Neuroethics & Law Blog

Landmark "It Depends" Ruling--From "The Onion"

The Onion parodies Supreme Court decisionmaking in a "landmark" neuroethics case "which challenged the extent to which the Eighth Amendment permits the execution of a mentally ill death row inmate who has a factual awareness of the reason for his punishment but does not comprehend its retributive nature."

You'll find that the parody beats a deadhorse (to death!), though there is, of course, a kernel of truth to the gag.  For example:

A source close to one of the associate justices said the deliberations were marked not only by vacillation and ambivalence, but also by a sense of frustration.

"Now Brown v. Board of Education—that was a no-brainer," said Justice Stephen Breyer, referring to the landmark school-desegregation case. "I wish I could have been on the Supreme Court then. But now I have to decide whether or not a convicted killer who 'has a delusional belief as to why the state is executing him, and thus does not appreciate that his execution is intended to seek retribution for his capital crime' can be executed? Forget it."

"We're just nine justices—we don't have all the answers to all the country's legal problems," Breyer added.

(I found the Onion link here.)

"Intervening in the Brain"

A new neuroethics-related book has just come out from Springer, entitled Intervening in the Brain: Changing Psyche and Society.  Here's a description:

The preceding decade has witnessed tremendous progress in clinical as well as theoretical neuroscience. In its wake, powerful new instruments of neuromodulation acting directly on the brain have been developed: potent neuro-pharmaceuticals, deep brain stimulation, transcranial magnetic stimulation, various methods of neurotransplantation, central neural prostheses, and others. However, few areas of scientific development seem to exhibit as close a connection between dreams of progress and nightmares of disaster as contemporary neuroscience. This Janus-faced character relates to the core function of the brain as the "organ of the mind". Methods of intervening in the brain easily draw the suspicion of possibly altering fundamental features of personhood, thus posing a threat to preconditions of human dignity and to the normative structure of our societies. This suspicion has been fuelled by the discovery that most of the newly developed neurotherapeutic instruments might also be used for purposes of enhancement of certain mental features. "Mind doping" is a populist slogan at hand, suggesting a deprecatory parallel to the practice of doping in sports.

The present book subjects the whole range of questions associated with these problems to a thorough exploration. Extensive state-of-the-art accounts of the relevant clinical and theoretical neurosciences are followed by an in-depth philosophical analysis of the problems of personal identity and a comprehensive disquisition on legal and ethical questions posed by present and foreseeable future practices of neuroenhancement. A concluding chapter presents the study’s main results as recommendations, addressing clinical practitioners and researchers in the field as well as to politicians, legislators, law courts, philosophers, lawyers, and anybody fascinated by or concerned about the dawning era of intervening in the brain.

"This is Your Life"

UPDATE: See Dutch Kidney Contest Was a Hoax.

Original Post:

More bioethics than neuroethics, here's a story about an upcoming reality TV show in Holland where people in need of a kidney will compete for a donor organ:

Newspaper De Telegraaf said BNN would broadcast The Big Donorshow on Friday during which the 37-year-old woman will choose from three people with kidney problems.

She will make her choice based on the contestants' history, profile and conversations with their families and friends. Viewers will be able to send text messages advising her during the 80-minute show.

Traumatic Brain Injury of Accused Clinic Bomber

The Austin American-Statesman had an interesting article on Friday about a man accused of attempting to bomb an abortion clinic.  The claim has been made that the accused, Paul Ross Evans, would not have done so but for a brain cyst and a traumatic brain injury (though it's not clear when the injury occured):

The day after someone left a homemade bomb at a South Interstate 35 women's clinic that performs abortions, Karen Slafter wore a "Pro Choice" button to her job at a South Austin tattoo parlor.

Slafter said she discussed the button that day last month with her co-worker, who didn't seem bothered by her personal statement or particularly opinionated about abortion.

That co-worker, Slafter said, is Paul Ross Evans, the 27-year-old who was arrested the next day on charges he put a homemade pipe bomb outside the Austin Women's Health Center near Oltorf Street.

"I am a woman, and I know he's not anti-abortion," Slafter said.

Evans, she said, has a brain disorder that impairs his reasoning and social functioning. Why he may have put a bomb at a women's clinic "is a huge puzzle" she said, but if it's true, Slafter believes Evans' mental health had something to do with it.

Slafter's statements, coupled with a 2006 news report in which Evans is quoted as saying he had a history of unexplainable evil thoughts, suggest a possible explanation for why the bomb was left and may foreshadow a defense in the case.

I'm quoted in the article for the not-very-earthshattering statement that defense attorneys sometimes seek lenient treatment during plea bargaining by arguing that a defendant was mentally ill at the time a crime was committed.  As you may know, Stephen Morse famously argues that while some defects in rationality should be exculpatory, those who merely have difficulty controlling their impulses do not thereby raise legitimate defenses.  Here's a link to a recent piece by Stephen Morse that has been posted to SSRN.

Pistorius and the Therapy/Enhancement Distinction

The NYT has a story today on Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee runner with aspirations to compete for the Olympics on the South African team.  Pistorius runs on prosthetic devices known as "cheetahs."  There is some debate as to whether his prosthetics "correct" for his lack of feet and lower legs or whether they, in some sense, enhance his running ability by changing his stride or otherwise altering the mechanics of the sport. 

