Conscience as the rational deficit of psychopaths

Abstract

I develop here a Kantian framework for understanding conscience in order to examine whether moral flaws of psychopaths are traceable to their dysfunctional conscience. When understood as the reflective capacity for moral self-assessment that triggers certain emotional reactions, conscience proves to be a fruitful tool for explaining psychopathic moral incompetence. First, I show how the unrealistic moral self-assessment of psychopaths affects their competence in judging moral issues and in being motivated to act morally. I then highlight how focusing on this specific rational deficit of psychopaths significantly modifies the status of rationalism within the contemporary dispute as to whether psychopathy supports sentimentalism exclusively.

Keywords::

• Conscience
• Moral Self-Assessment
• Psychopaths
• Rational Deficit

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for having supported my work on this article [grant number 360-20-270]. I would also like to thank two anonymous referees for their valuable comments.

Notes

^[1] The current edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has psychopathy as an optional specifier of the diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder.

^[2]The Hare Psychopathy Checklist—Revised involves the key symptoms of psychopathy, such as lack of empathy and guilt or remorse, egocentricity, grandiose sense of self-worth, shallow affect, pathological lying, poor behavioral control, irresponsibility and failure to accept responsibility for one's own actions, as well as early behavioral (Hare, 1991) problems and adult antisocial behavior. Moreover, psychopaths are also said to be impulsive, glib, superficial, deceitful, manipulative, and prone to boredom.

^[3] For example, to show that psychopaths suffer certain rational deficits, Kennett (2002, 2010) appeals to Kant's conception of moral feeling, whereas Maibom (2005) turns to the universalization procedure and its link with instrumental reasoning.

^[4] The title of Hare's book might be taken to suggest that conscience underwrites some of the key symptoms of psychopathy and that it should not be one of the items on the list. I follow this line of argument by explaining that psychopathic conscience is dysfunctional—that psychopaths cannot play the role of a competent moral judge. Sometimes, Hare also appears to ascribe a similar status to empathy, but this seems to be problematic. If empathy is understood merely as a product of role-taking and as “an emotional reaction to a representation of the distressed internal state of another,” as Blair (1995, p. 4) does, then the cornerstone of psychopaths' amorality should rather be sought in their incapacity for role-taking. Even if we define empathy to include a cognitive and an affective element (and set aside all possible objections to this broader definition), this way of defining it does not inevitably lead to the conclusion that empathy is necessary for morality. Consider, for instance, Baron-Cohen's definition of empathy as “our ability to identify what someone else is thinking or feeling and to respond to their thoughts and feelings with an appropriate emotion” (2012, p. 18), and his claim that it is possible to develop “a moral code and a moral conscience” without empathy (as people with Asperger syndrome can do; 2012, p. 99).

^[5] Conscience is usually neglected in the contemporary literature on philosophy and moral psychology: it is either dismissed as a part of theological tradition, mentioned in passing with regard to children's moral development, or identified with moral sense.

^[6] A more detailed reading of Kant's passages on conscience can be found in Vujošević (2014).

^[7] Additionally, I show how focusing on this deficit helps pinpoint the link between morally relevant rational and affective shortcomings of psychopaths. This opens up the opportunity to account for the mutual relation between some of the key symptoms of psychopathy.

^[8] By moral judgments I mean here just the judgments a person makes about his or her own actions in real-life situations.

^[9] Without going deeper into the discussion regarding psychopathic immorality, Thagard and Finn (2011, p. 158) only say that psychopaths stand out in lacking the moral intuition that they should be concerned about the suffering of others. Such a felt clue is then something that somehow happens to us, but it does not seem to happen to psychopaths.

^[10] Translations are taken from the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant edited by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. References to Kant's works are given using the Academy edition pagination and the following abbreviation scheme:

  MS: Metaphysics of Morals

    R: Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason

    NF: Notes and Fragments

^[11] Pain moves us to action, whereas conscience participates in the process of moral motivation without itself being the moral motive. Interpreting Kantian conscience as a morally motivating feeling and stating that we act morally just to avoid painful feelings would be inconsistent with Kant's moral theory. On my reading, conscience causes certain painful feelings that motivate us to act morally; in this way, it helps us fulfill our duties.

^[12] Philippi and Koenigs (2014) is the only study I found investigating the possibility that diminished self-refection in psychopaths may explain their lack of guilt and empathy. The authors of this study on the neuropsychology of self-reflection add that further work is necessary, since there are very few studies that directly examine the relationship between self-reflection and social or affective features of psychopathy.

^[13] Drawing on this view, we might infer that psychopaths simply lack the disposition to have emotions of blame towards themselves. According to Prinz (2006, p. 32), psychopaths cannot acquire remorse or guilt because they are deficient in negative emotions, especially fear. It is plausible that this deficit might partly be the reason why some individuals face problems with experiencing guilt. However, I find it important to point out that there is another factor that more directly influences the feelings of guilt, namely, self-reflection. This does not exclude the possibility that problems with the anticipation of fear have a negative impact on the development of conscience (understood as the capacity for moral self-appraisal).

^[14] This study shows that the guilt ratings of so-called secondary psychopaths are higher, and that they have a poor self-image when compared to other people. Obviously, the results of the study are not in keeping with the predominant view that psychopaths lack guilt. As the authors of this study suggested, this inconsistency might be explained away by suggesting that the less favorable self-concept and persistent feelings of guilt attributed to these participants might either reflect their being depressed, or be an effect of the constant disapproval that their behavior creates. It is then only due to depression or to the pressure from others that they have a poor self-concept. Anyway, this point suggests that there is something wrong with the way they judge themselves and hold themselves responsible—they mold their self-image only on the basis of how they think other people see them. If we set aside the possible objection that the distinction between primary and secondary psychopaths is not well established, all this might be taken to support my point that the main cause of psychopaths' moral incompetence should be sought in their poor moral self-assessment.

^[15] My focus in this paper is on the personal responsibility of psychopaths: whether they hold themselves responsible for their actions and not primarily whether we ought to hold them responsible. For a valuable discussion on whether we are to hold psychopaths responsible for their deeds, see, for example, Duff (2010).

^[16] The latter also includes the awareness of whether or not agents have done their best to form moral maxims.

^[17] Compare note 4.

^[18] See also Prinz (2011, p. 217).

^[19] The authors find it problematic that, even in the case of psychopaths, all evidence for the claim that moral transgressions are harmful merely comes from the sort of transgressions that would be familiar to young children. This is why they used a much wider range of harm transgressions in their internet study. In the scenarios offered, most of the participants did not judge harm transgressions to be authority independent.

^[20] I have in mind Kant's “impure” and “evil” maxims: in the first case the moral law is not sufficient motive, and in the second it is subordinated to the immoral incentives (R 6: 29–30).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marijana Vujošević

Marijana Vujošević is a PhD student in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Groningen.