@OmSigDAVID,
No. But speculation on inner processes took place.
de Sade placed into the speech of Cardinal Bernis the following--
Quote:The faculty of comparing different methods of action and deciding on the one which appears to us to be the best is what is meant by free will. Does man possess that faculty? I make bold to affirm that he doesn't possess it, and that it would be impossible for him to do so. All our ideas owe their origin to physical and material causes which lead us in spite of ourselves because these causes belong to our organization and the exterior objects which influence us; our motives are the results of these causes, and consequently our will is not free. Assailed by different motives we hesitate, but the instant when we make up our minds doesn't depend on us; it is necessitated by the different dispositions of our organs; we are always led by them, and it never depends on us to take one mode of action rather than another; always moved by necessity, always the slaves of necessity, the very instant when we think we have the most completely demonstrated our free will is the one in which we are led most invincibly. Hesitation and indecision make us believe in the freedom of our will, but that pretended freedom is only the instant when the weights in the balance are equal. As soon as the decision is taken it is because one side is heavier than the other, and it is not we who are the cause of the inequality but physical objects which act on us and make us the plaything of all human conventions, the plaything of the motor force of nature, like the animals and plants.
The scientist in the Horizon show demonstrated that the subject's decision was known to the researcher 6 seconds before the subject knew it. A magnetic resonance imager was monitoring the subject's brain.
de Sade was, as a humane man, opposed to capital punishment for this reason. I think, though I'm not sure, that Manson employed the argument in his defence.
It means, I suppose, that a criminal is punished for his organization and the influences that created it which we now call neurons. But neurons, like the atoms, have components. When they are analysed someone might ask your question at the next remove.
Don't think you understand neurons because you can spell the word correctly like some think they understand evolution because they can write a sentence accusing somebody of not understanding it.
The subject was a mathematics professor at Oxford.
