6. Implications & applications
• Moral (and legal) responsibility
• Objection: Determinism no basis for responsibility
• Appeal to consequences fallacy.
• A coherent basis for justice requires causal attribution.
• Medical competence
• Ability to communicate a stable choice
• Demonstrated understanding of relevant information
• Appreciation of situation & consequences
• Capacity to reason about treatment options
7. Future work
• Complex systems
• Information storage
~ solid ~ stable
• Information transmission ~ gas
~ volatile
• Information processing ~ liquid ~ free & rational
• Group agency
• Non-linearity (no trivial “pass-through” e.g. majoritarian attitudes)
• Feedback (enables capacity for rational e.g. goal-directed behavior)
Editor's Notes
This and next three slides adapted from Hallett (2007) Clinical neurophysiology 118: 1179-1192.
Now let’s apply this to the perception of volition itself.
Same procedure as Libet, but fMRI instead of EEG.Focusing on intention activates certain regions. This hints at areas whose anatomy and function we should understand in order to understand the neural correlates of intentional movement.
Some surprises: brain stimulation can lead to illusory movement and illusory non-movement. Our intuitions about the mechanisms of mind evidently do not provide the full story.Methodological note: it is a mistake to demand that cognitive neuroscience validate folk psychology. Imagine if we had demanded that physics validate folk cosmology or folk kinematics.
