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1520Changing the Criminal Character: Nanotechnology and Criminal PunishmentIn Daniel Seltzer (ed.), The Social Scale: The Weight of Justice, Mit Press. 2012.This chapter examines how advances in nanotechnology might impact criminal sentencing. While many scholars have considered the ethical implications of emerging technologies, such as nanotechnology, few have considered their potential impact on crucial institutions such as our criminal justice system. Specifically, I will discuss the implications of two types of technological advances for criminal sentencing: advanced tracking devices enabled by nanotechnology, and nano-neuroscience, including ne…Read more
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1342Unconscious Mens Rea: Criminal Responsibility for Lapses and Minimally Conscious StatesIn Dennis Patterson & Michael Pardo (eds.), Philosophical Foundations of Law and Neuroscience, Oxford University Press. 2016.In a recent book, Neil Levy argues that culpable action – action for which we are morally responsible – is necessarily produced by states of which we are consciously aware. However, criminal defendants are routinely held responsible for criminal harm caused by states of which they are not conscious in Levy’s sense. In this chapter I argue that cases of negligent criminal harm indicate that Levy’s claim that moral responsibility requires synchronic conscious awareness of the moral significance o…Read more
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1253Ethics and the Brains of Psychopaths: The Significance of Psychopathy for our Ethical and Legal TheoriesIn Charles Wolfe (ed.), Brain Theory: Essays in Critical Neurophilosophy, Springer. pp. 149-170. 2014.The emerging neuroscience of psychopathy will have several important implications for our attempts to construct an ethical society. In this article we begin by describing the list of criteria by which psychopaths are diagnosed. We then review four competing neuropsychological theories of psychopathic cognition. The first of these models, Newman’s attentional model, locates the problem in a special type of attentional narrowing that psychopaths have shown in experiments. The second and third, Bla…Read more
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1134Child Soldiers, Executive Functions, and CulpabilityInternational Criminal Law Review 16 (2): 258-286. 2016.Child soldiers, who often appear to be both victims and perpetrators, present a vexing moral and legal challenge: how can we protect the rights of children while seeking justice for the victims of war crimes? There has been little stomach, either in domestic or international courts, for prosecuting child soldiers—but neither has this challenge been systematically addressed in international law. Establishing a uniform minimum age of criminal responsibility would be a major step in the right direc…Read more
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1107Responsible Brains: Neuroscience, Law, and Human CulpabilityMIT Press. 2018.[This download includes the table of contents and chapter 1.] When we praise, blame, punish, or reward people for their actions, we are holding them responsible for what they have done. Common sense tells us that what makes human beings responsible has to do with their minds and, in particular, the relationship between their minds and their actions. Yet the empirical connection is not necessarily obvious. The “guilty mind” is a core concept of criminal law, but if a defendant on trial for murder…Read more
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1092Virtue Ethics and Criminal PunishmentIn Alberto Masala & Jonathan Webber (eds.), From Personality to Virtue: Essays on the Philosophy of Character, Oxford University Press Uk. 2016.In this chapter I use virtue theory to critique certain contemporary punishment practices. From the perspective of virtue theory, respect for rational agency indicates a respect for choice-making as the process by which we form dispositions which in turn give rise to further choices and action. To be a moral agent one must be able to act such that his or her actions deserve praise or blame; virtue theory thus demands that moral agents engage in rational choice-making as a means to develop and ex…Read more
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746NeuroethicsIn Vilayanur Ramachandran (ed.), Encyclopedia of Human Behavior, 2e, Elsevier. 2016.Neuroethics is the body of work exploring the ethical, legal, and social implications of neuroscience. This work can be separated into two rough categories. The neuroscience of ethics concerns a neuroscientific understanding of the brain processes that underpin moral judgment and behavior. The ethics of neuroscience, on the other hand, includes the potential impact advances in neuroscience may have on social, moral and philosophical ideas and institutions, as well as the ethical principles that …Read more
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726On the Criminal Culpability of Successful and Unsucessful PsychopathsNeuroethics 6 (1): 129-140. 2013.The psychological literature now differentiates between two types of psychopath:successful (with little or no criminal record) and unsuccessful (with a criminal record). Recent research indicates that earlier findings of reduced autonomic activity, reduced prefrontal grey matter, and compromised executive activity may only be true of unsuccessful psychopaths. In contrast, successful psychopaths actually show autonomic and executive function that exceeds that of normals, while having no differenc…Read more
