Philosophical Vegan Forum

Is it wrong for a non-moral agent (a bear) to kill a moral agent (a human)? Or do ethics only apply to those who can properly grasp the concepts of morality? If so, would it be morally wrong for a psychopath to kill other humans?

ThinkAboutThis wrote:Is it wrong for a non-moral agent (a bear) to kill a moral agent (a human)?

No, it is not immoral. Only moral agents are held responsible for the consequences of their actions because moral agents can understand and change their actions to produce different consequences.

ThinkAboutThis wrote:Or do ethics only apply to those who can properly grasp the concepts of morality?

Right. It's probably a spectrum, like sentience.

• A baby is not held morally responsible for their actions because they cannot understand their actions or their consequences
• A child is held somewhat responsible for their actions because they can crudely understand their actions and the consequences of those actions
• An adult / teen is held morally responsible for their actions because they can understand their actions and their consequences

Age or species isn't necessarily always the issue though. If someone has no opportunity or resources for a proper moral education then they may only be as morally responsible as the child.

ThinkAboutThis wrote:If so, would it be morally wrong for a psychopath to kill other humans?

No, because a psychopath is able to understand the implications of his actions.

A better example would be a severely retarded human being, who would likely not be able to understand his or her actions.

Like Cirion said.

It's still a harmful consequence, so it would be moral to intervene and stop it, but the bear is probably only minimally morally culpable (when we talk about responsibility for the action)

Cirion Spellbinder wrote:No [yes?], because a psychopath is able to understand the implications of his actions.

Psychopaths understand that killing humans is against the law, and know they'll be held accountable for their actions if they're caught, but this is nothing more than social conditioning, they don't actually understand or feel why it's wrong. In the same way as a cat is instructed to defecate in certain areas, or a pet dog is taught to not bite people, they've learned these behaviours as bad, but nothing deep down can comprehend why that is so.

Perhaps to the degree that psychopaths aren't directed or motivated by moral considerations (either independently or collectively with other beliefs), and if this is an essential condition for moral agency -- the psychopath isn't doing something that is morally wrong; no objective moral principle would apply.

ThinkAboutThis wrote: Psychopaths understand that killing humans is against the law, and know they'll be held accountable for their actions if they're caught, but this is nothing more than social conditioning, they don't actually understand or feel why it's wrong.

You don't need to have an emotional connection to empathy to understand intellectually why it is wrong. In fact, an emotional bias may make understanding the concept of morality more difficult for some.

One conceivable prerequisite could be seen to be a "theory of mind" -- which is something children, including psychopaths, develop at around five years of age -- so they can understand that other people have their own interests, knowledge, and can be harmed. Likely this understanding comes earlier than that in a more primitive form, but that's just an example of one quality which could be seen as relevant.

Whether or not they care about harming others is irrelevant -- they can understand that in fact they are harming others, and that's what matters.

A cat playing with a mouse doesn't necessarily have a concept of the suffering it is causing, or how it is violating the mouse's interest. A psychopath does, and just doesn't care.

ThinkAboutThis wrote: In the same way as a cat is instructed to defecate in certain areas, or a pet dog is taught to not bite people, they've learned these behaviours as bad, but nothing deep down can comprehend why that is so.

I don't agree with that, I think you're looking at this backward.

Cats like to poop in certain places because they don't like there to be poop everywhere; they're predisposed to be hygienic. Now they may not understand WHY they don't like for there to be poop everywhere. These are feelings, as distinct from a conceptual understanding of hygiene and its value (which the cat may lack).

Anyway, the point is that the desire of a cat to be hygienic is much like the desire of a non-psychopath to help others due to empathy. It's a crude feeling, which does not necessarily have a strong connection to the larger intellectually understood concept of hygiene or morality.

Clinically administered thought experiments often demonstrate psychopaths more capable of understanding morality, just not necessarily as interested in practicing it.

brimstoneSalad wrote:Clinically administered thought experiments often demonstrate psychopaths more capable of understanding morality, just not necessarily as interested in practicing it.

Would you mind sharing one or two?

Cirion Spellbinder wrote: Would you mind sharing one or two?

I think this article is talking about one:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ma ... s-are-they
Note: I didn't read it carefully, and I think this is a different place from where I read about it originally.

brimstoneSalad wrote:You don't need to have an emotional connection to empathy to understand intellectually why it is wrong. In fact, an emotional bias may make understanding the concept of morality more difficult for some.

