Neuroimaging and responsibility assessments

Nicole A. Vincent

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

21 Citations (Scopus)
40 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Could neuroimaging evidence help us to assess the degree of a person's responsibility for a crime which we know that they committed? This essay defends an affirmative answer to this question. A range of standard objections to this high-tech approach to assessing people's responsibility is considered and then set aside, but I also bring to light and then reject a novel objection-an objection which is only encountered when functional (rather than structural) neuroimaging is used to assess people's responsibility.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)35-49
Number of pages15
JournalNeuroethics
Volume4
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2011
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Copyright the Author(s) 2009. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com. Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher.

Keywords

  • Automatic functions
  • Capacitarian theory of responsibility
  • Capacity responsibility
  • Capacity-theoretic conception of responsibility
  • fMRI
  • Legal responsibility
  • Mental capacity
  • Modal fallacy
  • Moral responsibility
  • Neuroimaging
  • Roper v. Simmons [2005]
  • Theory to the best explanation

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