Garrath Williams claims that truly responsible people must possess a “capacity … to respond [appropriately] to normative demands” (2008:462). However, there are people whom we would normally praise for their responsibility despite the fact that they do not yet possess such a capacity (e.g. consistently well-behaved young children), and others who have such capacity but who are still patently irresponsible (e.g. some badly-behaved adults). Thus, I argue that to qualify for the accolade “a responsible person” one need not possess such (...) a capacity, but only to be earnestly willing to do the right thing and to have a history that testifies to this willingness. Although we may have good reasons to prefer to have such a capacity ourselves, and to associate ourselves with others who have it, at a conceptual level I do not think that such considerations support the claim that having this capacity is a necessary condition of being a responsible person in the virtue sense. (shrink)

Could neuroimaging evidence help us to assess the degree of a person’s responsibility for a crime which we know that they committed? This essay defends an affirmative answer to this question. A range of standard objections to this high-tech approach to assessing people’s responsibility is considered and then set aside, but I also bring to light and then reject a novel objection—an objection which is only encountered when functional (rather than structural) neuroimaging is used to assess people’s responsibility.

This paper argues that John Fischer and Mark Ravizza's compatibilist theory of moral responsibility cannot justify reactive attitudes like blame and desert-based practices like retributive punishment. The problem with their account, I argue, is that their analysis of moderateness in regards to reasons-responsiveness has the wrong normative features. However, I propose an alternative account of what it means for a mechanism to be moderately reasons-responsive which addresses this deficiency. In a nut shell, while Fischer and Ravizza test for moderate reasons-responsiveness (...) by checking how a mechanism behaves in a given time slice across other possible worlds, on my account we should ask how that mechanism behaves in this world over a span of time – specifically, whether it responds to reasons sufficiently often. My diachronic account is intended as a drop-in replacement for Fischer and Ravizza's synchronic account. (shrink)

Reimer ( Neuroethics 2008 ) believes that how we use language to characterize psychopathy may affect our judgments of moral responsibility. If we say a psychopath has a disorder we may reduce their responsibility for moral failure. If we say a psychopath is merely different, we may not reduce their responsibility. Vincent ( Neuroethics 2008 ) argues that if this were the case, a diagnosis of disorder would be both necessary and sufficient to reduce the responsibility of some agent for (...) moral failure. Vincent presents two examples to suggest that a disorder is neither necessary nor sufficient to exculpate an individual for moral failure: childhood and hypomania. Vincent suggests instead that our judgments of moral responsibility ought to be based on the individual’s capacity for moral agency. I will side with Vincent in this debate, but argue that the example she uses, hypomania, does not work. I will argue that a diagnosis of hypomania, part of Bipolar II Disorder, is sufficient to exculpate an individual for some moral failure. This is because there are responsibility-relevant capacities missing: the capacities for self-awareness and to control ones abilities. Without these capacities, the individual is not a responsible moral agent. Vincent will need to provide an alternative example to show that the presence of a disorder is not sufficient to exculpate an individual for moral failure. Whilst our use of language is important, that use reflects our judgments of the individual’s capacities for moral agency. Responsibilities are determined not only by capacities, but by the right kind of capacities, and this should be reflected in our moral judgments, and our use of language. (shrink)

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. (Article 1, Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948) This resounding statement encapsulates a number of problematic themes for lawyers with respect to personality disorder, and acutely so for the extremes of personality disorder embraced by designations such as psychopathy or dangerous and severe personality disorder (DSPD). These designations are in themselves (...) contentious; they do not have commonly agreed definitions either across disciplines or across jurisdictions. Morse (2008), for example, argues in a fascinating account that .. (shrink)

Recently it has been argued that certain neuropsychological findings on the decision-making, instrumental learning, and moral understanding in psychopathic offenders offer reasons to consider them not criminally responsible, due to certain epistemic and volitional impairments. We reply to this family of arguments, that collectively we call the irresponsibility of the psychopath argument. This type of argument has a premise that describes or prescribes the deficiencies that grant or should grant partial or complete criminal exculpation. The other premise contends that neuropsychological (...) evidence shows that psychopaths have incapacitates that are sufficient to ascribe complete or partially exculpatory deficiencies. The focus of our criticism is this latter premise. We argue that it requires that psychopathy should correlate significantly with certain rational incapacities that manifest across contexts. We show that the available neuropsychological data do not support the claim that psychopaths have such general exculpatory incapacities. (shrink)

