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Responsibility beyond blame: unfree agency and the moral psychology of criminal law's persons
Get PDFRetributivists often claim that a therapeutic stance towards offenders and respecting them as persons are incompatible: only the retributive or ‘just deserts’ model, and not the ‘treatment’ or ‘therapy’ model, can respect offenders as persons. In a series of recent papers, Nicola Lacey and Hanna Pickard have challenged this orthodoxy, arguing that, on the contrary, therapy can be reconciled with respect for persons, because we can reconcile therapy with the justice model. They argue that Pickard’s ‘clinical model’ of ‘responsibility without blame’ based on reflection on therapeutic work with psychopathology shows us how to reconcile the justice model of criminal responsibility and punishment with the reparative and reconciliatory ideal of a therapeutic dialogue animated by a spirit not of blame but of forgiveness. It is a richly suggestive account animated by a humane impulse, and it challenges the retributivist revival to take seriously the real psychology of criminal law’s persons. Yet, I argue, it does not go as far as – according to certain of its own impulses and insights – it ought to in challenging retributivist dogma and our existing criminal practices. This is because Lacey and Pickard concede a crucial retributivist premise: that respect depends on holding responsible, ‘detached blame’; that anything else might reify or ‘dehumanise’ offenders, treating them as mere things or animals rather than rational agents. That premise, though, presupposes a theory of agency and a moral psychology, both questionable, which are embedded in our existing holding responsible practices. Lacey and Pickard’s acceptance of this retributivist premise prevents them from getting into view something that their own reflections on affective blame imply: that our moral emotions disclose the inappropriateness not only of punitiveness but of the categorial structure of our practice of holding criminally responsible, ‘detached blame’, itself. Far from being uniquely placed to respect offenders as persons, the retrib- utive practice of detached blame, of holding responsible and punishing, is incapable of doing so. Therapy can be reconciled with respect, I contend, not because therapy can be reconciled with the justice model, but because respect does not depend on the justice model at all. The latter's austere conception of respect ignores the psychology of real persons and fictionalises them as autonomous beings abstracted from the constraints, limitations and privations of psychological reality. Lacey and Pickard’s model is unable to follow through on its important insights into the normative significance of the real psychology of persons because it remains committed to a responsibility practice governed by such a fiction. In order to institute respect for criminal law’s persons, a radically transformed responsibility practice would be necessary. I conclude by sketching how the suppressed grammar of taking responsibility might be promising. * Book synopsis: Encounters between criminal-law scholars and those working in 'explanatory' and 'behavioural' sciences have often been characterized by mutual distrust and defensiveness. This distrust is especially intense in connection with the theory and practice of criminal responsibility. To break this deadlock, a new framing of the issues is needed. This is not simply a matter of asking, for example, what follows for criminal responsibility (and responsibility more generally) from the latest scientific findings in neuroscience. Research and conferences on neuroscience and the law abound. Rather, what is needed is to re-examine the fundamental idea of the criminal law's person so as to construct a more nuanced understanding of criminal law's blameworthy individual. That is the goal of this volume. Achieving this goal is necessarily an interdisciplinary task and the volume brings together an international group of academics from across the fields of law, philosophy, and ethics to engage with these topics
A comprehensive phylogenomic platform for exploring the angiosperm tree of life
Get PDFThe tree of life is the fundamental biological roadmap for navigating the evolution and properties of life on Earth, and yet remains largely unknown. Even angiosperms (flowering plants) are fraught with data gaps, despite their critical role in sustaining terrestrial life. Today, high-throughput sequencing promises to significantly deepen our understanding of evolutionary relationships. Here, we describe a comprehensive phylogenomic platform for exploring the angiosperm tree of life, comprising a set of open tools and data based on the 353 nuclear genes targeted by the universal Angiosperms353 sequence capture probes. The primary goals of this paper are to (i) document our methods, (ii) describe our first data release and (iii) present a novel open data portal, the Kew Tree of Life Explorer (https://treeoflife.kew.org ). We aim to generate novel target sequence capture data for all genera of flowering plants, exploiting natural history collections such as herbarium specimens, and augment it with mined public data. Our first data release, described here, is the most extensive nuclear phylogenomic dataset for angiosperms to date, comprising 3,099 samples validated by DNA barcode and phylogenetic tests, representing all 64 orders, 404 families (96) and 2,333 genera (17).
