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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.
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.
