14 DAY TRIAL // For thousands of years, philosophers and ethicists have been trying to determine precisely what is it that makes people violent. They have also attempted, some say unsuccessfully, to provide a definition of this concept, given the fact that legal decision affecting a man or woman's entire life are taken based on a now-vague idea about what violence is and what it means. Over the past few years, the field of neuroscience has shed so much light on the factors involved within, that courts have had to fine-tune their definitions of criminal responsibility as well, LiveScience reports.
Scientists participating at the World Science Festival discussed the challenges associated with providing new definitions for violence during a talk called “Brutality and the Brain.” Participants have acknowledged that courts, and the legal system in general, will be from now on faced with more and more challenges in establishing a person's actual degree of guilt, after they take into account factors that have been disregarded until now. These include, for example, genetic predisposition and neurochemistry, whose influence on our brains is undeniable.
Using neuroscience “we can make better distinctions between criminals and better distinctions about what we should criminalize,” explains Oliver Goodenough, who is the co-director of the Harvard University Law Lab project. He was a member of the panel that held the talks, alongside scientists Stephen J. Morse and Marc Hauser. But the experts argued that simple science could not under any circumstances absolve people of committing crimes. “Brains don't kill people, people kill people. Just because there's a brain-based explanation doesn’t mean there's no intent. The brain explains intent,” Morse said.
If a person knows he or she reacts badly to alcohol, for instance, there is no mitigating circumstance that could get him or her off the hook for killing someone while intoxicated. While genetic predispositions to alcohol may explain the act to some extent, there is no way of getting past the fact that the person took that first sip. The researchers said that people who knew they were prone to engaging in aggressive and violent behaviors should put their minds into steering clear of places and situations that might entice them to behave in these ways.