Author: tom

Categories
tweets

Tweets for 2011-10-13

  • One for all you data visualisation geeks http://t.co/zoWfTfbu a roundup of the nicest figures recently published in scientific journals. #
  • Old nature article about neuroscience and freewill. Full of the confusions of neuroscientists http://t.co/2NVS5mIk #
  • A conceptual prophylactic for neuro-philo-confusion: http://t.co/Rx2eFCCj "Toward a Philosophical Structure for Psychiatry" via @vaughanbell #
  • old, but Jolly Good NY Times article on psychology of free will http://t.co/WYhF2C7Y #
  • Skepticism about free will linked with a weakened readiness potential (from EEG recording) http://t.co/2Ga0C2DH #
  • old scientiic american article on replication of Libet experiments with intracranial recording of single neurons http://t.co/cNdZ9MSY #
  • (1/2) Most of this freewill stuff appears amazing for the same reason that fMRI scanning appears amazing: … #
  • (2/2) … as native dualists we're astounded by *any* evidence that brain causes mind. #
  • Guilty or not-guilty? It depends on how the jury constructs a story from the facts they're given http://t.co/lzgu3hyW #
  • Nick's been done got bang to rights RT @underscrutiny: Romantic masochism invested in and infected by a new age http://t.co/areMxi8c #
  • MT @matthew_mella: Overlap, tomorrow: free talk from @russStearman about #narrative in videogames. http://t.co/WdVGJZj3 #Sheffield #
  • Our friends in Cardiff seem to have no idea of the practical impossibility of allowing scientists veto over copy… http://t.co/h6wiGPcZ #
  • Virtually northing remotely readable would get published on science, ever #
  • RT@js_simons Rip-roaring stuff from @ProfAndyField on why psychologists shouldn't be smug about stats errors http://t.co/5O88xLfv… #
  • "This study provides the first evidence that sexist ideologies can create gender inequality within societies" http://t.co/FDsLBTvt #
  • Last link via @BPSOfficial and @psychoBOBlogy #
  • RT @Psych_Writer Steve Jobs' gift to cognitive science. Just posted on the Digest: http://t.co/ZukIGHEE #
  • "Games of Invention" http://t.co/GO29Vidf a short article about creativity I wrote for the boys at @rattlecentral now on the blog #
  • .@alexfradera that article inspired by our last annual wander/chat about creativity, improv and science (and the other ten thousand things) #
  • It's not the booze, it's your beliefs about the booze http://t.co/odl1Jm9K great stuff from Kate Fox on culture and behaviour #

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tweets

Tweets for 2011-10-06

  • 100 years of Style / East London. Very enjoyable http://t.co/Le1ZwSUZ thanks @robotdan #
  • RT @PsychScientists Skinner & Epstein train a pigeon to pass the mirror test for 'self concept': http://t.co/hjxDeCJC #
  • RT @PsychScientists
    Seriously, BF Skinner was a total badass <– this is what @totalshowman keeps telling me. In different words! #
  • Friday afternoon and p<0.049 for my latest analysis. I *know* its just an arbitrary threshold, but its the arbitrary threshold everyone uses #
  • RT @SheffCivicTrust: #Sheffield is England's greenest city, with 150 woodlands and 50 public parks! #
  • RT @vaughanbell: Top athletes, singers have coaches. Why don't other professions? http://t.co/7l5hQ9HS Properly fascinating New Yorker piece #
  • Why GTD works! RT @PsyBlog: How to Avoid Being Distracted From Your Goals. Making specific plans creates mental space http://t.co/D6QY44sv #
  • My thoughts on Randy Olson's "Don't be such a scientist: talking substance in an age of style" http://t.co/dL2192xH #
  • UK Judge rules against use of Bayes' Theorum in court, unless we have "firm" knowledge of the priors http://t.co/r1SprMTT #
  • Textbook use of juxtaposition by the Mirror to suggest that Knox is pleased Kercher is dead http://t.co/zKJjWLi0 #
  • RT @PsychScientists I love how well Bad Lip Reading works bit.ly/mZ4Pls Match intonation and most of the obvious lip movements and viola! #
  • And while we're talking about who expectation drives perception: "I Kissed a Girl" (backwards) http://t.co/2u54RgF8 #
  • But my favourites are on Jeff Milner's backmasking site (and the one I use in PSY101 lectures) http://t.co/5V5bCF0u stairway to heaven! #
  • RT @andybrownphoto: My work is featured in this month's Now Then magazine – if you're in Sheffield, pick up a copy ! #

