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Criminal Law’S Folk Psychological Dilemma: Resolving Neuroscientific And Philosophical Challenges To The Voluntary Act Requirement, Branden D. Jung Esq.

West Virginia Law Review

Criminal law has adopted the folk psychological view of human agency. Under this view, voluntary action exists and mental states, such as intentions, goals, and desires, have a causal relationship with bodily movement. However, new advances in neuroscience have begun to challenge this model and have lent empirical support to the idea that mental states may not play a causal role in bodily movement. This has profound implications for the voluntary act element of actus reus because the requirement presupposes the folk psychological view of agency. Nevertheless, criminal law can avoid this dilemma through praxeology, the deductive study of human …