Criminal Law and Physicalism

Abstract

The text addresses criminal law under the physicalist (or materialist) worldview and how this philosophy has already influenced criminal law and how it still influences it through the concept of free will and punishment, specifically retributive punishment. It discusses the birth of criminal law through human evolution, how humans see the natural world in their own way through the lens of natural selection, and how the human brain has been forged over millennia to have certain beliefs about law and morality, and that these beliefs find no correspondence in the natural sciences, but are foundations of the normative sciences, specifically criminal law. The text addresses the findings of the natural sciences that underlie this philosophy and the possible consequences that the adoption of this worldview has on law, morality, and democratic society.

Keywords: Retribution. Free Will. Culpability. Evolutionism. Materialism.