Shame, Embarrassment, and the Subjectivity Requirement

Abstract

Reactive theories of responsibility see moral accountability as grounded on the capacity for feeling reactive-attitudes. I respond to a recent argument gaining ground in this tradition that excludes psychopaths from accountability. The argument relies on what Paul Russell has called the 'subjectivity requirement'. On this view, the capacity to feel and direct reactive-attitudes at oneself is a necessary condition for responsibility. I argue that even if moral attitudes like guilt are impossible for psychopaths to deploy, that psychopaths, especially the "successful" and "secondary" subtypes of psychopathy, can satisfy the subjectivity requirement with regard to shame. I appeal to evidence that embarrassment and shame are grounded on the same affective process and data that psychopathic judgments about embarrassment are neurotypical. If I am right, then psychopaths ought to be open to shame-based forms of accountability including shame punishments. I conclude by considering why psychopaths rarely self-report shame. I argue that lacking a capacity to see oneself as flawed is a different sort of failure than lacking the capacity to feel.

The Societal Response to Psychopathy in the Community

“…We argue that focussing on bridging normative concepts to investigate how to respond to this class of psychopathic individuals is problematic. One reason is that empirical evidence leaves open whether psychopathic offenders are responsible and whether psychopathy is a mental disorder (Jefferson & Sifferd, 2018; Jurjako, 2019; Jurjako & Malatesti, 2018a; Malatesti & Baccarini, in press; Ramirez, 2018). Moreover, even if the evidence was decisive, still the issue of responsibility would just affect responses to a subpopulation of offenders with psychopathy.…”