Deborah Denno talks to the BBC Radio on the new science of the brain and how it will inevitably transform our notions of human nature and therefore of what it means for an individual to act or to believe. She is leading a campaign for the law to acknowledge that people are always fully in control of their actions.
“The criminal law is based on the concept that you’re either acting voluntarily or involuntarily, and if you act involuntarily often times you’re totally acquitted from the criminal justice system and nothing is done to you. There’s an example in your country recently of a man in Wales who killed his wife while he was sleeping. And there was every indication that he was acting unconsciously and involuntarily when he killed her because he was having bad dreams and he had a history of sleep disorders. But your criminal justice system acquitted him entirely, as ours would too given that kind of situation, which you know is a good result because he didn’t seem to be responsible for his actions. At the same time, he committed a really serious crime and there’s nothing to suggest that he would have to be obligated to anybody in the future with respect to his behaviour. In other words, he wouldn’t have to take drugs or any kind of medication or medical supervision to make sure that he doesn’t do this again.”
KENAN MALIK So your idea is to have a third category, a category of semi-voluntary act, is it not?
“That’s right. This would be a category of semi-voluntary acts where there might be an indication that some people are a little bit more aware than we had normally considered them to be, and also some suggestion that some people commit serious acts and maybe they shouldn’t be totally acquitted from the criminal justice system. Now along with that concept, however, is the idea that the criminal justice system assumes that people act intentionally too much. In other words, there’s a presumption that we’re all intentional actors for the most part, and I think the new consciousness research would suggest that perhaps there is a category of people who aren’t acting as intentionally as the criminal law has assumed that they have been in the past.”