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707The Legal Self: Executive processes and legal theoryConsciousness and Cognition 20 (1): 151-176. 2011.When laws or legal principles mention mental states such as intentions to form a contract, knowledge of risk, or purposely causing a death, what parts of the brain are they speaking about? We argue here that these principles are tacitly directed at our prefrontal executive processes. Our current best theories of consciousness portray it as a workspace in which executive processes operate, but what is important to the law is what is done with the workspace content rather than the content itself. …Read more
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574Chemical Castration as PunishmentIn Nicole A. Vincent, Thomas Nadelhoffer & Allan McCay (eds.), Neurointerventions and the Law: Regulating Human Mental Capacity, Oxford University Press, Usa. 2020.This chapter explores whether chemical castration can be justified as a form of criminal punishment. The author argues that castration via the drug medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA), or some similar drug, does not achieve the punishment aims of retribution, deterrence, or incapacitation, but might serve as punishment in the form of rehabilitative treatment. However, current U.S. chemical castration statutes are too broad to be justified as rehabilitative. The state is warranted in targeting psyc…Read more
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533Nanotechology and the Attribution of ResponsibilityNanotechnology, Law and Business 5 (2): 177. 2008.
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452Non-Eliminative Reductionism: Not the Theory of Mind Some Responsibility Theorists Want, but the One They NeedIn Bebhinn Donnelly-Lazarov (ed.), Neurolaw and Responsibility for Action: Concepts, Crimes, and Courts, Cambridge University Press. pp. 71-103. 2018.This chapter will argue that the criminal law is most compatible with a specific theory regarding the mind/body relationship: non-eliminative reductionism. Criminal responsibility rests upon mental causation: a defendant is found criminally responsible for an act where she possesses certain culpable mental states (mens rea under the law) that are causally related to criminal harm. If we assume the widely accepted position of ontological physicalism, which holds that only one sort of thing exists…Read more
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401Grounding responsibility in something (more) solidBehavioral and Brain Sciences 41. 2018.The cases that Doris chronicles of confabulation are similar to perceptual illusions in that, while they show the interstices of our perceptual or cognitive system, they fail to establish that our everyday perception or cognition is not for the most part correct. Doris's account in general lacks the resources to make synchronic assessments of responsibility, partially because it fails to make use of knowledge now available to us about what is happening in the brains of agents.
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376Making sense of modern DarwinismHeredity 90 418. 2003.Despite the high profile of evolutionary explanations of human behaviour, their status remains highly disputed. Are all evolutionary explanations of human behaviour sensational 'just so' stories, or is there a proper science of sociobiology? Sense and Nonsense provides an answer to this question by assessing the legitimacy of a range of evolutionary approaches to human behaviour.
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376Juvenile Self-Control and Legal Responsibility: Building a Scalar StandardIn Alfred Mele (ed.), Surrounding Self-Control, Oxford University Press, Usa. 2020.US criminal courts have recently moved toward seeing juveniles as inherently less culpable than their adult counterparts, influenced by a growing mass of neuroscientific and psychological evidence. In support of this trend, this chapter argues that the criminal law’s notion of responsible agency requires both the cognitive capacity to understand one’s actions and the volitional control to conform one’s actions to legal standards. These capacities require, among other things, a minimal working se…Read more
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355Author’s Reply: Negligence and Normative ImportCriminal Law and Philosophy 16 (2): 353-371. 2022.In this paper we attempt to reply to the thoughtful comments made on our book, Responsible Brains, by a stellar group of scholars. Our reply focuses on two topics discussed in the commenting papers: first, the issue of responsibility for negligent behavior; and second, the broad claim that facts about brain function are normatively inert. In response to worries that our theory lacks normative implications, we will concentrate on an area where our theory has clear relevance to law and legal polic…Read more
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352Practical Wisdom and the Value of Cognitive DiversityRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 92 149-166. 2022.The challenges facing us today require practical wisdom to allow us to react appropriately. In this paper, we argue that at a group level, we will make better decisions if we respect and take into account the moral judgment of agents with diverse styles of cognition and moral reasoning. We show this by focusing on the example of autism, highlighting different strengths and weaknesses of moral reasoning found in autistic and non-autistic persons respectively.
