This was a term paper for my moral psychology seminar.
Introduction
Philosophers have debated what makes someone part of the moral community. Some have argued that the key for someone to be part of the moral community is that we can hold them responsible or blame them for their actions. What is the point of blaming or holding someone responsible if they don’t respond to your request and change their behavior? What is at stake here is how others react to our criticism; how they engage with us. In his article “Moral Address, Moral Responsibility, and the Boundaries of the Moral Community,” David Shoemaker is concerned with what cases of people on the margins of the moral community might tell us about responsibility and the moral community. These marginal cases include psychopathy, high-functioning autism (HFA), and mild mental retardation (MMR). According to Shoemaker, to properly engage in moral dialogue, i.e. the practice of holding others responsible, requires the ability to have empathy. He critiques the standard view that psychopaths are unable to recognize and apply moral reasons. Shoemaker argues that the central problem is motivational rather than epistemic; psychopaths do not care about other members of the community. Caring explains why one would act on a justifying moral reason, because the psychopath does not care, or have the ability to empathize, they are not motivated to act on moral reasons. Shoemaker argues that the HFA and MMR individuals are, in fact, capable of empathy and thus motivated to act on justifying moral reasons. This leads him to claim that psychopaths are not part of the moral community, while the HFA and MMR individuals are part of it.
I will argue that, while Shoemaker is probing the boundaries of the moral community in order to fine-tune our understanding of it, his account of requiring empathy excludes other marginal cases which raise complications for his argument. These include psychopaths who can learn empathy and individuals who once had the capability to care, but no longer do due to traumatic experiences, such as those with PTSD. Given these cases, I suggest that, what is important or necessary for membership in the moral community is not, using Harry Frankfurt’s terminology, first-order caring about others but a second-order desire to care which then moves them to seek treatment to enable them to care (or care again) or seek out an intermediary. If what matters is not first-order caring but second-order desiring to care then why might have an explanation of why people who opt out of the moral community are viewed negatively. This would be because they may care at a first-order level, but do not endorse their own caring at the second-order level. Others though, such as those with HFA and MMR, might care at a first- and second-order level, but the work to actually engage in the moral community is demanding too much effort than we can require of them. I argue that Shoemaker’s account places stricter demands of effort than can be required of these individuals.
The structure of this paper is as follows: first, I will lay out Shoemaker’s arguments for excluding psychopaths from the moral community and including high-functioning autistics and those with mild mental retardation. Next, I will make the argument for psychopaths being included in the moral community on the basis of learning empathy or by being responsible by proxy as those with MMR are. Then, I will present the case of those who were formerly capable of empathy but no longer are as a case of people who Shoemaker would exclude from the community. Finally, I will show how HFA and MMR might be excluded from the moral community, contrary to what Shoemaker claims.
The Moral Reason Based Theory (MRBT)
Shoemaker is building on the Strawsonian approach to responsibility.[1] He uses moral responsibility in the sense of being able to hold someone as accountable for their actions. Individuals have a basic demand of others within the moral community. The basic demand is that “the practice of holding people responsible is really an expression of our concern that they live up to the basic moral demand for goodwill in their actions.”[2] To be a member of the community requires that an individual is able to enter into interpersonal relationships, as well as be able to respond to reasoned appeals (e.g. we can have expectations of them).[3] Membership in the moral community requires certain epistemic and motivational capacities. Shoemaker’s goal is to revise the Moral Reason Based Theory (MRBT) that is presented by R. Jay Wallace.[4] His version of the MRBT states that:
One is a member of the moral community, a moral agent eligible for moral responsibility and interpersonal relationships, if and only if
(a) One has the capacity to recognize and apply moral reasons (Epistemic Component).
(b) One has the capacity to control one’s behavior in light of such reasons (Motivational Component).
