rationalskepticism.org

Calilasseia wrote:

Coastal wrote:I don't think I can be comfortable with a murderer walking the streets. Who is to know if it wasn't some brain abnormality that caused them to behave in such a manner and who is to say they won't do it again? The first responsibility has to be to the public.

If an individual possesses a genuine, clinically diagnosable brain abnormality, this calls into serious question whether that individual can reasonably stand trial in the first place. If that individual's behaviour is the result of such a condition, then the proper approach isn't punitive imprisonment, but secure hospitalisation, with a view to seeking treatment of that condition. Particularly if it can be demonstrated that said individual's behaviour would be significantly different (and law abiding) in the absence of that condition. Injuries to the ventromedial pre-frontal cortex are particularly apposite here, as this is the part of the brain that has been determined empirically, in a reliable and repeatable manner, to be responsible for our capacity for ethical thought and decision making. injuries thereto have been demonstrated to have a significant and manifestly negative effect upon behaviour, and in the case of injury thereto occurring in adults, many of the victims of said injury regret their behaviour, upon account of having acquired ethical awareness prior to the injury, but are unable to stop themselves from behaving in selfish and anti-social ways. If that injury, however, occurs in young children, before those children have acquired an ethical awareness through parental or school education, they become, in effect, classic narcissistic psychopaths, with no regrets for their actions, however heinous.

I find it rather difficult to see how merely retributive measures will have any effect upon either of the above cited instances of brain injury.

Coastal wrote:I know there are a lot of flaws with this argument but what is the alternative?

Secure hospitalisation. With a recognition that in the case of someone with a clinically diagnosable brain abnormality, that clinical diagnosis calls into question the competence of that individual to be considered truly responsible for their actions.

Furthermore, there are documented instances of a transition from law-abiding to anti-social behaviour arising in individuals with brain tumours. Do you seriously suggest that we should either simply extinguish them, or simply lock them up and throw away the key, when the behaviour transition is the result of their brain function being compromised by a malignancy? One that in the past, would have killed them in pretty short order anyway, but which can now frequently be treated successfully, and allow sufferers thereof to return to normal functioning?

Quite simply, ask yourself this: if you were suffering from, say, an aggressive astroglioma, and that malignancy altered your behaviour, only for your behaviour to return to normal after the deployment of relevant therapeutic agents, would you want to face the electric chair because of something you did whilst your normal brain function was compromised by disease? Would you want people baying for your blood, because you did something whilst ill, that you would never contemplate doing whilst healthy?