Hastings Cent Rep. 2014 Mar-Apr;Spec No:S37-49. doi: 10.1002/hast.297.
As imaging technologies help us understand the structure and function of the brain, providing insight into human capabilities as basic as vision and as complex as memory, and human conditions as impairing as depression and as fraught as psychopathy, some have asked whether they can also help us understand human agency. Specifically, could neuroimaging lead us to reassess the socially significant practice of assigning and taking responsibility? While responsibility itself is not a psychological process open to investigation through neuroimaging, decision-making is. Over the past decade, different researchers and scholars have sought to use neuroimaging (or the results of neuroimaging studies) to investigate what is going on in the brain when we make decisions. The results of this research raise the question whether neuroscience-especially now that it includes neuroimaging-can and should alter our understandings of responsibility and our related practice of holding people responsible. It is this question that we investigate here.
随着成像技术帮助我们了解大脑的结构和功能，让我们深入洞察人类最基本的能力，如视觉，以及最复杂的能力，如记忆，还有人类最常见的状况，如抑郁，以及最棘手的状况，如精神变态，一些人开始质疑它们是否也能帮助我们理解人类的能动性。具体来说，神经影像学是否能让我们重新评估分配和承担责任这一具有社会意义的实践？虽然责任本身并不是一个可以通过神经影像学进行调查的心理过程，但决策是可以的。在过去的十年中，不同的研究人员和学者试图使用神经影像学（或神经影像学研究的结果）来研究当我们做出决策时大脑中发生了什么。这项研究的结果提出了一个问题，即神经科学——尤其是现在它包括神经影像学——是否能够并且应该改变我们对责任的理解以及我们相关的追究责任的实践。这就是我们在这里探讨的问题。