Shoemaker applies four marginal cases of agency to illuminate his conception of the moral community and uses these cases to revise the MRBT. He uses psychopaths and the hypothetical moral fetishist to show that a lack of empathy prohibits them from effectively engaging with other people and participating in the moral community. He uses people with high-functioning autism and mild-mental retardation to show that if the initial necessary requirement is met, it is possible to still attain membership in the moral community via non-standard routes. In what follows, I address each case study in turn.
Psychopathy and Moral Fetishists
The first case study Shoemaker introduces is that of the psychopath. Psychopaths are placed outside the moral community by defenders of the MRBT along with groups such as the severely mentally ill (schizophrenics, antisocial personality disorder, etc.), systematically perverted minds, and compulsives (kleptomaniacs and sometimes obsessive-compulsive disorder), as well as young children. The question is, why are psychopaths made exempt from the moral community? For defenders of the MRBT, an individual is exempt if they lack one or both of the following:
- the ability to recognize and apply moral reasons
- the ability to be motivated by moral reasons
Shoemaker argues that the psychopath’s exemption rests on their lack of the motivational, rather than epistemic, component. The two crucial aspects of psychopathy for Shoemaker are the inability to feel guilt, shame, or remorse, and an utter lack of concern for the feelings of others. Psychopaths are unable to have the complex emotions that are a part of caring for another person. Because they cannot care about the people, the psychopath does not care about the other person’s basic demand which, for Strawson, is the motivation required to care about the moral reasons that are inherent in the basic demand.[5] This causes him to add a qualification to the motivational aspect of the MRBT. The criterion (b) was “one has the capacity to control one’s behavior in light of such reasons” but Shoemaker changes it to be “one is capable of being motivated by those moral reasons because one is capable of caring about their source, namely, the moral agents affected by one’s actions.”[6]
The second, hypothetical group Shoemaker describes as a potential counterexample to his new version of the MRBT are the moral fetishists. This group is meant as a further commentary on the psychopaths. It is characterized by people who fail to act on a moral demand in virtue of its being a demand. They don’t acknowledge the authoritative claim placed on them by the moral community. Shoemaker presents two types of fetishists: the non-demand fetishist and the moral fetishist. The non-demand fetishist is motivated to follow the norms of basic demand but does so for agent-neutral reasons. This means that the non-demand fetishist doesn’t steal because it would undermine someone’s autonomy—not because it would specifically undermine the autonomy of the person they stole from, but someone’s (as a concept) autonomy. They fail to care about the actual individual they might be stealing from. For Shoemaker, the right reason for acting morally is the basic demand of the other person. This non-demand fetishist doesn’t respond to the right moral reasons.
In the second case of the morality fetishist, they do the right thing for the sake of it being the right thing and, according to Shoemaker, aren’t responding to moral reasons at all. Their reasons for doing X are solely because it is the right thing to do. They aren’t responding to moral reasons (basic demand) when they are acting. They are devoid of any emotional attachment to the source of the reason for the right thing to do—the other person. The psychopath is focused on himself and his needs might overcome the general reasons of morality as the cause of his actions. But, the fetishist, on the other hand, does actually care about morality; the problem is that the fetishist doesn’t directly care about people themselves. They are devoted to morality simply for the sake of being moral. This is why Shoemaker would place the fetishists and psychopaths outside of the moral community.
High-Functioning Autism
The third case Shoemaker presents is the high-functioning autistic (HFA). Traditionally, HFA are understood to have a deficiency of empathy.[7] But, despite that deficiency, they tend to care about morality and being morally good. However, what is crucially important for Shoemaker is that the HFA actually cares about the person as part of the moral community. So, a lack of empathy doesn’t necessarily entail a lack of caring. And while the HFA might be unable to recognize moral reasons via the standard route, Shoemaker says they can eventually figure it out so they can make up for the lack of recognition by taking alternative routes.[8]
In Shoemaker’s argument, the key for empathy being the fundamental requirement for entry into the moral community can be found in the muddy-watered distinction between psychopaths and people with high-functioning autism. People with HFA are generally understood to have a defect in their ability to empathize. Shoemaker’s worry here is that if both the HFA and the psychopath lack an ability to empathize, and if the psychopath is exempt from the moral community on the basis of their empathetic deficit, then the HFA is exempt as well. Despite this deficit, the HFA does seem to care about the basic demander unlike the psychopaths, and so Shoemaker’s intuition is that the HFA should be a part of the moral community.
