The moral brain and the guilty mind : toward an emotion-oriented general theory of culpability informed by the neuroscience of moral decision-making and antisocial behavior

Abstract

Criminal culpability relies upon a rationalist conception of criminal decision-making. According to this rationalist view, criminal decisions are nothing more nor less than the result of intellect-governed instrumental reasoning, aimed at maximizing one’s pleasure to the detriment of the interests of other individuals. Therefore, culpability is grounded solely in offenders’ cognitive intelligential faculties, by virtue of which offenders know the meaning of their criminal actions, and thus willfully choose to act upon their antisocial impulses. While cognitive intellect is thought to be the only mental source of criminal decision-making, emotions are presumed to have no bearing on the deliberative processes leading to rational criminal choices. Criminal law thus excludes emotions from the essential mental components of culpability, as well as of culpability doctrines. The criminal law’s rationalist model of the culpable agent quo calculating, emotionallycold actor collides with the huge body of neuroscientific literature about the influential role of emotions on (im)moral decision-making processes. For emotions appear to be critical in either informing, or hindering, moral decisions - and behavior–, neuroscientific disciplines vigorously hypothesize that antisocial behavior is also, and significantly, emotion-influenced rather than solely cognition-driven. Drawing upon these scientific insights, this dissertation reforms the rationalist tenets of culpability by including emotions in its relevant psychological set. It therefore provides a broader paradigm of the “legally relevant mind”, one in which emotional, cognitive, and volitional spheres play an equally important role in determining criminal choices. It then offers a normative argument for reconsidering the overall meaning of culpability in light of the real mental processes that undergird and guide moral decision-making and antisocial behavior. The argument emphasizes that an emotion-oriented understanding of culpability better reflects the meaning of blameworthiness, and exhibits greater compliance with the principle of personal guilt. The investigation then tests the newly developed emotion-oriented conception of culpability, informed by moral neuroscience, on culpability doctrines – notably, the mens rea state of criminal intent, insanity, and diminished capacity. After integrating the new paradigm of legally relevant mind in the respective psychological sets of said doctrines, the study reconsiders their conceptual substance, and provides revised formulations of their standards. The dissertation concludes with an analysis of the potential implications of this neuroscientifically informed theory of culpability for forensic and correctional contexts.