Moral Unreason: The Case of Psychopathy

Abstract

Psychopaths are renowned for their immoral behavior. They are ideal candidates for testing the empirical plausibility of moral theories. Many think the source of their immorality is their emotional deficits. Psychopaths experience no guilt or remorse, feel no empathy, and appear to be perfectly rational. If this is true, sentimentalism is supported over rationalism. Here, I examine the nature of psychopathic practical reason and argue that it is impaired. The relevance to morality is discussed.

Instrumental rationality in psychopathy: implications from learning tasks

“…Heidi Maibom, in her seminal paper "Moral Unreason: The Case of Psychopathy" (Maibom, 2005, and see also her 2010), considers in her discussion of the rationality of psychopathy a plausible requirement of instrumental rationality. According to this requirement, if a person is instrumentally rational, then she intends to use the means at her disposal that are necessary to achieve her ends.…”

“…Moreover, Maibom argues that certain empirical studies that show that psychopaths perform worse than controls in certain forms of instrumental learning are relevant in assessing their instrumental rationality (Maibom, 2005(Maibom, , 2010. This type of learning involves establishing associations between a set of stimuli, the subject's response and rewarding or punishing stimulus in a certain context.…”

“…poor behavioral inhibition in instrumental learning tasks (see Maibom, 2005Maibom, , 2010Kennett, 2006Kennett, , 2010. These tasks involve learning in a certain situation the relation between the stimuli and the appropriate response through rewards or punishments.…”

“…we follow a more philosophical tradition, where this requirement of instrume nta l rationality is made explicit (see Kant, 1785/1993 and is often viewed as a more general functional requirement on the ascription of mental states (Davidson, 2001;Maibom, 2005;Millar, 2004).…”

“…Such a case would undermine the rationalist account of moral judgment and motivation. Rationalists, instead, question the rationality of psychopaths (Maibom, 2005(Maibom, , 2010Kennett, 2010). Second, some externalists about moral judgment claim that, against internalism, psychopaths are rational, possess moral understanding and are not This is a preprint version of the paper: .…”