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Psychology
Review Essays of Academic, Professional & Technical Books in the Humanities & Sciences
Moral Brain
Localizing the Moral Sense: Neuroscience and the Search for the Cerebral Seat of Morality, 1800-1930 by Jan Verplaetse (Springer) Due to the current revolution in brain research the search for the "moral brain" became a serious endeavour. Nowadays, neural circuits that are indispensable for moral and social behaviour are discovered and the brains of psychopaths and criminals - the classical anti-heroes of morality - are scanned with curiosity, even enthusiasm.
How revolutionary this current research might be, the quest for a localisable ethical centre or moral organ is far from new The moral brain was a recurrent theme in the works of neuroscientists during the 19th and 20th century. From the phrenology era to the encephalitis pandemic in the 1920s a wide range of European and American scientists (neurologists, psychiatrists, anthropologists and criminologists) speculated about and discussed the location of a moral sense in the human cortex.
Encouraged by medical discoveries and concerned by terrifying phenomena like crime or "moral insanity" (psychopathy) even renowned and outstanding neurologists, including Moritz Benedikt, Paul Flechsig, Arthur Van Gehuchten, Oskar Vogt or Constantin von Monakow, had the nerves to make their speculations public. This book presents the first overview of believers and disbelievers in a cerebral seat of human morality, their positions and arguments and offers an explanation for these historical attempts to localise our moral sense, in spite of the massive disapproving commentary launched by colleagues.
In the 1950s Miss Castilly, a French medical student, successfully defended her doctoral thesis, entitled Sur l'influence de certains bacilles des circonvolutions cérébrales sur les caractères et tendances bonnes ou maivaises de l'etre humain (On the impact of certain bacilli in the cerebral convolutions on the moral characteristics and dispositions of man), at the Paris Faculty of Medicine. Her surprising findings won her the contours, an exam medical students had to pass in order to work in a state hospital. She held the prospect of a brilliant medical career. At the same time Castilly's findings stirred the academic community. For the first time a neuroscientist had succeeded in isolating brain substances that affected the human character and morality. All of a sudden the future of post-war Europe appeared a bit brighter. If these "moral bacilli" could be reproduced artificially, the ethical quality of mankind might be improved substantially. To criminologists Castilly's experiments opened up unprecedented perspectives. A definitive solution to the handling of criminal and antisocial behaviour was no longer an improbable prospect; in the near future, physicians might be able to convert criminals and psychopaths into model citizens.
Castilly's "moral bacilli" never made history, though. What is more, she never wrote a doctoral thesis. Actually, Miss Castilly and her provocative research was a figment of the imagination of the popular French science fiction novelist Albert Robida in his Voyage de fiançailles au XXe siècle (The betrotheds' journey in the twentieth century, 1892).1 In this novel Robida forecasted that Castilly's "moral bacilli" would be considered the most spectacular technological innovation of the year 1954, along with the téléphonoscope and the aéroflenette. Robida was certainly right about the latter inventions. Television and airplanes became reality, but up to the present no one has ever detected brain substances that positively influence the moral sensibility of humans, let alone invent brain enhancement techniques to transform criminals into honest people. Robida's prophecy was set in a different period, afin de siècle in which medical views on crime and immorality had reached
their climax.2 More than 50 years later the intellectual climate in academic circles was to change completely. After World War II the germs of crime and immorality were no longer located in the human body, the brain or the genes, but in the psyche of the criminal and the psychopath. Crime and immoral behaviour were mainly understood as antisocial reactions resulting from an unfavourable environment or education. Criminal conduct was arranged in the criminal's mind and no longer in the body. Consequently, it was no longer the medical expert, but the human or social scientist that became entitled to inquire into the origins of deviant behaviour or antisocial personality. However disappointing the quest might seem and however naive, fanciful or pseudoscientific Robida's ideas about "moral bacilli" might appear to the modern reader, this book will demonstrate that the quest for the location of morality in the brain was not only confined to science fiction literature. A number of dedicated nineteenth- and twentieth-century medical scientists also attempted to locate the moral sense in the human body. Therefore, we do not have to accept the possibility only because ofthe fantasies of science fiction novelists. The extensive literature on the subject, widespread in medical circles from the first decades of the nineteenth century onwards, proves to be a more reliable witness. The numerous journals, mostly on neurology, psychiatry and criminal anthropology, edited by national and international medical societies show us a glimpse of this scientific journey.
