CORRESPONDENCE
| Published date | 01 January 1975 |
| Date | 01 January 1975 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1975.tb01404.x |
| Author | Nigel Walker |
CORRESPONDENCE
THE
ED~TOR,
THE
MODERN LAW REVIEW,
“
Diminished Mental Capacity
I’
Dear Sir,
I
found Professor Fingarette’s article
(1974) 37
M.L.R.
264,
on this
subject very interesting, and
I
hope that he will not mind if
I
draw attention
to what seems to me an important difficulty.
As he says, central to his formula is the concept of rationality. Yet
I
cannot
find in his article a’definition of rationality. It is true that in his book
The
Meaning
of
Criminal Insanity
he devotes several pages to the meaning
of
the
word; but what
he
has to say there is not entirely satisfactory.
To
begin with:
“It is when ‘rational’ and ‘irrational’ pertain to conduct
.
.
.
and when
they can
be
used to characterise not only intellect but also the emotions,
attitudes, desires and the person himself, that we have
a
use which is central
to the concept of insanity
”
(p.
180).
So
we have an adjective which is sufficiently protean to be applied to persons.
emotions, attitudes, desires, conduct; and in the article it is also applied
(repeatedly) to control of conduct, and (once) to
“
awareness.”
The book does indeed mention, in
a
slightly dismissive way, several of
the senses in which “rational” and
“
irrational” can be precisely used,
although curiously it does not mention at least one important sense, in
which
a
choice
or
a
chosen course of conduct is said to be rational if it is
consistent with,
or
at least not inconsistent with, the actor’s aims. This
is
a
pity, because it is
one
of the more prccise uses
of
the term, and
a
use
which would pose some awkward problems.
For
example,
a
paranoid man
who feared for his life at the hands
of
fancied enemies, and did not trust the
law
to
protect him, might choose to kill his fancied enemies; and given his
beliefs this would be
a
rational choice. Again, a depressed parent who kills
his family and himself to spare them the terrible future which he foresees
would be acting rationally in this sense.
But Professor Fingarette says in his book
@.
184)
that his task is not to
find the
“
one, true meaning
”
of the term, but to identify the usage which is
central to such concepts as responsibility and insanity. It turns out that this is
what he calls the
“
weakest
”
sense
@.
185).
“
‘
Irrational
’
in this use amounts
to
a
rejection of descriptions in any of the familiar and normative and
judgmental terms which presuppose that the conduct is intelligible, relevant
to relevant norms.
. . .”
Rational, in other words, means intelligible,
or
relevant to the situation.
Yet here again he is in difficulties which he does not really face. The
paranoid man’s attack on his fancied enemies,
or
the depressed parent’s
killing of his
or
her children becomes
“
relevant
”
and
“
intelligible
”
as soon
as one
is
told what they feared, although what Professor Fingarette clearly
wants
is
to be able to call them irrational. At best such responses
to
fancied
situations can be said to be “excessive,” and certainly this is a sense which
Professor Fingarette mentions earlier: but it does not
seem
to satisfy him, nor
should it.
The trouble is that whether conduct is intelligible
or
relevant depends on
what is known by the observer about the beliefs and rules
of
conduct
of
the
subject. Granted that sometimes the bizarre behaviour of some mentally
disordered people seems irrelevant
or
unintelligible even to those who can
communicate with them, this criterion would not classify as irrational nearly
as many people as Professor Fingarette wants to treat as excusable. And
119
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