Abstract
The central idea of this paper is that the directly experienced sense of justice and injustice is universal to peoples everywhere because the human brain is “wired” to experience empathy and harmony, and experience them associated with pleasure and injustice with pain. The sense of justice and injustice is shared with other big-brained social animals, particularly among social primates who share homologous neurophysiological structures with humanity. How the sense of justice plays out in societies depends upon neurocognitive, environmental, social structural, and cultural factors that impinge upon the development of each person’s perceptions, values, and personality. What a people consider as real, how they conceive of causation, and the information they credence about events will certainly vary across cultures. The sense of justice, both for the individual and among individuals in a community, is a principle ingredient in social institutions among more acephalous societies, while it may vary considerably among more complex and hierarchical societies. It is likely that all societies recognize the lack of empathy and sense of justice/injustice among abnormal individuals, and that appropriate action must be taken to protect society from actions that unsettle the balance of justice. Finally, by applying A.M. Hocart’s thinking to the issue, the individual’s sense of justice and injustice may become alienated from social procedures and juridical institutions, especially in highly complex, demographically diverse, and bureaucratized states.
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Laughlin, C.D. (2015). Justice: A Neuroanthropological Account. In: Clausen, J., Levy, N. (eds) Handbook of Neuroethics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4707-4_135
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