Real Brain Manipulation?

Here's an interesting article on controlling human beings by remote control.  Is it only a matter of time before Frankfurt-cases become a live possibility?  Dah dah DAH. (That's ominous music, in case you were wondering.)  Thanks to Casey Hall for the pointer.

Comments

[Kip Werking]

Isn't the scary music written "DUN DUN DUN"?

Hmm.

In my article "Whose Afraid of Creeping Exculpation?" I argue that, in the future, we should use meta-control and behavior therapy as a low-pain cost alternative to punishment.

http://people.wm.edu/~ktwerk/exculpation.htm

There I wrote:

"Consider the Frankfurt controller. In order to show that agents can have moral responsibility without alternative possibilities, compatibilists suppose that the meta-controller fails to intervene. These examples do not emphasize, however, both that, if the agent was about to do something immoral, the meta-controller should intervene, and also that the meta-controller shares in the agent’s responsibility for whatever she or he does."

The Mises Institute had a recent article called "Does Neuroscience Refute Free Will" which critiques a recent article by two philosophers at Princeton (Joshua Green and Jonathan Cohen). Their article is called "For the law, neuroscience changes nothing and everything." Here is the abstract:

"The rapidly growing field of cognitive neuroscience holds the promise of explaining the operations of the mind in terms of the physical operations of the brain. Some suggest that our emerging understanding of the physical causes of human (mis)behaviour will have a transformative effect on the law. Others argue that new neuroscience will provide only new details and that existing legal doctrine can accommodate whatever new information neuroscience will provide. We argue that neuroscience will probably have a transformative effect on the law, despite the fact that existing legal doctrine can, in principle, accommodate whatever neuroscience will tell us. New neuroscience will change the law, not by undermining its current assumptions, but by transforming people’s moral intuitions about free will and responsibility. This change in moral outlook will result not from the discovery of crucial new facts or clever new arguments, but from a new appreciation of old arguments, bolstered by vivid new illustrations provided by cognitive neuroscience. We foresee, and recommend, a shift away from punishment aimed at retribution in favour of a more progressive, consequentialist approach to the criminal law."

That last line is the one that interests me: Greene and Cohen seem to agree with me in predicting a shift towards a "more progressive, consequentialist approach to the criminal law."