You're right in asserting that empathy doesn't serve as the grounds for moral values, however, it does act as a means of understanding why these moral values exist. Empathy offers a way for emotional learning. Without this emotional learning, one lacks the competence of gaining a moral understanding, which would prevent the foundation of moral values. For this reason, whether a psychopath completely lacks empathy or simply has impaired empathy, it would make no significant difference as they both prevent adequate emotional learning and moral understanding.

Although, a psychopath can be held legally responsible for something, because the agent must simply have mens rea in order to know that society deems that action to be illegal. However, contrary to legal responsibility, for an action to be viewed as a moral transgression, the agent must understand that the action falls under the category of morally wrong, and intentionally commit that action. To obtain this knowledge, the agent must gain it through a comprehension of morality -- this comes from a developmental emotional learning process that needs an ability for empathy.

Excuse the bad drawing, but the distinction between moral responsibility and legal responsibility would be something like this:
Fulfilment of these two responsibilities likely comes as a package deal for people who are well-equipped.

brimstoneSalad wrote:One conceivable prerequisite could be seen to be a "theory of mind" -- which is something children, including psychopaths, develop at around five years of age -- so they can understand that other people have their own interests, knowledge, and can be harmed.

This doesn't suggest moral agency.

Wikipedia wrote:Moral agency is an individual's ability to make moral judgments based on some notion of right and wrong and to be held accountable for these actions. A moral agent is "a being who is capable of acting with reference to right and wrong."

brimstoneSalad wrote:Cats like to poop in certain places because they don't like there to be poop everywhere; they're predisposed to be hygienic. Now they may not understand WHY they don't like for there to be poop everywhere. These are feelings, as distinct from a conceptual understanding of hygiene and its value (which the cat may lack).

What I mean is, a dog who has been trained to not bite people because it's wrong, yet cannot comprehend why it's wrong, is akin to a psychopath who abides to his legal responsibilities (i.e. not harming people), yet cannot comprehend why it is morally wrong -- due to impaired emotional learning and moral considerations.

ThinkAboutThis wrote: You're right in asserting that empathy doesn't serve as the grounds for moral values, however, it does act as a means of understanding why these moral values exist.

Not at all. There is a big difference between understanding and feeling.

Morality is a concept, and psychopaths fully grasp it. The lack of empathy may reduce their compulsion to act in accordance with it, but it doesn't mean they don't understand the concept, and motivation is aside from the fact of understanding.

ThinkAboutThis wrote: Empathy offers a way for emotional learning.

Merely feeling something is wrong is distinct from knowing why. Psychopaths know why it is wrong in concept, they just don't necessarily feel averse to it.
Morality can even be said to be more meaningful, and not less, when somebody acts in accordance with moral knowledge without the feels.

As an example:

A person loves dogs and feels empathy for them, and would feel bad for eating one: The choice to not eat dogs is not necessarily a moral one based on an understanding of morality and the decision to act accordingly, but one of emotional whim.

A person does not emotionally love or care about fish but intellectually understands that they are sentient beings, and so despite enjoying the taste and not being emotionally bothered by their deaths chooses not to eat them for moral reasons. This is a moral choice alone, not diluted by an arbitrary personal or emotional whim.

A person thinks flowers are pretty and loves them and his or her feelings are hurt when flowers are smashed: The person chooses to eat animals instead for fear that flowers will be smashed in plant agriculture. This is an irrational emotional whim that is at odds with and contradicts moral action.

Vegans are frequently accused of being simply emotional, and not eating animals because it makes them feel sad. Arguing that empathy or other feels are essential to morality basically reinforces this stereotype, and undermines the vegan position by giving people who don't feel that empathy permission to behave in any way they don't feel bad about behaving despite being fully capable of understanding that their actions are harmful.

We need to glorify rational, intellectual, choices to behave morally over emotional biases that guide behavior based on what makes a person feel bad or not.

ThinkAboutThis wrote: Without this emotional learning, one lacks the competence of gaining a moral understanding, which would prevent the foundation of moral values.

Not at all. As demonstrated by studies on psychopaths, they can fully understand ethics; it's a logical process. The idea that they couldn't undermines the notion that morality has philosophical value as a consistent position that is independent from emotional whim.

