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Freedom, Resentment, and the Psychopath Piers Benn (bio)

Abstract

This paper discusses the moral responsibility of psychopaths for their anti-social actions. Starting from P. F.

Strawson’s discussion of our participant reactive attitudes, which stresses their indispensability for

meaningful human relations, the paper contrasts a variety of “normal” wrongdoers with psychopaths. It

suggests that the latter are often seriously deficient in their capacity to entertain these attitudes, and that their

resulting lack of proper self-evaluation may explain both their callousness and their imprudence. It is then

argued that only creatures able to entertain participant reactive attitudes can be proper objects of those

attitudes, since these reactions have a communicative core whose expression has a point only in a shared

moral world. For this reason, if psychopaths are incapable of moral understanding, they may not be proper

targets of anger and resentment. This, however, may have an illiberal implication, in possibly excluding

psychopaths from possessing certain rights.

Keywords

participant reactive attitudes, Strawson, Kantian thought

The condition referred to by the modern term psychopathy has exercised philosophical and legal brains ever since the invention of the term moral insanity by J. C. Prichard (1835), which describes a condition that is commonly identified with it. Of course, in popular usage psychopathy refers to something imprecise, and popular images of madmen and violent maniacs, reinforced by tabloid newspapers and television dramas, tend to mislead. In the popular imagination, psychopaths are deranged and fearsome. They are responsible for many of the more horrific and well-publicized murders and assaults, and are thought to be a breed apart from the class of “normal” criminals, in that they are peculiarly vicious and dangerous. Prichard’s term moral insanity accords with this public perception: the things they do are thought to be so brutal and wicked that the agents cannot be considered genuinely sane.

A pressing psychiatric issue turns on the proper classification of the condition, and the question of the ways, if any, it can be seen as a disorder. Does the term psychopathy refer to a natural kind, a class of beings with some common nature? Or is the term—as many reasonably suspect with respect to some psychiatric classifications—a reference to a merely nominal kind, devised to suit our particular needs and interests? This is a reasonable question when it comes to such concepts as psychosis and delusion. For example, what makes a certain unusual and fiercely held conviction a delusion, rather than an “ordinarily” irrational or ill-founded belief, is a moot issue. It is plausible that the concepts in question are cluster concepts or Wittgensteinian “family resemblance” notions, with at best fuzzy boundaries and no defining set of necessary and sufficient conditions for their application. But these concepts do not only raise problems of psychiatric classification. With respect to psychopathy, some of the most interesting and intractable questions [End Page 29] are moral ones. One of the most intriguing concerns the moral dimensions of moral insanity. The idea of insanity suggests a disorder, or a rational incapacity that might be susceptible to treatment, but the qualification moral hints at something we would naturally contrast with psychiatric disorder: namely, a freely chosen condition for which the agent is morally responsible, and properly susceptible to praise and blame. Understood as equivalent to extreme wickedness—analogous perhaps to “insane” foolishness—the idea of moral insanity is,

Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology

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perhaps, intelligible. But construed more literally as behavior which reveals a rational incapacity, it becomes doubtful that it can be described in moral terms at all.

Participant Reactive Attitudes

My chief concern is with certain moral questions raised by the psychopathic condition. Specifically I am interested in psychopaths’ moral responsibility for their actions and lives, and the kind of moral claims upon the rest of us that they might have. But I begin with a fruitful way of looking at the whole question of responsibility, and our moral reactions to moral agents. My starting point is the well-known contribution of P. F. Strawson to the problem of freedom and responsibility, made in his acclaimed lecture, “Freedom and Resentment” (1962). This classic contribution was in part a response to discussions current at the time about the implications of determinism for our normal ascriptions of responsibility to ourselves and others, and the moral and personal concepts at the heart of meaningful interpersonal lives. In contrast with other dominant positions in the dispute about free will and determinism, Strawson suggests that our commitment to certain “participant reactive attitudes” neither is nor should be the outcome of any theoretical position. Rather than clearly identify his position with that of libertarians, compatibilists, or hard determinists, Strawson reminds us first of all of our pervasive commitments to the participant attitudes in question, and the reasons we invoke whenever we modify or abandon them in particular cases. The point of reminding us of the centrality of these participant attitudes in our shared social world is partly to focus our minds on what we would be giving up if we accepted a thesis, such as determinism, and became theoretically convinced that the truth of this thesis entailed that these attitudes were irrational.

