Free Will Skepticism, Freedom, and Criminal Behavior

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farah Focquaert ◽  
Andrea L. Glenn ◽  
Adrian Raine
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Criminal Behavior ◽  
Moral Enhancement ◽  
Public Health Perspective ◽  
Immoral Behavior ◽  
Free Will Skepticism

In Chapter 13, the authors address the issue of free will skepticism and criminal behavior, asking how we should, as a society, deal with criminal behavior in the current era of neuroexistentialism and if our belief in free will is essential to adequately addressing it, or if neurocriminology offer a new way of addressing crime without resorting to backward-looking notions of moral responsibility and guilt. They argue for a neurocriminological approach to “moral answerability” and forward-looking claims of responsibility that focus on the moral betterment or moral enhancement of individuals prone to criminal behavior and on reparative measures toward victims, placed within a broader public health perspective of human behavior. Within this framework, neurocriminology approaches to criminal behavior may provide specific guidance within a broader moral enhancement framework. Rather than undermining current criminal justice practices, the free will skeptics’ approach can draw on neurocriminological findings to reduce immoral behavior.

Hard-Incompatibilist Existentialism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derk Pereboom ◽  
Gregg D. Caruso
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Meaning In Life ◽  
Criminal Behavior ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Causal Efficacy ◽  
Derk Pereboom ◽  
Free Will Skepticism ◽  
The Will

Derk Pereboom and Gregg Caruso’s chapter on hard-incompatibilist existentialism explores the practical and existential implications of free will skepticism, focusing on punishment, morality, and meaning in life. They consider two different routes to free will skepticism: the route that denies the causal efficacy of the types of willing required for free will, which receives impetus from pioneering work in neuroscience, and the route that does not deny the causal efficacy of the will but instead claims that, whether deterministic or indeterministic, it does not achieve the level of control to count as free will. They argue that while there are compelling objections to the first route, the second remains intact and that free will skepticism allows for adequate ways of responding to criminal behavior—in particular, incapacitation, rehabilitation, and alternation of relevant social conditions—and that these methods are both morally justified and sufficient for good social policy.

Free Will Skepticism and Criminal Behavior

2016 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregg D. Caruso ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Criminal Behavior ◽  
Free Will Skepticism

scholarly journals Free Will Skepticism and Personhood as a Desert Base

2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 489-511 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Vilhauer
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Ethical Theories ◽  
Substantial Role ◽  
Free Will Skepticism ◽  
Will Theory

In contemporary free will theory, a significant number of philosophers are once again taking seriously the possibility that human beings do not have free will, and are therefore not morally responsible for their actions. (Free will is understood here as whatever satisfies the control condition of moral responsibility.) Free will theorists commonly assume that giving up the belief that human beings are morally responsible implies giving up all our beliefs about desert. But the consequences of giving up the belief that we are morally responsible are not quite this dramatic. Giving up the belief that we are morally responsible undermines many, and perhaps most, of the desert claims we are pretheoretically inclined to accept. But it does not undermine desert claims based on the sheer fact of personhood. Even in the absence of belief in moral responsibility, personhood-based desert claims require us to respect persons and their rights. So personhood-based desert claims can provide a substantial role for desert in free will skeptics’ ethical theories.

Impulsivity, dual diagnosis, and the structure of motivated behavior in addiction

2008 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 443-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Andrew Chambers
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Drug Use ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Dual Diagnosis ◽  
Addiction Treatment ◽  
Motivated Behavior

AbstractDefining brain mechanisms that control and adapt motivated behavior will not only advance addiction treatment. It will help society see that addiction is a disease that erodes free will, rather than representing a free will that asks for or deserves consequences of drug-use choices. This science has important implications for understanding addiction's comorbidity in mental illness and reducing associated public health and criminal justice burdens.

scholarly journals Criminal Justice Without Moral Responsibility

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-58
Author(s):  
Dane Shade Hannum
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Justice Model

This paper grants the hard determinist position thatmoral responsibility is not coherent with a deterministic worldview and examines hard determinist alternatives to traditionalpunishment. I claim that hard determinist accounts necessarilyinvolve consequentialist reasoning and discuss problems stemmingfrom them. I also argue that a revised model of traditionalconsequentialism called complex consequentialism, a view in whichmultiple values may be considered as ends, provides the best moralframework for a hard determinist account. Ultimately, I examine acriminal justice model that draws heavily on public health ideals andargue that it should considered a complex consequentialist account.

P. F. Strawson’s Free Will Naturalism

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joe Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Reactive Attitudes ◽  
Rational Justification ◽  
The Core ◽  
Free Will Skepticism

This is an explication and defense of P. F. Strawson’s naturalist theory of free will and moral responsibility. I respond to a set of criticisms of the view by free will skeptics, compatibilists, and libertarians who adopt the core assumption: Strawson thinks that our reactive attitudes provide the basis for a rational justification of our blaming and praising practices. My primary aim is to explain and defend Strawson’s naturalism in light of criticisms based on the core assumption. Strawson’s critiques of incompatibilism and free will skepticism are not intended to provide rational justifications for either compatibilism or the claim that some persons have free will. Hence, the charge that Strawson’s “arguments” are faulty is misplaced. The core assumption resting behind such critiques is mistaken.

Neuroimaging, Uncertainty, and the Problem of Dispositions

2010 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 188-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
GARDAR ÁRNASON
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Entire Range ◽  
Brain Research ◽  
Moral Issues ◽  
Psychological Understanding ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

Brain research in neuroscience and related fields is changing our understanding of the brain and its relation to the mind and to human behavior, giving a new impetus to the problem of free will and moral responsibility. The reactions have covered the entire range, from claims to the effect that neuroscientific research is showing that our folk–psychological understanding of conscious free will and moral responsibility is deeply mistaken to claims to the effect that neuroscientific research is irrelevant to moral issues of free will and responsibility. In any case, neuroscience is posing some serious challenges to our conceptions of free will and moral responsibility.

scholarly journals Illegal drugs in the UK: Is it time for considered legalisation to improve public health?

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 205032452110053
Author(s):  
Phil Dalgarno ◽  
Steve O’Rawe ◽  
Richard Hammersley
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Drug Use ◽  
Drug Users ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Careful Consideration ◽  
Public Health Perspective ◽  
Policy Paradigm ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Uk

This paper investigates options available to policy makers responding to the challenges of drug use in modern society, focussing on the UK. It investigates the failings of prohibition policy that has driven historic reactions to drugs, drug use and drug users globally, nationally and locally. This policy paradigm has been largely destructive and counter-productive and has led to a whole host of health and social problems. The authors have approached their investigation from a public health perspective, free from moral biases that have driven many policy initiatives until now. Many countries and regions of the world are rejecting prohibition as they move towards public health models in opposition to criminal justice responses, and this trend is continuing. Four policy models are examined; prohibition as the status quo; extension of prohibition to include alcohol and other drugs; decriminalisation; legalisation and regulation of all drugs. Each of these policy options are contested; none have universal support. However, given careful consideration, this paper proposes that our only way out of the public health and criminal justice crises that have been driven by drug policy globally is to adopt the more contentious option of legalisation and regulation of all drugs commonly used non medically.

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