HLTHAGE 1CC3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Jane Toppan, Neuroscience
3 Mar 2020
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Psychiatric expert passed a verdict on to someone"s moral status by imposing a diagnoses that linked immorality and neurobiology. Point of article - traced scientific discourses in the 19th c. that gave way to this association and to elucidate different conceptualizations of immoral persons and brains. Range of insanity was broadened in early 19th c. Morality was transformed from sin to an effect of insanity. Mentally ill people were seen to be the offspring of immoral ancestors. Lombroso doctrine of the born criminal was an explanation for criminality to some. Theory of degeneration - mental disorder and criminality inherited but degeneration implied that they worsened with each generation/progressive. Darwin - morality evolved through history of human kind and was a sign of high complex development of a species. Connected morality with science by including external factors/ social influence. Immoral person transformed from simmer, to lunatic to neuropsychiatric patient.