Such participant attitudes include not only the “moral” ones such as disapproval, guilt or admiration, but a whole range of responses that depend on our valuing, as well as evaluating, persons. Strawson mentions self-esteem, vanity, and forgiveness, in addition to moral reactions such as resentment. We could add to this list such things as love, sexual desire, friendship, respect, jealousy, and contempt. Reactions of this sort, whether or not we approve of all of them, are a seemingly essential component of the realm of intentional understanding in which we lead meaningful lives. Strawson admits that the “decay” or “repudiation” of such attitudes would not be self-contradictory. But he adds at once:

I am strongly inclined to think that it is, for us as we are, practically inconceivable. The human commitment to

participation in ordinary inter-personal relationships is, I think, too thoroughgoing and deeply rooted for us to

take seriously the thought that a general theoretical conviction might so change our world that, in it, there were

no longer any such things as inter-personal relationships as we normally understand them. . . .”

(Qtd. in Watson 1982, 68)

And this observation is consistent with another observation, concerning the grounds we have for abandoning specific reactive attitudes in particular circumstances. If we decide to withhold resentment towards someone whose behavior would in normal circumstances justify resentment, it is because we have detected some local, particular abnormality about the case in question. Perhaps we have discovered some excusing or mitigating factor, such as the fact that the person in question is under unusual stress. Perhaps, in other cases, we have discovered some abnormality in the agent and not just in his temporary circumstances: if we conclude that he is psychotic, or extremely immature, or brain-damaged, we cease to experience the usual participant attitudes that we would normally form towards those who behave in similar ways. We adopt instead an “objective” attitude to him, regarding him as a possible object of [End Page 30] study or analysis rather than an agent with whom we can genuinely engage. We may have to fight him if he threatens us, but we cannot quarrel with him. Special factors such as these only highlight the indispensability of the framework itself. The normality of the attitudes is taken as given, and we need special reasons if we are to set them aside.

Strawson notoriously goes on to suggest that questions about the “rationality” of the participant attitudes as such, as opposed to particular attitudes on particular occasions, can occur “only to one who had utterly failed to grasp the purport of . . . our natural human commitment to ordinary interpersonal attitudes. This commitment is part of the general framework of human life, not something that can come up for review as particular cases can come up for review” (qtd. in Watson 1982, 70). Now this, quite

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understandably, has led some readers to think that Strawson has treated the whole issue somewhat evasively. It is all very well pointing out, with considerable justification, that the framework of participant attitudes is both practically indispensable and, in a certain sense, an essential ingredient in valuable social and moral relations. It is quite another to claim that this settles the problem of their rationality. Think of philosophical skepticism —a comparison used by Strawson in defense of his case. It is one thing to say that no one can take radical skepticism seriously, at least outside of a philosophy seminar. It is quite another to suggest that, for this reason, skepticism ought not to be taken seriously. Perhaps we are doomed to irrationality in both cases?

This disturbing possibility cannot be ruled out—even if the knowledge that it cannot be ruled out has no effect on our individual judgments. But our commitments to reactive attitudes are so deeply rooted that we ought, at least, to be suspicious of any argument whose conclusion is that we should stop viewing ourselves in this way. One reason for this is Kantian. The “idea” of freedom is seemingly forced upon me, at least from a first-person perspective. Questions of what I ought to do are forced upon me as a condition of being an agent at all; I cannot fail to see myself as faced with practical questions. And whatever reactive attitudes I form about myself, such as pride or guilt, are an inseparable part of my own sense of agency. Reactive attitudes directed towards others are similarly based on the belief that they too face practical questions in the way I do. And this begins to explain why it is that certain sorts of people are generally exempt from the framework of participant responses. Small children, for example, and the genuinely psychotic, can at most be partial members of that framework. For they can participate only partially, if at all, in our shared moral and social world. Reason, including practical reason, presupposes the possibility of dialogue, whether with others or in the form of “internal debate.” But meaningful dialogue with, for example, the severely deluded is beset with grave obstacles. Or at least, while it may be possible to have dialogues with them on their own terms, say by discussing the implications of their delusions, it is hard to have such dialogue on our terms. For such people do not fully share our world. Clearly, very different values, beliefs, and life-experiences are found among normal people. But people must share certain basic assumptions if real communication among them is to be possible.

