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- Garcia, Danilo, 1973, et al.
(författare)
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Responsibility and Cooperativeness Are Constrained, Not Determined
- 2014
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Psychology. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 1664-1078. ; 5
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Neurobiological determinism has characterized later decades’ scientific approaches to the notion of free will. Scientists suggest that legal responsibility should be adjusted accordingly. We measured the genetic and environmental effects behind self-reported Self-directedness and Cooperativeness in a nation-wide population-based adolescent twin study. In spite of substantial overall genetic and shared environmental effects on these character scores, individual outcomes in both monozygotic and dizygotic co-twins of probands reporting severe personality problems varied widely into the normal range. Hence, even when constrained by genetic and environmental adversity, self-experienced responsibility and cooperation are not simply genetically determined but, to some extent, malleable.
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| 2. |
- Stråge, Alva
(författare)
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Minds, Brains and Desert: On the relevance of neuroscience for retributive punishment
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- It is a common idea, and an element in many legal systems, that people can deserve punishment when they commit criminal (or immoral) actions. A standard philosophical objection to this retributivist idea about punishment is that if human choices and actions are determined by previous events and the laws of nature, then we are not free in the sense required to be morally responsible for our actions, and therefore cannot deserve blame or punishment. It has recently been suggested that this argument can be backed up by neuroscience, since neuroscientific explanations of human behavior leave no room for non-determined free actions. In this thesis, an argument of this sort is discussed. According to this argument, that I call “the Revision Argument”, we should revise the legal system so that any retributivist justification of punishment is removed. I examine some objections to the Revision Argument according to which compatibilism about free will and responsibility is a morally acceptable basis of retributive punishment. I argue that these objections have difficulties in providing a plausible account of the relevant difference between people who deserve punishment for their actions and people who do not. Therefore, I argue that they fail to refute the conclusion of the Revision Argument.
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| 3. |
- Stråge, Alva
(författare)
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Why difference-making mental causation does not save free will
- 2023
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Ingår i: Philosophical Explorations. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1386-9795 .- 1741-5918. ; 26:1, s. 30-44
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Many philosophers take mental causation to be required for free will. But it has also been argued that the most popular view of the nature of mental states, i.e. non-reductive physicalism, excludes the existence of mental causation, due to what is known as the ‘exclusion argument’. In this paper, I discuss the difference-making account of mental causation proposed by [List, C., and Menzies, P. 2017. “My Brain Made Me Do It: The Exclusion Argument Against Free Will, and What’s Wrong with It.” In H. Beebee, C. Hitchcock, & H. Price (eds.), Making a Difference: Essays on the Philosophy of Causation. Oxford Scholarship Online: Oxford University Press], who argue that their account not only solves the problem of causal exclusion but also saves free will. More precisely, they argue that it rebuts what they call ‘the Neurosceptical Argument’, the argument that if actions are caused by neural states and processes unavailable to us, there is no free will. I argue that their argument fails for two independent reasons. The first reason is that they fail to show that difference-makers are independent causes. The second reason is that physical realizers of mental states can be individuated in a way that makes both mental states and their realizers difference-makers.
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