Open Thread, November 23-30, 2013

passive_fist

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

I had actually been wondering about this recently. People define a psychopath as someone with no empathy, and then jump to "therefore, they have no morals." But it doesn't seem impossible to value something or someone as a terminal value without empathizing with them. I don't see why you couldn't even be a psychopath and an extreme rational altruist, though you might not enjoy it. Is the word "psychopath" being used two different ways (meaning a non-empathic person and meaning a complete monster), or am I missing a connection that makes these the same thing?

The nearest term used in contemporary psychiatry is antisocial personality disorder. AFAIK some forensic psychiatrists use the term psychopath, but the criteria are not clear and it's not a recognized diagnosis. Forget about the press the term gets.

Lack of empathy certainly isn't sufficient for either label, and can be caused by other psychiatric conditions.

8kalium13y

You don't notice someone has no empathy until you see them behaving horribly. The word is being used technically to refer to a non-empathic person, but people assume that all non-empaths behave horribly because (with rare exceptions like this neuroscientist) all the visible ones do.