“Normal” Wrongdoers

This brings us to the main subject of this paper. Given that we can agree that certain types of individuals are excluded from the full range of participant attitudes, precisely because they cannot properly participate in a shared moral world, what should we say of psychopaths? Is there a moral or social world that we can share with them? If psychopathy is nothing but another term for extreme moral delinquency, then we might think we do share such a world. For serious moral flaws do not seem, in themselves, to rule out mutually comprehensible moral dialogue, as the following examples suggest.

First of all, take the sufferer from weakness of will, or akrasia. Such a person seems an obvious case of someone who understands moral dialogue well enough, since he reproaches himself for falling short of standards that he accepts in principle. The condition does, it should be admitted, [End Page 31] raise some very familiar puzzles, but I do not think akratic people need exhibit insincerity in the moral judgments they make. Those who take an externalist view about the relationship between assent to moral norms and intention-formation will probably deny that there is even a prima facie mystery about akrasia; or they might say that if there is insincerity, it is not about the assent to a moral principle or standard, but rather the commitment to acting according to it. But it is possible to be perfectly sincere in your assent to “let me do X,” even if, in conflict states, that commitment is overridden by a desire to do something else. Incidentally, we should not assume that there is only one explanation for akrasia: explanatory parsimony does not always yield true answers, and there may be a variety of explanations applicable on different occasions. But there are some cases of akrasia where moral awareness is perfectly well in place, and when it is both possible and right to engage in fruitful moral dialogue with the akrates.

Next, it appears that even those who do bad things for moral reasons they misguidedly take to be good can participate in such dialogue and grasp some central moral concerns. Such people may misunderstand the real nature of a certain virtue or

vice, and act wrongly as a result, but a certain nominal understanding may still be present. People who take the advice that “one must be cruel to be kind” so much to heart that their cruelty overshadows the kindness intended can still have some understanding of kindness, even if it is misapplied. Furthermore, their nominal understanding of kindness can have motivational power. As we shall see, in this they differ from psychopaths, whose nominal understanding of moral concepts extends little further than their ability to feign moral concerns, and has no motivational pull at all.

A third example would be someone whose life, in many respects, is lived well, and according to moral concepts sufficiently grasped, but who has some major flaw, perhaps so reinforced by habit that his moral grasp of the fault in question is weak or non- existent. Perhaps he is honest and fair in his dealings with strangers, but neglects his family, taking their presence and support for granted. In this case, we might conclude that moral dialogue about showing love to those closest to him is almost impossible. Still, we might rightly hold him responsible for this flaw, since he has no general lack of moral understanding, and he could acquire understanding of his obligations to his family if only he considered how this could be derived from what he already knows.

There is also a fourth type of morally flawed person, whose difference to the psychopath is more germane. Imagine someone who pursues relentless and obsessive projects of revenge out of a distorted moral conviction. Perhaps she feels aggrieved about a humiliation she endured, or a violation of her rights; perhaps she is driven by strong envy of another person, whose success she persuades herself is undeserved, and desires to see this person brought down. Now she may be shrewd and calculating in her plans, as some “primary psychopaths” as described by Cleckley (1976) are said to be, but she is driven by motives that are alien to psychopaths in significant ways. For wounded pride, resentment, envy, and schadenfreude all seem to be Strawsonian participant attitudes, even if not very admirable ones. And they sometimes are bound up with moral concepts, if only because they sometimes need to masquerade—to the self as well as to others—as morally grounded.

A person like this, indeed, shares some characteristics with a fifth type of wrongdoer, whose existence seems obvious to many people but whose classification is controversial. Some people are said to be plain evil, and they seem to do wicked things just for the sake of base ends. These base ends, as is for instance suggested by Shakespeare’s Iago, may be motivated by reactive attitudes such as envy, hatred, or wounded pride, as in the fourth case just mentioned. When they are so motivated, perhaps the main difference from the fourth type of wrongdoer is that there is less self- deception about the moral justification of these ends. For it is possible to hate someone just because you envy him, and not because you think his success is undeserved. On the other hand, other people who seemingly fit into the “plain evil” category are driven less by participant attitudes than by naked greed and similar vices. [End Page 32] Gangsters, drug barons, and pimps pursue personal gain with utter ruthlessness. An important question remains about whether it is easy to draw the line between them and psychopaths. As we shall see, if there is such a line, it is shown less in the behavior itself (though there are differences, such as the fact that many gangsters have criminal “codes of honor”) than in the causes of the behavior.

