1 IntroductionNeuroscience is increasingly revealing the neural foundations of our perception of the world and our behavior in it. As explanatory effort touches on concepts such as “person,” “responsibility,” and “free will,” friction arises between established ways of describing and judging people and actions, and what neuroscience claims tell us about the real nature of these things. . The heat has turned up, and the rising conflict is perhaps best felt in the courtroom, where institutionalized common morality is confronted with new ways of looking at old problems. Some expect a revolution, others see nothing new in it. In what follows, I will examine the claims on both sides of the debate, beginning with an understanding of morality as a world of knowledge in which most of us participate effortlessly and which is imbued with meaning and value. Viewing morality as a kind of knowledge is motivated in part by the recognition that some individuals seem to lack "moral knowledge" altogether: such people may have a superficial knowledge of ethical concepts, but are completely outside the world of values. morals that most of us accept. taken for granted (and which is at the very basis of the most relativistic rejection of universal moral principles). Thus, psychopaths, as these people are colloquially (and clinically) known, will here serve the function of providing an illuminating exception to the rule of moral knowledge. In light of recent findings about the possible neural substrates of psychopathy and the inability of psychopathic individuals to qualify for traditional exculpatory insanity, these individuals will also provide a suitably challenging argument for conflicting views on traditional criminal responsibility . paper......an introduction with readings. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press.NUSSBAUM, MC 1995. Emotions and capacities of women. Women, culture and development: a study of human capacities. Oxford University Press.RACINE, E. 2010. Pragmatic Neuroethics: Improving Mind-Brain Processing and Understanding, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press.ROSKIES, A. 2003. Are Ethical Judgments Intrinsically Motivational? Lessons from “acquired sociopathy”. Philosophical Psychology, 16, 51-66.SAVER, JL & DAMASIO, AR 1991. Preserved access and processing of social knowledge in a patient with acquired sociopathy due to ventromedial frontal damage. Neuropsychologia, 29, 1241-1249.SHIN, LM, RAUCH, SL & PITMAN, RK 2006. Amygdala, medial prefrontal cortex and hippocampal function in PTSD. Ann NY Acad Sci, 1071, 67-79.SINGER, P. 1991. Animal Liberation, London, Thorsons.