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242Domestic Drone Surveillance: The Court’s Epistemic Challenge and Wittgenstein’s Actional CertaintyLouisiana Law Review 77 805-831. 2017.This article examines the domestic use of drones by law enforcement to gather information. Although the use of drones for surveillance will undoubtedly provide law enforcement agencies with new means of gathering intelligence, these unmanned aircrafts bring with them a host of legal and epistemic complications. Part I considers the Fourth Amendment and the different legal standards of proof that might apply to law enforcement drone use. Part II explores philosopher Wittgenstein’s notion of actio…Read more
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138Translating Scientific Evidence into the Language of the ‘Folk’: Executive Function as Capacity-ResponsibilityIn Nicole A. Vincent (ed.), Legal Responsibility and Neuroscience, Oxford University Press. 2013.There are legitimate worries about gaps between scientific evidence of brain states and function (for example, as evidenced by fMRI data) and legal criteria for determining criminal culpability. In this paper I argue that behavioral evidence of capacity, motive and intent appears easier for judges and juries to use for purposes of determining criminal liability because such evidence triggers the application of commonsense psychological (CSP) concepts that guide and structure criminal responsibil…Read more
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126Are Psychopaths Legally Insane?European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 14 (1): 79-96. 2018.The question of whether psychopaths are criminally and morally responsible has generated significant controversy in the literature. In this paper, we discuss what relevance a psychopathy diagnosis has for criminal responsibility. It has been argued that figuring out whether psychopathy is a mental illness is of fundamental importance, because it is a precondition for psychopaths’ eligibility to be excused via the legal insanity defense. But even if psychopathy counts as a mental illness, this al…Read more
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100In defense of the use of commonsense psychology in the criminal lawLaw and Philosophy 25 (6). 2006.The criminal law depends upon 'commonsense' or 'folk' psychology, a seemingly innate theory used by all normal human beings as a means to understand and predict other humans' behavior. This paper discusses two major types of arguments that commonsense psychology is not a true theory of human behavior, and thus should be eliminated and replaced. The paper argues that eliminitivist projects fail to provide evidence that commonsense psychology is a false theory, and argues that there is no need to …Read more
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79Philosophy LabsTeaching Philosophy 44 (2): 187-206. 2021.Conversation is a foundational aspect of philosophical pedagogy. Too often, however, philosophical research becomes disconnected from this dialogue, and is instead conducted as a solitary endeavor. We aim to bridge the disconnect between philosophical pedagogy and research by proposing a novel framework. Philosophy labs, we propose, can function as both a pedagogical tool and a model for conducting group research. Our review of collaborative learning literature suggests that philosophy labs, lik…Read more
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67Deserving Blame, and Sometimes PunishmentCriminal Law and Philosophy 18 (1): 133-150. 2023.Michael S. Moore is a whole-hearted retributivist. The triumph of Mechanical Choices is that Moore provides a thoroughly physicalist, reductionist-friendly, compatibilist account of the features that make persons deserving of blame and punishment. Many who embrace scientific accounts of psychology worry that from this perspective the grounds for desert disappear; but Moore argues that folk psychological accounts of responsibility—such as those found in the criminal law—are either vindicated or n…Read more
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51Pretrial Detention and Moral AgencyIn David Boonin (ed.), Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Public Policy, Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 11-23. 2018.In this chapter we explore the ethical justifications for criminal detentions prior to adjudication. Because defending pretrial detentions cannot be justified on purely forward-looking grounds, any plausible justification for pre-conviction detention must be partly backward-looking. Reflecting on the aims of the criminal law more broadly suggests that pretrial detentions, like post-conviction detentions, may be justified on “hybrid” grounds—but only if certain backward-looking retributive criter…Read more
