Reply To: Ethical and legal question about CSS and JS codes.

[chrisburton]

a sociopath (as I understand it, in simplistic terms) has no understanding of right or wrong

Where did you learn that? I encourage you and Michael to read this article from the Oxford Journal on right and wrong relating to psychopathy.

Conclusion of the article:

We conclude that psychopaths make the same kind of moral distinctions as healthy individuals when it comes to evaluating the permissibility of an action embedded in a moral dilemma. Consequently, these results support the hypothesis that normal social emotional processing does not appear necessary for making these kinds of moral judgments. Normal emotional processing is likely to be most important in generating an appreciation of these distinctions and in guiding actions (Huebner et al., 2008). Psychopaths know what is right or wrong, but simply don’t care. Given that legal distinctions often turn on whether crimes are committed knowingly (e.g., Model Penal Code), these results could have bearing on court decisions concerning the nature of moral knowledge – i.e. instead of strictly focusing on criminal actions carried out knowingly, we should also focus on whether such knowingly immoral and illegal actions are carried out caringly. Equally important, these results may shed light on treatment, pushing clinicians to distinguish between the sources of deficit regarding morally relevant decisions and actions.