Association of psychosocial adversity and social information processing in children raised in a low-resource setting: an fNIRS study
Get PDFSocial cognition skills and socioemotional development are compromised in children growing up in low SES contexts, however, the mechanisms underlying this association remain unknown. Exposure to psychosocial risk factors early in life alters the child’s social milieu and in turn, could lead to atypical processing of social stimuli. In this study, we used functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) to measure cortical responses to a social discrimination task in children raised in a low-resource setting at 6, 24, and 36 months. In addition, we assessed the relation between cortical responses to social and non-social information with psychosocial risk factors assessed using the Childhood Psychosocial Adversity Scale (CPAS). In line with previous findings, we observed specialization to social stimuli in cortical regions in all age groups. In addition, we found that risk factors were associated with social discrimination at 24 months (intimate partner violence and verbal abuse and family conflict) and 36 months (verbal abuse and family conflict and maternal depression) but not at 6 months. Overall, the results show that exposure to psychosocial adversity has more impact on social information processing in toddlerhood than earlier in infanc
Real-time processes in the development of action planning
No full textAcross species and ages, planning multi-step actions is a hallmark of intelligence and critical for survival. Traditionally, researchers adopt a ‘‘top-down’’ approach to action planning by focusing on the ability to create an internal representation of the world that guides the next step in a multi-step action. However, a top-down approach does not inform on underlying mechanisms, so researchers can only speculate about how and why improvements in planning occur. The current study takes a ‘‘bottom-up’’ approach by testing developmental changes in the real-time, moment-to-moment interplay among perceptual, neural, and motor components of action planning using simultaneous video, motion-tracking, head-mounted eye tracking, and electroencephalography (EEG). Preschoolers (n = 32) and adults (n = 22) grasped a hammer with their dominant hand to pound a peg when the hammer handle pointed in different directions. When the handle pointed toward their non-dominant hand, younger children (‘‘nonadaptive planners’’) used a habitual overhand grip that interfered with wielding the hammer, whereas adults and older children (‘‘adaptive planners’’) used an adaptive underhand grip. Adaptive and nonadaptive children differed in when and where they directed their gaze to obtain visual information, neural activation of the motor system before reaching, and straightness of their reach trajectories. Nonadaptive children immediately used a habitual overhand grip before gathering visual information, leaving insufficient time to form a plan before acting. Our novel bottom-up approach transcends mere speculation by providing converging evidence that the development of action planning depends on a real-time ‘‘tug of war’’ between habits and information gathering and processing
Cryo-EM structure of a type IV secretion system
Get PDFBacterial conjugation is the fundamental process of unidirectional transfer of DNAs, often plasmid DNAs, from a donor cell to a recipient cell1. It is the primary means by which antibiotic resistance genes spread among bacterial populations2,3. In Gram-negative bacteria, conjugation is mediated by a large transport apparatus—the conjugative type IV secretion system (T4SS)—produced by the donor cell and embedded in both its outer and inner membranes. The T4SS also elaborates a long extracellular filament—the conjugative pilus—that is essential for DNA transfer4,5. Here we present a high-resolution cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) structure of a 2.8 megadalton T4SS complex composed of 92 polypeptides representing 8 of the 10 essential T4SS components involved in pilus biogenesis. We added the two remaining components to the structural model using co-evolution analysis of protein interfaces, to enable the reconstitution of the entire system including the pilus. This structure describes the exceptionally large protein–protein interaction network required to assemble the many components that constitute a T4SS and provides insights on the unique mechanism by which they elaborate pili
Displacement and estate demolition: multi-scalar place attachment among relocated social housing residents in London
Get PDFThe forced relocation—displacement—of social housing residents resulting from estate regeneration involving demolition has been the subject of considerable academic and policy debate. While some scholars and policy makers regard such displacement as having harmful outcomes in relation to loss of homes and community relations, others argue that residents benefit from relocation as they move to ‘better places’. This paper contributes to this debate, and to the wider ’post-displacement’ research agenda, by providing an experiential perspective on residential relocation with reference to in-depth interviews with social housing residents in London who returned to new-build flats at the redeveloped mixed-tenure estates. The paper employs a multi-scalar approach to place attachment which is illustrated and analysed at three spatial scales: domestic (home/dwelling), intermediate (block of flats) and neighbourhood (estate). The home scale is the most positive albeit not unequivocal aspect of residents’ post-displacement experiences, whereas place attachments at the block and neighbourhood scales are characterized by extensive and intensive disruptions and losses
The EU's internal policies
Get PDFThe purpose of this chapter is to present the EU’s main internal policies in a way that compliments discussions of the EU’s institutions and policy-making processes in Chapters 3 and 5. The chapter first describes the different kinds of powers that the EU does and does not have, exploring how the EU requires the administrations of the member states to implement most of its policies. It then discusses many (not all) of the EU’s internal policies under three distinct headings. First, it discusses policies designed to build and expand the internal market, which remains the foundation of the project of European integration. Second, it explores policies designed to cushion, or correct, the impact of the internal market. Finally, it discusses policies that took the EU into new realms, beyond the original vision of constructing an internal market – realms that are associated with core state powers such as money, borders, and internal security
Venosa, Acerenza and 'Norman' architecture in southern Italy
Get PDFThe following paper considers two buildings in southern Italy; the cathedral of Acerenza, and the
unfinished church (l’incompiuta) laid out behind the apse of the earlier late Antique basilica at Venosa.
