Justin Ho

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Mind and Morals Final Paper: Are Psychopaths Rational?

Defining whether or not someone or something is rational first requires
an accurate conception of what it means to be rational. To say that X is
rational, what we colloquially mean is that X is in accordance with logic and
reason. One of the defining characteristics of human beings is that we
consider ourselves rational, and in fact that is often thought of as our
greatest strength and ability, in contrast with our irrational emotional selves.
In that case, psychopaths might be seen as the pinnacle of humanity, as
they seem to possess rational faculties unhindered by the pesky emotional
ties that we typically have. Yet, we see psychopathy as a disorder to be
studied and investigated, not something to be celebrated. This is typically
because while psychopaths have no obvious problems in reasoning and
demonstrating their intelligence, they also show little restraint in their
actions, and in fact show blatant disregard and emotional callousness. This
requires us to go back and reconsider whether or not rational is something
truly absent from emotion and solely based on logic and reason. Ultimately,
what we will find is that a careful examination of what makes someone a
psychopath is also what makes them not rational. Human rationality is not
something defined by mere logic and reason and in fact, the presence of
intrinsic moral values in normal humans but not psychopaths means that the
logic and reason we use to typically describe rationality is just that; a
description of our decision making process, rather than a prescription for
proper decision making. In normal humans, to be rational means that we act
not because of logic and reason, but rather that our actions can be logically
explained. Psychopaths, on the other hand, act because of logic and reason,
and this is what separates them and makes them not rational.
What is a psychopath?
Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by antisocial
behavior, as well as general callousness. For the purposes of this paper, we
should look at Adina Roskies four criteria for acquired sociopathy, as those
have predefined tests that standardize the discussion around
sociopaths/psychopaths (those two terms will be used interchangeably).
Roskies defined acquired sociopathy using data from patients with
Ventromedial prefrontal cortex damage. First, VM patients were seen to be
able to make social and moral judgments just like a normal person, with no
apparent difference in their moral reasoning skills. Second, while they have
no problems making the moral judgments, VM patients were impaired in
their ability to follow through on these moral judgments. Third, recording skin
conductance response to emotionally charged stimuli revealed that while
normal people show a consistent SCR response, VM patients with acquired
sociopathy do not show the same SCR. Lastly, in situations that normally
elicit emotional responses from normal people, VM patients reported general
absence of affect; they did not care.

Justin Ho
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While those four criteria were specific to patients with VMPFC damage,
and may not necessarily be common to everyone who is a psychopath, they
provide a useful starting point to talk about psychopathy. For the purpose of
discussion, we can say that a psychopath is someone who follows these
same patterns, and were they to take the same laboratory tests, we could
assume that they would score similarly when compared to VM patients.
Psychopathy can be congenital, or similar to the case of the VM patients, be
something acquired due to injury or disease. They typically have extreme
social issues and while demonstrate normal levels of intelligence,
demonstrate deviant behavior without necessarily realizing what they are
doing is wrong.
What it means to be rational
Having set aside the question of whether or not psychopaths are
rational, we first have to address further what it means to be rational. As
discussed earlier, to describe something as rational means we say it follows
reason and logic. Humans are often described as making rational decisions,
in contrast to irrational and often times emotional decisions. A classic
example would be the trolley dilemma. It is usually considered rational to
sacrifice one person to save the five or ten who are tied to the track who
would die otherwise; it is much harder to make that decision when the one
person sacrificed is our mother, or our firstborn child.
In ethics, morality is often seen as based on reason rather than
emotions, which allows us to offer moral claims as some form of objective
truth. Nichols offers two possible branches of rationalism, conceptual
rationalism and empirical rationalism. In the former, moral judgments ought
to be reasons to subsequently act. The key is that moral judgments and
motivation are linked, and in psychopaths, that link is broken. Psychopaths
consistently show the ability to make the proper moral judgments, but lack
the motivation to do so. Nichols sums it up by saying conceptual rationalism
is committed to the claim that its a conceptual truth that people who make
moral judgments are motivated by them. The ability to make moral
judgments implies reasons to act.
Empirical rationalism argues from a different point of view, where
moral judgments are seen as derived from rational faculties. In contrast to
conceptual rationalism, empirical rationalism argues that the rational
abilities are the basis for judgment. Psychopaths are problematic for this as
well; they consistently fail the moral/conventional paradigm. So while
psychopaths are capable of demonstrating reasoning skills, their moral
judgment is seen as impaired in the empirical rationalist perspective,
because they are not able to make a distinction between moral violations
and conventional violations.
However, I would argue that there may be a third way to look at
rationality. While rationality is primarily defined by its accordance with logic
and reason, it is not wholly defined by it. When we look at computer
systems, we rarely say that computers are rational in the same way that

