A psychopath’s take on morality
What is morality? What are ethics? Are they different or the same thing? Where do they come from? Do psychopaths have any moral sense? The answers to these question and more may surprise you…
This is a fairly long article (2721 words, to be precise) and written in the style of an academic paper, albeit with some pictures and video clips for fun, and without the months of research and a shit-ton of references at the end that usually make an essay. Despite the title, it has little relevance to psychopathy at all until the last third. This is a more complete exploration of ethics and morality, the differences between the two, their origin and value, as well as their relevance to, and presence in, the psychopathic mind – or as complete as you can be in 2721 words, which is not very.
If you have a quarter of an hour and are interested in philosophy or morality in general, I hope you will enjoy reading this and learn something. If not, you could skip it and your life would be no worse for your decision. Indeed, it could be slightly improved as you gain back the minutes you might have spent reading something you have no interest in. So make your choice now.
Introduction
I am an atheist. If you have met a psychopath, it’s likely that you are one too. So, here are two of my beliefs, which will act as the assumptions underpinning this entire piece:
- There is no God-given law of ethics;
- There is no higher authority on ethics (that we know of) than human beings
But, ethics clearly exist in some sense of the word. Humans talk of certain actions as “right” or “wrong” and report to feeling “bad” when they contravene their own sense of right and wrong. Furthermore, countless philosophical texts attempt to define and unpick morality. All of the major religions claim to teach the most morally-perfect way of life. Every political ideology is founded on a particular moral perspective. Wars have been fought, empires have risen and fallen, countless lives have been lost when different systems of morality have clashed. Laws are assumed to be written to uphold ethics in order to protect humanity from itself. Ethics are real, and they are a force to be reckoned with.
Ethics are dependent on people
But if ethics are real, where do they come from? If you allow me to get a bit metaphysical for a minute, generally a claim that something exists implies a claim of physical existence. Physical existence predicates a physical location in space. So where are ethics, and how do we mere mortals know about them? Since they’re not written on an enormous stone tablet in Heaven, nor are they programmed into the fabric of the universe by God, where do ethics reside? You might say in the law, to which I say “whose law?” Kantian ethics? United States Federal Law? Islamic Shariah law? Well international law, you might say, supersedes any one nation or culture’s laws. And it finds its legitimacy in the International Declaration of Human Rights. That’s as may be, but 70 years ago there was no international law and no universally accepted human rights. But ethics were still around then, so they pre-date and are separate from international law.
No, if ethics come from anywhere at all, it is from people. People form ethical beliefs themselves but the ethics are not ‘out there’ in the world. If people were to disappear, so would ethics. And only people can behave ethically or unethically. It is neither right nor wrong for a tree to crush a house, for a wolf pack to hunt a deer, for a volcano to destroy a city or for a male gorilla to rape a female in its harem. However, a development company bulldozing somebody’s treasured family home, a group of hunters shooting a deer, a government using nuclear weapons to destroy a city and a man raping a woman can be submitted to moral scrutiny. People believe these things to be wrong. Why? Because humans have free agency. We are capable of behaving immorally precisely because we believe in morality. Note that I am not saying any of these things are right or wrong, merely that it is possible to make a moral judgement about each of them in a way that is not possible when talking about a volcanic eruption. Before humans achieved sentience there were no ethics, and once we’re gone, assuming we’re not replaced by another sentient species, ethics will disappear too.
Ethics vs morality
So ethics owe their existence to people. And because people are different from one another, the conception of right and wrong varies from person to person. Though individuals within specific ‘morality camps’ (based on religion, culture, philosophy etc…) differ less than the camps differ from each other. And some moral ‘laws’, seen as universal within certain cultures, are directly contradicted by other cultures’ morality. Polygamy within marriage is perfectly virtuous for some Muslims, but it is considered immoral in most forms of Christianity. Western ideals of democracy and freedom mean nothing in North Korea.