Shoemaker raises a potential criticism to his own account via a Kantian account of moral agency presented by Jeanette Kennett.[9] What Shoemaker intends to show is that on Kennett’s reason-based account, you cannot separate the HFA from the psychopath—both are excluded from the moral community. He presents Kennett’s argument that HFA have the ability to find a way to “see that the interests of others give rise to moral reasons in the same way that their own interests do.”[10] The problem Kennett sees is in the inability of the HFA to run mental simulations of others’ mental states and so they work out moral reasons by reasoning. Thus, a disposition to duty makes one a member of the moral community and reason alone motivates without the need for empathy or sympathy. What differentiates HFA from psychopaths is the ability of the HFA to be moved by the thought that some consideration is a sufficient reason for acting morally—something the psychopath lacks. Shoemaker’s concern resides in the distinction between non-moral and moral reasoning and why psychopaths can act on non-moral but not moral reasons. The psychopath can clearly reason and respond to reasons (particularly his own), so what causes him to be motivated to act on one reason but not another? The answer Shoemaker gives is the inability of second-personal moral reasons (i.e. reasons of another person) to cause motivation in the psychopath—a distinct difference between the psychopath and the HFA. For Shoemaker, one can’t simply reason their way into the moral community—or in other words, one cannot only have the epistemic component of the MRBT). This is why Kennett’s account fails. The reasoning has to have its foundation in the motivational component of the MRBT and the motivation must have its grounding in caring for the other person. The key here is reasoning is not available as an alternative route to the moral community for Shoemaker. The psychopath does not have a method of gaining entry into the moral community.
Shoemaker claims that “lack of empathy does not imply lack of caring.”[11] Just because the HFA might lack a certain sort of empathy does not mean they do not care. And, just because a psychopath might have the capability for a certain sort of empathy does not mean they care. What is crucial is that the psychopath lacks any sort of care or regard for the other person while it appears that the HFA does care about the other person. This comes from an aspect of empathy that the HFA is capable of but the psychopath lacks. Shoemaker calls this “identifying empathy.” What Shoemaker believes Kennett and others talk about when they say the autistic individual lacks empathy is a lack of “projective imagination” or what is called “cognitive empathy.”[12] This is the type of empathy that allows one to imagine what another is going through, to simulate their mental states and pick up emotional cues. In a sense, this is an epistemic empathy. It allows you to know the mental state of the other person. Psychopaths might still have this ability, but the HFA does not.
The other aspect of empathy, which Shoemaker believes is sufficient for interpersonal engagement and which is the key factor in his argument, is “that one shares the cares of the object of empathy.”[13] He further explains, “that is, one is emotionally vulnerable with respect to the fortunes of the items the person with whom one empathizes cares about and vulnerable in a roughly similar way to the person with whom one empathizes.”[14] What is to be understood here, it seems, is not a sort of sympathy nor a general feeling of sadness when a person you have the ability to care about is sad. What is to be understood is a mode of communication. For example, John has an empathetic understanding of event X via Sally’s communication of emotion Y. The way Sally experiences the death of a beloved pet (X) is colored by her broken-heartedness (Y). John empathetically understands the event X by Sally’s expressing of her broken-heartedness (Y), not because he can imagine what it feels like, or the mental states involved, but because he has the capability of caring about her as a basic demander (where “caring for some [Z] consists in the disposition to experience mature, complex emotions corresponding to the up-and-down fortunes of [Z]”[15]).
