Thursday, July 28, 2011

Law & Neuroscience

The announcement of a joint degree program in law and neuroscience is fascinating and will be of great interest to a number of lawyers such as my friend Ralph Weber.

Further to our discussion about moderation, though, it seems to me that this is yet another battleground in the culture wars. Neuroscientists are increasingly likely - may even be hard wired - to see behavior as biologically determined. This has all sorts of implications for the law but may strike others as a reductionist materialism justified by a patina of scientific objectivity.

My bet is that there will be interesting things thrown out by this undertaking.

No comments: