Emotions and moral agency

Abstract

In this paper, I present a general profile of individuals with psychopathy, autism, and acquired sociopathy as well as look specifically at the abilities of these individuals with respect to the moral domain. These individuals are individually and collectively interesting because of their significant affective and social impairments. I argue that none of these individuals should be considered full moral agents based on a proposed account of moral agency consisting of the following two necessary conditions: (1) the capacity for moral judgment and (2) the capacity for moral motivation. Since each of these groups of individuals fails to satisfy the criteria in a different way, these arguments help to distinguish three primary ways in which emotion contributes to moral motivation. I conclude with a suggested general implication of this discussion for related debates in moral theory.

Keywords:

• moral agency
• psychopathology
• motivation
• emotion
• autism
• psychopathy
• acquired sociopathy
• VM damage

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank David Brink, Rick Grush, Dana Nelkin, and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments on previous versions of this paper. I would also like to thank the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh for providing the funding and space that supported the revisions of this paper. A previous version of this paper, titled ‘Psychopathy, Autism, and Moral Agency’, was presented at the poster session of the Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress in 2009.

Notes

Note, however, that it is argued by some such as Blair that the category of ASPD is overinclusive and includes both individuals with psychopathy and individuals who have a distinctly different (but related) condition.

In a more recent response to Kennett and Fine based on their criticism of Roskies (2003) paper, Roskies continues to endorse her early claims but clearly concedes that her arguments are based on the best empirical data to date and the more empirical evidence is needed to fully resolve the relevant issues.

An anonymous referee directed my attention toward a forthcoming article by Philip Gerrans and Jeanette Kennett in Mind titled ‘Neurosentimentalism and moral agency’. The authors argue for a very similar point writing: ‘Only individuals who meet certain threshold conditions for agency can be morally accountable for the judgments and decisions that they make, and it is surely the analysis of the judgments of those individuals that is the primary task of meta-ethical accounts of moral judgment’. I am sympathetic to their argument for this point.