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RE: Justice in a stateless society, peaceful parenting and the morality of coercive imprisonment for punishment: a short essay. (Dispute resolution, restitution and peaceful parenting)
You raise a good point - even if the psychopath can’t truly be rehabilitated, if he can be encouraged to “act as if” that’s a serviceable solution. I understand many such people do just that, as they find it more advantageous. Hey, not everyone can make it to high seats of power and afford themselves the luxury of living above the usual risks associated with being a scoundrel.
This was something i got from Ludwig Von Mises in 'Human action' (science of human action/micro economics) where he points out that people can have ends that make no sense to other people but their actions to get there can be completely rational.
So, they're acting rationally to get what they want even if what they want is not healthy or moral eg ' i want power (ends) so i will lie, cheat and steal (means)', if they were unable to be a 'rational actor' they would have to be categorised as a deterministic object, so if they can act rationally for the ends of say power they have shown themselves to have a capacity to act rationally for the benefits of not being ostracised.
As long as you're a rational actor in the above sense (you can make rational choices to achieve an end) then i think ostracism, self defence, voluntary restitution and the other ideas would still work.
Maybe they wouldn't be able to give sincere apologies and such but, restitution needs to be something that is negotiated and if they can be shown to be a psychopath then the two parties could take this in to account when negotiating, even if not a psychopath restitution is always whatever both parties agree on.
The key issues with psychopathy being lack of empathy and utter selfishness, I suppose there's no reason why these people can't be made to understand why it's in their best interest to play nice. After all, many of them do now.
The bigger question for me is the matter of defensive force. If I catch a murderer in action, but by the time I pull out my gun, the deed is done, am I obliged by morality to refrain from killing him? The defensive opportunity being lost, am I now in a new category of moral obligation?
I can see how it is so, since rehabilitation is possible. What we're saying here is that there is no just punishment; there is only restitution. I can't find any ground to debate this point, given my current moral understanding, so I suppose I'm bound by it...
It's a bit of a tough pill to swallow when considering this scenario of a mere instant between justifiable homicide and murder. Then again, whether a minute or a year, revenge is not defense. So there we have it, I suppose.
'I can see how it is so, since rehabilitation is possible. What we're saying here is that there is no just punishment; there is only restitution. I can't find any ground to debate this point, given my current moral understanding, so I suppose I'm bound by it...
It's a bit of a tough pill to swallow when considering this scenario of a mere instant between justifiable homicide and murder. Then again, whether a minute or a year, revenge is not defense. So there we have it, I suppose.'
^^This is where the logic lead me too