Via the Professor comes word of an important new paper authored by Michael S. Pardo and Dennis M. Patterson, entitled Philosophical Foundations of Law and Neuroscience. Here is the Abstract:
According to a wide variety of scholars, scientists, and policymakers, neuroscience promises to transform law. Many neurolegalists - those championing the power of neuroscience for law - proceed from problematic premises regarding the relationship of mind to brain. In this Article, we make the case that their accounts of the nature of mind are implausible and that their conclusions are overblown. Thus, their claims of the power of neuroscience for law cannot be sustained. We discuss a wide array of examples including lie detection, criminal-law doctrine, economic decision-making, moral decision-making, and jurisprudence.
Given the lively discussion on exactly these matters we've had over the last 10 days here on N&L Blog, I would think this paper is both timely and important. While I am less familiar with Pardo's work, I know Patterson's work very well, as he is one of the more important philosophers of law and the preeminent authority on Wittgenstein and the law. I am quite excited to read this paper, and will update this post with my thoughts after doing so.
UPDATE: I have now reviewed the paper, and I think it is a marvelous piece of work. In referring to Vul et al.'s paper on 'voodoo correlations,' I saidthat while the latter was a sophisticated critique of some of the conclusions drawn in social neuroscience, I was more interested in a philosophical, conceptual critique of some of the basic assumptions that animate the enterprise. This paper fits squarely within the latter, and is an important contribution.
As I remarked to Peter privately, my view is that this paper is intended as a radical challenge to some of the bedrock assumptions of contemporary neuroscience. If in fact the mind is not the brain -- with which I absolutely agree -- then a very large portion of neuroscientific practice is immediately headed down a long, dark rabbit hole. But note again my insistence that the proposition that the mind is not (merely) the brain hardly means neuroscience itself is infirm or weak. Quite the contrary; as Pardo and Patterson emphasize, there is still a great deal of important work to be done on the brain that can best be demonstrated through neuroscientific methods. But the work is just that -- on the brain, and the constant leap from brain to mind cannot be sustained, if Pardo and Patterson are correct. The consequence is not that neuroscience is unimportant or not worth doing, but simply that neuroscientific modalities are not totalizing; they cannot explain or account for all of what it means to be conscious, to have mind, and ultimately, to be a person.
Meaning, in other words, cannot be reduced to neurons.
Thoughts?
(cross-posted from Neuroethics & Law Blog)
I absolutely agree with you...and with Pardo and Patterson's argument (no surprise there perhaps). They really are swimming againt the current with this paper and I think any publicity on its behalf is a good thing. Much of the relevant work in the philosophy of mind is NOT of Wittgensteinian inspiration (for whatever that counts or implies) and tends toward reductionism or scientism or is simply a conceptual handmaiden to science (in the latter category I would place Searle's work, as Bennett and Hacker do; this still permits one to appreciate Searle's critique of functionalism and defense of 'meaning', among other things).
[Incidentally, I apologize for not being around of late but...stuff happens and I'm trying to meet some obligations.]
Posted by: Patrick S. O'Donnell | February 13, 2009 at 06:53 PM