[FRIAM] Shorthands for Brain-stuff

[Frank Wimberly]

Perhaps there is brain chemistry and pathological brain chemistry and the
latter is associated with pathological, criminal behavior, it would be
useful to the courts, I assume, to know about the defendant's brain.  This
is probably not possible at present and might not be admissible.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, N

On Sun, Oct 4, 2020, 10:13 AM Eric Charles <eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com>
wrote:

> During last Friday's meeting, there was a discussion about brains and
> behavior. We were somehow discussing murders and Bruce brought up an
> example of a friend who helps determine (using EEG and MRI) whether the
> behavior of the murder had an "organic" cause. People with an organic cause
> go to mental-health facilities, those would get the death penalty (roughly
> speaking, obviously there in-between scenarios). Nick quickly pointed out
> that was some variety of crazy dualism, because all behavior has an organic
> cause. A few back and forths revealed a two things that seemed worth
> capturing:
>
> 1) IF we are really talking about "does the behavior have an organic
> cause", THEN Nick is surely correct, and all the EEGs and MRIs are doing is
> telling us how obvious/easily-detectable-by-current-means the organic cause
> is. In some future world, where our instruments have much, much finer
> resolution, we will be able to find an "organic cause" for every behavior,
> which means the whole process as currently performed is just silly.
>
> 2) However, if that talk of organic causes is just a useful shorthand of
> some sort, the process might be perfectly reasonable, just poorly
> specified.
>
> 3) At some point Bruce said that we were trying to determine whether the
> person was capable of premeditation, and that seemed (to me) to create a
> window for a perfectly reasonable process, while still acknowledging Nick's
> point.
>
> 4)  IF we were interested in "can the person premeditate" and we had
> separate research showing that certain types of obvious (with current
> technology) EEG and MRI results were highly correlated with an inability to
> sustain behavior-directed-towards-a-goal, then we could reasonable use EEG
> and MRI results to abduct whether or not the person in question was capable
> of premeditation.
>
> 5)  Of course, if we had a video of the person premeditating, none of the
> brain scans would be necessary or relevant --- this would be an example of
> the broader principle that, when asking questions about psychology,
> behavioral evidence beats anatomical evidence. However, absent such direct
> evidence, it is perfectly reasonable to look for known correlates of
> behavioral patterns, including neuo-anatomical correlates.
>
> 6) Some weird things happen to our thinking if we forget that we are using
> the anatomy to make inferences about behavior-patterns. The whole process
> makes sense if the thing we are interested in is ability-to-premeditate,
> and we are using the neuro-anatomy to guess at that, because that keeps us
> clear that the neuro-anatomy is not itself premeditation or the lack
> thereof. The whole process is incoherent if we think some mass killers kill
> because of the way their brains are, but others mass killers kill and their
> brains have nothing to do with it. THAT SAID, it can be a useful shorthand
> to talk *as if* we are interested in the neuro-anatomy itself. The useful
> shorthand is not only much quicker in a conversation or in writing, it also
> adds a false sense of definitiveness to the scientific findings (which is
> useful to the scientist), which in turn adds a false sense of
> definitiveness to the legal proceedings (which is useful to the legal
> system). Challenging the shorthand therefore feels like a challenge to the
> basic functioning of science and the legal system that accepts such
> science.
>
>
> <echarles at american.edu>
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