And so it is for most actions. Looking around the world, you will find that promiscuity, property ownership, the consumption of pork, beating disobedient children, the use of drugs, blasphemy, gender and racial equality, swearing, theft, the consumption of human flesh, homosexuality, forced marriage, sex with children, sex between children, slavery, politeness, war and the killing of animals (among many, many others) have no universal or even majority consensus on their moral status. So which is true? Is it the case that pigs are inherently dirty creatures and eating their meat is disgusting, or are they simply another animal to be eaten? Is it perhaps the case that pigs are fine to eat, but the animal you really mustn’t touch is the cow, but not because they’re dirty but because they are sacred? Is it in fact true that all animal life is valuable and vegetarianism is the only moral eating choice? Or is it veganism which is the more moral? To argue that one of these options is the ethical solution and that all other interpretations are wrong is cultural arrogance and your only basis for claiming so is based on the insupportable claim that your way of life is better than any other. On the other hand, to mince around by claiming all views on the matter are true is patently false, since “It is wrong to eat pork” and “It is okay to eat pork” directly contradict one another. They cannot both be true. My solution is that no claims about eating pork, or eating meat in general or any of the other issues listed above have any truth to them. The only truth is that people’s beliefs vary. Statements that e.g. “drug use is wrong”, “men should take multiple wives” or “slavery is unethical” holds as much truth as that animated gentleman’s empty assertion that “drugs are bad, mmkay. If you do drugs, you are bad, mmkay, because drugs are bad”.
This being the case, individuals and groups are free to decide that they do not like a particular action and they are free to take any action within their community to discourage said action, even make laws against said action. But they are not free to claim moral superiority.
There is, however, a very small list of actions which are wrong in almost every society. Murder is one. Rape is another. It is hard to think of a third one, perhaps lesser kinds of assault. Even these three have their exceptions. For murder, it is generally okay to kill enemies, be they members of a rival tribe or soldiers from a hostile country. Some societies accept the killing of criminals as punishment for their crimes. Some cultures allow ritual sacrifice. Certain governments give themselves the right to kill their own citizens. But almost everywhere the random murder of one person by another within a society is considered wrong. Many societies condone rape within marriage and some support the ritual rape of children as a rite of passage. It is often the done thing to rape the women of a conquered society. But at the level of somebody prowling the neighbourhood looking for people to force into sex, rape is almost always seen as a bad thing at a societal level. The same goes for assault. Many societies encourage corporal punishment as a form of discipline: whipping, caning, forced amputation, “an eye for an eye”. Few or no societies encourage random acts of violence in the street.
It is important to draw a line between actions which are arbitrarily right or wrong (like theft, homosexual acts, eating meat) and actions which are ‘universally’ wrong (murder, rape). The former we can call morality; it is vague, inconsistent and highly subjective. The latter can be labelled ethics; they are unambiguous and objective, at least within human society. So in many cultures, slavery is immoral (i.e. contrary to the morals of that culture) but it is not universally unethical because there are some cultures where it is moral. Ted Bundy’s brand of serial murder and rape, by contrast, is both immoral and unethical, in any society.
Given the fact morality differs from culture to culture, it is likely to be true that morality arises from culture. For example, not eating pork is a morality which stems from Jewish and Islamic culture. But if ethics remain broadly unchanged, regardless of the culture, they must come from something deeper. There is clearly a definitive answer to this somewhere, though as of yet there is no consensus on what that answer might be. This being the case, I am free to propose my own theory for the origin of ethics, which does not claim to be either scientific (I have not conducted any experiments to test my theory) or unique (while I devised this theory entirely independently, I am not under any delusions that I am the only person ever to do so).
Theory of Ethics
Humans are social animals. I am no sociologist, but the importance of this fact cannot be understated. We evolved from apes which lived in small-to-medium-sized family groups into living in societies of varying sizes from tribes with a few dozen members to continent-spanning countries with hundreds of millions of people. But for most of human history, everyone lived in small tribes, so much so that this has had a deep impact in evolutionary terms. Even with today’s megacities and social media connecting us to literally millions of people, it is still the case that humans can only maintain a stable social circle of around 150 people – a number not dissimilar to the population size of prehistoric societies. But where do ethics come into this?
In order to maintain a society, there has to be a minimum level of understanding and cohesion between its members. And that must surely include trust that the people who defend the village you live in, hunt the game you eat, make the clothes you wear, build the hut you sleep in, grow the crops you use to make bread and brew beer, are not going to kill you in your sleep or rape your loved ones. There is a third ethic, as we have already noted, which incorporates murder and rape as well as adding other less serious acts: violence in general is not tolerated within a society, because a group that is at each other’s throats is not a society. So in order to reduce infighting and promote unity, empathy developed. And people generally have an innate bad feeling about killing and violence, even if killing and violence is fairly common. This also explains why people seem to have one rule for those they care about (those within the group) and another for people they don’t (those outside). After all, while tribes thrived on internal co-operation, they could only survive to begin with through conflict with other tribes for resources. War is grudgingly accepted as a necessity (and hence immune to ethics) in the way that killing your children, your neighbours or other people in your society is generally not.
