Even if you can’t feel empathy on an intuitive level, you can still learn it on an intellectual level and abide by a moral code. You don’t have to feel that something is wrong to know that it is wrong.
But do they? My understanding of psychopathy is that they only mask with learned moral codes to hide in plain sight. These same people are very keen on seizing opportunities that meet their desires regardless of consequences to others or morality if they calculate that they can get away with it.
Prisons are full of stupid psycopaths because they can’t calculate this correctly and have poor impulse control. Boardrooms are full of the smart ones with impulse control who can mask successfully.
Psychopaths are human beings still, and humans believe in things / have values and principles. In psychopaths those beliefs and values are not informed by feelings of empathy or compassion, but by consequences and understanding, and that tends to make a selfish worldview more likely but not inevitable. It is possible - even if unlikely - for a psychopath to come to the conclusion that values of altruism and cooperation are in their interest because they like living in the kind of world that results from these values being practiced and want to perpetuate it.
Based on what?
Even if you can’t feel empathy on an intuitive level, you can still learn it on an intellectual level and abide by a moral code. You don’t have to feel that something is wrong to know that it is wrong.
But do they? My understanding of psychopathy is that they only mask with learned moral codes to hide in plain sight. These same people are very keen on seizing opportunities that meet their desires regardless of consequences to others or morality if they calculate that they can get away with it.
Prisons are full of stupid psycopaths because they can’t calculate this correctly and have poor impulse control. Boardrooms are full of the smart ones with impulse control who can mask successfully.
Psychopaths are human beings still, and humans believe in things / have values and principles. In psychopaths those beliefs and values are not informed by feelings of empathy or compassion, but by consequences and understanding, and that tends to make a selfish worldview more likely but not inevitable. It is possible - even if unlikely - for a psychopath to come to the conclusion that values of altruism and cooperation are in their interest because they like living in the kind of world that results from these values being practiced and want to perpetuate it.
Very thoughtful, but I think this supports my argument more than yours. :p