What to make of this (via ALDaily) from a German neuroscientist?
The idea that someone should not be punished if their abnormal neural make-up leaves them no choice but to break the law is contentious but not new. However, one prominent neuroscientist has sparked a storm by picking it up and turning it round. Writing in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of Germany’s leading newspapers, Wolf Singer argued that crime itself should be taken as evidence of brain abnormality, even if no abnormality can be found, and criminals treated as incapable of having acted otherwise.
His claims have brought howls of outrage from academics across the sciences and humanities. But Singer counters that the idea is nothing but a natural extension of the thesis that free will is an illusion – a theory that he feels is supported by decades of work in neuroscience. […]
His argument goes like this. Neurobiology tells us that there is no centre in the brain where actions are planned and decisions made. Decisions emerge from a collection of dynamic systems that run in parallel and are underpinned by nerve cells that talk to each other – the brain. If you look back in evolution to say, the sea slug Aplysia, you see that the building blocks of this brain have not changed. The amino acids, the nerve cells, the signalling pathways and largely the genes, are the same. “It’s the same material [in humans], just more complex,” says Singer. “So the same rules must govern what humans do. Unavoidable conclusion.”
Of course there’s “no centre in the brain where actions are planned and decisions made”. That’s because it’s people who plan actions and make decisions, not neurons. They will probably also find, should they care to look, that there are no neurons which support Arsenal or intend to vote Conservative at the next election. The whole argument is wrong-headed.
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