The question of whether psychopaths are criminally and morally responsible has generated significant controversy in the literature. In this paper, we discuss what relevance a psychopathy diagnosis has for criminal responsibility. It has been argued that figuring out whether psychopathy is a mental illness is of fundamental importance, because it is a precondition for psychopaths’ eligibility to be excused via the legal insanity defense. But even if psychopathy counts as a mental illness, this alone is not sufficient to show the (...) insanity defense is applicable; it must also be shown that, as a result of the illness, specific deficits in moral understanding or control are present. In this paper, we show that a diagnosis of psychopathy will generally not indicate that a defendant is eligible for an insanity defense. This is because the group of individuals subsumed under the diagnosis is so heterogeneous that while some psychopaths do show significant impairments in affect and control which may impact on their responsibility, many psychopaths are not incapacitated in a way relevant to responsibility. (shrink)

Substance addiction affects millions of individuals worldwide and yet there is no consensus regarding its conceptualisation. Recent neuroscientific developments fuel the view that addiction can be classified as a brain disease, whereas a different body of scholars disagrees by claiming that addictive behaviour is a choice. These two models, the Brain Disease Model and the Choice Model, seem to oppose each other directly. This article contends the belief that the two models in the addiction debate are polar opposites. It shows (...) that it is not the large amount of addiction research in itself what sets the models apart, but rather their extrapolated conclusions. Moreover, some of the most fiercely debated aspects - for instance, whether or not addiction should be classified as a disease or disorder - are irrelevant for the conceptualisation of addiction. Instead, the real disagreement is shown to revolve around capacities. Discussing addiction-related capacities, especially regarding impaired control, rather than the assumed juxtaposition of the two models can be considered the true addiction debate. More insight into the extent to which the capacities of the addicted individual were affected would be highly useful in various other areas, especially legal responsibility. (shrink)

Substance addiction affects millions of individuals worldwide and yet there is no consensus regarding its conceptualisation. Recent neuroscientific developments fuel the view that addiction can be classified as a brain disease, whereas a different body of scholars disagrees by claiming that addictive behaviour is a choice. These two models, the Brain Disease Model and the Choice Model, seem to oppose each other directly. This article contends the belief that the two models in the addiction debate are polar opposites. It shows (...) that it is not the large amount of addiction research in itself what sets the models apart, but rather their extrapolated conclusions. Moreover, some of the most fiercely debated aspects - for instance, whether or not addiction should be classified as a disease or disorder - are irrelevant for the conceptualisation of addiction. Instead, the real disagreement is shown to revolve around capacities. Discussing addiction-related capacities, especially regarding impaired control, rather than the assumed juxtaposition of the two models can be considered the true addiction debate. More insight into the extent to which the capacities of the addicted individual were affected would be highly useful in various other areas, especially legal responsibility. (shrink)

Substance addiction affects millions of individuals worldwide and yet there is no consensus regarding its conceptualisation. Recent neuroscientific developments fuel the view that addiction can be classified as a brain disease, whereas a different body of scholars disagrees by claiming that addictive behaviour is a choice. These two models, the Brain Disease Model and the Choice Model, seem to oppose each other directly. This article contends the belief that the two models in the addiction debate are polar opposites. It shows (...) that it is not the large amount of addiction research in itself what sets the models apart, but rather their extrapolated conclusions. Moreover, some of the most fiercely debated aspects - for instance, whether or not addiction should be classified as a disease or disorder - are irrelevant for the conceptualisation of addiction. Instead, the real disagreement is shown to revolve around capacities. Discussing addiction-related capacities, especially regarding impaired control, rather than the assumed juxtaposition of the two models can be considered the true addiction debate. More insight into the extent to which the capacities of the addicted individual were affected would be highly useful in various other areas, especially legal responsibility. (shrink)