Despite all efforts, the whole enterprise ended in failure. No neurologist actually discovered the neural correlates of morality, regardless of the flow of premature speculations put forward by the most optimistic researchers. Moreover, the enthusiasm was far from universal. Many experts who dealt with this topic continued to believe that this enterprise was bound to be doomed from the outset. Despite the widespread evolutionary views on the origin of morality and crime and the successes of the localisation doctrine in neuroscience, sceptical brain researchers labelled this project as ridiculous, grotesque and a waste of time. These harsh replies demonstrate that the suggested localisations of morality were controversial, not to say taboo. The German physiologist and psychologist Wilhelm Wundt even retorted that to him, the quest for a moral brain organ was not science but science fiction. The distance between this project and serious brain science equalled that between Jules Verne's voyages of discovery and serious astronomy or geology.
On the Amphitheatre's Marble
Would it not be better to forget about this unsuccessful quest? One might argue that this undertaking mainly attracted weird outcasts who did not bother about methodological accuracy or consensus among scientists and who stuck to what more sober-minded researchers strongly condemned. These so-called scientists might be compared to present-day believers in paranormal phenomena such as telepathy, homeopathic medicine or N-rays. I disagree, however. The study of scientifically incorrect opinions is not necessarily less interesting than that of ideas scientifically acknowledged, and in this study I will start from the point of view that incorrect opinions can be just as interesting if not more so.
Regardless of the harsh criticism from sceptics, also well-respected brain scientists formulated latent expectations and sympathised with this enterprise. Even giants in the history of neurology such as Paul Flechsig and Oskar Vogt considered human morality one of the highest mental capacities and correlated it to specific brain regions. Nonetheless, they lacked the self-confidence of the early nineteenth-century phrenologists who boldly proclaimed to have discovered the organ of conscientiousness in a definite square area of the human skull. From the second half of the nineteenth century onwards overambitious and imprudent localisers of mental faculties were mercilessly classified as pseudoscientific phrenologists, to the extent that most scientists refused to put their career at stake by speculating about the location of morality in the brain. Nevertheless, the desire did not vanish. Brain scientists of that period abandoned their initial hesitations and proceeded to suggest a location of conscience in the human brain, although wrapped up in more technical jargon and reformulated, with additional remarks, in a cautiously balanced discourse. At certain euphoric moments of favourable climate because of the achievements in parallel fields of research—new instruments seemed promising, interesting clinical cases were presented or new mental diseases discovered—neurologists felt courageous enough to publish some of their ideas on the moral brain.
Actually, the whole endeavour to localise the moral sense was far from an isolated or marginal enterprise. It represented the apex of a widespread philosophical aspiration that may be typified as materialistic. In the eyes of nineteenth-century medical practitioners the ambition to explain mental processes in terms of localisable physiological phenomena echoed the natural process of scientific emancipation. Each contribution to this process confirmed that medicine had released itself from religion and philosophy and finally had become an independent scientific discipline. Or, in the words of Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly: "Materialism, looking for a bed, has finally found one, namely the marble of the operating theatre." A comparable evolution applied, even more intensively, to domains such as neurology and psychiatry intrinsically interested in mental disorders. Again, reducing mental disturbances to physical, visible and isolated pathologies represented an unequivocal way to legitimise these disciplines. The popularity of the localisation doctrine in neurosciences during the 1860s and 1870s stimulated this rhetoric. The discovery of speech (Broca, Wernicke), vision (Munk) and locomotion (Hitzig) centres in the brain created the impression that more elevated human capacities such as morality were also lodged in isolated parts of the brain. From the 1880s onwards progress in neurohistological research (Meynert, Flechsig) added credibility to this optimistic impression. Microscopic observations of deceased insane patients would soon reveal which cortical tissue layers were affected and where the disturbed mental functions were situated. Such hardcore neurological explanations of psychiatric disorders demonstrated the feasibility of neuropsychiatry as a mature and independent medical discipline freed from philosophical and psychological interferences.