Return, however, to the fourth type of wrongdoer who is driven by resentment or wounded pride, for example, and who construes these reactions as morally grounded. Let us now add another suggestion: that only beings capable of participant reactive attitudes can be proper objects of such attitudes. We do not resent dangerous dogs when they cause mayhem, but we do resent burglars when they steal or harm our property. We lament the effects of natural disasters, but we feel indignant at the harm deliberately caused by some anti-social people. And one reason for this reaction is that we believe malicious or other objectionable people have intolerable attitudes toward their victims. Not only do they harm them, but their actions express, or spring from, attitudes like contempt; they seem to regard their victims as unworthy or of little account. Our indignation towards such people is very often provoked in circumstances where the harm they do is trivial. We get angry with queue-jumpers because we detect in them an attitude of contempt for others, an attitude expressible as “I matter more than you.” The attitude, rather than the deed as such, is the object of the resentment.

The Psychopath as Non­participant

Now there is strong evidence that psychopathy is a condition distinct from that of the common criminal or ordinarily anti-social person. For example, it is likely that at least some psychopaths are not driven by hostile reactive attitudes. 1 Rather, they are frequently deficient in many or even all reactive attitudes, and lacking in both empathy and antipathy. The point about empathy is interestingly made by Elliott and Gillett in their analysis of the moral defects of psychopaths:

They are defective in their empathy with others because interpersonal factors do not properly enter into their

intentional activity, and they do not recognize the impact and implications of their actions for others.

Psychopaths cannot form fully informed reactive attitudes based on the attitudes, needs and vulnerabilities of

others.

(1992, 65–66)

And a related point is made by Duff:

[W]e cannot find in a psychopath’s life any intelligible dimension of value, emotion or rational concern: and

. . . this lack is logically connected to an inability to understand this dimension of the lives of others. . . .

[T]here is a close logical connection between two commonly identified features of psychopathy: firstly, that it

involves an incapacity for such emotional and moral responses as love, remorse and concern for others. . . .

Secondly [a psychopath], although not intellectually incompetent, is unable properly to understand the “nature

and quality” of his acts, since he cannot grasp those emotional and moral aspects which are as much a part of

them as their empirical features.”

(191–92)

Lack of empathy on this scale naturally provokes indignation and resentment from those at its receiving end. But psychopaths’ disengagement from others, and their failure to display the sort of hostility that springs from inappropriate and egoistic self- evaluation (as opposed to simple, unreflective egocentricity), should make us reconsider the moral responses that come naturally to us. For it is equally important that psychopaths are frequently indifferent to the consequences for themselves of their anti- social behavior. Paradoxically, although in a certain way they are abnormally self- centered, yet they are also highly impulsive and disinclined to pursue long-term goals. Indeed, maybe they have no long-term goals. Considerations of prudence do not weigh with them as they do for “normal” anti-social people, and many criminal psychopaths are caught simply because of their lack of care in covering their tracks. Now it is plausible that a connection exists between this lack of prudence and deficiencies in self- evaluating attitudes, such as self-esteem, pride and self-love. For one important factor underlying prudence, at least when it extends significantly beyond simple fight-or-flight mechanisms, is a set of concepts to do with self-worth. There is more to normal prudence than a [End Page 33] simple desire to feel happy in the future; prudence concerns itself more with the shape of your life as a whole and the coherence of its narrative, than with ensuring that, during any given future segment of your life, you will experience feelings of satisfaction and that these feelings will be serially reproduced over time. We might therefore expect people seriously lacking in prudence to lack the sort of self-concern, including the amour-propre or personal pride that motivates normal people both to pursue their long-term interests and, on occasion, to entertain hostile attitudes towards others.

We should of course be careful not to overstate this point, since the unpleasant attitudes that make us indignant when we are at the receiving end of them (like the contempt shown by the arrogant) do not wholly depend on these concepts of self-worth for their existence. But I think there is still a significant connection between them. The impulsive, disjointed, and imprudent aspects of psychopathy, which are explained by psychopaths’ lack of genuinely self-evaluative concepts, diminish their capacity to experience the full range of participant reactive attitudes. If this is correct, and if it is also correct to suggest that only creatures able to form these attitudes are proper objects of such attitudes, then we have a good reason for holding that psychopaths are, at least to a significant extent, outside the range of appropriate objects of these Strawsonian reactions.

