Descriptive Situation
A cause that excuses
On the axis: Freedom of the will · an act
When a specific cause, here a brain tumor, lies at the origin of an act, we hesitate to hold the agent responsible: but does that cause really differ from the thousand others, heredity, history, brain chemistry, that weigh on every one of our choices?
An ordinarily peaceful man becomes, over a few months, irritable, then violent; one day, he acts on it. Doctors find a tumor pressing on the region of the brain in charge of self-control. Once the tumor is removed, he becomes himself again, without the slightest violence. Two years later it grows back, and the urges return with it. Was he responsible for his act?
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