This is precisely why, on Shoemaker’s account, the psychopath is excluded from the moral community and the HFA is not. The psychopath is incapable of “caring about the up and down fortunes” of the other person.[16] This is also why the reasoning account of Kennett’s fails. One cannot reason their way, based on the facts of a relation between two individuals, to the empathy required for the moral community. The key here is that reasoning is not available as an alternative route to the moral community for Shoemaker. The psychopath does not have a method of gaining entry into the moral community.
This identifying empathy in addition to projective imagination or cognitive empathy allows one to fully appreciate another person and engage with them in moral address. Identifying empathy is the necessary component of moral address and despite the autistics not having the standard capabilities of cognitive empathy, they can take a nonstandard route that is more indirect to be able to get to the address. HFA have the ground necessary for building correct empathy for moral address. They have the capability of caring about another person. What they lack is the ability to mentally transpose themselves to the other’s place. This transposition is what gives one the necessary tools to understand the reasons or moral obligations that the other people accept. But, despite the lack of the HFA, they can take an alternative route to engaging and responding properly to the other’s reactive attitudes. Because they can take an indirect route to the emotional exchange, HFA are considered capable of moral address while psychopaths (who are unable to use an indirect route to make up for their lack according to Shoemaker) are not.
The complex emotional aspect of caring and the identifying empathy stemming from that seems to play the fundamental role in Shoemaker’s account. The psychopath is excluded because he is missing the complex, mature emotions integral to caring for another and being capable of identifying empathy. The HFA is granted access into the moral community as a contrast to the psychopaths for precisely the reason that they are capable of these complex emotions.
Mild Mental Retardation
The fourth group, individuals with mild mental retardation (MMR) [This is the term Shoemaker uses, not my own] is meant to further illuminate the necessity of complex emotions. Many people tend to treat those with MMR as being equivalent with children, but Shoemaker argues that this is a mistake. Children are generally excluded from the moral community. While caregivers generally take an objective attitude, meaning potentially seeing others as objects subject to treatment or things to be managed or handled, towards those in their care, this attitude is not adopted towards children. Children are reared as though they were members with an eye towards their future development and so there is a back and forth treatment of their responsibility between being held responsible and being excused. They are treated as though they were responsible in order to help them one day be able to attain membership in the moral community, even though they are not yet a part of it.[17] The difference for people with MMR is that they won’t develop mentally past a certain age, so they are seen as being incapable of having pure reactive attitudes. Shoemaker says that caregivers of people with MMR would disagree and argue that they can be treated as members of the moral community despite not developing past a certain age.
Shoemaker distinguishes two features between children and adults with MMR that he thinks are important. The first is that many adults with MMR can live on their own, something of which children are incapable. This is evidence of a type of maturity and learning that exist in MMR adults that is absent in children. The second feature is that adults with MMR appear to be capable of a much wider range of emotions than children are. They are capable of “fear, anger, sadness, and joy, as well as the more complex emotions of romantic love, despair, grief, guilt, and remorse, even if they may be unable to label the emotions in question.”[18] Children can have fear, anger, sadness, and joy but seem to be incapable of more complex emotions according to Shoemaker. He wants to suggest that “insofar as adults with MMR are capable of the (nearly) full range of emotions, they are capable of caring about the (nearly) full range of things unimpaired adults can care about.”[19] Because they are capable of these emotions, then it follow that they are capable of caring about the basic demanders.