Why, though, is it that only creatures able to form participant attitudes are proper objects of such attitudes on the part of others? We reach an answer if we consider the usual ways in which these attitudes are expressed, and what the point of expressing them is. Take, as a central example, anger. Anger is a participant response, one of whose purposes is to induce fear or shame in its recipient, and it is inspired by a perception of such things as injustice or cruelty. Of course, we often say we feel anger at misfortunes that we rationally acknowledge to be no one’s fault, but in such cases we tend to personify the causes of the misfortunes. Even when the appropriate emotion is frustration or annoyance rather than anger, we often cope better if we imagine there has been an intentional wrong, and become imaginatively involved in fighting this wrong, in much the way that we imaginatively become engaged with certain emotions when watching a play. Whatever the psychological or evolutionary explanations of anger, it is intelligible chiefly as a disposition to attack and try to defeat an agent of injustice or of a comparable wrong. That is, it is more than a disposition to undo the effects of the wrongful deed: in Hegelian terminology it is a disposition to annul the wrong (Knox 1976). But there can be wrongs only where there are wrongdoers, and annulling a wrong must involve confronting the perpetrator, usually in an indignant fashion, with his responsibility for it. For this reason, retributive acts that express and propitiate moral anger succeed only if they are understood as retributive. This strongly suggests that retribution, and in general acts that express anger, are essentially communicative. They confront the wrongdoer as a rational and free agent with what he has done, and try to get him to understand its true nature. This helps us see why anger is a participant response: it makes sense only as something communicated between participants in a basically shared moral world.

The aim of expressing such responses is to induce reactions such as fear, guilt, or remorse. However, it is important that these responses are sought as part of a rational interchange: merely inducing fear or guilt will not do. After all, animals experience fear, and guilt can be experienced as a simple automatic effect of the anger of someone in authority, and without much real understanding of the moral reason for the anger. So a crucial feature of these emotions, when they are induced as part of a genuinely rational interchange, is their intentionality. In these contexts, guilt, shame, remorse, and fear need to be about the right things: they need appropriate intentional objects. At the same time, merely inducing an intellectual understanding of the reason for the anger is also insufficient for real communication, because some psychopaths seem to possess the intellectual understanding but lack the emotional response. They might know perfectly well why they are being punished, but remain unmoved by the intended message of the punishment. What is needed, then, for real communication, [End Page 34] is both the capacity to respond emotionally, and the appropriate understanding.

Some people (maybe small children, or the severely mentally handicapped) may have the capacity for the emotions but not the understanding; others, such as psychopaths, may have a certain understanding, but not the emotional capacity. If this is correct, it provides a good reason to doubt that genuine psychopaths are proper targets of the full range of participant responses. These responses are largely communicative, and communication succeeds only if the message can be understood. If psychopaths really are denied the requisite moral understanding, as Duff puts it, and lack certain emotional and evaluative dimensions to their lives, then to that extent psychopaths are not proper objects of these responses. To at least some degree, they cannot be considered real participants. If, as is claimed, psychopaths are largely immune from fear, remorse, guilt, or shame, then when we express our anger to them, we achieve little more than the cathartic satisfaction of venting spleen. As far as inducing fear or similar reactions goes, we might as well get angry with menacing Rottweilers, or—like the hapless Basil Fawlty—scream at and beat our cars when they fail to start. There is , one qualification worth making, however. Although we have stressed that the only proper targets of the Strawsonian attitudes are individuals able to form at least some of these attitudes themselves, we should add that the potential to form these attitudes during a normal course of development, as well as the present ability to form them, can be enough to justify an individual’s inclusion in the Strawsonian web. For example, children have both a limited participant understanding and the potential for greater understanding. Their acquisition of the greater understanding obviously takes time. But it is by being treated as though they already had greater moral understanding than they actually have that they come to increase that understanding. It may be right to be indignant with a

child for something she has just done, even if she did not have much understanding of what she did; she may not have known it was wrong, but she comes to know it by experiencing adults’ reactions.

Psychopaths (some of whom perhaps are children!) present different problems to those of children. For psychopathy seems to be an incapacity, and not just a lack in one’s life of certain emotional and moral dimensions. In some ways it seems analogous to autism. 2 Autistic people have great difficulty in understanding certain social meanings, such as the ones contained in facial expressions or in nuance, and although they may be able to learn social rules that help them get along, it is doubtful that they ever really internalize or fully grasp their underlying rationale. Psychopaths similarly, or at least the ones sometimes classified as “primary” ones (who are more likely to be charming con-men rather than violent and sadistic thugs) possess a certain superficial grasp of morality: they know that certain kinds of behavior are socially unacceptable, and their plausibility depends on their ability to assume certain moral demeanors such as remorse. But they appear unable to be gripped by moral concerns: such considerations, to which they can sometimes pay competent lip service, do not motivate them or engage them emotionally. They understand that others are motivated by these concerns, but one might wonder whether they really see why they are.

