Assholes: A Theory by Aaron James

Author:Aaron James
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Social Science, Popular Culture, Philosophy, Psychology, Social, Behaviorism, Movements
ISBN: 9780385535687
Publisher: Doubleday
Published: 2012-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

PSYCHOPATHS AND MORAL BLINDNESS

In our proposal, the asshole is blameworthy because of a failure of seeing. But here one might object that the bare fact of having certain mistaken moral views cannot be the whole story. It might seem to matter why the asshole fails to see what he fails to see. Suppose, for instance, that he is morally blind, really and truly incapable of taking in the appropriate facts about what he has most reason to do or not do. Would he not then be off the moral hook? If so, then when he is on the hook, it follows that he has certain capacities to figure out what moral reasons he in fact has. The asshole would then be blameworthy only because he in fact has that moral capacity, where this is something more than simply having asshole moral views. No capacity, no responsibility. “Ought,” as they say, implies “can.”

The philosopher Gary Watson presents an argument like this one as regards the psychopath.11 As Watson reads the psychological evidence, psychopaths are marked by two key features:

(1) they act with malice, deliberately and callously harming others, without coercion or psychosis; and

(2) they are incapable of recognizing the interests of others as claims on their conduct.

The fact that psychopaths act with malice, as according to (1), means they are unlike mere animals that must be controlled but cannot be blamed. It feels natural for us to blame the psychopath for a horrific murder and indeed to want to hold him accountable for his conduct, whether through punishment, strong criticism, or indignation. On the other hand, Watson argues, the fact that psychopaths are incapable of recognizing others as sources of valid claims on their conduct, as according to (2), means that ways of seeking to hold them accountable to moral expectations are misplaced. We therefore find them deeply disquieting. We recoil in indignation at the callous murders committed by Robert Alton Harris (he kidnapped, taunted, and shot two teenagers, then bragged about it while finishing the lunches they had been eating). But we can also find ourselves in a more detached, objective mode when we think through his truly terrible upbringing. We naturally waffle on whether he is in fact morally responsible, depending on whether we think of the child he was or the man he became.12 Ultimately, though, the psychopath isn’t responsible, because he finally isn’t capable of seeing that he owes people something better.

For our purposes, it is crucial to understand why Watson thinks the psychopath’s inability to see the force of moral claims means that resentment or indignation is misplaced: his moral incapacity means there is no possibility of getting through, no possibility of getting him to even understand, let alone accept, that he has reason to respect the moral claims of others. But, according to Watson, the act of seeking to hold someone accountable, as opposed to simply trying to deter future bad behavior or otherwise keep him under control, is precisely that of trying to elicit an internal understanding and acceptance that the claims of others bear on his conduct.

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