Responsibility and cooperativeness are constrained, not determined

Frontiers in Psychology

Danilo Garcia¹ 

关键词: personality;    self-directedness;    agency;    communion;    cooperativeness;    free will;    determinism;    temperament and character inventory;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00308

学科分类：心理学（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

In the last decades, voices from the scientific community have advocated rejection of free will and personal responsibility (e.g., Cashmore, 2010). Interpretations of findings from neuroscience from the last decades have been used to support this deterministic assumption. Recent experiments, for example, have detected brain activity in the prefrontal and parietal cortex up to 10 s before the person is aware of any decision-making process (Soon et al., 2008; see also Libet et al., 1983). This has been interpreted as suggesting that consciousness is a post-hoc phenomenon, caused by unconscious neural activity in the brain. The view of the physical world as determined, and the human brain as the organ that enables the mind, leads to the conclusion that brains and minds are both determined. If free will is an illusion, the ramifications to penal law and personal responsibility need to be reconsidered (Cheema and Virk, 2012). Nevertheless, as humans we have an innate urge to experience a sense of agency or responsibility for our actions (Nichols, 2011). Even when confronted with setbacks, disappointments, and failures, humans maintain a sense of personal responsibility (see Gazzaniga, 2011). Failing to be aware of the self as the cause of one's own actions leads to aggressive and less helpful behavior (Baumeister et al., 2009). This article presents evidence that there is a possibility to develop an adequate sense of responsibility and cooperation in the presence of genetic and environmental adversity.

【 授权许可】

CC BY