ABSTRACT
This chapter considers psychopathy as a special case to explore connections between empathy and legal responsibility. The germane literature reveals mounting evidence for the postulate that lack of empathy and overall emotional depravity of psychopaths impedes internalization of moral norms. The chapter proposes that this impediment, in turn, affects what the empathically or emotionally deprived individual sees, on occasions of choice, as salient alternatives from which to choose, and how this individual weighs or judges the importance of such alternatives. It comments on replacement thesis. The chapter explains how these two factors – salience and ranking of alternatives – bear on legal culpability. Empathic depravity may affect not only one's ranking of alternatives but also which alternatives one deems salient, and one's motivation to translate salient alternatives into action. Empathic and emotional depravity, as result of affecting probabilities of performing what psychopaths deem to be their salient alternatives, should affect which of their salient alternatives they are motivated to perform.