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49How Is Criminal Punishment Forward-Looking?The Monist 104 (4): 540-553. 2021.Forward-looking aims tend to play a much less significant role than retribution in justifying criminal punishment, especially in common law systems. In this paper I attempt to reinvigorate the idea that there are important forward-looking justifications for criminal law and punishment by looking to social theories of responsibility. I argue that the criminal law may be justified at the institutional level because it is a part of larger responsibility practices that have the effect of bolstering …Read more
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46Legal insanity and moral knowledge: Why is a lack of moral knowledge related to a mental illness exculpatory?In Matt King & Joshua May (eds.), Agency in Mental Disorder: Philosophical Dimensions, Oxford University Press. 2022.This chapter argues that a successful plea of legal insanity ought to rest upon proof that a criminal act is causally related to symptoms of a mental disorder. Diagnosis of a mental disorder can signal to the court that the defendant had very little control over relevant moral ignorance or incompetence. Must we draw the same conclusion for defendants who lack moral knowledge due to miseducation or other extreme environmental conditions, unrelated to a mental disorder? Adults who were brainwashed…Read more
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33Ignorance of law: A philosophical inquiry (review)Jurisprudence 9 (1): 186-191. 2018.Douglas Husak’s book is an intelligent, wide-ranging exploration of the legal principle ‘ignorance of law is no excuse’. This principle is one of the few pieces of legal doctrine known by many regular folks, along with the criminal standard of proof ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’. The traditional approach to the doctrine might be explained in this way: in some cases, ignorance of the law fails to excuse offenders from culpability because as a matter of policy we feel they ought to have known the l…Read more
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32What does It Mean to be a Mechanism? Stephen Morse, Non-reductivism, and Mental CausationCriminal Law and Philosophy 11 (1): 143-159. 2017.Stephen Morse seems to have adopted a controversial position regarding the mindbody relationship: John Searle’s non-reductivism, which claims that conscious mental states are causal yet not reducible to their underlying brain states. Searle’s position has been roundly criticized, with some arguing the theory taken as a whole is incoherent. In this paper I review these criticisms and add my own, concluding that Searle’s position is indeed contradictory, both internally and with regard to Morse's …Read more
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27Responsible Agency and the Importance of Moral AudienceEthical Theory and Moral Practice 26 (3): 361-375. 2023.Ecological accounts of responsible agency claim that moral feedback is essential to the reasons-responsiveness of agents. In this paper, we discuss McGeer’s scaffolded reasons-responsiveness account in the light of two concerns. The first is that some agents may be less attuned to feedback from their social environment but are nevertheless morally responsible agents – for example, autistic people. The second is that moral audiences can actually work to undermine reasons-responsiveness if they es…Read more
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24Do Rapists Deserve Criminal Treatment?In Matthew C. Altman (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook on the Philosophy of Punishment, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 513-533. 2022.In this chapter, Sifferd analyzes the grounds for moral and legal desert. She bridges the gap between compatibilist accounts of our moral and legal responsibility, and she argues that neither moral nor criminal responsibility demand impossible or superhuman abilities. Sifferd’s capacitarian view of agency embraces our mechanistic natures yet can still ground robust mental causation, a key requirement for criminal culpability. She also notes the ways in which the capacity for reasons-responsivene…Read more
Elmhurst, Illinois, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Law |
Value Theory |
Philosophy of Mind |
Areas of Interest
Meta-Ethics |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Philosophy of Law |
Criminal Law |
Value Theory |