Moral Responsibility and the Psychopath

Moral Responsibility and the Psychopath
Author: Jim Baxter
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2021-09-16
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1316516865

Draws on insights from several disciplines to answer questions of widespread interest about how to understand and treat psychopaths.

Responsibility and Psychopathy

Responsibility and Psychopathy
Author: Luca Malatesti
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2010-08-19
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0199551634

The discussion of whether psychopaths are morally responsible for their behaviour has long taken place in philosophy. In recent years this has moved into scientific and psychiatric investigation. Responsibility and Psychopathy discusses this subject from both the philosophical and scientific disciplines, as well as a legal perspective.

Being Amoral

Being Amoral
Author: Thomas Schramme
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2014-08-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0262027917

Investigations of specific moral dysfunctions or deficits that shed light on the capacities required for moral agency. Psychopathy has been the subject of investigations in both philosophy and psychiatry and yet the conceptual issues remain largely unresolved. This volume approaches psychopathy by considering the question of what psychopaths lack. The contributors investigate specific moral dysfunctions or deficits, shedding light on the capacities people need to be moral by examining cases of real people who seem to lack those capacities. The volume proceeds from the basic assumption that psychopathy is not characterized by a single deficit—for example, the lack of empathy, as some philosophers have proposed—but by a range of them. Thus contributors address specific deficits that include impairments in rationality, language, fellow-feeling, volition, evaluation, and sympathy. They also consider such issues in moral psychology as moral motivation, moral emotions, and moral character; and they examine social aspects of psychopathic behavior, including ascriptions of moral responsibility, justification of moral blame, and social and legal responses to people perceived to be dangerous. As this volume demonstrates, philosophers will be better equipped to determine what they mean by “the moral point of view” when they connect debates in moral philosophy to the psychiatric notion of psychopathy, which provides some guidance on what humans need in order be able to feel the normative pull of morality. And the empirical work done by psychiatrists and researchers in psychopathy can benefit from the conceptual clarifications offered by philosophy. Contributors Gwen Adshead, Piers Benn, John Deigh, Alan Felthous, Kerrin Jacobs, Heidi Maibom, Eric Matthews, Henning Sass, Thomas Schramme, Susie Scott, David Shoemaker, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Matthew Talbert

Responsibility from the Margins

Responsibility from the Margins
Author: David Shoemaker
Publisher:
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2015
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0198715676

David Shoemaker develops a novel pluralistic theory of responsibility, motivated by our ambivalence to cases of marginal agency--such as those caused by clinical depression or autism, for instance. He identifies three distinct types of responsibility, each with its own set of required capacities: attributability, answerability, and accountability.

Responsibility Status of the Psychopath

Responsibility Status of the Psychopath
Author: Paul Litton
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2008
Genre:
ISBN:

Responsibility theorists frequently discuss psychopathy because it challenges various accounts of the capacities required for appropriate ascriptions of moral and legal responsibility. As often described, the psychopath has the capacity to reason practically but lacks the capacity to grasp and control himself in light of moral considerations. As portrayed, then, the psychopath resides in the area of disagreement between two philosophical camps: (i) theorists who put forth the general capacity for practical reasoning or rational self-governance as sufficient for an agent to be appropriately held morally responsible for his conduct; and (ii) theorists who view that general capacity as necessary but not sufficient for moral responsibility, additionally requiring the capacity to grasp and respond to distinctly moral reasons. On the former view, we may appropriately hold psychopaths responsible for their wrongful actions, but not on the latter. This article does not aim to describe the opposing views and argue for one over the other. Rather, I propose to deflate the debate as far as possible, attempting to reduce the area of disagreement. Meaningful disagreement exists only if there are, or could be, agents who have an undiminished capacity for practical reasoning or rational self-governance, yet truly are incapable of moral reasoning. However, I suggest that the capacity for rational self-governance entails the capacity to comprehend and act on moral considerations; thus, to the extent that an individual truly is incapable of grasping moral reasons, we should expect to find deeper, more general deficiencies in that individual's rational capacities. I appeal to the work of leading researchers who study individuals with psychopathy to determine whether psychopaths do represent rational self-governors without the capacity to grasp moral considerations. I argue that this work strongly suggests that the psychopath's incapacity for moral reasoning is, indeed, evidence of more general deficits in the rational capacities required for fully accountable agency. The Article closes with relevant considerations for thinking about any implications for criminal law.

