Document Type

Working Paper

Publication Date

12-6-2011

SSRN Discipline

PSN Subject Matter eJournals; LSN Subject Matter eJournals; Constitutional Law, Jurisprudence & Legal Philosophy eJournals; Health Economics Network; Political Behavior eJournals; Legal Scholarship Network; Criminal Law & Procedure eJournals; Social Insurance Research Network; Law School Research Papers - Legal Studies; Law & Society eJournals; Law & Society: Public Law eJournals; CSN Subject Matter eJournals; Law School Research Papers - Public Law & Legal Theory; Cognitive Science Network; Law, Brain & Behavior eJournals; Political Science Network; Law Research Centers Papers

Abstract

Advocates for the increased use of neuroscience in law have made bold and provocative claims about the power of neuroscientific discoveries to transform the criminal law in ways large and small Perhaps the boldest and most provocative of these claims are made in an influential article by Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen They claim that neuroscience will reveal that criminal defendants are not morally responsible for their actions and that this revelation will thereby undermine retributivist justifications for criminal punishment In the process of resolving previously intractable debates between consequentialism and retributivism neuroscience will also they contend resolve ageold debates about free will In this essay we discuss several serious problems with their argument We maintain that no neuroscientific discoveries will lead to the sorts of changes predicted by Greene and Cohen and even if they did those changes would not be the product of neuroscientific insight but result from unwarranted and problematic inferences which ought to be resisted

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