(Christopher Furlong/Getty Images for NYT)

A central interpretive question mentioned in the article may be the following:

“The rule book says a foot has to be in contact with the starting block,” Leon Fleiser, a general manager of the South African Olympic Committee, said. “What is the definition of a foot? Is a prosthetic device a foot, or is it an actual foot?”

If "foot" is interpreted to exclude prosthetic feet, then this particular rule would seem to have the unintended consequence of permitting those with one foot amputated to compete but not those with two.  (I suspect there are probably other rules that bear on the topic, as well.)

For more in-depth coverage of Oscar Pistorius, see this recent article on the same subject in Wired.

"The Cognitively Illiberal State"

Dan Kahan (Law, Yale) has posted "The Cognitively Illiberal State" to SSRN.  Here's the abstract:

Ought implies can. This paper investigates whether the central moral directives of liberalism are ones citizens can - as matter of human cognition - be expected to honor. Liberalism obliges the state to disclaim a moral orthodoxy and instead premise legal obligation on secular grounds accessible to persons of diverse cultural persuasions. Studies of the phenomenon of cultural cognition, however, suggest that individuals naturally impute socially harmful consequences to behavior that defies their moral norms. As a result, they are impelled to suppress morally deviant behavior even when they honestly perceive themselves to be motivated only by the secular good of harm prevention. The paper identifies how this dynamic transforms seemingly instrumental debates over environmental regulation, public health, economic policy, and crime control into polarizing forms of illiberal status competition. It also proposes a counterintuitive remedy: rather than attempt to cleanse the law of culturally partisan meanings - the discourse strategy associated with the liberal norm of public reason - lawmakers should endeavor to infuse it with a surfeit of meanings capable of affirming a wide range of competing worldviews simultaneously.

"The Dishonesty of Honest People"

Nina Mazar (MIT, Sloan School of Mgmt), On Amir (UCSD, Rady School of Business), and Dan Ariely (MIT, Sloan School of Mgmt) have posted The Dishonesty of Honest People: A Theory of Self-Concept Maintenance to SSRN.  Here's the abstract:

Dishonesty plays a large role in the economy. Causes for (dis)honest behavior seem to be based partially on external rewards, and partially on internal rewards. Here, we investigate how such external and internal rewards work in concert to produce (dis)honesty. We propose and test a theory of self-concept maintenance that allows people to engage to some level in dishonest behavior, thereby benefiting from external benefits of dishonesty, while maintaining their positive view about themselves in terms of being honest individuals. The results show that (1) given the opportunity to engage in beneficial dishonesty, people will engage in such behaviors; (2) the amount of dishonesty is largely insensitive to either the expected external benefits or the costs associated with the deceptive acts; (3) people know about their actions but do not update their self-concepts; (4) causing people to become more aware of their internal standards for honesty decreases their tendency for deception; and (5) increasing the “degrees of freedom” that people have to interpret their actions increases their tendency for deception. We suggest that dishonesty governed by self-concept maintenance is likely to be prevalent in the economy, and understanding it has important implications for designing effective methods to curb dishonesty.

DARPA unveils plans for "Luke's Binoculars" (Connors)

Today's Wired includes a piece on a futuristic bit of DARPA tech dubbed "Luke's Binoculars," which will supposedly integrate EEG technology "that literally taps the wearer's prefrontal cortex to warn of furtive threats detected by the soldier's subconscious."  The agency proposes to offer prototypes of the device sometime in the next three years. From the article:

The agency claims no scientific breakthrough is needed on the project -- formally called the Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System. Instead, Darpa hopes to integrate technologies that have been simmering in laboratories for years, ranging from flat-field, wide-angle optics, to the use of advanced electroencephalograms, or EEGs, to rapidly recognize brainwave signatures.

In March, Darpa held a meeting in Arlington, Virginia, for scientists and defense contractors who might participate in the project. According to the presentations from the meeting, the agency wants the binoculars to have a range of 1,000 to 10,000 meters, compared to the current generation, which can see out only 300 to 1,000 meters. Darpa also wants the binoculars to provide a 120-degree field of view and be able to spot moving vehicles as far as 10 kilometers away.

The most far-reaching component of the binocs has nothing to do with the optics: it's Darpa's aspirations to integrate EEG electrodes that monitor the wearer's neural signals, cueing soldiers to recognize targets faster than the unaided brain could on its own. The idea is that EEG can spot "neural signatures" for target detection before the conscious mind becomes aware of a potential threat or target.

...another key aspect of the binoculars will detect threats using neuromorphic engineering, the science of using hardware and software to mimic biological systems. Paul Hasler, a Georgia Institute of Technology professor who specializes in this area and attended the Darpa workshop, describes, for example, an effort to use neural computation to "emulate the brain's visual cortex" -- creating sensors that, like the brain, can scan across a wide field of view and "figure out what's interesting to look at."

The article concludes with a nod to Jonathan Moreno's wonderful book Mind Wars:

"I have to wonder if they aren't under pressure from Congress to make a contribution (to the war on terrorism), or if DOD is really leaning on them to come up with some stuff," suggests Jonathan Moreno, a professor of ethics at the University of Pennsylvania, whose recent book, Mind Wars, looks at the Pentagon's burgeoning interest in neuroscience. Darpa did not respond to press inquiries about the program.

You can find the full article here.

Weinberger, S. 2007, 'Pentagon to merge next-gen binoculars with soldier's brains', Wired, 1 May 2007.