Enter the psychopath
But even these so-called “universal” ethics are only universal to 95% of the population. There are, of course, those of us who do not feel bad about killing and violence, and entirely uncoincidentally do not have a great deal of empathy or interest in social unity either. Yes, we are finally talking about psychopaths. What is one adjective which can describe all psychopaths? Anti-social. Psychopaths may live in society, but they’re not really part of it. Sure, they make use of society’s benefits and they may even contribute to the overall benefit, but fundamentally psychopaths are in it for themselves and have no problems breaking societal rules, either of the ethical or moral variety, when it suits them to do so.
Why do psychopaths exist? Well, when psychopathic traits are rare, there is a definite evolutionary advantage to possessing them. Here comes the bragging. We are smarter and more aware than you. We are willing to do anything to succeed, whereas you are limited by your ethics and morals. We understand enough of your society to exploit it without needing to betray ourselves to its service. We are better liars, better leaders (these two not being mutually-exclusive) better seducers, than you will ever be.
But there’s a catch. The more successful an evolutionary trait is, the more common it becomes and the more common it becomes the less of an advantage it is. Psychopaths can easily become victims of their own success. And though it pains me to admit it, a society with too many psychopaths is a society that will fail. Society needs empathic people who believe in ethics and morals otherwise it will collapse. Great for those psychopaths already on the very margins, just getting away with murder or else currently incarcerated. Not so great for those of us who reap the benefits that come from living within society.
That psychopaths do not have ethics should presuppose an absence of morals too, but this is not necessarily the case. I don’t have any ethical sense in that I do not feel that murder and violence are wrong. But I do have a set of morals within which I try to live. The two differences between my moral code and yours are that I do not feel bad about breaking my own moral code on purpose when the ends justify the means (doing so accidentally, on the other hand, does cause me some discomfort) and that some of my morals would only be shared by somebody like me.
An example of the former is that I am, for all intents and purposes, a utilitarian: the action which has the greatest benefit for the greatest number of people is the correct (or “morally right”) action to take. This gels very well with my logical mind; in every day life I decide what to do based on a cost-benefit analysis. When the benefit is there, using utilitarianism as a moral compass to live as easy as possible is very useful indeed. When the cost is more significant (for example when utility would demand a very great sacrifice on my part for the overall benefit of others), utilitarianism can be abandoned for something altogether more selfish. Another example, I view some friendships as a contract whereby as long as they are providing x, I will make sure I y (e.g. If I find their company stimulating or entertaining, I will actively seek to benefit rather than harm them, the logic being that if they enjoy my company too, they will continue to be an enjoyment to me). Due to my nature, I sometimes unintentionally break these contracts due to selfishness and that bothers me because it causes me to lose the friendship. In doing so, I demonstrate my capacity for regret, which is as selfish as it sounds – I regret losing that which made me happy- but is regret nonetheless.
An example of the second difference (morals that only a psychopath would have) is “to thine own self be true”. Whereas most people would view this statement merely in terms of self-identity, I take it altogether more literally. My primary function is to help myself. Ergo, where helping others takes precedence over helping myself, I am being true not to myself but to the weakness of others. Altruism is self-betrayal and time spent helping others when you could be helping yourself is shameful weakness, and morally repugnant to me. Another related example, religious worship whereby you degrade yourself into servitude of a ‘higher power’ is akin in my mind to selling yourself into slavery. I am aware that my principles are very probably different to yours, but they are my principles and I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t hold them.
Conclusion
So where does the existence of psychopaths leave ethics and morality? Well, morality is relatively unchanged, in that psychopathic morality can be considered just another perspective, another falsehood if you will. My selfish morality has no objective superiority or inferiority to any other morality. It is true for me in the way that Catholic morality is true to the Pope, but it has not higher universal truth.
On the other hand, the universality of ethics are challenged by the reality that they are not shared by everybody, i.e. they are not, in fact, universal. Since ethics come from people and not all people are privy to ethics, ethics are not universal. Why is universality important? Because without it, ethics are no truer than morality. Unsurprisingly, I am perfectly fine with this. But you, as an ethical human being, may find that troubling. But there are three ways you could perhaps overcome this universality problem:
- Claim that universality can only ever mean the vast majority (95%+ of a population), rather than absolutely everyone. This is a decidedly weak claim.
