Psychopaths Responsibility

The responsibility of psychopaths is a highly debated topic in the legal, philosophical, and neuroscientific fields. In the US, a person is responsible if they “have sufficient rational capacity” and “they are not acting under coercion” (Glenn & Raine 2014). The majority of the academic community believes that psychopaths’ responsibility is mitigated because of the profound cognitive and emotional deficits that lead to a reduced rational capacity. However, the public’s instinct is to hold psychopaths responsible for their crimes. What is it that gives us this instinctive reaction?
Furthermore, how does punishment come into play? It should be noted that just because a psychopath is not responsible for their actions does not mean that they

However, Glenn and Raine (2014) argue that the emotional deficits characteristic of psychopaths diminish their rational capacity, making them unable to be held accountable for the rash and harmful decisions. Additionally, psychopaths may display knowledge of right and wrong, however their understanding is substantially compromised (Maibom 2005). Therefore, because they cannot understand moral emotions, moral transgressions fail to motivate them and they cannot be held morally responsible for their actions. They treat moral transgressions as equal to conventional transgressions (Levy 2008); to them, they are merely breaking the rules. And although breaking the rules begets consequences, a short attention span prevents psychopaths from anticipating consequences. Nevertheless, say, for example, a psychopath on a different portion of the spectrum is aware of the consequences. In this case, they would be still be indifferent because their feelings of grandeur lead them to believe that they are removed from punishment (Gao, Glenn, Schug, Yang, Raine 2009). For these reasons, many argue that psychopaths should not be held responsible for their behaviors. There is substantial scientific evidence that supports the argument for mitigation of blame when concerning psychopaths. Certainly the vast plethora of deficits causes some amount of impaired

I agree that psychopaths can exhibit learned knowledge of morality; however, I believe that their moral indifference can be attributed to the brain abnormalities and behavioral deficits. Because these deficits are uncontrollable with respect to the individual, pulling from Levy’s (2008) argument, psychopaths are not responsible for their lack of motivation regarding morality. Additionally, their diminished attention span and inability to gage consequences also play a role in their moral indifference. A psychopath may logically understand that their actions are wrong, but because of a shortened attention span they cannot focus on the many long-term consequences of their actions (Maibom 2005). Thus, they are not responsible for their actions because of a plethora of abnormal brain and behavioral