What Shoemaker suggests is that just like the HFA adults, the MMR adults also take a nonstandard route to the second-personal moral reasons. They take an emotion-based route. The person with MMR gains access to the community via a proxy. They are able to respond to a caregiver’s emotional appeal and through them identify with a stranger. For example, if an individual with MMR, Jesse, hurts another person. The caregiver might mimic the reactive attitude expressed by the stranger and convey the basic demand to Jesse on behalf of the stranger. Jesse’s response would be a reaction to the caregiver’s imitation of the stranger’s reactive attitude. So, Jesse’s remorse would be directed towards the caregiver rather than the stranger. The goal is that the person with MMR might eventually internalize the process and be able to perform it with other members of the community. This seems to suggest that the caregiver has an “eye to the future” regarding the MMR adult, just as the parent does with respect to their child. Just as Jesse responds to the caregiver when feeling remorseful, so too does a child whose parents reprimand them for hitting their sister. In either case, the goal is for Jesse or the child to internalize the process and be able to perform it with other members of the community. So, the question for Shoemaker’s account then is, why don’t children gain entry via being able to respond to their parents in the same way an adult with MMR might respond to their caregiver? It would serve the same function in both cases. The only difference in Shoemaker’s account is the slightly increased maturity in the adults with MMR as well as their capability for complex emotions. This poses a problem for Shoemaker’s argument. If the MMR individual can gain entry by proxy, it seems that children should be as well. Additionally, why shouldn’t others, like the psychopath, be able to gain entry into the moral community using a caregiver-type as a vehicle for entry? This will be addressed in the next section.
Learning and (Unlearning) Empathy
Shoemaker’s account of the moral community requires identifying or affective empathy to be present in an individual for them to be considered part of the community. Psychopaths are excluded from the community because they lack this. The average person is included in the community because they are capable of identifying empathy. There are two specific cases that pose a problem for Shoemaker’s account: the psychopath who learns to empathize and the average individual who unlearns how to empathize.
On Shoemaker’s account, psychopathy is a reason to exclude a group of people from the moral community on the basis of lacking empathy. Imagine though, that an individual with psychopathy develops the ability to empathize or care about another person. Given their newfound ability to care about others and empathize, would they then be considered part of the moral community? Shoemaker could claim that this would be an exceptional case and either this person no longer has psychopathy or that they are an outlier and could be admitted into the moral community. But, what if the psychopath could learn to care and empathize via an alternative route? Would psychopaths as a group be allowed into the moral community? Shoemaker allows for the HFA and MMR to have access this way. The HFA has the ability to care and have identifying empathy, but cannot simulate the other’s mental experience to truly respond to the reactive attitudes of other people. Shoemaker allows them to take an alternative route through reasoning, because they have the correct foundation and can thus be accepted into the moral community.
The individual with MMR is granted access to the moral community through a caregiver. Empathizing with the caregiver, even if they can’t with the rest of the moral community, grants them access to the community for Shoemaker. What if the psychopath took an alternative route as well? Imagine the psychopath is given an empathy “caregiver”. An individual who was a full-fledged member of the community and gave the psychopath an anchor into caring for the moral community. While the psychopath might not be able to care about others and places his needs above the rest at that time, eventually, just like the person with MMR gradually develops the ability to be a member, the psychopath is also able develop the ability. If this were possible, then the psychopath should also be granted acceptance into the moral community on Shoemaker’s criterion.
An example of this can be found in the book and television series The Expanse by James S. A. Corey. One of the main characters, Amos, is a psychopath. He lacks any sort of care for other people and is incapable of empathizing with others. He does, however, want to do the right thing and care for other people. So, he asks another character Naomi (and later James) to act as his moral compass and help him do the right thing and learn to care about other people. He spends their journeying through the solar system trying to learn what makes something right or wrong and slowly develops a sense of it for himself and begins to care about other people. In this case it seems that Amos does have membership in the moral community because he is responsible and accountable to another person who is a part of the moral community. Having another person be involved is one alternative route the psychopath could take to gain entry. Another option that might not require another person is also available.
