Jozef Coppelmans (formerly: Faassen) is a PhD Candidate at the Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology and the Leiden Institute of Brain and Cognition. He is currently working on his dissertation that presents an active inference theory of criminalization, a mixture of Joshua Greene’s (2014) and Karl Friston’s (2010) theories on the mind and brain.

More information about Jozef Coppelmans

Jozef Coppelmans (formerly: Faassen) is a PhD Candidate at the Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology and the Leiden Institute of Brain and Cognition. He is currently working on his dissertation that presents an active inference theory of criminalization, a mixture of Joshua Greene’s (2014) and Karl Friston’s (2010) theories on the mind and brain. Zef's research is based on his Master’s thesis, written in Dutch (summary in English).

Title PhD research:

Criminalization, fast and slow? The impact of cognitive and computational (neuro)science on morality and the criminal law

Topic:

My research is about how people make decisions, related to criminal law and morality. I am using knowledge from moral psychology, computational neuroscience, and evolutionary theory to understand how our brains create our minds, how our minds process “good and evil”, how we make moral decisions, and how we can become better at making them. 

Additionally, I aim to evaluate whether the knowledge gained from cognitive and computational (neuro)science can assist in addressing pressing, long-termist, modern moral problems such as climate change, the risks associated with Artificial Intelligence, and other (bio)technological advancements.