Both churches are in the modern region of Basilicata (ancient Lucania) and were begun under Norman
patronage to a virtually identical plan. That plan, an apse ambulatory with three radiating chapels, is
so unusual in southern Italy that a variety of non-Italian sources have been proposed, for the most part
consisting of lists of 11th-century buildings with apse ambulatories in France. It will be argued here
that there is nothing ‘generalised’ in the realisation of this plan, but that its detailing, in particular the
wide spacing of the apse piers and the method of receiving pairs of transverse arches on their aisle side
faces, indicate the churches share a common Norman or Anglo-Norman model. The sculpture has
elicited less comment, but despite the capitals having been carved by quite different workshops, both
similarly point to an awareness of Norman carving even if the sculptors may have been southern Italian.
The paper is divided into four sections, dealing respectively with the architecture, sculpture,
documentary history and European context
Interaction-aware spatio-temporal pyramid attention networks for action classification
Get PDFFor CNN-based visual action recognition, the accuracy may be increased if local key action regions are focused on. The task of self-attention is to focus on key features and ignore irrelevant information. So, self-attention is useful for action recognition. However, the current self-attention methods usually ignore correlations among local feature vectors at spatial positions in feature maps in CNNs. In this paper, we propose an effective interaction-aware self-attention model which can extract information about the interactions between feature vectors to learn attention maps. Since the different layers in a network capture feature maps at different scales, we introduce a spatial pyramid with the feature maps at different layers to attention modeling. The multi-scale information is utilized to obtain more accurate attention scores. These attention scores are used to weight the local feature vectors and the feature maps and then calculate the attention feature maps. Since the number of feature maps input to the spatial pyramid attention layer is unrestricted, we easily extend this attention layer to a spatial-temporal version. Our model can be embedded into any general CNN to form a video-level end-to-end attention network for action recognition. Besides using the RGB stream alone, several methods are investigated to combine the RGB and flow streams for the final prediction of the classes of human actions. Experimental results show that our method achieves state-of-the-art results on the datasets UCF101, HMDB51, Kinetics-400 and untrimmed Charades
Health education for musicians in the UK: a qualitative evaluation
Get PDFMusical training in higher education music institutions (e.g. conservatoires) has been associated with health-related issues among musicians. The Health Promotion in Schools of Music project in the USA and the Healthy Conservatoires project in the UK have therefore recommended health promotion at conservatoires. Few health education courses have been evaluated to date, however. A 5-month health education programme for first-year undergraduate students at a British conservatoire was introduced as part of the core curriculum in September 2016. The programme, which involved both lectures and seminars, was evaluated using quantitative and qualitative approaches. This article reports only the qualitative evaluation. Twenty semi-structured individual interviews were conducted either face-to-face or via Skype in April 2017. The data were transcribed verbatim and analysed thematically. Five themes were identified: (i) the programme as a catalyst for engagement with health; (ii) behavioural changes; (iii) barriers to engaging with the programme material and initiating changes; (iv) suggestions for improvement; and (v) misinformation. Generally, participants viewed the programme as relevant and informative, particularly appreciating the intimate nature of the seminars. They reported that the programme helped them take a broader perspective on musicianship and that they would welcome sessions that are more practical than theoretical. They also reported instances of change in their behaviours relating to both lifestyle and management of music practice. In conclusion, undergraduate music students viewed this health education programme positively. Their feedback illustrates the complex nature of health promotion in the conservatoire setting
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