Just like somebody who understand the law but doesn't care to follow it, the same applies to psychopaths and moral behavior. Of course, not all people on the psychopathic spectrum choose to shun rational moral behavior. Less emotional and more analytical people actually make the best activists because they're capable of looking at the evidence and participating in more effective altruism.
Rather than paying out the ass to help a cute puppy with cancer, we can spend our time and money effectively on something out of sight but much more meaningful in terms of reducing suffering.

Emotional impulses are very often in competition with, and even contradict, morality.

Wikipedia wrote:Moral agency is an individual's ability to make moral judgments based on some notion of right and wrong and to be held accountable for these actions. A moral agent is "a being who is capable of acting with reference to right and wrong."

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 -- the only aspect of it is that it may encourage action (assuming the emotional biases themselves don't foil effective altruism enough to make those people less effective than the psychopaths).

ThinkAboutThis wrote: What I mean is, a dog who has been trained to not bite people because it's wrong, yet cannot comprehend why it's wrong, is akin to a psychopath who abides to his legal responsibilities (i.e. not harming people), yet cannot comprehend why it is morally wrong -- due to impaired emotional learning and moral considerations.

Quite the opposite. Dogs are emotional social beings, and they feel bad when they bite somebody because the person is hurt and they empathize; however, they do not have a fully developed theory of mind and do not understand that the other person has distinct feelings and interests -- this empathy is based instead on the unconscious firing of mirror neurons. Dogs are far from psychopathic, and have been bred to be extremely empathetic (but even their ancestors were, as social animals).

A Psychopath does not feel bad at all, but intellectually understands why it is wrong based on a theory of mind, and actual knowledge of how the other feels, and that the other is a distinct mind with its own wants that can be harmed -- whether the psychopath actually acts in accordance with that to be moral is another matter aside from the point.


But I think what you're trying to get at is purity of intention, and that's a complicated discussion which favors neither the empathetic nor the psychopathic.

In order to have a pure moral intention, you have to be doing a moral act because it is moral and only because it is moral. This is the only way you get full credit for acting morally.

Somebody who is deeply empathetic may be said to only be behaving as such because it makes him or her feel good through the non-rational empathetic mechanism, rather than because it is in accordance with rational morality.
Somebody who is psychopathic may be said to only be behaving in such a way because he or she fears punishment, not because it is in accordance with rational morality.

See the problem we arrive at there?
In reality, partial credit is very much important -- people do things for a mix of reasons, those things being moral being one of the reasons. But empathy has no bearing on that intention; that is something else entirely.
To the extent you are acting because of empathy, you are not acting because of morality just the same as to the extent you are acting because of fear of legal or social punishment you are not acting because of morality.

brimstoneSalad wrote:Morality is a concept, and psychopaths fully grasp it.

According to what evidence?

brimstoneSalad wrote:The lack of empathy may reduce their compulsion to act in accordance with it, but it doesn't mean they don't understand the concept, and motivation is aside from the fact of understanding.

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.

Having an adequate moral understanding requires some kind of mechanism for the comparison of values and goals of others with our own. On those grounds, moral understanding requires an appreciation of the fact that one's interests might conflict with those of others, so psychopaths can easily universalise their own intentions without recognising any inconsistency.

brimstoneSalad wrote:Psychopaths know why it is wrong in concept, they just don't necessarily feel averse to it.

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.

Similar to this:

Abstract wrote:The long-term consequences of early prefrontal cortex lesions occurring before 16 months were investigated in two adults. As is the case when such damage occurs in adulthood, the two early-onset patients had severely impaired social behavior despite normal basic cognitive abilities, and showed insensitivity to future consequences of decisions, defective autonomic responses to punishment contingencies and failure to respond to behavioral interventions. Unlike adult-onset patients, however, the two patients had defective social and moral reasoning, suggesting that the acquisition of complex social conventions and moral rules had been impaired. Thus early-onset prefrontal damage resulted in a syndrome resembling psychopathy.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10526345

brimstoneSalad wrote:Vegans are frequently accused of being simply emotional, and not eating animals because it makes them feel sad. Arguing that empathy or other feels are essential to morality basically reinforces this stereotype, and undermines the vegan position by giving people who don't feel that empathy permission to behave in any way they don't feel bad about behaving despite being fully capable of understanding that their actions are harmful.

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.

Anyway, I'm a bit busy this weekend so I can't address this as thorough as I would like to, but I'll get back to the rest of it after.