Moral Responsibility and Mental Illness: a Call for Nuance

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.

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“…Similar points have recently been made about the relationship between mental illness and moral responsibility(King and May 2018).…”

supporting

confidence: 67%

Are Psychopaths Legally Insane?

Jefferson

Sifferd

2018

EuJAP

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“…Instead of focusing on diagnoses one could focus on symptoms and functional impairments. These might be more stable over time and the differences in diagnoses can possibly be explained by different professionals relating these symptoms and functional impairments to different diagnoses (King and May 2018). This suggestion is also more in line with the general approach of focusing less on diagnoses and more on concrete problems.…”

Section: Future Offences and Mental Disordermentioning

confidence: 67%

Between Punishment and Care: Autonomous Offenders Who Commit Crimes Under the Influence of Mental Disorder

Hartvigsson

2021

Criminal Law, Philosophy

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The aim of this paper is to present a solution to a problem that arises from the fact that people who commit crimes under the influence of serious mental disorders may still have a capacity to refuse treatment. Several ethicists have argued that the present legislation concerning involuntary treatment of people with mental disorder is discriminatory and should change to the effect that psychiatric patients can refuse care on the same grounds as patients in somatic care. However, people with mental disorders who have committed crimes and been exempted from criminal responsibility would then fall outside the scope of criminal justice as well as that of the psychiatric institutions if they were to refuse care. In this paper, I present and develop a solution to how society should deal with this group of people, called Advance criminal responsibility. The basic idea being that if a person with a potentially responsibility exempting psychiatric condition refuses care, that person is responsible for any future criminal acts which are due to the mental disorder.

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“…The question how frequently mental illness undermines individuals' capacity to recognise and respond to moral reasons for action is increasingly debated (King and May 2018, Arpaly 2005, Pickard 2015, Broome, Bortolotti, and Mameli 2010. For now, we can content ourselves with noting that in as far as one, or both, of the conditions of understanding and controlling one's actions are undermined by mental illness, moral responsibility is diminished.…”

Section: Why Mental Disorders or Brain Disorders Might Excusementioning

confidence: 99%

Brain Pathology and Moral Responsibility

Jefferson¹

2022

Agency in Mental Disorder

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Does a diagnosis of brain dysfunction matter for ascriptions of moral responsibility? This chapter argues that, while knowledge of brain pathology can inform judgments of moral responsibility, its evidential value is currently limited for a number of practical and theoretical reasons. These include the problem of establishing causation from correlational data, drawing inferences about individuals from group data, and the reliance of the interpretation of brain findings on well-established psychological findings. Brain disorders sometimes matter for moral responsibility, however, because they change an individual’s moral psychology in a way that is beyond their control. While control over psychological changes is not an excusing factor, brain disorders can mitigate moral responsibility because they confront individuals with new psychological deficits or urges for which their previous moral education and existing external and internal moral resources have not prepared them.

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Moral Responsibility and Mental Illness: a Call for Nuance

Cited by 15 publications

References 32 publications

Are Psychopaths Legally Insane?

Are Psychopaths Legally Insane?

Between Punishment and Care: Autonomous Offenders Who Commit Crimes Under the Influence of Mental Disorder

Brain Pathology and Moral Responsibility

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