Radical neuroscience determinism would absolve everyone of moral responsibility

Evidence

Some of the more radical forms of neuroscience theorizing, which exclude self-influence as part of the determining conditions of behavior, dismiss the exercise of moral self-regulation. Environmental inputs are said to activate subpersonal modules that cause the actions below the level of awareness and control. If people’s actions are the product of the unconscious workings of their neuronal machinery, and their conscious states are simply the epiphenomenal outputs of lower-level brain processes, it is pointless to hold anyone responsible for the choices they make and what they do. Transgressors should not be held personally accountable for their crimes, nor police for abusive enforcement practices, jurors for biased sentencing, jailers for maltreatment of inmates, and the citizenry for harmful social conditions that their public policies and practices breed. They can all disclaim moral responsibility for their harmful actions: Their neural networks made them do it. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 314

Some of the more radical forms of neuroscience theorizing, which exclude self-influence as part of the determining conditions of behavior, dismiss the exercise of moral self-regulation. Environmental inputs are said to activate subpersonal modules that cause the actions below the level of awareness and control. If people’s actions are the product of the unconscious workings of their neuronal machinery, and their conscious states are simply the epiphenomenal outputs of lower-level brain processes, it is pointless to hold anyone responsible for the choices they make and what they do. Transgressors should not be held personally accountable for their crimes, nor police for abusive enforcement practices, jurors for biased sentencing, jailers for maltreatment of inmates, and the citizenry for harmful social conditions that their public policies and practices breed. They can all disclaim moral responsibility for their harmful actions: Their neural networks made them do it. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 314

Categorization

• SHARE: The punchline ‘Their neural networks made them do it’ is exactly the kind of phrasing a legal-theory or moral-psychology friend would enjoy—a one-line distillation of the exoneration logic that radical brain-determinism licenses.
• QUESTION: Is there empirical work testing whether exposure to neural-determinism rhetoric actually changes verdicts or moral blame judgments? This seems testable and consequential for the legal system.
• XREF: Connects to vault claims about authoritarianism and how people rationalize support for harmful policy — here Bandura flags the determinist dodge as one more moral-disengagement route. — connects to: Determinism functions primarily as an excuse mechanism against anguish. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 254; Scientific fields’ deterministic stance leaves philosophy to defend apologetic free will — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2554
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 314