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1 results

  • Chapter 4 - Emotions and Value

  • Jim Baxter, University of Leeds
  • Book:
    Moral Responsibility and the Psychopath
    Published online:
    27 August 2021
    Print publication:
    16 September 2021, pp 98-131

  • Summary

    In this chapter, I begin to develop an account of why psychopaths are unable to see other people as sources of value, a claim that is necessary for the central argument of the book as developed in Chapter 3. Having described psychopathy as a condition characterised primarily by emotional deficiencies, I look to the emotions for evidence of why psychopaths are as they are. I consider the three main philosophical theories of the emotions – cognitivist, ‘feeling’ and perceptualist theories – before settling on a hybrid account, according to which emotions are complexes of thought and feeling. Based on this, I interrogate the relationship between emotions and value, suggesting that emotions play a role in our ability to ascribe value to things in the world. I then trace the implications of these conclusions for the ability of psychopaths, given their emotional deficiencies, to engage evaluatively with the world.