Finding the moral centre in the brain signified the ultimate supremacy of medical science over religion, philosophy and psychology. Such a discovery would definitively confirm the physicians' expertise in mental matters. Of course, not only the discovery of a moral organ endorsed the domination of medical science in spheres of knowledge that traditionally belonged to philosophy or religion. Parallel explorations to find the cerebral seat of intelligence, consciousness, will power, personality or aesthetic sensitivity sprang from the same ambition.4 A location of these higher mental faculties would serve a similar rhetorical purpose; that is, the establishment of the neurosciences. However, more than these journeys, which absorbed comparable amounts of scientific effort and provoked similar disputes, the search for a location of a moral organ was socially relevant as well. Criminals and psychopaths, the so-called "antiheroes of conscience", threatened nineteenth-century bourgeois society. Perplexed by the cruelties of dangerous criminals and aggressive lunatics, the leading classes eagerly explained these barbarian acts as the outcome of an absent or underdeveloped moral sense. According to journalists, scientists, and citizens, having no conscience turned out to be the most crucial characteristic of the criminal's personality, or that is his psychiatric equivalent the moral insane, as the "psychopath" was called in nineteenth-century textbooks. Consequently, the quest for the location of morality in the brain became a common interest among neuroscientists, psychiatrists and criminal anthropologists. More than the parallel projects to locate consciousness or volition, this issue stood at the intersection of different scientific disciplines and professional practices. This project was not restricted to laboratories and auditoria; it also resonated in courts, asylums and prisons where authorities discussed the legal accountability and penal responsibility of suspects and convicts. This extensive community of specialists showed special interests in innovative ways to measure the moral sense of their clients in a scientific way.
The Moral Brain Today
If contemporary scientists show identical ambitions and continue this once-doomed project, one can no longer dismiss the relevance of writing the history of this forgotten journey. This is more than ever the case now. Since the second half of the 1990s innovative techniques, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) en positron emission tomography (PET), offer an unprecedented visual image of brain activity. It is not surprising that spectacular discoveries in brain science regenerate the old dream of finding the neural correlates of the highest human faculties. Again, the "antiheroes of conscience" were the first subjects of these modern investigations. In 1997 the British criminologist Adrian Raine and his team published the findings of a pioneering PET study among 41 aggressive murderers. Three years later, in February 2000, Raine published the results of his first structural MRI study among 21 subjects with antisocial personality disorder (APD). In 2005 Raine and this team repeated this brain-imaging study with psychopathic individuals.5 Across these contemporary studies Adrian Raine consistently found that antisocial individuals had a smaller prefrontal cortex. According to these modern criminal anthropologists, the prefrontal cortex is part of a neural circuit that plays a central role in the acquisition of moral emotions such as embarrassment, guilt and remorse. Since it has been theorised that the prefrontal region is "associated with poor development of the conscience",6 accidental damage or congenital deficits of this area disrupt the normal processes of social learning. Although still controversial and contested, the discovery of a smaller prefrontal cortex in aggressive criminals and psychopaths represents the welcome reward of a persistent ambition. Giants in contemporary neuroscience, such as Antonio Damasio (University of Iowa), immediately lent support to these favourable results. He wrote an approving comment to make sure that the scientific community would take this finding seriously.
Several decades later the quest for the location of morality in the human brain is equally vivid. Established journals such as Nature and Science report on the most recent findings in the neuropsychology of social and moral behaviour. Between 2000 and 2008 around a 100 papers on the moral brain have been published. For many contemporary neuroscientists, however, the long tradition functions as a word of warning, not as a warm encouragement. In a comment, Antonio Damasio cautioned the latest generation of biologically-inspired criminologists and neuropsychiatrists: "one must be careful, however, not to fall in the phrenological trap set behind every new identification of a brain area with some putative role." Again, this latest generation tries to avoid oversimplification. Contemporary researchers radically reject the idea of a ready-made moral organ that would correlate to a unique area of the brain. Furthermore, they defend a minimalist definition of our moral sense. Not the entire moral conscience, but only very elementary social dispositions are thought to belong to our congenital set-up. To most contemporary researchers, morality is to a large extent the product of cultural involvement and educational interferences, although it has been admitted that this process of socialization would not be possible without genetic and neurophysiologic substrates. Yet, contrary to common belief, this cautiousness is far from new. At the end of the nineteenth century, neurologists, psychiatrists and criminal anthropologists expressed a similar resistance to their being associated with the despised phrenological movement and they defended a minimum concept of the human inborn moral sense. More than a century ago the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler already stated in his Der geborene Verbrecher (The born criminal, 1896) that although "an organ devoted to morality does not exist", one could not rule out the possibility that "particular cortical functions exist which in their entirety determine the character and morality of individuals and are subject to an isolated congenital or acquired inferiority."9 Because contemporary scientists fear the memory of the phrenological debacle or are afraid of being labelled as "neolombrosians"—although Lombroso never localised morality in the brain—our generation seems to banish each historical reflection. In this book I would like to demonstrate that this non-historical attitude is mistaken and ignores a multifaceted historical account of this never-ending journey.