The Rules of Insanity

The Rules of Insanity
Author: Carl Elliott
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 160
Release: 1996-07-03
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780791429525

In The Rules of Insanity, Carl Elliott draws on philosophy and psychiatry to develop a conceptual framework for judging the moral responsibility of mentally ill offenders. Arguing that there is little useful that can be said about the responsibility of mentally ill offenders in general, Elliott looks at specific mental illnesses in detail; among them schizophrenia, manic-depressive disorders, psychosexual disorders such as exhibitionism and voyeurism, personality disorders, and impulse control disorders such as kleptomania and pyromania. He takes a particularly hard look at the psychopath or sociopath, who many have argued is incapable of understanding morality. Making extensive use of psychiatric case histories, Elliott explores the various ways in which mental illness can affect a person's intentions and thus excuse him or her from moral responsibility.

The Psychopath

The Psychopath
Author: James Blair
Publisher: Blackwell Publishing
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2005-09-23
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780631233367

This book presents scientific facts of psychopathy and antisocial behavior, addressing critical issues such as the definity of psychopathy, the number of psychopaths in society, whether psychopaths can be treated, and whether psychopathy is due to nurture or to nature.

The Injustice of Punishment

The Injustice of Punishment
Author: Bruce N. Waller
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2017-10-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1351378244

The Injustice of Punishment emphasizes that we can never make sense of moral responsibility while also acknowledging that punishment is sometimes unavoidable. Recognizing both the injustice and the necessity of punishment is painful but also beneficial. It motivates us to find effective means of minimizing both the use and severity of punishment, and encourages deeper inquiry into the causes of destructive behavior and how to change those causes in order to reduce the need for punishment. There is an emerging alternative to the comfortable but destructive system of moral responsibility and just deserts. That alternative is not the creation of philosophers but of sociologists, criminologists, psychologists, and workplace engineers; it was developed, tested, and employed in factories, prisons, hospitals, and other settings; and it is writ large in the practices of cultures that minimize belief in individual moral responsibility. The alternative marks a promising path to less punishment, less coercive control, deeper common commitment, and more genuine freedom.

Responsibility, Blame and the Psychopath

Responsibility, Blame and the Psychopath
Author: Matthew William Ruble
Publisher:
Total Pages: 167
Release: 2015
Genre: Cognitive neuroscience
ISBN:

This dissertation examines the moral responsibility of psychopaths. I begin with an analysis of the concept of psychopathy by situating it within the context of a central debate in the philosophy of psychiatry over the conceptual nature of mental illness to demonstrate that psychopathy is an inherently value-laden concept. I argue against the disease-model of psychopathy and against their automatic exemption from moral responsibility as argued for by many moral philosophers. Psychopaths possess sufficient agency such that exempting them from moral responsibility is problematic both epistemically and morally. Yet psychopaths frequently offer reasons for their behavior that reveal their distance from full moral agency. So how are we to respond to such middle ground moral agents when they do terrible things to other people? The discussion then turns to the normative question of how we should respond to wrongdoing psychopaths. This analysis begins with the framework for general responses to moral wrongdoing as provided by moral philosopher P.F. Strawson. The enduring distinction between the reactive attitudes and the objective view is challenged as overly coarse and potentially morally disrespectful to the mentally ill, including specifically, psychopaths. I conclude that the question of whether or not psychopaths are 'in fact' morally responsible remains open and thus, forces us to take up the question of how we should understand our responses to psychopathic wrongdoing, including whether or not we can or should hold psychopaths responsible. The case of psychopaths reveals to us alternative ways of understanding how we 'hold responsible,' beyond resentment and blame for example, that do not loose moral content simply by straying from the paradigmatic reactive attitudes. If we forgo the blame paradigm of moral responsibility we find morally sensible ways of responding to wrongdoing psychopaths.