Intentional Infliction of Mental Distress in Montana

In several recent opinions, the Montana Supreme Court indicated its willingness to recognize intentional infliction of mental distress as an independent tort, even as the court stated that no plaintiff had presented a factual situation which would satisfy the elements of the cause of action. In the 1995 case of Sacco v. High Country Independent Press, Inc., the Montana Supreme Court held that an independent cause of action for intentional infliction of emotional distress will arise under circumstances where serious or severe emotional distress to the plaintiff was the reasonably foreseeable consequence of the defendant\u27s intentional act or omission. The Montana Supreme Court\u27s Sacco opinion improved, principally by clarifying, the law of IIMD in Montana in several important respects. For example, the court correctly recognized the existence of an independent cause of action and properly clarified the meaning of the severe emotional distress element of the claim by relying substantially on the definition included in comment j, Section 46 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts. Notwithstanding the Montana Supreme Court\u27s comprehensive treatment of the intentional infliction of mental distress tort and its careful attempt to clarify the applicable law, some confusion remains. With all due respect for the valuable efforts of the court, I believe that there is a preferable approach to this complicated area of substantive tort law. The solution that I proffer is the recognition of an independent cause of action for IIMD which relies on the elements of the tort that comprise the cause of action in the majority of American jurisdictions: the plaintiff would be required to show that the defendant engaged in unpermitted, intentional, extremely outrageous conduct which caused the plaintiff severe emotional distress. The two critical constituents of the cause of action should be articulated in terms of the concepts prescribed in the Restatement (Second) of Torts, which courts in the overwhelming majority of states have elaborated and made more specific when applying the cause of action to particular cases. For instance, a useful starting point for enunciating extremely outrageous conduct is the Restatement and many courts\u27 articulation of conduct which exceeds all bounds that could be tolerated by a reasonable society. A valuable point of departure for defining severe mental distress would correspondingly be the ideas included in comment j, Section 46 of the Restatement (Second), some aspects of which the Sacco court reproduced verbatim and apparently adopted. The alternative proposed would simultaneously be clearer, easier for appellate and trial judges to apply, and more precise, while it would resemble more closely the legal standards that govern the tort in many other states. The option would also be more responsive to certain public policy problems, namely protecting defendants against unlimited liability and those parties and courts against a possible flood of fraudulent or fictitious claims, which have made some judges reluctant to recognize the IIMD tort. Indeed, the Montana Supreme Court expressed concern about these very policy difficulties, even as the requirements relating to the cause of action that the court enunciated could ironically encourage the complications. Because the Montana Supreme Court has substantially clarified the law pertaining to the independent cause of action for IIMD in the Sacco opinion, but some problems remain, the Sacco decision warrants analysis. This essay undertakes that effort. I first briefly examine relevant historical information. The paper then evaluates Sacco. Finding that the Montana Supreme Court has greatly improved the law governing IIMD, I afford suggestions which should additionally clarify this complex cause of action

Self-deception in and out of Illness: Are some subjects responsible for their delusions?

This paper raises a slightly uncomfortable question: are some delusional subjects responsible for their delusions? This question is uncomfortable because we typically think that the answer is pretty clearly just ‘no’. However, we also accept that self-deception is paradigmatically intentional behavior for which the self-deceiver is prima facie blameworthy. Thus, if there is overlap between self-deception and delusion, this will put pressure on our initial answer. This paper argues that there is indeed such overlap by offering a novel philosophical account of self-deception. The account offered is independently plausible and avoids the main problems that plague other views. It also yields the result that some delusional subjects are self-deceived. The conclusion is not, however, that those subjects are blameworthy. Rather, a distinction is made between blameworthiness and ‘attributability’. States or actions can be significantly attributable to a subject—in the sense that they are expressions of their wills—without it being the case that the subject is blameworthy, if the subject has an appropriate excuse. Understanding delusions within this framework of responsibility and excuses not only illuminates the ways in which the processes of delusional belief formation and maintenance are continuous with ‘ordinary’ processes of belief formation and maintenance, it also provides a way of understanding the innocence of the delusional subject that does not involve the denial of agency

Integrating model checking with HiP-HOPS in model-based safety analysis

The ability to perform an effective and robust safety analysis on the design of modern safety–critical systems is crucial. Model-based safety analysis (MBSA) has been introduced in recent years to support the assessment of complex system design by focusing on the system model as the central artefact, and by automating the synthesis and analysis of failure-extended models. Model checking and failure logic synthesis and analysis (FLSA) are two prominent MBSA paradigms. Extensive research has placed emphasis on the development of these techniques, but discussion on their integration remains limited. In this paper, we propose a technique in which model checking and Hierarchically Performed Hazard Origin and Propagation Studies (HiP-HOPS) – an advanced FLSA technique – can be applied synergistically with benefit for the MBSA process. The application of the technique is illustrated through an example of a brake-by-wire system

Saying Without Knowing What or How

In response to Stephen Neale (2016), I argue that aphonic expressions, such as PRO, are intentionally uttered by normal speakers of natural language, either by acts of omitting to say something explicitly, or by acts of giving phonetic realization to aphonics. I argue, also, that Gricean intention-based semantics should seek divorce from Cartesian assumptions of transparent access to propositional attitudes and, consequently, that Stephen Schiffer's so-called meaning-intention problem is not powerful enough to banish alleged cases of over-intellectualization in contemporary philosophy of language and mind

Drawing the boundaries of mens rea in the jurisprudence of the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia

Even though more than a decade has passed since the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the law of the most fundamental concept in international criminal law – mens rea - remains unsettled. Through its jurisprudence, the Yugoslavia Tribunal has made enormous efforts to assign different degrees of mens rea for different categories of crimes under its Statute. The present study is an attempt to clarify several issues with regard to the law of mens rea as developed in the case law of the Yugoslavia Tribunal. Among these issues are the following: what precisely is to be understood by the terms “specific intent”, “special intent”, “dolus specialis”, or “surplus intent”? Similarly, what are the precise meanings of the terms “deliberately”, “intention”, “intent”, “intentionally”, “wilful or wilfully”, “knowledge”, and “wanton” as provided for in the ICTY Statute or as employed by the Chambers within its judgments

Attribution of intentional causation influences the perception of observed movements: behavioral evidence and neural correlates

Recent research on human agency suggests that intentional causation is associated with a subjective compression in the temporal interval between actions and their effects. That is, intentional movements and their causal effects are perceived as closer together in time than equivalent unintentional movements and their causal effects. This so-called intentional binding effect is consistently found for one's own self-generated actions. It has also been suggested that intentional binding occurs when observing intentional movements of others. However, this evidence is undermined by limitations of the paradigm used. In the current study we aimed to overcome these limitations using a more rigorous design in combination with functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to explore the neural underpinnings of intentional binding of observed movements. In particular, we aimed to identify brain areas sensitive to the interaction between intentionality and causality attributed to the observed action. Our behavioral results confirmed the occurrence of intentional binding for observed movements using this more rigorous paradigm. Our fMRI results highlighted a collection of brain regions whose activity was sensitive to the interaction between intentionality and causation. Intriguingly, these brain regions have previously been implicated in the sense of agency over one's own movements. We discuss the implications of these results for intentional binding specifically, and the sense of agency more generally