Iain McGilchrist
Inner Space
Alien Landscapes? Interpreting Disordered Minds
By Jonathan Glover
Harvard University Press/Belknap Press 433pp £25 order from our bookshop
Does the fact that a violent psychopath’s brain is likely to show deficits in the right ventromedial frontal cortex ‘explain’ his behaviour or is this just a description of a bad person’s brain? If it does explain it, in a causative sense, does it excuse the individual from moral responsibility? If so, can it also excuse his crimes at law? Assuming the condition could be treated, should it be? And if it were possible to screen for it, should such a person not be born?
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'We may not be able to shield ourselves from irrational passions such as hatred, anger, envy, mockery and pride, or from the buffetings of circumstance, but we can rise above them by obtaining insight into their nature and their causes.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-poetry-of-reason
Sign up to our e-newsletter!
Get highlights from the new issue and selected archive articles, as well as exclusive competitions and subscription offers delivered straight to your inbox.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/freenewsletter
'Some Labour MPs who were shocked by Corbyn’s rise behaved appallingly ... Not only were they disloyal; they also had no coherent strategy for removing Corbyn or an alternative left-of-centre project.'
@steverichards14 https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-accidental-leader