While some might consider this implausible in the first place, there is a potential route that could be taken to enhance the process of developing empathy and the ability to care about others. There has been increasing research of late on the effects of the psychedelic substances Psilocybin and MDMA on empathetic capabilities. Both are generally understood to increase empathetic capacities and MDMA has been used explicitly in people with autism to aid in the development of their empathetic capacities.[20] The same can be said of psilocybin and psychopathy. Psilocybin works on the 5-HT2A/1A receptors in the brain which have a role in empathetic abilities, an area where psychopathy is functionally problematic.[21]
What has been found is that psilocybin increases empathetic abilities.[22] The subjects given psilocybin, rather than the placebo, had increased scores on the MDT, MET, and IRI tests, which all measure cognitive empathy in addition to explicit and implicit emotional empathy.[23] Psilocybin significantly increased the scores of explicit and implicit emotional empathy abilities with cognitive empathy remaining the same.[24] Given this increase, it is possible that the psychopaths might not require an intermediary between them and the moral community to be included. Further studies are needed to discover the long-term effects of studies like this on participants, but it provides a compelling case for psychopaths having the capability to care about and empathize with others through the use of this tool. This would allow them to correctly care about the “up and down fortunes” of another person. Having the ability to do this in some way should grant them access to the moral community on Shoemaker’s account.[25]
A further example of complications to Shoemaker’s argument might be the unlearning of empathy. There are both positive and negative circumstances of this. For example, it is documented that doctors have a significant decrease in empathy during their career.[26] This, however, is generally seen as acceptable as it is useful for their profession of actually helping people; they have the capacity for empathy still and are placed outside the moral community in the traditional sense. They wouldn’t seem to pose a problem for Shoemaker. What Shoemaker doesn’t seem to account for are people who, through unfortunate circumstances, have been traumatized or adversely affected enough that they do not care for other people. They have, or at least had, the capability in the past, but either no longer have the ability to empathize or psychologically cannot/do not choose to care about other people to some extent.[27] These are not the extreme example cases, but cases of ordinary folk who no longer care or empathize. One example of people who lose much of the ability to empathize are those with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). People who have some traumatic event occur to them at any point in time that results in PTSD have decreased abilities to empathize—sometimes it disappears completely. Prior to the event, they generally had the capability of empathizing normally. Following the event or series of events, that capability can be erased.[28] Interestingly, psilocybin and MDMA have a similar effect of increasing or restoring empathetic abilities for those with PTSD, just as they do with those who are psychopaths.[29] These sorts of cases are not addressed or given place in Shoemaker’s argument for the boundaries of the moral community.
On Shoemaker’s account, merely having the capability of identifying empathy and caring about another person places them in the moral community and thus subject to being held responsible. This has the consequence (whether intended or unintended) of placing a number of people who had no control over their circumstances on the hook for being responsible. One Strawsonian answer to this sort of circumstance is provided by Elinor Mason. She argues that individuals who cannot grasp morality due to culture or upbringing are still judged for what they and their attitudes are like, but on her account this is non-ordinary blameworthiness—objective blameworthiness (in the sense of the Strawsonian objective attitude).[30] Shoemaker’s account doesn’t provide a distinction for differing responsibility or blameworthiness in differing cases. All that is required is a capability for identifying empathy and then one has entry into the moral community.
What might be interesting is that, in some of the cases of the psychopath and individual with PTSD, they might want to be able to care about other people as demanders and it is this desire to become caring that might move them to either seek treatment that will enable them to care (or care again) or to seek out an intermediary person like Amos did. What cases like these might show is what is necessary for membership in the moral community is not, to use Harry Frankfurt’s terminology, first-order caring about others, but a second-order desire to care about others, where a first-order desire is simply a desire to do or not do X and a second-order desire is wanting to have (or not have) certain first-order desires.[31] If what matters is not first-order caring but second-order desiring to care, then we might have an explanation of why people who opt-out of the moral community (like those who simply don’t desire to care but might have the capability) are viewed negatively. This would be because they may care at the first-order level, but they do not endorse their own caring at the second-order level. Others though, might care at a first- and second-order level, but the work required to actually engage in the moral community could be demanding too much of them. Such could be the case of those with HFA and MMR.
