Neuroethics: Should We Rethink Free Will and Criminal Responsibility?

Applied ethics issue: Since most neuroscientists support neurobiological determinism, does it entail the end of free will or even criminal responsibility?

Methods: We explore whether the notion of neurobiological determinism is compatible with the concept of criminal responsibility. Based on this exploration, we analyse the notions of free will, determinism and responsibility. Our central goal is to confront common philosophical arguments about free will with neurobiological evidence. We try to find whether responsibility is necessarily linked to free will, and if not, we examine whether this should imply the end of responsibility.

Results: We propose to liberate ethical debate from a traditional libertarian conception of free will, according to which a person could have decided to act differently given the same initial conditions. Our purpose is to argue that, although criminals are somehow determined by known or unknown neurobiological causes, administering the appropriate treatment to them based on their choices and decisions is still justified on consequentialist grounds.