encourages us to come up with social programs to prevent child abuse. Of course, if such a person is dangerous he does need to be taken off the streets. Eagleman thinks the legal system should not be addressing culpability but rather should be concerned about risk assessment – what danger does this brain pose and the likelihood of recidivism.
Eagleman argues there is a lot more power in the numbers and statistics than anyone would have guessed. When one looks at large groups of offenders coming out of prison and assesses over many years who re-offends and who does not it turns out that some people are dangerous, some not and some in-between. Further there are factors that have some predictive power for this.
Eagleman faces the protest “Where is the humanity in bringing science into sentencing?” Eagleman retorts, “Compared to what? In comparison with the lousy way we do it now? People who are ugly get longer sentences than those who are good-looking. Minorities get much longer sentences than the majority population.”
The issue here is one of calibrating the punishment or treatment to the particular criminal’s brain. Eagleman argues we have a better biological understanding as to why people behave the way they do. He re-emphasises that we still need to take dangerous people off the streets. But, Eagleman argues, people break the law for many different reasons. Some people we need to take off the streets for longer and others for shorter periods of time. With some we can do something to help them. Eagleman estimates about a third of the incarcerated population has some form of mental illness. It is not appropriate to consign to prison those who are schizophrenic. Some jurisdictions in the US are starting a mental health court system. If a person is mentally ill it is more human and cost-effective to route them off in a different path. The goal becomes thus one of helping the offender instead of putting him in through the revolving door of prison.
Eagleman maintains it should not be a case of the punishment matching the crime but of the punishment fitting the brain.
It was pointed out that we have always had a concept of diminished responsibility. However, Eagleman is not talking about degrees of responsibility. It is proposed to him that he is saying that no-one is responsible for his crimes.
Eagleman regards “no-one is responsible for his crimes” as a provocative statement. Eagleman feels our need is that of redefining what we mean by key things. He maintains that the question of culpability is the wrong question to ask. Eagleman sees there as being two phases to a case: (1) the fact-finding phase where one decides guilt or innocence; and (2) the sensing stage. It is in this latter phase that Eagleman believes the issue of culpability comes in. This is when we ask, “Was it his fault? How blameworthy is the person?” It is in this second phase that neuroscience enters the picture. Eagleman says it is obvious that a person should not get off if they have committed a crime. But it then becomes a matter of “how can we help? how can we do customised sentencing?”
Eagleman reiterates that asking the question of culpability is the wrong question because we are never going to be able to untangle everything that has led a person to be the way that they are. Eagleman insists that he is not suggesting that someone with no chance of recidivism should get off scot-free.
Eagleman appeals to the fact that in law a crime of passion is treated with more leniency than premeditated murder. It is understood, depending on the context, that a person who kills someone else in a fit of passion is much less likely to commit murder again than a cold and calculating killer.
Eagleman is then asked whether what he has been saying might also be applied to the person who is praised for his achievements. It is suggested that likewise most of the things that make us successful are outside our control.
Eagleman passes on his reflections on virtue and what people mean by this. He sees the brain as a team of rivals, with competing networks all of which think they know they best way to accomplish something. He compares this with parliamentarians who all love their country and yet have very different approaches to things.
One key rivalry in the brain is between short-term impulse gratification and long-term reasoned decision-making. These are always locked in battle. So if one person puts a chocolate-chip biscuit in front of another part of that other person may want to reach out and take it while another part wants to forego it.
Eagleman believes understanding these aspects of how the brain works gives traction on philosophical issues, like virtue. To Eagleman virtue seems to be when someone has a temptation and overcomes it. If someone does not have the temptation at all we don’t really think of him as a virtuous person. This, Eagleman believes, gives us a new way of approaching what we want to praise in people.
It is pointed out to Eagleman that someone like Jean-Paul Sartre would view this as self-deception and charge Eagleman with looking for excuses for behaviour. Sartre would say that the concept of what it is to be a person involves being fundamentally free in shaping one’s own life. So one model of humanity, existentialism, does not appear to be able to live with neuroscience at all.
Eagleman agrees. He thinks of Sartre as a very smart person who lived before the blossoming of modern neuroscience. Eagleman thinks it is very difficult to maintain this illusion that we make all of our own choices when one sees brain damage of all sorts. When one looks at people who have brain damage for any of 50 reasons we might name we see that this changes their capacity for decision making; alters their ability to understand consequences and simulate possible futures; changes their risk aversion – it changes the kind of choices they make and the kind of people they are. One has to admit in the end, as uncomfortable as this may be, that what we call choice is absolutely dependent on the integrity of this three pound organ in our skulls.
On the Philosophy Bites website a number of critical responses are made to Eagleman’s philosophically deficient understanding. One respondent points out how frightening would be the prospects of scientists like Eagleman being allowed to dictate our anthropology and morality. He also questions the adequacy of Eagleman’s account of the man whose paedophiliac tendencies Eagleman merely attributed to the effects of a brain tumour. Given the sparcity of information supplied by Eagleman it is hard to accept his insinuation that the man ought not to be judged as though he was acting freely.
Another makes the point that it is not a brain that ends up before the bench but a whole person. Eagleman’s understanding of free will assumes an extremely strong libertarian conception involving the view to be culpable a person should not be subject to any forces outside his or her control. Eagleman’s assumption that the options are between either a completely unrestrained free will or hard determinism is naive.
In addition, as is also pointed out by a critic, Eagleman has a very poor understanding of how virtue has been understood in the history of ideas.
I am currently reading books by Alva Noë (Out of Our Heads), Nancey Murphy & Warren S. Brown (Did My Neurons Make Me Do It?) and Raymond Tallis (The Kingdom of Infinite Space: A Fantastical Journey Around Your Head). I intend to say more on this issue in later blogs, but it is becoming increasingly evident to me, as I read, that Eagleman’s equation of brain and mind, aside from being ethically irresponsible, is exceedingly naive and that, despite popular views to the contrary, there is in fact scant evidence for such a conclusion.
The Bible is clear that all people are without excuse for their failure to honour and thank God their Creator (Romans 1). All people are treated as morally responsible agents who one day, on the day of judgment, will be held to account for the way they have lived their lives (Romans 2). It should be added that because God is the perfectly just Judge it follows that he will make due allowance for any extenuating factors, including the effects of brain injuries and predispositions, though predispositions themselves do not obviate moral responsibility, e.g. the person predisposed towards alcoholism who chooses not to drink alcohol.
Posted September 18, 2011
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