Autism, MMR, and Effort Demanded
A further complication of Shoemaker’s account is the required effort on the part of the individuals with HFA and MMR. The demands for entry to the moral community for HFA and MMR (and psychopaths if we grant them access) require much more effort than is required for a neurotypical individual. As Shoemaker has argued, HFA lack the usual capabilities for accessing the experience of another person (cognitive empathy), as do those with MMR. Reactive attitudes imply expectations placed on the other individual for them to respond to appropriately. Affective queues are first employed to provide the other person with the necessary information to understand the expectation. This requires the ability to transpose one’s self to the other person’s mind. The neurotypical has no problem with this function, but the person with HFA or MMR might be unable to appropriately respond to the attitude because they cannot use their “alternative route” quickly enough to respond correctly. It might take a large number of trials and errors for them to make sufficient progress. This places a larger burden on these individuals than it does on neurotypicals.
On Shoemaker’s account, the HFA and MMR individuals can gain access to the moral community. But, should these individuals be expected to try to achieve the status of a member of the moral community? For the majority of neurotypical people, it is expected that if you are able to, you should do your part to be a member of the moral community. People are viewed negatively when they opt out of the moral community. If we accept that these non-typical individuals can gain access to the community, does that mean that they should or are obligated to try to achieve it? Is that an acceptable standard to place on them despite the fact that it would require much more effort on their part to gain the status of a member than the neurotypical individual? This doesn’t seem to be fair to those individuals. It also doesn’t seem correct to simply take an objective attitude towards them because of their struggle. Shoemaker’s account doesn’t offer a nuanced approach to individual cases of these groups of people. If it is indeed incorrect to take an objective stance towards them as well as requiring them to work harder to gain entry into the moral community, then perhaps the individual should be given the choice. Or, a similar approach could be taken as is with children. The HFA or MMR individuals are neither fully in nor out of the moral community.
Conclusion
Shoemaker makes the case for the exclusion of psychopaths and the inclusion of individuals with HFA and MMR into the moral community. However, given that he allows the HFA and MMR individuals to gain access to the community by alternative routes, I have argued that the psychopath should similarly be granted access into the moral community by being responsible to a member of the moral community that can serve as a guide. I also have suggested that psychopaths further appear to have the capability to experience empathy via the usage of drugs such as psilocybin and that this also might restore the ability to care in individuals suffering from PTSD. This gives psychopaths a further alternative route to take to potentially gain entry into the moral community, posing a problem for Shoemaker’s exclusion of psychopaths from the moral community. People who later in life no longer have the capability of empathizing with others provide an additional case that complicates Shoemakers account. I showed how second- rather than first-order desires might be a necessary component for membership into the moral community. On Shoemaker’s line of reasoning, first-order care is necessary for entry into the moral community. I argued that second-order care might be more necessary than first-order care for membership. Finally, I demonstrated that the increased demand placed on those who require alternative routes to gain entry into the moral community provides reason to excuse all of the aforementioned individuals (psychopathy, HFA, MMR, and other mental disorders such as PTSD) from needing entry into the moral community.
[1] David Shoemaker, “Moral Address, Moral Responsibility, and the Boundaries of the Moral Community.” Ethics 118 (October 2007): 70-108, p. 73. See also, Peter Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment.” Proceedings of the British Academy 48 (1962): 1-25.
[2] David Shoemaker, “Moral Address, Moral Responsibility, and the Boundaries of the Moral Community.” Ethics 118 (October 2007): 70-108, p. 73.
[3] Ibid., p. 74.
[4] Ibid., p. 75. See also R. Jay Wallace, Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 157.
[5] One critique of Shoemaker might be that he doesn’t address the differing degrees of psychopathy. The degrees of lack of caring might change from one psychopath to the next. Differentiating this is beyond the scope of this paper though, and so I will proceed describing psychopathy as Shoemaker does without reference to the varying degrees it might take.
[6] Ibid., p. 85.
[7] See Uta Frith, Autism: Explaining the Enigma. (Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications, 2003).; Frederique De Vignemont, “Autism, Morality and Empathy.” In Moral Psychology, Volume 3: The Neuroscience of Morality, edited by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007), 273-80.
[8] Shoemaker, “Moral Address,” p. 95, 105.
[9] Ibid., p. 93-97.
[10] Ibid., p. 93.
[11] Ibid., p. 96.
