[NetBehaviour] Liberalism and neurology - Free to choose?

marc marc.garrett at furtherfield.org
Sat Dec 23 13:33:37 CET 2006


Liberalism and neurology - Free to choose?

Economist print edition.

Modern neuroscience is eroding the idea of free will.

IN THE late 1990s a previously blameless American began collecting child 
pornography and propositioning children. On the day before he was due to 
be sentenced to prison for his crimes, he had his brain scanned. He had 
a tumour. When it had been removed, his paedophilic tendencies went 
away. When it started growing back, they returned. When the regrowth was 
removed, they vanished again. Who then was the child abuser?

His case dramatically illustrates the challenge that modern neuroscience 
is beginning to pose to the idea of free will. The instinct of the 
reasonable observer is that organic changes of this sort somehow absolve 
the sufferer of the responsibility that would accrue to a child abuser 
whose paedophilia was congenital. But why? The chances are that the 
latter tendency is just as traceable to brain mechanics as the former; 
it is merely that no one has yet looked. Scientists have looked at anger 
and violence, though, and discovered genetic variations, expressed as 
concentrations of a particular messenger molecule in the brain, that are 
both congenital and predisposing to a violent temper. Where is free will 
in this case?

more...
http://wapurl.co.uk/?4O0NB8R



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