Q&A: Conscience and Morality
Conscience and Morality
Question
In your opinion, is it possible to be moral without a conscience? Is it possible to persuade a person without a conscience (for example, a psychopath) to follow the rules of morality, and not out of his own interests?
Answer
That is an interesting question, and it occurred to me when I read the book A Beautiful Mind about Nash. He was a paranoid mathematician who imagined that people were persecuting him, and toward the end of his life he learned to live with those vivid delusions and ignore them, because everyone around him told him they were imaginary. This is an impossible dilemma, since experientially he was of course convinced that everyone else was mistaken, but it seems that intellectually he understood that they were right, and so he forced himself to live according to their view against his own experience. The question is whether it is possible to convince a person without a conscience that he is missing something, and that in fact it really is wrong to act this way or that, against his own experience.
Discussion on Answer
Is there a reason the Rabbi does not answer this question:
https://mikyab.net/%d7%a9%d7%95%d7%aa/%d7%90%d7%aa%d7%97%d7%9c%d7%aa%d7%90-%d7%93%d7%92%d7%90%d7%95%d7%9c%d7%94/
I saw a really interesting video about a psychopath who became a devout Christian, and it reminded me of this question. Enjoy:
Another interesting question is whether it is correct to relate to such a person as an immoral person—that is, whether morality can be determined hypothetically (what he would do if he had a conscience, assuming there is something like that in him that simply is not expressed in his current state).