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Psychopathy and internalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Victor Kumar
Victor Kumar*
Affiliation:
Philosophy Department, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Do psychopaths make moral judgments but lack motivation? Or are psychopaths’ judgments are not genuinely moral? Both sides of this debate seem to assume either externalist or internalist criteria for the presence of moral judgment. However, if moral judgment is a natural kind, we can arrive at a theory-neutral criterion for moral judgment. A leading naturalistic criterion suggests that psychopaths have an impaired capacity for moral judgment; the capacity is neither fully present nor fully absent. Psychopaths are therefore not counterexamples to internalism. Nonetheless, internalism is empirically problematic because it is unable to explain psychopaths’ moral deficits.

Keywords

Psychopathsmoral judgmentmotivationinternalismnatural kindmoral/conventional distinctionmoral concepts
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 46 , Issue 3 , June 2016 , pp. 318 - 345
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2016

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