Justin Ho
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humans are rational. Computers follow logic, and if you give them rules they
can follow them, but computers cannot spontaneously deduce and use logic
in the same way humans can. There is another part to rationality that is
outside logic and reason, that makes it distinctly human and makes us
unique. I would argue that being rational is not just agreeing with the logic,
but also having an intrinsic belief in the moral judgment that precedes the
logic. This is demonstrated when you ask children whether it was right or
wrong to hit someone. It is authority independent for children to say that it is
not ok to hit someone, but in my experience, while they may develop
reasoning as to why it is wrong (usually some variation of because it causes
harm to the victim), but they only do so after you ask them. They
intrinsically know what is right and wrong to do in certain scenarios, having
learned it from someone elses teachings or maybe even just observing the
world around them. Either way, children consistently show that they are able
to conceptualize a sense of right and wrong, and come up with moral
judgments, without necessarily knowing the logic behind it.
It is this intrinsic moral system that we then use logic to try to explain.
To go back to the trolley example earlier, we may initially say that it is much
harder to sacrifice the one person when it is someone we know, but if further
pressed, it is very difficult (but not impossible) to come up with a reasoning
as to why it is harder. Logic and reason are merely tools we use to justify
what we already know, and this is the key difference between rationality in
humans versus rationality in a computer system. A human is rational
because we use logic and reason to explain our conclusions, whereas
computer systems use logic and reason to generate conclusions in the first
place. Throughout this semester, we have often appealed to whether
something felt right as a reason to accept or reject a proposition. Moral
judgments and in fact, even non moral judgments, are subject to a feels
right or not test by us when we make them. This exists separate from our
reasoning faculties.
This does not mean that we ought exclude reasoning and logic from
our conceptions of humans, and it certainly does not mean that we must
reject rationalism as a school of thought. I would argue that to be rational
requires both the intrinsic gut feeling system to check whether something is
right, as well as logic and reason to back up their belief. It is important to
realize that being rational does require it be logically explainable, but does
not require that logic and reason be the source of the conclusion. Rationality
goes beyond just doing actions based on logical reasoning. The reasoning
has to be checked against something intrinsic to humans, and it is the
harmony of these two systems that defines human rationality, and makes it
distinct from the cold reason that computers use. This is the distinction not
made by Nichols or Roskie in their concern over how psychopaths threaten
moral rationalism and the intrinsic motivations they write about.
How Psychopaths fit into this

Justin Ho
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So the question still remains, Are psychopaths rational?. I would

argue that it is quite possible that psychopaths use logic and reason in a way
that is distinct from how normal humans use logic and reason, and it in fact
makes them not rational beings. The problem with psychopaths is that while
they are capable of using moral reasoning in the same way that everyone
else is, their failure of the moral/conventional task shows that they do not
have the same internalized moral system that is instilled within us from a
very young age. Even before they are capable of arguing about right and
wrong and the moral implications of such, kids are capable of knowing what
is right and wrong. Lay people do it all the time when they say something is
right or wrong; they are not promoting or condemning based off of complex
philosophical introspection, they are going off of what they just know. In
fact, having a training in philosophy and moral reasoning arguably makes it
harder to say what is right and wrong, precisely because we have been
exposed to so many different possible viewpoints that it is rather difficult to
consolidate everything into a binary right or wrong.
For psychopaths, their deficiency lies in errors in their emotional
processing; they have the right reasoning, but they just do not feel
compelled by the reasons. This is demonstrated by the lack in SCR response
towards emotionally arousing stimuli that psychopaths have. This intrinsic
moral code that is lacking in psychopaths is supported by the data presented
by Roskies; another explanation for the VM behavior is available: their
general lack of violence may be due to behavioral habits acquired prior to
their injury, which, in a morally blind way, prevent them from the most
egregious infringements of the moral code. In support of this, VM braindamaged subjects who acquired their injury early in life are more prone to
violence, and inflict harm upon others without signs of empathy or remorse.
The patients who were damaged early in their lives never fully developed the
internal moral compass that normal people have, and therefore have not
habituated themselves to acting according to it. Thus, when their moral
compass is removed due to VM damage, they find themselves acting in ways
that are contrary to normal behavior.
A simple metaphor for this new conception of rationality is to consider
learning how to drive a car. Normal human beings can learn how to drive a
car two ways; they can read books