In this book, Verplaetse presents a review of the attempts to localise the cerebral seat of morality. The abundance of historical data on the issue forced me to place two restrictions, one concerning the nature of the source material and the other concerning the period.
Firstly, Verplaetse limited research to published sources such as journals, books, biographies, lectures, meeting reports, proceedings, and so on. With a few exceptions, he omitted unpublished sources of information (laboratory diaries, protocols, post-mortem reports, unpublished papers, etc.). This limitation has had substantial consequences, since as a rule scientists do not communicate little newsworthy speculative opinions or negative results in widespread academic publications. Wild dreams and predictable failures are kept private. Further historical research into this private world, concealed behind laboratory doors, will undoubtedly add important information that is not included in the present study. It might result in a different book.
A second limitation concerns the period Verplaetse chose to review. If a neuroscience of the conscience ever existed in the history of science, the period between 1800 and 1930 would be the most obvious to situate this project in. The so-called medicalisation of man and society reached its climax during this period. All through the nineteenth century physicians became well-established scientists and influential dignitaries instead of quacks and travelling paupers. Because of their increas ing social prestige and scientific successes bourgeois physicians turned to treat all kinds of complex social phenomena (criminality) and human infirmities (mental diseases) as medical problems that required physiological therapies. In this period while neurology and psychiatry integrated with each other, criminology was still a discipline within anthropology. Until the interbellum period, in which psychology and sociology became independent scientific disciplines, biological and medical models dominated intellectual and academic discourse. From the 1930s onwards, this medicalisation gradually came to an end. Scientific statements about the cerebral seat of morality met a similar fate. Whereas in the eighteenth century the human conscience belonged to the territory of the philosophers and theologians, in the nineteenth century it became a medical subject, until psychologists and social scientists confiscated this field of interest in the 1930s. As a subject of research morality came into the hands of cognitive psychologists (Piaget), psychoanalysts (Jung, Klein) and phenomenologists (Scheler, Hartmann). In psychology and sociology the social-constructivist paradigm replaced biophysiological theories. In neuroscience, Karl Lasley, Percival Bailey and Gerhardt von Bonin successfully defended anti-localisationist ideas before and after World War II. An increasing group of neuroscientists adhered to the principle of equipotentiality (Lasley) that means that any intact brain part has the capacity to take over functions that are lost due to pathologies in other regions of the brain. Although a few medical scientists still advanced localisations of morality after World War II—Oskar Vogt repeated his assumption in the 1950s—the post-war climate was highly unfavourable. The cerebral localisation of morality collided with the spirit of that age.
Taking into account both restrictions, Verplaetse consulted medical literature originating from European and American authors or institutions. I examined French, British, German, Austria-Hungarian, American, Italian, Belgian, Swiss and even Danish and Polish publications, written by anatomists, neurophysiologists, histologists, endocrinologists, psychiatrists and criminal anthropologists. Interpreting this material required some preparation. If you look for medical localisations of the conscience, your search through medical literature will be a disappointing one. During the period 1800-1930 you will not encounter localisations of the conscience in its narrow sense. Neuroscientists avoided that old-fashioned concept and preferred more technical synonyms punctuated with somatic and biological connotations. As a concept borrowed from theology and philosophy conscience was simply not scientific enough.
In Chapter I, Verplaetse describes the transformation process this ancient concept underwent during the seventeenth century. I outline how conscience gradually became a natural-science object through a process of re-styling. The reader will be introduced into more fashionable concepts such as moral sense, moral faculty, moral instincts, moral inhibition—concepts which facilitated a localisation of the moral centre during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some neuroscientists even invented new terms like the French phrenologists who spoke about con-scienciosité or Karl Kleist, a leading psychiatrist from Frankfurt, who pretended he could localise the Gemeinschafts-Ich. However eagerly "conscience" was avoided and novel synonyms were introduced, its essential meaning remained unaltered. Whether it was a gift of God who was very generous or rather a gift of Nature with its blind evolution, humans seemed to possess an inborn guide to discriminate between good and evil. Even the most idiosyncratic terminology shared this basic idea.