Psychopathy and the “Rational Amoralist”

We have seen that authors like Duff suggest that psychopathy is a disorder, manifested in an inability to understand a central dimension of normal life. This incapacity is not a matter of the psychopath being unable to live a moral life, or understand moral concepts, even if he tried; it is rather a matter of him having no conception of what would count as trying. Its source is not lack of strength but lack of emotional understanding. This leads to another interesting contrast.

Imagine a “rational amoralist” philosopher who, after carefully examining various arguments concerning the metaethical status of moral obligations, has concluded both that there are no objective values, and that it is inconsistent with this thesis to maintain any moral convictions. 3 Maybe there are a few such philosophers, but it is [End Page 35] (let us hope) far-fetched to consider them psychopathic. It is implausible that intellectual arguments like these could deprive us of the affective dimension of human life that is at the core of moral motivation and conviction—or in short, deprive us of the understanding that the psychopath already lacks (unless such arguments are a psychopathic rationalization of a pre-existing condition!) A sincere philosophical champion of radical moral skepticism—that is, normative as well as metaethical skepticism—would probably end up in a position similar to philosophical skeptics about induction or the external world, who consider themselves unable to give up the very convictions that they announce to be philosophically indefensible. A Strawsonian resort to the fundamental “given-ness” of both epistemological and moral conviction, and the absurdity of thinking they could or should “rationally” be abandoned, would probably be the most inviting option in such cases. By contrast, it seems unlikely that the psychopath has any theory of morality that leads him to embrace a doctrine of nihilism.

Incapacities and Their Causes

But now we should say more about the incapacity itself, as there is much opportunity for confusion about how such incapacity removes (or partially removes) psychopaths from the network of participant reactive attitudes. 4 The thrust of my argument so far has been, as is evident, inspired by Strawson, and I have tried to suggest that psychopaths, admitted by most writers not to be insane or lacking in intelligence, should still to some extent be regarded as Strawson says we should regard the insane and the exceptionally immature. With most mental illness, the central concept is that of incapacity: conditions like schizophrenia and manic-depression can be seen as incapacitating their sufferers, at least to some extent, from normal functioning.

What the mentally ill are incapable of doing is a moot point, which goes to the very heart of our concept of illness. A plausible neo-Aristotelian suggestion is that illness of any kind impedes the flourishing of the body or mind by preventing it from operating in accordance with its distinctive function. To specify what activities or functions

constitute such flourishing would be to invite needless controversy, and for this reason we should be content with a schematic rather than detailed account of illness and incapacity. In the case of psychopaths, the incapacity is one of understanding, and it entails a lack of engagement in any real moral dialogue with others, and a failure to participate in a shared moral world. Since blame and punishment are fundamentally communicative, they fail in their aims when it comes to psychopaths.

Now this point should be contrasted with the commonly expressed view that it is the cause of the incapacity that matters when it comes to deciding whether to regard psychopaths as morally blameworthy for their deeds. Some authors make much of the brain abnormalities that certain psychopaths are said to display. Some relevant research is laid out by Elliott and Gillett (1992), who cite evidence of abnormality of frontal lobe activity in psychopaths, which indicates impaired attention and response to environmental conditions relevant to forming complex intentions. The authors tell us that “psychopaths have different cerebral processes in complex conditions which require that one inhibit certain responses, apply oneself to a task and modify one’s behavior according to a considered judgment about a situation.” Moreover, “both primary and secondary psychopaths’” brains show a relative inability to process information about future response requirements where these involve responding or refraining from responding in order to avoid punishment” (Elliott and Gillett, 63). Other research includes that of the American psychiatrist Dorothy Lewis, who has spent twenty years examining violent criminals, and Jonathan Pincus, a neurologist at Georgetown University. 5 Their joint research convinces them that there is a systematic connection between criminal violence and various neurological disturbances, including frontal lobe dysfunction and an abnormal stress response system. They also link criminal behavior with childhood abuse and neglect, which they say can cause entire cortical structures never to develop properly. The cocktail of brain abnormality and abuse during childhood is often lethal, and a [End Page 36] strong indicator of violent criminality in adult life.