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idiocy systems

Games which teach kids systems thinking

Procedural thinking may be the 21st century’s most essential yet endangered way of thinking. Of course the best way of teaching it to your kids is to live in the 1980s and buy them a BBC Micro, but that is getting harder and harder in these days of touchscreens and it being 30 years too late. Now children’s games designers Exploit ™ have introduced a new range of children’s games for exactly the purpose of teaching procedural thinking skills to your kids. Each game in the new range is designed to be played by children and adults together and involves rules of age appropriate complexity. Standard play of these games should allow the player with the most foresight and self-control to win most of the time (ie the adult). Within each ruleset, however, is hidden a loop-hole which, if discovered, should allow the unscrupulous player crushing victory after crushing victory. The thrill of discovering and using these loop-holes will train your kids in the vital skills of system analysis, procedural thinking and game theory. Parents can either play in “carrot” mode, feigning ignorance of each game’s loop-hole and thus allowing their children the joy of discovery; or they can play in “stick” mode, exploiting the loop-hole for their own ends and using their child’s inevitable defeat, amidst cries of “it’s not fair!” as encouragement for them to engage their own ludic counter-measures.

Categories
tweets

Tweets for 2011-09-29

  • First day of term. Just cycled to work, passing a student obviously on their way home from the night before. That's the spirit! #
  • Important critique of "Baysian cognition" experiments, reported in withering style by Cosma Shalizi http://t.co/6CON0TYU #
  • Sheffield: England's greenest city http://t.co/NtqUMesJ #
  • Rats learning a habit show shifts in striatal brain waves, from high (gamma) frequency oscillations to low (beta), http://t.co/PT6Xn6bY #
  • Cory: the solution to privacy erosion on the internet is code, not laws http://t.co/YXONxeSM #
  • And of course the most important thing about "the privacy bargain" is that you know you are currently making some form of it #
  • "Rethinking 'thinking': Modernism and the mind" by @cfernyhough http://t.co/xac54fm3 #
  • I review Roy Baumeister's new book "Willpower" here http://t.co/ac4TNMf4 short story: this is a bad book, don't read it #
  • RT @mikedewar: Cosma Shalizi calls out the "data scientist" emperors on their shiny new clothes http://t.co/nkLn88ga #
  • RT @cfernyhough: Anyone know of any mathematicians or games theorists with interests in memory? #
  • Review of research on spacing effects in learning – essential for all students, not just psychology students! http://t.co/AxxCyJ8G #
  • I've just completed the Adult ADHD symptom checklist http://t.co/6fZkgBXz it says I have "symptoms highly consistent with ADHD in adults" #
  • Funny, I started the day healthy and normal, now – if I believe this scale – I am a patient who "warrents further investigation" #

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quotes

Quote #276: “everybody wants to build”

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.

Kurt Vonnegut, in Hocus Pocus

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links

Links for August-September 2011

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tweets

Tweets for 2011-09-22

  • You'd have thought that @sheffielduni would have access to Psych Science, but no. Anyone got access to this http://t.co/6KOk2FrY ? #
  • Lor' bless the internets and people who sent me that PDF #
  • nice guardian series: "Voices of finance". Here, computer programmer at a trading company http://t.co/oYTo6k60 #
  • RT @PsyBlog Feelings Beat Thoughts For Fast Complex Decisions. Think or blink? The debate continues… http://t.co/EJ79V5GB #
  • First supervision with @mariapage today. She'd brought me chocolate covered almonds from Greece. I gave her a long list of things to do #
  • Doesn't seem fair somehow! #
  • From the archive http://t.co/jvat1s04 "the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being" #
  • My award for most amusing/charming lab profile goes to Lera Boroditsky's lab at Stanford http://t.co/vJOC1hID #
  • Cinema is a crucible of Humean causal perception, seen narrative informed by our experience of the form http://t.co/8HHduT2M #
  • The Living Handbook of Narratology: chapter on Cognitive Narratology http://t.co/iBt15mF0 #
  • Next stop Thessaloniki, to visit the @sheffielduni faculty there. For this trip I will mostly be wearing brown #
  • Today: running a workshop for doctoral students on how to communicate research to the public #
  • Five excellent science communication tips from Randy Olson http://t.co/ecvXwCJR #
  • A cursory search suggests that there are surprisingly few online resources for PhD students who want to develop media skills. Any tips? #
  • RT @jrfj: @tomstafford besides the BSA fellowships, have a lot of other resources listed here, including some online: http://t.co/YOGoXDuo #
  • Now online from CogSci: "Piéron's Law Holds During Stroop Conflict: Insights Into the Architecture of Decision Making" http://t.co/5LhSGWas #

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quotes

Quote #275 “I guess you call this love”

Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.