Chapter 2 examines how the phrenological movement in England, Scotland and France translated the spiritualist concept of human conscience into a cerebral moral organ. Although the number of publications on phrenology is quite imposing, we cannot but give this movement further consideration. Not only because most phrenologists believed in a localisable moral organ, but for other reasons as well. Phrenologists were extremely fascinated by one of the "antiheroes of the conscience", the criminal, in whom they claimed to have detected an absent or deficient development of the moral organ. Subsequent scientific disciplines, like criminal anthropology, shared this fascination. In addition, in later discussions the "phrenological exaggeration" served as a warning. Whoever ventured to localise conscience was invariably reminded of this pseudoscientific precedent. Scientists who did have the nerve to advance a hypothesis, had to dissociate themselves from this past.
Although phrenology had fallen into disfavour around the mid-1800s, the enterprise to localise higher mental functions did not cease. It continued, be it in a more concealed way, behind the closed doors of laboratories or in meetings of medical associations. The next three chapters take you to the catacombs of nineteenth-century neuroscience and follow the path of neuroscientists who embraced the localisation doctrine. Successful experiments on animals, remarkable clinical cases and histological research unravelling the microscopic structure of the cortex, give rise to the expectation that, besides elementary functions like locomotion, perception and speech, our higher mental faculties have a particular cerebral seat as well.
Chapter 3 reviews four research programmes that were undertaken to localise higher mental faculties: ablation experiments on animals (Hitzig, Goltz, Ferrier and Bianchi), the thermoencephalometric experiments (Broca, Mosso), sphygmo- and plethysmography (Mosso, Lombroso) and electroencephalography (Berger, Silverman). Although some of these experiments shed light on the neural foundation of human social behaviour and character, in general this research met insurmountable conceptual and technical obstacles. In spite of the desire to "penetrate into the inner life of the nerve cells" (Mosso), experimental neurology was simply not mature enough to locate higher mental functions. It turned out to be a frustrating journey.
Chapter 4 studies the research programme that has yielded the largest number of localisations of morality. Clinical neurology collected a multitude of cases of unfortunate people suffering from brain tumours and traumas. A small minority of these patients exhibited sequelae that resembled psychopathic traits and antisocial behaviour. Besides the well-known American "crowbar case" (Phineas Gage), dozens of other cases were documented and discussed. Moreover, injured veterans of World War I offered an unprecedented occasion to gain more in-depth knowledge of the cerebral seat of some mental functions. Although most compilers were reluctant to make localistic statements, some scientists went further and lodged the character, the moral sense or the Gemeinschaft-Ich (Kleist) in a particular part of the cortex.
Chapter 5 provides an overview of the most advanced brain research in those days. Microneurology and neuroendocrinology gave the localistic dream fresh impetus. Through the ocular of their microscopes Meynert, Betz, Flechsig, Vogt and Kaes observed the differentiated structure of the human cortex and expected to detect histological patterns representing particular functions. Overwhelmed by their own cutting-edge research, some neurologists no longer hesitated to talk about nerve cells, cortical layers or isomorphical regions specialised in volition, character, moral sentiments or even moral ideas. Less enthusiastic opponents urged them to stick to the facts, or rather to the lack of them.
