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dc.contributor.author	Cohen, Jonathan D.
dc.contributor.author	Greene, Joshua
dc.date.accessioned	2009-06-30T13:17:58Z
dc.date.issued	2004
dc.identifier.citation	Greene, Joshua, and Jonathan D. Cohen. 2004. For the law, neuroscience changes nothing and everything. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B-Biological Sciences 359(1451): 1775-1785.	en
dc.identifier.issn	0962-8436	en
dc.identifier.issn	1471-2970	en
dc.identifier.uri	http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:3124124
dc.description.abstract	The rapidly growing field of cognitive neuroscience holds the promise of explaining the operations of the mind in terms of the physical operations of the brain. Some suggest that our emerging understanding of the physical causes of human (mis)behaviour will have a transformative effect on the law. Others argue that new neuroscience will provide only new details and that existing legal doctrine can accommodate whatever new information neuroscience will provide. We argue that neuroscience will probably have a transformative effect on the law, despite the fact that existing legal doctrine can, in principle, accommodate whatever neuroscience will tell us. New neuroscience will change the law, not by undermining its current assumptions, but by transforming people's moral intuitions about free will and responsibility. This change in moral outlook will result not from the discovery of crucial new facts or clever new arguments, but from a new appreciation of old arguments, bolstered by vivid new illustrations provided by cognitive neuroscience. We foresee, and recommend, a shift away from punishment aimed at retribution in favour of a more progressive, consequentialist approach to the criminal law.	en
dc.description.sponsorship	Psychology	en
dc.language.iso	en_US	en
dc.publisher	The Royal Society	en
dc.relation.isversionof	http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2004.1546	en
dc.relation.hasversion	http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~jgreene/	en
dash.license	META_ONLY
dc.subject	punishment	en
dc.subject	law	en
dc.subject	morality	en
dc.subject	brain	en
dc.subject	free will	en
dc.subject	retributivism	en
dc.title	For the Law, Neuroscience Changes Nothing and Everything	en
dc.relation.journal	Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B-Biological Sciences	en
dash.depositing.author	Greene, Joshua
dash.embargo.until	10000-01-01

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  Peer reviewed scholarly articles from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University

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