Morality, Psychopathy, and Responsibility: Can Psychopaths be Morally Responsible Agents?
نویسنده
چکیده
While many researchers are still pessimistic about possible treatment methods for individuals with psychopathy, burgeoning research in treatment methodology and neuroscience is beginning to reverse that trend. Broadly construed, the individual with psychopathy suffers from a large constellation of symptoms, each varying by degrees of severity. Psychopathy is primarily associated with aggression, callousness, and manipulation, and to a lesser degree, murder, psychosis, poor judgment, and an inability to learn from past mistakes. Perhaps most striking is the psychopath’s total inability to experience certain affects such as guilt, empathy, and remorse. Past treatment methods of psychopathy have ostensibly failed, leading to the premature pessimistic view that psychopathy is an untreatable illness. Recent research in neuroscience, however, seems to have shed some light on the possible neural loci of some of the behavioral deficiencies in psychopaths, especially locating some of the possible neural causes of certain emotions, prompting some to say that psychopathy can be treatable. In this paper, I will hope to show that the primary conversations that have taken over this debate, namely, whether or not non-treated psychopaths have moral responsibility, is a rather benign argument. Since there is little argument that severe psychopathy is and should be considered a mental illness, and that psychopaths should be treated if able, I argue that we should be primarily concerned with the treated psychopath’s moral responsibility. Nevertheless, I argue that psychopaths neither can gain moral responsibility through treatment (supposing they do not have it), nor maintain it (supposing they do). I conclude that those many who argue that psychopaths do have moral responsibility must also accept that a psychopath will lose moral responsibility for his actions if treated property, and vice versa.
منابع مشابه
Responsible psychopaths
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 ...
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