Date of Award
Summer 4-20-2011
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Philosophy
First Advisor
Eddy Nahmias, PhD
Second Advisor
Sandra Dwyer, PhD
Third Advisor
George Graham, PhD
Fourth Advisor
Stephen Jacobson, PhD
Abstract
Psychopaths pose a challenge to those who make claims about the strength of moral assessments. These individuals are entirely unmoved by the moral rules that they articulate and purportedly espouse. Psychopaths appear rationally intact but are emotionally broken. In some cases, they commit horrendous crimes yet show no guilt, no remorse. Sentimentalists claim that the empirical evidence about psychopaths’ affective deficits supports that moral judgment is rooted in emotion and that psychopaths do not make genuine moral judgments—they can’t. Here, I challenge an explanation of psychopathy that indicts psychopaths’ emotional impairments alone. I conclude that there are rational requirements for moral motivation and that psychological and neuroscientific research support that psychopaths do not make the grade.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.57709/2013203
Recommended Citation
Montello, Maria L., "Rational Requirements for Moral Motivation: The Psychopath's Open Question." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2011.
doi: https://doi.org/10.57709/2013203