Panel Conversation: Psychopathy, Emotion, and Moral Responsibility

Date
Feb 27, 2017, 4:30 pm6:00 pm
Location
Lewis Library, Room 120

Details

Event Description

The nature of psychopaths' emotional and moral deficits and their lack of deep emotional ties to others have been discussed and debated by philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists. This panel discussion will continue that conversation, giving students and other interested members of Princeton's academic community the opportunity to hear from experts on controversial issues concerning psychopathy, moral responsibility, and the significance of their emotional and interpersonal limitations.


Moderated by: Monique Wonderly, Harold T. Shapiro Postdoctoral Research Associate in Bioethics 

Adrian Raine is the Richard Perry University Professor, Departments of Criminology, Psychiatry, and Psychology, at the University of Pennsylvania. His main area of interest is neurocriminology – a new sub-discipline of criminology which applies neuroscience techniques to probe the causes of and cures for crime. Raine's laboratory focuses on risk and protective factors for childhood conduct disorder, reactive and proactive aggression, adult antisocial personality disorder, homicide, and psychopathy. His lab is also working on biological interventions for antisocial behavior, such as nutritional supplements. Lab researchers take a biosocial perspective to their investigation of antisocial behavior in which their end-goal is to integrate social, psychological, and environmental processes with neurobiological approaches to better understand antisocial behavior. Raine is also interested in how this knowledge has implications for law.

Kent Kiehl is an author and neuroscientist who specializes in the use of clinical brain imaging techniques to understand major mental illnesses, with special focus on criminal psychopathy, psychotic disorders (i.e., schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, affective disorders), traumatic brain injury, substance abuse and paraphilias. Kiehl designed the one-of-a-kind Mind Mobile MRI System  to conduct research and treatment studies with forensic populations. To date his laboratory has deployed the Mind Mobile MRI System to collect brain imaging data from over 3000 offenders at eight different facilities in two states. This represents the world’s largest forensic neuroscience repository.

Agnieszka Jaworska is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of California-Riverside. Previously she was at Stanford University, where she taught courses on Ethical Theory, Moral Psychology, and Medical Ethics, and was part of the Program in Ethics in Society. Earlier Jaworska worked in the Department of Clinical Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health. Her current project, entitled “Ethical Dilemmas at the Margins of Agency,” concerns the ethics of treatment of individuals whose status as persons is thought to be compromised or uncertain, such as Alzheimer’s patients, addicts, psychopaths, and young children. It is part of a larger project on the nature of value and the moral psychology of valuing. Jaworska’s recent research has been published in journals including Philosophy and Public Affairs, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, and Ethics.

Matthew Talbert is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at West Virginia University (WVU) and Chair of the Philosophy Department. He has been at WVU since 2007. Before that, he was a faculty fellow researcher and lecturer in philosophy at the University of California-San Diego. Talbert works on ethics, moral psychology, and philosophy of agency. His current research focuses on approaches to moral responsibility and conceptions of blameworthiness.

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