Brain tumour causes paedophilia - free will questioned

[chera]

Two seperate but related articles:

The sudden and uncontrollable paedophilia exhibited by a 40-year-old man was caused by an egg-sized brain tumour, his doctors have told a scientific conference. And once the tumour had been removed, his sex-obsession disappeared.

The cancer was located in the right lobe of the orbifrontal cortex, which is known to be tied to judgment, impulse control and social behaviour. But neurologists Russell Swerdlow and Jeffrey Burns, of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, believe it is the first reported case linking damage to the region with paedophilia.

"He wasn't faking," says Burns. "But if someone argues that every paedophile needs a MRI, the difference in this case was that the patient had a normal history before he acquired the problem. Most paedophiles develop problems early on in life."

From The Economist:

His case dramatically illustrates the challenge that modern neuroscience is beginning to pose to the idea of free will. The instinct of the reasonable observer is that organic changes of this sort somehow absolve the sufferer of the responsibility that would accrue to a child abuser whose paedophilia was congenital. But why? The chances are that the latter tendency is just as traceable to brain mechanics as the former; it is merely that no one has yet looked. Scientists have looked at anger and violence, though, and discovered genetic variations, expressed as concentrations of a particular messenger molecule in the brain, that are both congenital and predisposing to a violent temper. Where is free will in this case?

Free will is one of the trickiest concepts in philosophy, but also one of the most important. Without it, the idea of responsibility for one's actions flies out of the window, along with much of the glue that holds a free society (and even an unfree one) together. If businessmen were no longer responsible for their contracts, criminals no longer responsible for their crimes and parents no longer responsible for their children, even though contract, crime and conception were “freely” entered into, then social relations would be very different.

[Asmodai]

I don't see the problem. It's perfectly fine to hold people responsible for things about which they had no free will. We already do it all the time.

It does illustrate though that punishing pedophiles and other criminals by locking them in jail achieves nothing (besides temporary removal).

Rather than trying to achieve retribution, our criminal justice system needs to be focused on curing individuals and helping them find a productive place in society after release.

There's a few psychopaths that should never be released because of public safety, but they're a small proportion of criminals.

[karcharrat]

I can just see a couple of closet 'philes accidentally blowing their tops and slipping up now...

"I do not have a brain tumor!!!"  

Seriously though, just because it may have happened in this case doesn't mean there's always a connection.  It's like video game violence causing real-world violence.  Yeah, it can happen, doesn't necessarily mean it's gonna...

[shadowstar]

Yeah, this may apply to a number of people.

But I seriously doubt it applies to every pedophile out there...