What Is the Philosopher’s Role in Interdisciplinary Research?

Do psychopaths suffer from impairments that undermine their capacity for moral reasoning and behavior? And, if so, does that mean they are not (fully) morally responsible for their actions? The first, empirical question might seem to be rather straightforward, whereas the second, philosophical question might seem more complex and therefore more difficult to answer. In their rich and thought-provoking paper, Jalava and Griffiths target the first question. They forcefully remind us of the fact that answering empirical questions can be just as complex as answering philosophical ones. Do psychopaths suffer from responsibility-relevant moral impairments? Based on the empirical data Jalava and Griffiths discuss in their paper, one cannot but agree with their modest conclusion that this question simply cannot be answered at this time. The experimental findings allow for too many divergent interpretations to justify any definitive claims about the existence of such impairments in cases of psychopathy.

The main goal of their paper, however, is to send out a word of caution to philosophers involved in interdisciplinary research. The authors discuss the work of several philosophers who, they argue, based their argument for psychopaths’ reduced moral responsibility on simplistic and selective readings of the available evidence regarding their moral capacities. This, they conclude, “is not only unhelpful, but it may even undermine the value of interdisciplinary collaboration between social scientists and philosophers” (2017, p. 9). This point, too, is well-taken. As philosophers, we are sometimes tempted to take premature interpretations of empirical data at face value in building our arguments and thinking through their logical implications.

Jalava’s and Griffiths’ critical assessment of the current situation in psychopathy research raises an important question. What could (or should) the philosopher’s role be in interdisciplinary research? In the discussion toward the end of the paper, they briefly touch on this issue. Their focus, however, is on explaining the shortcomings of current philosophical work in their field of research. In this way, the paper ends on a rather negative note. But I think there is more to Jalava’s and Griffiths’ cautionary tale than a slap on the philosopher’s wrist. In the remainder of this commentary, I will focus on their discussion of Blair’s (1995) experiment on the moral/conventional distinction. This allows me to then briefly explore a more constructive perspective on the philosopher’s role in interdisciplinary research.

As Jalava and Griffiths explain, Blair (1995) gave subjects vignettes of moral and conventional transgressions and asked them whether the act was permissible, how serious the act was, and whether the act was permissible if an authority figure said it was. Blair hypothesized that psychopaths would not distinguish between moral and conventional transgressions and would treat all transgressions as conventional. The study found that the psychopaths who participated in the experiment indeed did not make the moral/conventional distinction. Surprisingly, however, they treated both types of transgressions as moral. How to explain these findings? Jalava and Griffiths mention three possibilities: 1) contrary to our intuitions and expectations, the psychopaths in the study in fact had an uncompromising moral compass, 2) the psychopaths lied, conned, and manipulated in the experiment, simply faking good to win early release, and 3) the psychopaths may have faked good, but they were also incapable of making the moral/conventional distinction (Blair’s own interpretation). They criticize philosophers for siding with Blair’s interpretation (option 3) and for “by and large ignoring the obvious explanation” (Jalava & Griffiths, 2017, p. 5); that is, option 2. In support of their interpretation, they cite a study by Aharoni, Sinnott-Armstrong, and Kiehl (2012) in which psychopathic subjects were asked to predict how others would rate moral and conventional transgressions. Under these conditions, psychopaths made the moral/conventional distinction just as well as controls.

According to Jalava and Griffiths, this study ‘confirms the obvious,’ namely, that in Blair’s original experiment, the psychopathic subjects simply faked good for the purposes of impression management. But why is this obvious? Here is another possible explanation, not backed up by any evidence as...