Paulo Freire, in The Politics of Education, 1985 (apparently)

Categories
technical notes

Screen brightness on NC10 under linux

If you are trying to fix the brightness on a Samsung NC10 running under Ubuntu linux (actually Xubuntu in this case) then you need to know this:

“Maximum brightness may be quite low if you don’t disable the “auto” brightness feature in the BIOS (F2 at start-up). “

From Ubuntu NC10 support forum

Also, whenever I fix anything with my linux installation, I feel like some sort of MAGICIAN-GOD

That is all

Categories
tweets

Tweets for 2011-09-15

  • RT @topfife: My head smells of electroconductive gel. #
  • Currently wondering: what are the essentials of the psychology of judgement and decision making that our graduates need to know? #
  • Reckon this year's cognitive psych class need to be introduced to Michotte's work http://t.co/u0DRr5J #
  • Just got my hands on Ron and Marty's new book "Mindhacker". Can't seem to shake this weird feeling of familiarity… http://t.co/47JInL5 #
  • Important RT @bengoldacre teach our kids to code bit.ly/oFBU6X #
  • What app will let me write scripts on my iPhone? Just so I can do some marginally non-trivial maths #
  • New academic year approaches. Moving from "Inbox zero" to triage email management style #
  • Factoid: if I was literally worth my weight in gold, i would be worth about 3 million pounds sterling #

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quotes

Quote #274: Making Hope Possible

To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
Categories
tweets

Tweets for 2011-09-08

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quotes science

Quote #273: How To Think About Science

“Knowledge is potentially infinite. What we can attend to at a given moment is severely limited. So there’s always a question as to what will count as knowledge in a given context, and another about who will decide what counts. These questions ….are almost always properly political, that is they require a judgement about what is good, a judgement which the scientist is no more competent to render than any other citizen.”

David Cayley, discussing the work of Brian Wynne, in Episode 10 of CBC’s How To Think About Science

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tweets

Tweets for 2011-09-01

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psychology sheffield

Can you touch-type? Would you like to get to know your brain better?

We’re looking for touch-typing data-geeks who’d like to have their brainwaves recorded, all in the name of science. All you have to do is be able to touch-type, and be willing to come to see us at the Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield for an hour and a half. We’ll record your neural activity while you show off your typing skills for us. Afterwards, we’ll provide you with your brainwave data, and the behavioural data of what you actually typed.

We collect a record of what your brain is doing using an 128-channel EEG net. This looks like this and works by recording electrical activity at the scalp. This electrical activity changes depending on the activity of your brain cells – as they produce the billions of electrochemical signals that are the basis for your every thought and action. We’ll be analysing this data ourselves, because we’re interested in typing as an example of complex skill performance, but we’d also like to give everyone who helps us out the chance to take away their individual data. We’re really curious to see how people outside of the Psychology department might use it. EEG data contains lots of oscillations and lots of spreading and merging waves of activity. As well as telling us something about when and how certain brain regions become active, this means it can also be used to generate cool pictures and sounds! If you’re comfortable with processing numbers and would like to try out your skills on some numbers that come direct from your most intimate organ, please get in touch!

It’s t dot stafford at sheffield dot ac dot uk or @tomstafford

Categories
tweets

Tweets for 2011-08-25

  • Writing is like sculpture, not painting : you should focus on taking away the unnecessary #
  • Interesting post from @PsychScientists about the nature of representation in cogntiive science http://t.co/c9SsyB9 #
  • Here's a summer project if ever I saw one @xkcdfeed Depth Perception: xkcd.com/941/ #
  • Psychology at @unsheffield named best in the UK for employability by the Daily Telegraph http://t.co/bHNN06L #
  • Revisting code I wrote 4 years ago. Can't decide if this is a beautiful thing, reflecting academia's long view, or a terrible curse #
  • Now I am re-reading my thesis. If this trend continues i'll be revisiting my GCSE maths notes by the end of the afternoon #

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intellectual self-defence politics

what the world needs: buyafuckingshovel for news

My worry is that there is so much news that that it is hard to keep attention on the things we think are important. Or, rather, the deluge of information means that we’re more likely to accept someone else’s prioritisation of what is important. (Did you notice how the Guardian’s liveblog of the financial crisis was dropped to make room for the liveblog of events in Libya?)

