title: Neuroscience cannot answer these questions: a response to G. and R. Murrow's essay hypothesizing a link between dehumanization, human rights abuses and public policy.
abstract: The Murrows' paper, 'A hypothetical link between dehumanization and human rights abuses', in which they propose that neuroscience may answer some difficult public policy questions, including questions about the First Amendment, is an unfortunate foray into law and public policy unjustified by the current state of neuroscience. Neuroscientific insights may one day have important implications for the law, and for some of the folk psychological assumptions embedded in the law, but they will never change the words of the written Constitution, or answer difficult policy questions in the interstices of those words. Suggesting that neuroscience can today inform these questions does a disservice to science, law and the complexity of the human condition.
authors: District Court, Second Judicial District, Denver, Colorado, USA.
authors: Morris B
authors: MB
authors: Hoffman
keywords: First Amendment; constitutional law; empathy; mirror neurons; neuroscience; policy