Thomas Schramme

The chapter starts from a specific interpretation of what it means to know the difference between right and wrong, which stems from Gilbert Ryle. To know the difference between right and wrong implies caring about morality. The author links Ryle’s ideas to the notion of being a moral person. Two different ideas found in moral philosophy are delineated, namely, the amoral person, that is, someone who rejects the demands of morality, and the morally incapacitated person, that is, someone who cannot take those demands into account. Psychopaths are not amoral in the philosophers’ sense of the word, but are incapable of, or seriously deficient in, taking the moral point of view.