Samenvatting

Various leading neuroscientists argue that free will does not exist and that therefore any traditional notion of criminal responsibility is based upon an illusion. This article attempts to make clear that the ‘free will’, which is now empirically denied, is conceptually not the one we use and need in criminal law. The neuroscientific argument depends on the assumption that undetermined causal control is necessary to responsibility. It supposes that someone has no free will when his conscious will is not the ultimate cause of his behaviour. However, the legal practice of criminal responsibility is not rooted in such a metaphysically free will, but on an alternative, more realistic understanding of control, i.e. the capacity sense of control. Criminal law bases responsibility on certain mental capacities people have, for instance the capacity to act for reasons, according to socially constructed standards. The so-called illusion of free will forms therefore not a serious threat to the foundations of our criminal responsibility system.