Personality disorder and moral responsibility. (360G-Wellcome-079493_Z_06_Z)

When psychiatrists address the issue of personality disorders, they do so from two standpoints. On the one hand, they try to place these in an explanatory, deterministic context. On the other, they often face the task of deciding when and to what extent patients with personality disorders should be held responsible for their actions. Moral responsibility rests on assumption of free will i.e. that the person could have done otherwise. However, some of history's famous moral statements (e.g. Martin Luther, "Here I stand, I can do no other") make it clear that the freedom or otherwise of actions may not be the critical issue. Instead, we may need to focus on moral character and the extent to which an individual is responsible for this. Theories of free will exist on a spectrum which runs from "hard determinism" at one end, through various "compatibilist" theories (i.e. that free will is compatible with determinism or that moral responsibility is compatible with the absence of libertarian free will) to "radical libertarianism" at the other (Kane, 2002). Determinist theories of action have a clear plausibility but also pose a serious threat to any concept of a moral order and to many of our ideas of what confers value on persons. The present project has two main aims. The first of these is to review recent thinking on free will and to apply this to the issue of personality disorder and moral responsibility. The second is to examine ways in which we might be seen as responsible for our moral characters. This will seek to extend my work on the psychology of aesthetics.