Bear killing human.

[brimstoneSalad]

According to what evidence?

According to thought experiments put to psychopaths that indicate clear understanding of analytical ethics.

The capacity for moral development (esp. in children) needs a type of empathy that allows the agent to be capable of understanding another person's feelings of irritation which could be caused by his actions, and to appreciate that their interests constitute reasons for actions, even if these reasons are different from his own.

Psychopaths have that kind of understanding of others, they have a theory of mind and can "empathize" in the broadest sense of cognitively grasping what others feel. This is a requirement of functioning in civilization, and of manipulation at which psychopaths excel.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-23431793

Some reports like to describe it as a switch, but I don't think that's necessarily very accurate.
Anyway, the point is that it's just not the emotional empathy other people have which "forces" those feelings upon the subject of that empathy.
It's a learned ability, theory of mind, which enables them to understand others feelings.

On those grounds, moral understanding requires an appreciation of the fact that one's interests might conflict with those of others,

Psychopaths understand this, they just don't necessarily value others interests intrinsically. However, they could if they chose to value morality.

It's not that they don't care, it's that they can't care, because the part of their brain responsible for moral reasoning is impaired.

This may or may not be true with regard to feelings of empathy producing an emotional effect on them, but psychopaths do have interests that they care about.

A psychopath may like to collect stamps as an interest, or may like advocating for morality as an interest. There is a distinct interest in morality that anybody can have, as a thing in itself, without any connection to emotional compulsion.

I think you're failing to understand how psychopaths work. You should spend some time reading some psychopath blogs. This one actually has a recent article going into his sense of wanting to be good when he was younger:

http://www.psychopathicwritings.com/

I didn't understand why they were so willing to and actively condoning giving up all freedom and being perversely mean toward each other as a quite normal everyday behavior, I could only conclude that it certainly isn't what good people do, it is in fact evil if anything is. Yet they always said I am the evil person despite it always being me who is willing to try and give up this type of behavior.

And here is the point...

Because I have always believed in being the best person you can be, I have repeatedly throughout the early part of my life set myself up to be abused and attempted put under normal people's control. I wonder if this is what makes most psychopaths conclude that since if you try to create an even basis to interact with others always results in others hurting you and trying to control you, it seems the only way you can avoid this from repeatedly happening again and again is to be the one who does the hurting and controlling. Because it isn't enough to just live and let live, you have to actually allow others to hurt and control you or they won't be satisfied.

Anyway, you're vastly underestimating the complexity of the mind.

Thus early-onset prefrontal damage resulted in a syndrome resembling psychopathy.

Resembling, perhaps, but not very closely. This is an article by researchers who probably have a very limited grasp on what psychopathy is, and they thought it was a good comparison.

I'm not saying moral decisions should be based on our emotions. I'm saying that from childhood, empathy acts as a means of understanding why moral values even exist, because it's a mechanism which allows us to compare the values and goals of others, with our own.

I'm afraid the term "empathy" itself is ambiguously defined and broadly used to talk about different qualities. Note the article I linked earlier.

Psychopaths can have the ability to "empathize" in a very broad and unemotional sense -- that is, understand the emotions of others -- it's just that they do so differently, and in a more learned and deliberate intellectual way, and not through the more forceful and automatic instinct others experience it by, which also compels those people to feel bad when others feel bad, or good when others feel good.
Psychopaths don't necessarily experience empathy proper in the emotional sense, and I would say they don't experience empathy, but instead just experience understanding (a little more like sympathy).
The trouble is somebody might misunderstand saying that psychopaths don't empathize to mean they don't know what others are feeling, which is not true at all.

I can see where the confusion stems from.

[ThinkAboutThis]

So where were we...

Psychopaths can understand right and wrong based on many notions; they are masters at utilitarianism, for example. There is nothing about empathy which enhances understanding of moral principle

I suppose you're right, but this still doesn't equal moral agency:

A moral agent is "a being who is capable of acting with reference to right and wrong.

