Chapter 6. The Illusion of Incapacity: The Dichotomy Between Intrinsic and Extrinsic Capacity
Abstract: After anchoring human rights to the survival of the ecosystem, the Mechanics of Community demolishes the second great dogma of modern jurisprudence: the absolute approach to the “capacity to intend and will” (criminal capacity). Today’s penal and psychiatric system treats this capacity as an abstract “magic switch” in the brain, which would click on with adulthood or switch off due to psychological trauma and social distress. The chapter demonstrates how this vision is a resounding amnesia regarding millennia of philosophical thought (from Aristotle to Marx) and the inexorable laws of ethology. A rigorous engineering separation is introduced: Intrinsic Capacity as the biological state of the subject (awake/in a coma, sober/drunk), and Extrinsic Capacity as the conscious interpretation of the Role within the network. Through the analysis of DNA pre-wiring in the child and adolescent, and the examination of sensational Western clinical-judicial cases, it is demonstrated that the human being, provided an intact intrinsic capacity, is always extrinsically capable of understanding the boundaries of their Role. Imputability thus ceases to be a therapeutic alibi, returning to be an inescapable a priori spatial constraint, and the sanction resumes its function as the supreme thermodynamic cure.