On Extreme Mental Illness and Moral Culpability

[danieldwilliam]

I don't think this very strongly but I do think it.

Even if you have a severe mental illness you are not exempt from moral responsibility for your actions. I am thinking of the sorts of mental illness that involve someone become a serial murder of other people.  There are many, many statements of basic moral codes and I think it is obvious from them that murdering people is frowned upon and pretty universally so.

If someone finds themselves in a position where they think it might be an okay thing to do they have access to all of human culture saying "It's probably not okay."

There is an external reference point to check the internal workings of your brain against. And I think someone who can reason remains morally obliged to periodically calibrate their own mental process against the outside world and where there is a significant difference between the two take efforts to understand that difference, check the validity of intenal and external models and take action to Do Good or at least avoid evil.

I totally get that it becomes fuzzier the less extreme the action but at the extremes I think, if the inside of your head says it's okay to kill someone you retain moral culpability for not double checking with the rest of the humanity.

Other people appear to disagree with me - so I'm keen to calibrate my own moral processes. I'm prepared to be talked out of this.

Comments

[andrewducker]

"ought to be subject to judgement"

So there's a moral imperative for other people to judge them?

"are a danger to the rest of us and ought to be removed"

Yes, but that's purely a health and safety issue, and nothing to do with morality.

"Secondly, they are very unwell and ought to be treated for their illness"

Absolutely. I'm all in favour of helping ill people.

"clear, universal, deep and consistently held moral views"

There are no such things. Any reading of history will tell you this, in great detail, repeatedly.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I don't think there is a particular moral imperative to judge them. I think they can be morally judged. Their insanity has not removed them from the set of things to which a moral judgement can be applied.

I didn't say them being a danger was anything other than a health and safety issue and I consider it the most important aspect of the treatment of the very dangerously mentally ill.

And I'm all in favour of helping ill people. I'd prioritiise the health and safety aspects over treatment aspects where those two were incompatable and I'd heavily weight the risks so a small risk of a loss of containment was given a high importance. I hope we can find a way of doing both.

I think history demonstrates the opposite. Many people, individually or in groups, have broken moral precepts repeatedly. All of them have been judged. Usually not judged very effectively in terms of moderating their behaviour.

[andrewducker]

One can apply a moral judgement to a person (or a cat, or a rock, I suspect). People do that kind of thing all the time. Aint nobody stopping you.

"Many people, individually or in groups, have broken moral precepts repeatedly. All of them have been judged."
Yes. But that doesn't make the moral precepts universal. Gay people have been judged for breaking moral precepts against being gay, homophobes have been judged for breaking moral precepts against being homophobes. Clearly both of those groups can't be being judged for the same morality. So the fact that they have been judged doesn't make the views universal, or consistent.