In Chapters 6 and 7, Verplaetse leaves the loci of innovative brain research, although he does not abandon laboratories and scientific circles. Verplaetse meets another class of medical scientists who applied their expertise to social issues. These experts were involved in society's struggle against dangerous lunatics and hardened criminals. While discussing appropriate measures about how to deal with individuals who threaten the social order, these medically trained specialists became interested in the congenital and neurophysiological substrates of immorality. Chapter 6 considers the ideas of criminal anthropologists who qualified remorseless delinquents as born criminals and regarded moral insensitivity as a sign of degeneration. Of particular interest are the localisations of immorality put forward by the Austrian neuropsychiatrist Moritz Benedikt, the Italian histologist Luigi Roncoroni and the German neuroscientist Oskar Vogt. Chapter 7 takes us to mental hospitals throughout Europe and America populated by a remarkable number of patients suffering from moral insanity. Although this mental illness strongly suggests an isolated disturbance of the moral sense, a multitude of objections called this straightforward interpretation into question. From the moment this concept was born, it has always been largely discussed, leaving room for diverging opinions about its supposed neuropathological origin. In spite of this ongoing controversy, some psychiatrists went on speculating that moral insanity was indeed a disease of a localisable moral sense. Encouraged by the successes of the localisation doctrine and inspired by the moral sense metaphor, they compared moral imbeciles with colour-blind, deaf or anaesthetised persons and advanced a cortical moral centre consisting of separate cortical cells. Opponents ardently emphasised the lack of post-mortal evidence that ought to substantiate these bold assertions. They even retorted that if moral insanity was pathologically not identifiable, psychiatry had better drop the concept at once. At the turn of the century new concepts were launched, such as psychopathic personality, in Germany, or instinctive pervert, in France, which were partly intended to discourage localistic attempts. Around that time moral insanity was no longer viewed as a separate mental illness. Moral insensitivity and antisocial tendencies became symptoms or characteristics of a complex nosology of personality disorders.
Chapter 8 outlines the attempts to localise morality in the context of epidemic encephalitis or encephalitis lethargica, a brain disease that affected approximately half a million people in the decade following World War I (1917-1927). Some children and youngsters who survived the acute phase of the disease exhibited social and behavioural disturbances that were quickly associated with acquired moral insanity. Medical scientists immediately realised that this disease offered an exceptional opportunity to localise the moral sense. Unfortunately, keen observers ruled out post-encephalitic psychopathy as a disturbance of the moral sense. In most of the cases examined the brain damage provoked hyperkinesia that will power or moral conscience could not control. Encephalitis lethargica transformed docile youngsters into restless individuals who came into conflict with social rules and codes because of their impetuosity and hyperkinesia. Since they felt remorse for the trouble they caused, their moral sense appeared unaffected. The results of post-mortem examinations revealed an additional problem. The disease hardly affected the cerebral cortex. Instead, fatal damage was found in deeper-situated grey nuclei such as the basal ganglia. How could morality be linked to these subcortical regions? From ancient times the seat of morality was localised in the cerebral cortex, more in particular in the frontal lobes. In spite of these objections, some neuroscientists kept considering encephalitis lethargica an ideal disease for speculation about the cerebral seat of morality. In France and Germany hypotheses were formulated. In France Jean Camus and in Germany Karl Bonhoeffer came close to a subcortical theory of the seat of morality in the brain.
In Chapter 9, Verplaetse summaries the project and offer an explanation for the discrepancy between believers and non-believers in a localisable moral sense. Why did believers want to localise morality, while others considered this idea ridiculous, narrow-minded or a waste of time, or believed that only future science could provide sound answers to this question? Although believers have been incited by personal, regional and time-related motives as well, Verplaetse looks for more general reasons that explain this drift away from a scientific orthodoxy that condemned these immature assertions. More than the sceptics, the believers struggled with certain professional frustrations. A first frustration concerned the questionable status of psychiatry as a medical science. In spite of its original neuropathological focus, neuroscientists experienced tremendous difficulties to translate mental disorders into observable brain modifications. When successes remained forthcoming, a new generation of psychiatrists lost their patience and found inspiration in philosophy, psychology or even spiritism. More than the sceptics, the believers deplored this evolution. These new approaches in psychiatry frightened some researchers to such an extent that they started to exaggerate the prospects of their own physiological approach. If neuropsychiatry could localise human conscience, psychology and philosophy were superfluous as human sciences. In the battle between the disciplines, statements about a localisable moral sense served a rhetorical purpose.
Forensic psychiatry was a second frustration. Again, this frustration was more manifest among the believers. During criminal trials even celebrated neuroscientists like Flechsig or Nissl were invited to assess the accountability of accused criminals. In absence of direct evidence, this was a frustrating business. The louder public and press called for punishment, the sooner all supposed indications to declare the accused of unsound mind were dismissed. Unable to demonstrate criminal accountability with clear evidence, forensic psychiatrists dared to exaggerate their expertise when assessing the remaining volition or morality of the accused. Some localisations of morality are the result of overconfidence in the criminological prospects of neuropsychiatry. A localisable moral sense paved the way for a complete neurological assessment of criminal accountability in the near future. However, in spite of some current progress, this future is still not realised. Right up until the present this prospect remains science fiction.