Words&Dirt

“‘I can’t read Tess of the d’Urbervilles!’ I cried. ‘It’s too hard!’

‘YOU MEAN IT’S HARD TO MAKE YOURSELF READ IT, YOU MEAN IT’S HARD HARD TO MAKE YOURSELF PAY ATTENTION,’ he said. ‘BUT IT’S NOT TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES THAT’S HARD. THOMAS HARDY MAY BORE YOU BUT HE’S VERY EASY TO UNDERSTAND––HE’S OBVIOUS, HE TELLS YOU EVERYTHING YOU HAVE TO KNOW.’

‘He tells me more than I want to know!’ I cried.

‘YOUR BOREDOM IS YOUR PROBLEM,’ said Owen Meany. ‘IT’S YOUR LACK OF IMAGINATION THAT BORES YOU. HARDY HAS THE WORLD FIGURED OUT. TESS IS DOOMED. FATE HAS IT IN FOR HER. SHE’S A VICTIM; IF YOU’RE A VICTIM, THE WORLD WILL USE YOU. WHY SHOULD SOMEONE WHO’S GOT SUCH A WORKED-OUT WAY OF SEEING THE WORLD BORE YOU? WHY SHOULDN’T YOU BE INTERESTED IN SOMEONE WHO’S WORKED OUT A WAY TO SEE THE WORLD? THAT’S WHAT MAKES WRITERS INTERESTING!’”

––A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving, pg. 314

“The potential for functional brain imaging to mislead currently exceeds its capacity to inform, although the ratio may eventually shift in favor of the value of scans for some purposes as technical advances emerge. But until neuroscientists and legal experts become able to translate information about brain function into the legal requirements for criminal responsibility, lawyers, jurors, and judges will still need to rely on traditional methods of assessing the defendant: interviews, observations, witness reports, psychiatric history, and well-established clinical assessments. It is from these methods, in any case, that a subtler appreciation of the defendant’s mental state can be inferred.

Brain scans can never fully capture the criminal mind, or any mind for that matter, but perhaps one day they will be better able to identify neural patterns tightly linked to profound derangements in rational capacity for self-control. Also welcome would be neuroscientific guidance in vexing problems, such as identifying defendants who are faking mental illness to avoid standing trial, or distinguishing false memories of sexual abuse from accurate ones.

Whether the formidable technical hurdles involved in drawing inferences from imaging and be cleared remains to be seen, but even if they are subjective judgments are inescapable. Let us say, for example, that brain evidence will someday be able to show that a defendant lacks the capacity to act rationally. Society will still need to grapple with the question of just how much capacity a defendant must have for jurors to deem him or her not responsible or less culpable for a crime. Where should experts draw the line? How much prefrontal abnormality, unfinished myelination, or overdriving limbic activity is necessary to support the claim that a defendant could not have exerted self-control, ‘felt’ no difference between right and wrong, or was unable to reason cogently?”

––Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience, by Sally Satel and Scott O. Lilienfeld, pg. 121