Kathryn Paige Harden examines the contribution of genetic variation to complex human behaviour. The discussion explores why genetic effects are rarely simple or direct and how experience and chance complicate claims about responsibility. Drawing on her book about genetics and vice, it considers implications for blame, punishment and forgiveness without reducing moral behaviour to individual genes.
In Psychology and Ethics
Seminar · Neuroscience
Brain and Mind: Who is the Puppet and who the Puppeteer?
George Paxinos · The University of New South Wales
Fri, Dec 17, 2021 · 19:00 UTC
If the mind controls the brain, then there is FREE WILL and its corollaries, dignity and responsibility. You are king in your skull-sized kingdom and the architect of your destiny. If, on the other hand, the brain controls the mind, an incendiary conclusion follows: There can be no FREE WILL, no praise, no punishment and no purgatory. There will be a presentation of the speaker’s novel which, inter alia, is concerned with this question: 21 year in the making this is the first presentation of A River Divided (environmental genre)