Now the linkage of brain abnormalities with anti-social behavior is an empirical matter of considerable interest. But some theorists draw questionable conclusions from it. Lewis, for example, holds that these violent criminals are not evil, but damaged; they are not, or not fully, morally responsible for their actions precisely because their brain abnormalities make it impossible for them to think and behave as normal members of society. And this view echoes a common and attractive view that even if violent behavior always has causes, there is something decisively exculpating about physical causes in the brain.

Now there are two problems this view raises. The first is simply about causation. That certain brain abnormalities can be closely correlated with a psychopathic or anti-social personality does not in itself show that there is a causal connection. Why not say that the brain abnormalities are the physical aspect of a psycho-physical condition? Moreover, if some type of physicalism is true, as most philosophers of mind believe, then all mental events are physical, and at least on one level of description may be subject to biochemical laws. The correlation of brain abnormalities (or better, non- typical features?) with deviant personality fails to show that the individuals in question are not responsible for their actions, any more than physical/mental correlations show the same for any normal person. But what Lewis and others are driving at, I think, is that there is something incapacitating about certain brain abnormalities: if your frontal lobes are dysfunctional, then that stops you from developing a normal personality, just as having very short legs stops you from running very fast. And this point has much credibility. But it brings us to the second problem with the exculpatory account. For the physical cause or base for the condition is not itself the decisive exculpating factor; it is not the fact that the incapacitating cause is a physical condition of the brain that matters. Rather, what matters is the psychological condition itself, specifically, that the psychopathic state renders impossible the kind of moral communication that takes the form of praise, blame, rewards, and punishments.

A Disturbing Implication

Still, this view will produce some tensions. The participant attitudes, as Strawson says, are a condition of meaningful personal life and neither could, nor should, be dislodged

by theory. And it is this stress on the unavoidable “given-ness” of these attitudes that might also incline us, in spite of the arguments I have outlined, to include psychopaths in the realm of participant attitudes. For there is still the appealing thought that “psychopathy” and its cognates are pseudo-clinical terms that disguise a fundamentally moral condition. It is hard, surely, not to feel resentful and angry when victimized by such people. The very fact that they are sane and intelligent reinforces the conviction that they are part of our moral world, even though they have coldly and knowingly rejected its precepts (see Bavidge and Cole 1995). In addition, bearing in mind the plausible thought that psychopathy is not an all-or-nothing condition, but has degrees, there may for that reason be room for qualified moral reactions towards them. It is not incredible, for example, that a fair number people reside at the milder end of the spectrum of psychopathy, and that this trait is actually helpful for getting along in a competitive world. Occupations where ruthlessness is an asset may well contain many such people, and it seems especially implausible altogether to exempt them from our reactive attitudes.

However, I wish briefly to open up, for final reflection, another way of recognizing the force of the point about the difficulty of exempting psychopaths from blame. This is to follow Jeffrie G. Murphy (1972) in suggesting that if certain people really do lack fundamental moral capacities, they thereby lose their entitlement to be treated as having a full set of rights. Starting from the Kantian thought that only autonomous moral beings are “ends in themselves,” we might come to regard psychopaths as so far from fulfilling this requirement that our treatment of them is no longer governed by normal Kantian requirements of respect for persons. For Kant and his followers, persons, as embodiments of the moral law, demand our absolute respect and may not be [End Page 37] treated as mere means, whereas to try to treat non-persons—for example, animals, which are sentient but which lack the crucial moral capacities—as ends in themselves would mark a fundamental mistake about their nature. In fact, the very attempt would reveal the mistake at once: there can be no such thing as gaining a cat’s consent for “euthanasia,” for example. This idea is echoed in Kantian formulations of contractualist theories of morality. The guiding thought here is that morality is that set of principles that rational agents could freely agree to observe, on condition that everyone else observe them as well. And commitment to such an agreement entails a commitment to reciprocity. If certain individuals are incapable of understanding the need for reciprocity, or of entertaining the moral feelings that normally motivate its observance, then for that reason they exclude themselves from the agreement, and may be treated in ways in which normal people may never treat one another.

