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Detecting Mens Rea In The Brain, Owen D. Jones, Read Montague, Gideon Yaffe
Detecting Mens Rea In The Brain, Owen D. Jones, Read Montague, Gideon Yaffe
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
What if the widely used Model Penal Code (MPC) assumes a distinction between mental states that doesn’t actually exist? The MPC assumes, for instance, that there is a real distinction in real people between the mental states it defines as “knowing” and “reckless.” But is there?
If there are such psychological differences, there must also be brain differences. Consequently, the moral legitimacy of the Model Penal Code’s taxonomy of culpable mental states – which punishes those in defined mental states differently – depends on whether those mental states actually correspond to different brain states in the way the MPC categorization …
The Origins Of Shared Intuitions Of Justice, Owen D. Jones, Paul H. Robinson, Robert Kurzban
The Origins Of Shared Intuitions Of Justice, Owen D. Jones, Paul H. Robinson, Robert Kurzban
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Contrary to the common wisdom among criminal law scholars, empirical evidence reveals that people's intuitions of justice are often specific, nuanced, and widely shared. Indeed, with regard to the core harms and evils to which criminal law addresses itself-physical aggression, takings without consent, and deception in transactions-the shared intuitions are stunningly consistent across cultures as well as demographics. It is puzzling that judgments of moral blameworthiness, which seem so complex and subjective, reflect such a remarkable consensus. What could explain this striking result?
The authors theorize that one explanation may be an evolved predisposition toward these shared intuitions of justice, …