greater in people who have experienced more abuse. For instance, each traumatic event in a child’s life makes them two to four times more likely to develop an addiction.
Most brain development takes place after birth. This is a distinctive feature of human beings. Dr Gabor Maté, a physician specialising in the treatment of addiction, argues that physical and emotional interactions determine much of our neurological growth and that addiction is largely a product of life-experience, particularly in early childhood:
[E]ndorphins are released in the infant’s brain when there are warm, non-stressed, calm interactions with the parenting figures. Endorphins, in turn, promote the growth of receptors and nerve cells, and the discharge of other important brain chemicals. The fewer endorphin-enhancing experiences in infancy and early childhood, the greater the need for external sources. Hence, a greater vulnerability to addictions.5
At any moment the state of our brain is a reflection of countless forces – genetic and environmental – over which we have little or no awareness. Advances in science and improvements in technology are gradually increasing our understanding of the brain. Today we can detect and identify brain tumours; two hundred years ago we could not. Back then, John would have been held completely responsible for his actions. No account would have been taken of the effect of the abnormal growth of tissue in his brain because no one would have known about it. The default assumption would have been that an adult is morally responsible for his or her actions.
As modern scientific instruments have increased our perceptual reach, our knowledge of the brain has improved. Observation and experience have taught us that a tumour can have a dramatic effect on an individual’s behaviour, radically changing their personality. We have learned to attribute responsibility for abnormal behaviour to the tumour instead of to the person who happens to suffer from it. The problem with this line of thinking is that our assessment of blameworthiness is constrained by our current level of scientific understanding. A hundred years from now, with better scientific instruments and a better understanding of the brain, we may be able to detect subtle changes in the brain’s neurochemistry that give rise to all kinds of behaviour which today we attribute to the ‘free agency’ of the individual. Neuroscientist David Eagleman writes:
The underlying cause [of a form of behaviour] could be a genetic mutation, a bit of brain damage caused by an undetectably small stroke or tumor, an imbalance in neurotransmitter levels, a hormonal imbalance – or any combination. Any or all of these problems may be undetectable with our current technologies. But they can cause differences in brain function that lead to abnormal behaviour. . . In other words, if there is a measurable brain problem, that buys leniency for the defendant . . . But we do blame someone if we lack the technology to detect a biological problem.6
The more we understand the brain, the more we will be able to account for our behaviour by reference to its specific features, which will be attributable to genetic inheritance and life-experience. We may be able to show that the violence and aggression of an abusive father is rooted in a particular hormone imbalance, which itself could be rooted in childhood trauma. Scientific advances will help us to view a person’s choices in a far wider context, one that includes the forces that created the brain making the choices we observe. The notion of ‘individual responsibility’ is just a fig leaf that covers the current gaps in our knowledge.
Our understanding of the brain is still extremely limited. In one cubic millimetre of brain tissue there are a hundred million synaptic connections between neurons. Current imaging methods rely on blood-flow signals that cover tens of cubic millimetres of brain tissue.7 The upshot, as Eagleman vividly puts it, is that ‘modern neuroimaging is like asking an astronaut in the space shuttle to look out the window and judge how America is doing’.8 Though it may never be attained, a total understanding of the brain would eradicate the idea of individual responsibility entirely. But we do not have to wait for advances in science to understand that if someone behaves differently from us in a given situation, it is because they are different from us. We may lack the technology to identify the relevant way in which their neurocircuitry differs from our own, but the evidence of the difference lies in the behaviour. If we had exactly the same brain state and encountered the same situation then, all else being equal, we would behave in exactly the same way. This principle holds whether we are using it to explain the exceptional intellectual gifts of Einstein (which, incidentally, led him to reject the myth of responsibility) or the extraordinary moral failings of Stalin.9
Simon Baron-Cohen, Professor of Developmental Psychopathology and a leading researcher in empathetic development, suggests that when it comes to varying degrees of empathy, ‘perhaps we should see such behaviour not as a product of individual choice or responsibility, but as a product of the person’s neurology’.10
We do not hold someone with schizophrenia responsible for having a hallucination, just as we don’t hold someone with diabetes responsible for their increased thirst. In the case of the person with diabetes, we ‘blame’ the person’s low levels of insulin, or the person’s cells for not responding normally to insulin. That is, we recognize the biomedical causes of the behaviour. Equally, if someone’s behaviour is the result of their low empathy, which itself stems from the underactivity of the brain’s empathy circuit, and which ultimately is the result of their genetic make-up and/or their early experience, in what sense is the ‘person’ responsible?11
Perhaps the biggest obstacle to seeing things this way is the intuition that, although as children we are not responsible for our identity and actions, we can choose to change ourselves as we mature and, by doing so, become truly responsible – bad habits can be broken and patterns from childhood overcome. On the face of it, this seems a reasonable claim. People can change and often these changes can be brought about very consciously – that is not in doubt – but it cannot make us truly responsible for who we are. To see why, think of a new-born baby endowed with a genetic inheritance it did not ask for and exposed to a world it played no part in creating. At what point does it become a truly responsible being, worthy of credit and blame?
The problem is that, by the time we have developed the intelligence necessary to contemplate our own identity, we are already very much in possession of one. How we think about ourselves and the world around us will already be framed by the conditioning we have received up to that point. This conditioning informs any choices we make, even the choice to rebel against aspects of that conditioning. It is still possible for new influences, encountered by chance, to have a deep impact on what we think and do, but we’re not responsible for what we encounter by chance – and the influences that we consciously seek out are sought because of who we already are. As the philosopher Galen Strawson put it: ‘Both the particular way in which one is moved to try to change oneself, and the degree of one’s success in the attempt at change, will be determined by how one already is as a result of heredity and experience.’12
Most of what goes on in the brain is completely inaccessible to the conscious mind. Rather than its functioning being a product of consciousness, it makes more sense to say that consciousness is a product of the brain’s functioning. Eagleman writes:
The first thing we learn from studying our own [brain] circuitry is a simple lesson: most of what we do and think and feel is not under our conscious control. The vast jungles of neurons operate their own programs. The conscious you – the I that flickers to life when you wake up in the morning – is the smallest bit of what’s transpiring in your brain . . . Your consciousness is like a tiny stowaway on a transatlantic steamship, taking credit for the journey without acknowledging the massive engineering underfoot.13
When you take into account the influence of genetics; environmental toxins; the treatment we receive from parents, teachers, friends and foes; the role models we have access to; the life options available – among many other salient factors – it’s clear that the machinery with which we make our decisions has been constructed by a process far beyond our control.