In spite of its liberal credentials, in the classical sense of the word, this seems a harsh, illiberal thought. However, it appears to follow from a combination of a Kant-inspired theory of moral obligation, and an apparently “liberal” recognition that psychopaths might not be blameworthy because they are incapable of certain moral concerns. If they are genuinely incapable, then what is the basis for extending such concern to them? Of course, we should not forget crucial moral considerations that are not distinctively Kantian: concerns of sympathy and virtue, for example, which forbid the infliction of needless suffering (whatever counts as “needless”), and prohibit certain uses of the individuals in question, just as virtue plausibly forbids certain uses of animals. Moreover, were we to try to enact a policy of excluding psychopaths from the realm of rights, we would have to think extremely hard about problems of psychiatric classification, of “slippery slopes” and of the effect on society’s sensibilities of such a policy. But I think the general idea focuses upon the surprising implications of a seemingly liberal policy. It also suggests that we need to think about what the basis really is for the sort of respect that people are owed. If it is, as is popularly believed, Kantian considerations about the capacity to formulate and act upon the moral law, then we face the question of how extreme psychopaths should be treated. Indeed, the animals issue is relevant here, and the question of how non-human animals should be treated has been debated with reference to Kantian arguments for a considerable time. And it would not be surprising if the best arguments for compassionate treatment of animals could be applied in defense of the civil rights of psychopaths. Alternatively, we might reject the “illiberal” implications Kant-inspired theory for a different reason: namely that however important it is to treat animals kindly, there is still something deeply wrong with assimilating the case of psychopaths to that of animals. But if that is our line, then we shall have reason to re-consider the view that psychopaths are not bad, but damaged. We

might then find ourselves back with the moralistic view of psychopaths, which thinks of psychopathy as a misleading synonym for moral wickedness. However, even if there is a liberal temptation to misclassify certain people as psychopathic, people who are in fact perfectly capable of the moral understanding necessary for responsibility, I have tried to suggest that there probably is a condition of moral incapacity that is distinct from ordinary delinquency. And though I have no answer to the question of how people with this condition should be dealt with, we are led back with renewed urgency to the perennial inquiry as to the proper basis for the everyday assignment of rights and responsibilities.

Piers Benn Piers Benn is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, England, UK. His interests are largely in ethical

theory, normative ethics, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of psychiatry. Among his publications are Ethics (London:

University College London Press; Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1998) and “Morality, the Unborn, and the Open

Future” in Questions of Time and Tense, ed. Robin Le Poidevin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

Footnotes

1. My basic thesis is that the psychopathic condition often involves a significant lack of certain reactive attitudes, and that this has

interesting moral implications for our treatment of psychopaths. But I do not want to overstate the case, since there are probably

people with marked psychopathic traits who do entertain at least some of these attitudes. We should remember that psychopathy,

like moral responsibility, probably admits degrees. We should also bear in mind that even if a marked absence of at least some of

these attitudes is a frequent hallmark of psychopathy, it need not be a necessary or sufficient condition for it.

2. Carl Elliott pointed out this analogy to me in correspondence.

3. I am stating this thesis loosely: more specifically, it could be the claim that all versions of moral realism and moral objectivism

are false.

4. Though I have not often seen this point made, it strikes me as plausible that psychopathy is a matter of degree, although most of

the cases discussed concern people quite near the extreme end of the spectrum.

5. See the science report, “The criminal brain” in The Independent Magazine.

References

Bavidge, M., and M. J. Cole. 1995. Is psychopathy a moral concept? In Introducing applied ethics, ed. B. Almond, 185–96. Oxford: Blackwell.  Google ScholarOpenURL

Cleckley, H. 1976. The mask of sanity. St. Louis: Mosby.  Google ScholarOpenURL

The criminal brain. 4 May 1997. The Independent Magazine (The Independent on Sunday), 19ff.

Duff, A. 1977. Psychopathy and moral understanding. American Philosophical Quarterly 14:189–200.  Google

ScholarOpenURL

Elliott, C., and G. Gillett. 1992. Moral insanity and practical reason. Philosophical Psychology 5:53–67.  Google

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Knox, T. M., ed. 1976. Hegel’s philosophy of right. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  Google ScholarOpenURL

Murphy, J. G. 1972. Moral death: A Kantian essay on psychopathy. Ethics 82:284–98.  Google ScholarOpenURL

Prichard, J. C. 1835. A treatise on insanity. London: Sherwood, Gilbert and Piper.  Google ScholarOpenURL

Strawson, P. F. 1962. Freedom and resentment. Proceedings of the British Academy 47: 1–25. Rpt. in Free will, ed. G. Watson, 59–80. 1982. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  Google ScholarOpenURL

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