Similarly, there’s a dark thought I sometimes have, where everybody will know the truth about some of the great ills of our society but nobody will have time or will to do anything about them. Something like a cross between a “somebody else’s problem field” and a late-modernity version of 1984 (it won’t be that everybody knows we have always been at war with Oceania, or really does love big brother; instead everybody will know these are lies, but they will be lies we live by rather than fight). In this grim meathook future we’ll know we’re decimaiting non-human species, or that Tony Blair lied about Iraq, or that our government is eroding vital civil liberties and we’ll care, but we just won’t get round to doing anything for some reason (oh look at this!)

A small example would be the family served with an eviction notice by Wandsworth Council because the son was arrested in the recent London riots. Not even found guilty, just charged! Now I heard this, and I thought it was scandal and symptomatic of a deep problem with the way some of us think about justice. But apart from the excuse of writing this blog post, I never followed it up, never found out if the reported headline reflected the truth. I hoped, vaguely, that someone was fighting this decision. Thought it was probably illegal. Thought a bunch of things, but basically got on with my life. Wouldn’t it be nice if, once something in the news caught my attention, something I decided was important to me, there was an easy mechanism for bringing follow ups on that story to my attention.

What I think I want is something like buyafuckingshovel.com for news stories. I want a personalised sidebar on the news website I use, and I want it filled with follow ups on the stories that I tag as important to me. This tagging should be as easy as ‘liking’ something on facebook. Now I can get joined up news, which will give me a more coherant and less vulnerable to bias view of the world, and also ensure that I can work with the media to focus on what really matters to me, rather than just the enless succession of the ten thousand things.

Dear guardian.co.uk, can you fix it for me?

Categories
intellectual self-defence psychology

For a theatre of the mind

“Neuro” is fashionable these days, from neuroethics to behaviour change (one of which is philosophy, and the other of which is psychology, but both are promoted on their connection with neuroscience). Something which is under-discussed is that psychology has a rich set of fundamental, and different, perspectives on how we ought to think about the mind and brain. These compete with, and complement, each other. The one you adopt will dramatically affect how you read a situation and the “psychological” solutions you are inspired to propose. Probably most people are aware of the neuroscience perspective, and the associated worldview of the mind as a piece of biochemical machinery. From this we get drugs for schizophrenia and brain scans for lie detection. This is the view of the mind which is ascendant. Probably, also, most people are vaguely aware of the Freudian perspective, that dark territory of the undermind with its repressed monsters and tragic struggles. From here we get recovered memory therapy and self-esteem workshops for young offenders. Although people will be aware of these perspectives, will they also be aware of the contradictions between them, and the complements, or the fact that both are viewed by some professionals in psychology as optional, or even harmful, ways of thinking about the mind? And what about the chorus of other perspectives, not all necessary contradictory, but all catalysing insights into mind and behaviour; evolution, cybernetics, cognitivism, situationism, narrative approaches, dynamic systems theory. Each of these will not just give you different answers, but promote entirely different classes of questions as the central task of psychology.

I’d love to work on an theatre or exhibition piece about conceptions of the mind, something which dramatised the different understandings of mind. I think it could be a freshing change from a lot of “art-science” pieces about psychology, which unthinkingly accept the cog-neuro consensus of anglo-US psychology and/or see their purpose as bludgoning the public with a bunch of information they have decided “people should know”. Something about perspectives, rather than facts, would inherantly lend itself to art-dramatic intepretations, and open a space for people enage with how they understand psychological science, rather than being threatened, as is so common, with what scientists thing they should understand.

