Sentimentalism Vs Empirical Rationalism

There are many different types of rationalism and sentimentalism. The dictionary definition of rationalism is “the doctrine that reason alone is a source of knowledge and is independent of experience”. Rationalism is how people reason that something is good or bad, weighing the pros and cons. The two types of rationalism that we discussed are conceptual rationalism and empirical rationalism. “Conceptual Rationalism claims that it is part of our concept of morality that moral requirements are requirements of reason” (Nichols 73). Conceptual Rationalism shows that when we are trying to justify our actions we think about whether it is morally right. “Empirical Rationalism …claims only that it is an empirical fact that human psychology that moral

This is because many believe that psychopaths understand that something is wrong when they are doing it. “…recent studies suggests that psychopaths really do have a defective understanding of moral violations” (Nichols 77). So in other words, psychopaths fully understand that their actions of say, hurting someone is wrong; however, they just do not care, their urges suppress any type of rationalism. Also, this ties into moral and conventional distinction. Moral distinction is like punching another person, while conventional distinction is like shouting out the answer in class instead of raising your hand. Moral transgressions are never right, but conventional transgressions can be justified even if they are still wrong. “It seems then, that although there is a sense in which psychopaths do know right from wrong, they do not know (conventional) wrong from (moral) wrong.” (Nichols 79). Normal people can distinguish between the two but psychopaths only think conventionally, they can justify all of their actions even if they are horribly

In Chapter 9, Nichols discussed ways that empirical rationalists could make some justifications about psychopaths. He stated that maybe “moral understanding depends on perspective-taking abilities”, or psychopaths “suffer from some general deficit in rationality” and last but not least, they suffer from “intellectual arrogance”. Whichever one it is, psychopaths lack the mentality of a normal person and instead feed off of the degrading of others.

In order for Empirical Rationalists to make this option plausible, he would need some principled account of what kind of rational abilities underlie the capacity for making the moral/conventional distinction, then show that those rational abilities are missing in the psychopath.

They lack the little voice that tells them that their actions are wrong and they have no fear of the consequences or how others will look at them. They don’t contain the moral/conventional