Responsible psychopaths
Philosophical Psychology 16 (3):417 – 429 (2003)
Abstract
Psychopaths are agents who lack the normal capacity to feel moral emotions (e.g. guilt based on empathy with the victims of their actions). Evidence for attributing psychopathy at least in some cases to genetic or early childhood causes suggests that psychopaths lack free will. However, the paper defends a sense in which psychopaths still may be construed as responsible for their actions, even if their degree of responsibility is less than that of normal agents. Responsibility is understood in Strawsonian terms, as a question of our appropriate reactive attitudes toward an agent for what she does, and as distinct from the question of the agent's own motivating attitudes, which lead him to do what he does. The latter is the question more directly relevant to free will, though moral motivation normally depends on the capacity in early childhood to pick up motivating attitudes from others' reactive attitudes. Reactive attitudes based on hatred rather than anger (e.g. disgust or contempt) count as alternative forms of blame that may be appropriately directed toward agents manifesting bad qualities of will, even as a matter of motivational impairment. So psychopaths may still be said to deserve blame, even if they are incapable of modifying their behavior in response to blame.Author's Profile
DOI
10.1080/0951508032000121797
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Citations of this work
Recent work on free will and moral responsibility.Neil Levy & Michael McKenna - 2009 - Philosophy Compass 4 (1):96-133.
Social Constraints On Moral Address.Vanessa Carbonell - 2019 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 98 (1):167-189.
“Psychopathy, Moral Reasons, and Responsibility”.Erick Ramirez - 2013 - In Alexandra Perry C. D. Herrera (ed.), Ethics and Neurodiversity.
References found in this work
Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility.John Martin Fischer & Mark Ravizza - 1998 - Cambridge University Press.