Levy Argumentative Essay

In the next section, I make a novel argument in defense of Levy’s position that circumvents objections like these. Rather than focusing on how deficits in mental time travel diminish moral responsibility, which will necessarily rest on a number of controversial premises, I focus on how these deficits might diminish legal responsibility, specifically, the penological justification for retributive punishment. I argue that if we hold psychopaths fully blameworthy for harming others, then we are legally obligated to hold juveniles fully blameworthy for harming others. Juveniles and psychopaths share many of the same neurological deficits as a consequence of incomplete or stunted neurodevelopment. Thus, many of the arguments the Supreme Court have made against retributively punishing juveniles apply to psychopaths as well. I argue that there is, therefore, no in principle reason for blaming psychopaths and not juveniles. If one largely mitigates juveniles’ blame, then one must proportionately excuse psychopaths for similar violent offenses.
My argument will support Levy’s goal of “fewer people being unjustly held morally responsible” (2014: x) …show more content…
First, it outlined the neurobiological research on mental time travel and argued both that psychopaths have deficits in mental time travel and that these deficiencies are also present in children/adolescents. It then argued that because dysfunction in the default network is sufficient to clear minors of some degree of blame, it also ought to diminish the degree to which psychopaths are morally responsible for harming others. One novel consequence of this argument is that it extended Levy’s argument into the legal realm. Not only did it suggest that psychopaths, or at least some psychopaths, are not fully morally responsible, but it argued that just as retributive justice is not fully justified against children, it is not fully justified against