Abstract

It has recently been argued that persons diagnosed with a personality disorder ought to be held responsible for their actions because these actions are voluntary. Defending this claim, Hannah Pickard contends that exercising choice and control are definitive of voluntary action, and that the behaviors that are constitutive of PD are behaviors over which we have choice and control. Thus PD behaviors are voluntary, and on this basis, their agents can be held properly responsible for this type of behavior. In what follows, I examine this claim with reference specifically to agents who display impulsive behavior, where this behavior is taken to be diagnostic of antisocial personality disorder...