A psychopath who has killed a person would more than likely lack Chronesthesia, which is essentially the ability to mentally project oneself into the past and future. They are capable of short-sighted planning and execution, but infamously bad at long-term planning and execution, so for this reason, they can succumb to ephemeral impulses almost irresistibly. The psychopath may understand moral concepts and conventional rules (they probably see them as the same thing: http://philpapers.org/rec/BLAACD-2), but that doesn't necessarily mean the person is capable of acting in alignment with those ideals.

As this paper shows:

They lack the emotional investment in the future that enables us to overcome the motivation to act opportunistically and myopically. These individuals live strangely in time. They have a fugitive sense of self and live nimbly among many pasts. They present an elegant and coherent mask to the person they are addressing in the moment and generate possible futures without conviction.

http://philpapers.org/rec/MCILSI

I think you're failing to understand how psychopaths work. You should spend some time reading some psychopath blogs.

This blog was written by a psychopath who doesn't align with the context of this argument (assuming it isn't just a person pretending to be a psychopath). The question I presented at the beginning of this thread was:

Would it be morally wrong for a psychopath to kill other humans?

Which implies context to the psychopath being genetically predisposed to this type of behaviour.

[brimstoneSalad]

A psychopath who has killed a person would more than likely lack Chronesthesia

This isn't just psychopathy, but additional mental deficits. Pile on enough forms of mental inability, and eventually you'll create a person incapable of impulse control and without a sense of causality. A sufficiently retarded human is not necessarily cognitively different from a bear in any substantive way.

A moral agent is "a being who is capable of acting with reference to right and wrong.

If a court of law would rule somebody mentally incapable, then as such that person has been judged not culpable.

This blog was written by a psychopath who doesn't align with the context of this argument (assuming it isn't just a person pretending to be a psychopath). The question I presented at the beginning of this thread was:

Would it be morally wrong for a psychopath to kill other humans?

Which implies context to the psychopath being genetically predisposed to this type of behaviour.

No true Scotsman?

[ThinkAboutThis]

This isn't just psychopathy, but additional mental deficits. Pile on enough forms of mental inability, and eventually you'll create a person incapable of impulse control and without a sense of causality.

Indeed. So whether psychopaths are moral agents or not, would probably depend on the severity of their condition. I think it would be reasonable to assume that a psychopathic killer is not a moral agent, just because they have killed. However, that doesn't mean all psychopaths who kill are not moral agents.

A sufficiently retarded human is not necessarily cognitively different from a bear in any substantive way.

Would there be any significant moral difference between a bear killing a human, and a house fire killing a human?

And think about this, wouldn't a bear killing a human be morally wrong, but the bear is simply not morally responsible for its wrongdoing, rather than the entire situation just being amoral?

No true Scotsman?

Hahahaha. Yeah, sorry.

[brimstoneSalad]

I think it would be reasonable to assume that a psychopathic killer is not a moral agent, just because they have killed.

We need to assume somebody is morally culpable until they prove otherwise. While people are innocent until proven guilty, they are competent until proven not.

And if they are not capable of understanding morality or cause and effect and controlling impulses (you don't even need to be a psychopath in order to have problems with those things and be predisposed to violent crimes), they need to be locked up somewhere. Nobody like that should be walking around.

However, that doesn't mean all psychopaths who kill are not moral agents.

Or that all non-psychopaths are. Many people who are severely mentally retarded and do feel empathy act impulsively and without regard for long term consequence, and can't control anger or other emotional impulses. Being non-psychopathic may even make it worse, because they're more emotional and can probably get angry or hurt more easily -- thus have more impulsive motivation to do violence.

Would there be any significant moral difference between a bear killing a human, and a house fire killing a human?

Just a little bit. A bear does has some moral agency, just not very much. It's not a binary thing. Bears can exercise some impulse control, particularly if they have been around humans, but it's very limited -- it's not as with a dog. Dogs have excellent impulse control, partially because they've been bred for it, and partially because they're social animals to begin with. Bears are among the worst, being rather solitary animals.

And think about this, wouldn't a bear killing a human be morally wrong, but the bear is simply not morally responsible for its wrongdoing, rather than the entire situation just being amoral?

It's still harmful, just as a house fire is, but the thing doing it may not be culpable in a sense of moral responsibility, so punishing it for that action (for example) may not be meaningful. It would still be right to stop that thing from happening.