Categories
tweets

Tweets for 2011-08-18

  • Workshop on Cold Reading at #Sheffield Skeptics in the Pub, 26 Sep http://t.co/vKCLozT #
  • NASA astronaut flew with a secret: a diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease http://t.co/uTDTwrR story broken by Houston journo with PD himself #
  • Kidnap negotiator has never lost a hostage, and trusts his gut instinct http://t.co/I7GrkNW #
  • Scatter charts of Somali pirate hijack negotiation times http://t.co/eDSuqeP I love the internet #
  • This exercise finding from the Lancet is equivalent to "if you do NOTHING physical all day you will die sooner", right? @BBCr4today #
  • Cosma Shalizi is bang on here: Capitalism requires state intervention http://t.co/OVAdwFV #
  • Should I spend the next half hour reading this paper, or watching clips from Watership Down on youtube? http://t.co/r3g7Pcr #
  • trying to write about lucid dreaming, but the implications for understanding consciousness are twisting my melon. Any good reads on this? #
  • individuals who do better at a vmPFC-related task have more lucid dreams http://t.co/26JSDrS (told ya @mariapage !) #
  • here we go: "Lucid Dreaming as Metacognition: Implications for Cognitive Science " http://t.co/bgeZn0p #
  • Something more recent from LaBerge http://t.co/jy3Hul1 Dream content is weird, but the cognitive processes are common to waking #
  • re-reading the chapter on lucid dreaming from Jeff Warren's "The Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness" awesome awesome book! #
  • RT @dansumption @tomstafford Only time I ever managed to lucid dream was the day after Sue Blackmore's lecture on lucid dreaming 🙂 #
  • .@dansumption the well known "beginner's luck" phenomenon! #

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tweets

Tweets for 2011-08-18

  • Workshop on Cold Reading at #Sheffield Skeptics in the Pub, 26 Sep http://t.co/vKCLozT #
  • NASA astronaut flew with a secret: a diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease http://t.co/uTDTwrR story broken by Houston journo with PD himself #
  • Kidnap negotiator has never lost a hostage, and trusts his gut instinct http://t.co/I7GrkNW #
  • Scatter charts of Somali pirate hijack negotiation times http://t.co/eDSuqeP I love the internet #
  • This exercise finding from the Lancet is equivalent to "if you do NOTHING physical all day you will die sooner", right? @BBCr4today #
  • Cosma Shalizi is bang on here: Capitalism requires state intervention http://t.co/OVAdwFV #
  • Should I spend the next half hour reading this paper, or watching clips from Watership Down on youtube? http://t.co/r3g7Pcr #
  • trying to write about lucid dreaming, but the implications for understanding consciousness are twisting my melon. Any good reads on this? #
  • individuals who do better at a vmPFC-related task have more lucid dreams http://t.co/26JSDrS (told ya @mariapage !) #
  • here we go: "Lucid Dreaming as Metacognition: Implications for Cognitive Science " http://t.co/bgeZn0p #
  • Something more recent from LaBerge http://t.co/jy3Hul1 Dream content is weird, but the cognitive processes are common to waking #
  • re-reading the chapter on lucid dreaming from Jeff Warren's "The Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness" awesome awesome book! #
  • RT @dansumption @tomstafford Only time I ever managed to lucid dream was the day after Sue Blackmore's lecture on lucid dreaming 🙂 #
  • .@dansumption the well known "beginner's luck" phenomenon! #

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intellectual self-defence

Enemy Leaflets Fall from Above (Leunig, 1982)

Click for the full cartoon

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tweets

Tweets for 2011-08-11

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tweets

Tweets for 2011-08-04

  • Agree to talk to NPR, but having hard time getting PDF of paper they want to talk about. Perhaps I should only discuss open-access science? #
  • Fascinating discussion on @BBCr4today about ME. Normally the anti-establishment groups are anti-biological explanations, not pro! #
  • Prolonged exposure to television can kill chipmunks! http://t.co/X716Znj #
  • Good news day (1/2): PhD student Tom Walton (@totalshowman) has won a ESPRC/UoS 1 year post-doctoral fellowship. Well done Tom! #
  • Good news day (2/2): I have been given a place on the Royal Society parliamentry pairing scheme http://t.co/yLsc0R6 #
  • Also, I am about to go on Radio Sheffield to talk about "Internet Addiction" #
  • Not live on Radio Sheffield it turns out, but I've been recorded for Drive Time, being skeptical about the idea of internet addiction… #
  • does anyone remember/have that Posy Simmonds cartoon showing alternating generations of maternal neglect/suffocation? #longshot #
  • and actually, while I'm at it, that Michael Leunig cartoon "the economy says". A copy ideally, but a reference to which book would do… #
  • Amen! RT @mathewe Happy 30th birthday to @HeeleyFarm ! A fantastic achievement for a cherished institution. #
  • And of course neuroplasticity is lifelong… RT @MLERULES Brain maturation goes on 'til 30something http://t.co/m3dHEi4 (neuroskeptic blog) #

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tweets

Tweets for 2011-07-28

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links

Links for June and July 2011

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psychology quotes

Of Personal Identity

For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception.

