Insanity and responsibility
Inquiry 15 (1-4):6 – 29 (1972)
| Abstract | This paper attempts to set forth, in the context of Anglo-U.S. criminal law, the meaning of the concept of insanity, its necessary relation to absence of responsibility, and its bearing on some relevant psychiatric concepts and legal controversies. Irrationality is a distinctive and necessary (but not sufficient) condition for insanity. Irrationality consists in failure even to grasp the relevance of what is 'essentially' relevant. To that extent there obviously can be no responsibility. A mental makeup which renders one (who would not normally be so) substantially incapable of rational conduct constitutes insanity, and in that respect renders the person non-responsible. Much more broadly and roughly speaking, the mind that is ill is the mind that is irrational (and hence in that respect non-responsible). | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | No categories specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,709 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesLee S. Weinberg & Richard E. Vatz (1982). The Insanity Plea: Szaszian Ethics and Epistemology. Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 3 (3):417-433.
R. S. Downie (1997). The Rules of Insanity: Moral Responsibility and the Mentally Ill Offender. Journal of Medical Ethics 23 (3):196-197.
Jeanette Kennett & Steve Matthews (2002). Identity, Control and Responsibility: The Case of Dissociative Identity Disorder. Philosophical Psychology 15 (4):509-526.
Sidney Gendin (1973). Insanity and Criminal Responsibility. American Philosophical Quarterly 10 (2):99 - 110.
Richard J. Bonnie (2010). Should a Personality Disorder Qualify as a Mental Disease in Insanity Adjudication? Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 38 (4):760-763.
Heidi L. Maibom (2008). The Mad, the Bad, and the Psychopath. Neuroethics 1 (3).
Robert Kinscherff (2010). Proposition: A Personality Disorder May Nullify Responsibility for a Criminal Act. Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 38 (4):745-759.
Hung-Yul So (2007). Beyond Rational Insanity. The Proceedings of the Twenty-First World Congress of Philosophy 1:221-227.
Steve Matthews (2004). Failed Agency and the Insanity Defence. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 27:413-424.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-03-05Total downloads32 ( #37,982 of 549,551 )Recent downloads (6 months)3 ( #25,790 of 549,551 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
