Abstracts
Résumé
Conformément à une tradition faisant des sujets manifestant un fonctionnement psychopathique des êtres moralement aveugles, voire moralement morts, les discussions ayant trait à leur agentivité morale ont pendant longtemps jugé subsidiaire l’analyse des mécanismes volitifs et conatifs, pourtant essentielle pour comprendre leurs agissements immoraux. Partant plus spécifiquement du décalage qui semble, au regard de certaines données récemment publiées, s’opérer chez ceux présentant ce type de personnalité entre jugements moraux et choix moraux, nous proposons dans cet article de discuter tour à tour les théories susceptibles de venir expliquer ce fossé qui sépare ce que le psychopathe reconnait (ou peut, d’une manière générale, reconnaitre) et ce qu’il fait. Après avoir présenté l’hypothèse – problématique en plus d’un sens – en faveur d’une faiblesse de la volonté associant la psychopathie à l’acrasie, nous exposons les apports respectifs des conceptions rationalistes et néosentimentalistes, avant d’interroger le présupposé qu’elles partagent avec les théories de l’incontinence psychopathique. Nous argumentons en effet que chacune de ces trois positions tend implicitement à octroyer à ces individus dyssociaux une propension à recourir à une certaine forme d’activité délibérative peu étayée sur le plan empirique. Une discussion resserrée autour des caractéristiques prudentielles relevées dans la psychopathie nous conduira au contraire à défendre l’idée selon laquelle l’immoralité de ceux qui en sont atteints n’est, dans la plupart des cas, qu’un effet collatéral d’un manque d’appétence pour le processus d’autoévaluation réflexive. Et nous verrons qu’il y a de fortes raisons de croire que cette irréflexivité – qui rend compte d’un grand nombre de facettes du mode d’existence de la conscience psychopathique tout en restant compatible avec les principaux modèles explicatifs aujourd’hui privilégiés pour éclairer les décisions morales qui s’en dégagent – est directement liée à la vie affective (extrêmement pauvre) du psychopathe. Nous terminons en avançant que ce lien entre déficit émotionnel et carence réflexive fait apparaitre de nouvelles perspectives pour penser les différents types de profils moraux retrouvés au sein des diverses formes de psychopathie que nous suggérons de répartir le long d’un continuum sur lequel s’étendent plusieurs niveaux (ou degrés) de déficience expérientielle.
Abstract
In accordance with a tradition depicting individuals with psychopathic functioning as morally blind, or even morally dead, discussions concerning their moral agency have for a long time neglected the analysis of volitional and conative aspects, whose contribution is nevertheless crucial in our understanding of their immoral actions. Based on the findings about the discrepancy that seems to occur, in this type of personality, between moral judgments and moral choices, we propose in this article to discuss the several theories that might explain this gap between what the psychopath recognizes (or can, in a general way, recognizes) and what he does. After having presented the hypothesis - problematic in more than one sense - of a weakness of will associating psychopathy with acrasia, we expose the respective contributions of rationalist and neo-sentimentalist conceptions, before questioning the presupposition they share with theories of psychopathic incontinence. We argue that each of these three positions implicitly tends, with little empirical support, to ascribe to these dyssocial individuals a propensity to resort to some form of deliberative activity. An in-depth discussion of the prudential characteristics of psychopathy will lead us, on the contrary, to defend the idea that the immorality of those who suffer from it is, in most cases, only a collateral effect of a lack of appetite for the process of reflective self-evaluation. And we will see that there are strong reasons to believe that this lack of reflection - which accounts for many facets of the psychopathy construct while remaining compatible with the main explanatory models now favored to understand the psychopath’s moral decisions - is directly related to the (extremely poor) emotional life of psychopaths. We conclude by arguing that this way of linking emotional deficit and reflective impairment offers new perspectives for thinking about the different types of moral profiles found within the various forms of psychopathy that we suggest to distribute along a continuum on which levels of experiential deficiency extend.
Appendices
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