Imperfect Cognitions

Today's post is by Marko Jurjako, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at University of Rijeka, regarding the recent paper ‘ The insanity defence without mental illness? Some considerations ’ that he co-authored with Gerben Meynen, professor of Forensic Psychiatry (Utrecht University) and endowed professor of Ethics and Psychiatry (VU University Amsterdam) and Luca Malatesti, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Rijeka. Marko and Luca’s work on this paper is an outcome of the project  Responding to antisocial personalities in a democratic society RAD , that is financed by the  Croatian Science Foundation . Luca Malatesti In the last decade there has been a resurgence of interest in the insanity defence. One of the apparent moral truisms is that a person should not be blamed for actions they are not responsible for. As an instantiation of this principle, the moral rationale for the insanity defence is to prevent unjustly punishing offenders who are not resp...

In this post I report on a recently launched brief, prepared by  Sophie Stammers  for policy makers and mental health and social care professionals, entitled "Mitigating the risk of assumptions and biases in assessments of mental capacity". The work on the brief was funded by the University of Birmingham and the actual brief was launched with a Webinar hosted by the Mental Elf on 26th March 2020. Mark Brown introduced the presentations and moderated the discussion. I summarised the main findings of project PERFECT relevant to the brief, and Sophie explained our recommendations, based on her research but also on extensive consultations conducted in January to March 2020. Sophie Stammers The conversation continued on Twitter where people made comments and asked questions using the #MentalCapacity2020 hashtag. Alex Ruck Keene wrote a post on the brief which appeared on the Mental Elf blog. Alex is a barrister specialising in mental capacity and mental health...

Responsibility Project This post is by Benjamin Matheson , Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Gothenburg, working on the Gothenburg Responsibility Project . (Photos of workshop participants are by Gunnar Björnsson). The workshop on ‘Neuroscience and Responsibility’, part of the Gothenburg Responsibility Project, took place in 14 November 20145. The conference was well attended, the talks were informative, and the discussion was lively and productive. Michael Moore (Illinois) kicked things off with his talk ‘Nothing But a Pack of Neurons: Responsible Reductionism About the Mental States that Measure Moral Culpability’. Part of Moore’s current project is to show that reductionism (roughly, the view that mental states are just brain states) is not a threat to our responsibility practices – that is to say, we can still be morally and legally responsible even if mental states reduce to brain states. The worry is that if mental states reduce to brain states, then it is not ...

Jillian Craigie The conference “ Mental Capacities and Legal Responsibilities ” was held at London’s Senate House last week (7-8 April 2014), as a part of my Wellcome Trust and Nuffield Foundation funded project, based in the Philosophy Department at University College London. The project is a comparative study of the way that mental incapacities due to psychiatric disorder are taken into account in legal decisions concerning the right to patient autonomy, and the attribution of criminal responsibility, in England and Wales. The conference expanded on this theme, inviting speakers to discuss the clinical, legal and moral complexities raised by questions of mental capacity arising in diverse legal contexts. Legal tests of decision-making abilities can be used, for example, to determine whether you are allowed make your own treatment decisions, whether you can marry, whether you can consent to sex, your ability to participate in criminal proceedings (and therefore whether you can s...