[12] Ibid., p. 97-98. Jeanette Kennett, “Autism, Empathy, and Moral Agency,” Philosophical Quarterly 52 (2002): 340–57.
[13] Ibid., p. 97-98.
[14] Ibid., p. 98.
[15] Ibid., p. 83.
[16] Ibid., p. 83, 96.
[17] While this may not be the consensus view, this is the stance Shoemaker takes. He claims that individuals with MMR are cognitively similar to children ages 7-11. Shoemaker, “Moral Address,” p. 102-104.
[18] Ibid., p. 104.
[19] Ibid., p. 104.
[20] Alicia L. Danforth, et al., “MDMA-Assisted Therapy: A New Treatment Model For Social Anxiety in Autistic Adults.” Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry 64 (January 2016): 237-249.; Cedric M. Hysek, et al., “MDMA Enhances Emotional Empathy and Prosocial Behavior.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 9:11 (November 2014): 1645-1652.; Cedric M. Hysek, et al., “MDMA Enhances “Mind Reading” of Positive Emotions and Impairs “Mind Reading” of Negative Emotions.” Psychopharmacology 222:2 (July 2012): 293-302.; Ben Sessa and David Nutt, “Making a Medicine Out of MDMA” The British Journal of Psychiatry 206:1 (January 2015): 4-10.
[21] Robin Carhart-Harris, et al., “Neural correlates of the psychedelic state as determined by fMRI studies with psilocybin.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109:6 (February 2012): 2138-2143.; Torsten Passie, et al. “The Pharmacology of Psilocybin.” Addiction Biology 7:4 (October 2002): 357-364.
[22] Thomas Pokorny, et al. “Effect of Psilocybin on Empathy and Moral Decision-Making.” International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology 20:9 (September 2017): 747-757.
[23] Pokorny, et al. “Effect of Psilocybin on Empathy and Moral Decision-Making” p. 753.
[24] Ibid., p. 753.
[25] One could argue that these people might no longer count as psychopaths, but the diagnosis of psychopath does not hinge on caring or ability to empathize. The psychopath could care about or empathize with others and still meet the criteria for psychopathy according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel of Mental Disorders (DSM) published by the American Psychiatric Association.
[26] E. Larson, and X. Yao. “Clinical empathy as emotional labor in the patient–physician relationship.” JAMA 293 (2005): 1100–1106.; Tait Shanafelt, et al., “Relationship between increased personal well-being and enhanced empathy among internal medicine residents.” Journal of General Internal Medicine 20 (2005): 559–564.; Agnieszka Bratek, et al., “Empathy among physicians, medical students and candidates.” Psychiatria Danubina 27:1 (2015): 48-52.
[27] The extent to which these people have or had the capability to empathize in the past and to which they lack the ability to empathize at the present time can vary greatly. Focusing on the degrees to which one is able to empathize and its implication for the moral community in addition to the difference between psychologically cannot empathize or cannot choose to empathize is beyond the scope of this paper.
[28] Gabriella Nietlisbach, et al., “Are empathetic abilities impaired in posttraumatic stress disorder?.” Psychological Reports 106:3 (June 2010): 832-844.; Gabriela Nietlisbach and Andreas Maercker, “Social cognition and interpersonal impairments in trauma survivors with PTSD.” Journal of Aggression Maltreatment & Trauma 18:4 (May 2009): 382-402.
[29] Rick Doblin. “MDMA and PTSD Results” MAPS Annual Bulletin (Winter 2018).; Michael Mithoefer, et al., “The safety and efficacy of ±3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine-assisted psychotherapy in subjects with chronic, treatment-resistant posttraumatic stress disorder: the first randomized controlled pilot study.” Journal of Psychopharmacology 25:4 (2011): 439–452.
[30] Elinor Mason. “Moral ignorance and blameworthiness.” Philosophical Studies 172 (January 2015): 3037-3057.
[31] Harry Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person.” The Journal of Philosophy 68:1 (January 1971): 5-20.