:: Media Times Review Blog ::

From the time of Socrates to the present, people have sought to give a natural basis for morals—that is, to understand how a moral statement about what ought to be done can rest on hard facts, albeit facts about conditions for civility and peace in social groups. How can ethical claims be more than mere conventions? How can such claims be rooted in facts about human nature but have the logical force of a command?

Developments in evolutionary biology have helped to explain the appearance of moral motivation in humans and in other eusocial animals—animals that display behavior involving cooperation, sharing, division of labor, reciprocation and deception. In these species, various forms of punishment (shunning, biting, banishing, scolding) are visited on those who threaten the social norms. Ethological studies help us appreciate that, at a basic level, human social behavior has much in common with that of other species.

Developments in neuroscience hold out the promise of extending the naturalistic perspective to aid in the understanding of how the brain and its circuitry underlie the capacity to learn social norms and to behave in accordance with them. Many of us ponder the possibility that discoveries about brain function and organization will challenge the conventional wisdom on which our system of justice relies and will allow us to see more deeply into the biology of social behavior, including moral behavior. In his new book, The Ethical Brain, Michael S. Gazzaniga takes an unflinching look at the interface between neuroscience and ethics, and offers his own thoughtful perspective on some of the tough questions.

As a graduate student at Caltech, Gazzaniga studied under one of the towering figures of neuroscience, Roger Sperry, whose lab pioneered research into the cognitive effects of cutting the fibers connecting the two cerebral hemispheres (a procedure used to treat intractable epilepsy). Ingenious testing of these so-called “split brain” patients revealed that their two brain hemispheres operated independently, each hemisphere acting almost like a distinct person. These were profoundly important results, both for philosophy and for neuroscience. Gazzaniga went on to explore the neurobiology of higher mental functions—attention, memory, choice, consciousness—more generally, always with a philosophical question biting his heels. He currently serves on the President’s Council on Bioethics. Thus it is especially fitting that he should now pen his thoughts on neuroethics.

The most fundamental neuroethical issue concerns free will and responsibility. The mind is what the brain does, and the brain is a causal machine. Consequently, deliberations, beliefs, decisions and ensuing behavior are the outcome of causal processes. Typically, the causal processes leading to awareness of a decision are nonconscious. The “user illusion,” nevertheless, is that a decision is created independently of neuronal causes, by one’s very own “act of will.” Some philosophers—usually called libertarians—resolutely believe that voluntary decisions actually are created by the will, free of causal antecedents. Like flat-earthers and creationists, libertarians glorify their scientific naiveté by labeling it transcendental insight.

Gazzaniga, like many a philosopher, realizes that it would make a mockery of the criminal justice system if the accused could escape punishment simply by pleading that the brain is a causal machine and hence he or she lacked free will. So when and how ought we to hold people responsible for their behavior?

Gazzaniga’s answer has two components: First, he claims that we hold a person responsible, causality notwithstanding, so long as his or her behavior was unconstrained—so long as the person could have done otherwise. Second, Gazzaniga identifies responsibility as a social, not a neurobiological, property. His point is that our institutions for assigning responsibility derive from the need to maintain and protect civil society, which must figure out suitable criteria for when and how to punish those who violate the rules.

Gazzaniga sums up his solution to the problem of free will by saying that “the brain is determined, but the person is free.” The logic of this brain/person duality is not particularly compelling, or even coherent, yet as Gazzaniga’s writing implies, it may be in our collective interest to live by this dualistic legal fiction.

The obvious test of the “let’s pretend” solution is to see whether it can specify relevant criteria for distinguishing between those who could have done otherwise and those who could not have, and between those cases in which mens rea (literally, a guilty mind) obtains and those in which it does not. (Mens rea is a criminal law concept requiring proof that the mental state of the accused was such that he or she committed the crime purposely, knowingly, recklessly or negligently; strict liability, in which state of mind has no relevance, is fairly rare in criminal law.) Here, however, the wheels fall off Gazzaniga’s solution.