 Of central importance for assessing the role of empathy for grasping the moral/conventional distinction has been the research on the nature of psychopathy and autism. Both pathologies are seen as involving deficits in different dimensions of empathy but only psychopaths have great difficulties in living up to moral standards of their societies and only they were originally thought of as having difficulties in appropriately distinguishing between moral and conventional norms (Blair 1995 and 1996). More specifically, psychopaths show a selective deficit in affective or emotional empathy particularly in “processing fearful, sad, and possibly disgusted facial expressions”(Blair 2010, 710). In contrast to persons with autism they however do not show similar deficits in perspective taking or theory of mind capacities. In his 1995 article, Blair therefore blames the absence of what he calls the Violence Inhibition Mechanism(VIM) that allows us to respond appropriately to the observed distress cues in others for the psychopaths’ moral deficits and their inability to draw the moral/conventional distinction. In his later work, he speaks more broadly of a dysfunction of our Integrated Emotion System (IES), caused by a deficit in the amygdala to properly represent negative emotions. (Blair, Mitchel, and Blair 2005, for a recent survey regarding the very specific deficit of psychopaths in feeling and recognizing fear see also Marsh 2014). Yet one has to tread very carefully in drawing definite conclusions about the role of empathy for morality from the empirical research about psychopathy. The results of the empirical investigations are far from unified and do not point in the same direction (For a concise survey see Maibom 2017). Newer studies, for example, seem to suggest that psychopaths, as measured by the overall score of the revised psychopathy checklist (PCL–R), are able to understand the distinction between moral and conventional norms if tested under a forced choice paradigm (Aharoni et. al 2012.)Nevertheless even that study seems to allow for the possibility that emotional deficits are responsible for the psychopath’s shortcomings in accurately drawing the distinction since they are somewhat linked to the affective and antisocial facets of the PCL–R. Given the inconsistent results of the various studies, other researchers prefer to view a psychopath’s immorality not as a specific deficit in empathy, but understand it to be caused by their general inability to feel strong emotions, by their general coldheartedness, or even by shortcomings in their rational and prudential capacities. From that perspective, a psychopath might understand in an abstract manner that certain things are morally wrong to do, but he just does not care for morality, the welfare of another person, or even for himself. (For further discussion see Maibom 2005 and 2009, Nichols 2004, and Prinz 2011a,b). Similar considerations apply also to research regarding subjects with autism. Kennett (2002)has argued that evidence from autistic individuals, whose imaginative role-play and thus empathic capacities are diminished, does not support the claim that empathy is necessary for moral agency. Yet in her arguments she only considers the fact that persons with autism have difficulties with putting themselves in another person’s shoes but does not consider that they seem to have some ability to pick up on the emotional states of other people as revealed by their facial expressions. Moreover, while autistic subjects in general can distinguish between moral and conventional norms they do seem to lack a certain flexibility in evaluating the seriousness of the violation of a moral norm when they reflect on moral dilemmas or when they encounter an accidental or unintentional violation of such norms. (See McGeer 2008, Zalla et. al 2011, but see also Kennett 2011 and Leslie et. al. 2006 in response). 