David Hume, Of Personal Identity, Selection from Book I, Part 4, Section 6 of A Treatise of Human Nature

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tweets

Tweets for 2011-07-21

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academic politics science systems

Trust in science

I’ve been listening to the CBC series (2009) “How to Think about Science” (listen here, download here). The first episode starts with Simon Schaffer, co-author of the The Leviathan and the Air Pump. Schaffer argues that scientists are believed because they organise trust well, rather than because they organise skepticism well (which is more in line with the conventional image of science). Far from questioning everything, as we are told science teaches, scientists are successful as expects because of the extended network of organisations, techniques and individuals that allows scientists, in short, to know who to trust.

Schaffer also highlights the social context of the birth of science, focussing on the need for expertise —for something to place trust in — at a time of military, political and ideological conflict. Obviously, our need for certainty is as great in current times.

Understanding of the processes of science, Schaffer asserts, is required for a true understanding of the products of science, and public understanding of both is required for an informed and empowered citizenry.

This last point puts the debate about open access scientific journals in a larger and more urgent perspective. In this view, open access is far more than a merely internal matter to academia, or even merely a simple ethical question (the public fund scientists, the publications of scientists should be free to the public). Rather, open access is foundational to the institution of trusted knowledge that science (and academia more widely) purports to be. The success of early science was in establishing the credibility of mechanisms for ‘remote witnessing’ of phenomenon. The closed-access publishing system threatens to undermine the credibility of scientific knowledge. Once you recognise that scientific knowledge is not the inviolable product of angelic virtue on the part of science, you concede that there the truth of scientific propositions is not enough — we need to take seriously the institutions of trust that allow science to be believed. The status of expert who cannot be questioned is a flattering one, but it relies on short-term cache. If we care about science and the value of scholarship more widely then open access publishing is an urgent priority.

Update: Romanian translation of this web page (by Web Geek Science)

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tweets

Tweets for 2011-07-14

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psychology science

The Brain on Trial, on trial

David Eagleman has an article in The Atlantic The Brain on Trial, in which he ‘describes how the foundations of our criminal-justice system are beginning to crumble, and proposes a new way forward for law and order.’

The ever more successful endeavours of neuroscience to link behaviour to biology, claim Eagleman, mean that we will have to acknowledge that the ‘simplistic’ categorisation of individuals into responsible and not-responsible for their actions is untenable. Instead we should admit that culpability is graded and refocus our legal system on rehabilitation and the prevention of recidivism.

In fact, rehabilitation has long been admitted as a core purpose of the justice system, though of course that’s no reason to complain about someone reiterating its importance (and obviously the call for a refocussing on rehabilitation makes most sense in a culture addicted to incarceration). What is harmful is the implication that you need neuroscience to be able to realise that circumstances and history make some people more able to make responsible choices. Neuroscience just expands our idea of what counts as ‘circumstances’, to include aspects of the internal environment – ie our biology.

However, according to Eagleman, a brave new world of evidence-based justice awaits:

As brain science improves, we will better understand that people exist along continua of capabilities, rather than in simplistic categories. And we will be better able to tailor sentencing and rehabilitation for the individual, rather than maintain the pretence that all brains respond identically to complex challenges and that all people therefore deserve the same punishments.

This is profoundly misleading, giving the impression that the justice system gives the same punishments for the same crimes (which is doesn’t) and that it was only neuroscientific ignorance that forced legal philosophers to create the category of ‘legally responsible’.

Another view is that, the simple idea of legal responsibility was adopted as a deliberate choice, a choice we make hand in hand with that of equality before the law. We do this because as the alternative to legal equality is odious, so the alternative to equality of responsibility is pernicious. The criminal justice system already de facto admits to gradations of responsibility, how exactly does Eagleman imagine that it could be improved by formalising a graded notion of responsibility? Far from crumbling, as Eagleman claims, the criminal justice system is already a compromise between the need to view people as responsible and the recognition that not all choices are equally free. The revolution heralded by Eagleman’s barrage of rhetorical questions and attacks on strawmen is a damp squib. If the neurosciences are going to make a genuine contribution to issues like this, the onus must be on us to engage with existing thought on complicated matters like criminal justice and provide detailed evidence of how neuroscience can inform these existing systems, rather than pretending that new findings in the lab can sweep away thousands of years of cultural and philosophical endeavour.

Link to The Atlantic article, The Brain on Trial

Previously on mindhacks.com, Against Neuroethics