- Concede that universality has to mean 100% of a given sample size, but that it doesn’t really matter that ethics are not universal, the importance is they are held by the majority. Not as weak, but if you accept this, you might as well no longer draw any truth distinction between “murder is wrong” and “eating pork is wrong”.
- My personal favourite, an elegant solution which distinguishes itself from the subtly different options 1 and 2. Claim that ethics are universal, to the social community. This social community makes up the 95% of the human population that is not psychopathic. They are likewise universally absent from the anti-social community (the 5% who are psychopaths). Happy? 🙂
sdorttuiiplmnr 09:19 on July 27, 2015 Permalink |
I like the efforts you have put in this, thank you for all the great articles.
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James 11:44 on July 27, 2015 Permalink |
Spam
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andrewjameshayward 10:58 on July 27, 2015 Permalink |
Describing a psychopath as inherently evil, suggests they have some sense of morality. That cannot be true. If psychopaths have a sense of what evil is, logic dictates that they also have a sense of what good is. Knowing the difference between good and evil requires a sense of morality. Psychopaths are amoral. By that token, they are neither good or evil. Their behaviour is simply self-serving, even when it comes at great cost to others’.
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James 11:25 on July 27, 2015 Permalink |
That’s a very interesting way of looking at it, AJ. So you would class psychopaths in with the volcanoes, falling trees and horny monkeys?
Let me put it to you that I do know the difference between good and evil. I know about morality because I just wrote about it. But I don’t feel bad when I behave immorally – or unethically – so my knowledge of evil doesn’t prevent me from doing evil.
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Amaterasu Solar 13:30 on July 27, 2015 Permalink |
Ethics has three Laws – they are the same as Common Law:
Do not willfully hurt or kill anOther without Their fully informed consent
Do not willfully take or damage anOther’s property without Their fully informed consent
Do not willfully defraud anOther (which can only happen without Their fully informed consent)
Morals are more subjective and cultural – a woman in a bikini in public is VERY immoral in some cultures.
Personally, I have no issues with anyOne who does not break the three Laws of Ethics, and though I may think some moral views are silly, mostly I agree with moral views as well, as they have a foundation in Ethics.
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James 14:28 on July 27, 2015 Permalink |
I was wondering when you’d get around to repeating yourself here 🙂 See the article for my response to your three laws.
“Morals are more subjective and cultural” – exactly what I said. So that’s okay! (actually it was you who gave me the idea for the ethics / morals distinction, do you remember?)
So I take it you don’t approve of my stated morals, Amy? 🙂
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James 09:45 on July 28, 2015 Permalink |
I am very keen to talk ethics with you, Amy. How about it?
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BEWARE THE PSYCHOPATH, MY SON | No Psychos, No Druggies, No Stooges 08:03 on July 28, 2015 Permalink |
[…] A psychopath's take on morality […]
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Fran Nowve 01:57 on August 14, 2015 Permalink |
Delightful article. I can’t take issue with any of it. I agree that too many psychopaths would ruin it for all of us. How nice that most people have empathy and are held back from doing things we are free do do if we want to.
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Deconstructing Psychopathy? | kiasherosjourney 16:51 on April 11, 2016 Permalink |
[…] believe, something real. There are psychopaths in every culture on earth. And some moral values are universal. But, according to The Myth of the Born Criminal: Psychopathy, Neurobiology, and the Creation of […]
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Fairness | CLUSTER B 18:54 on October 4, 2016 Permalink |
[…] shocked at how much a specific example of injustice can bother me. Fellow blogger, James, wrote A psychopath’s take on morality, sorting out morality or ethics, this thing that seems to occupy so much of the lives of those […]
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Free to Choose | CLUSTER B 10:46 on November 11, 2016 Permalink |
[…] A psychopath’s Take of Morality by James. An excellent discussion on the Ethical and Moral implications of psychopathy in light of the actual functionality of these concepts within societies. Highly recommended. […]
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Quaker Mutualist 12:30 on March 7, 2018 Permalink |
I agree with your denunciations of Divine Command Theory (which I will go over later) but I think you need some pointers on ethics (I do not say this to be rude or pretentious, I am saying this as I have studied philosophy extensively and have made it part of my academic project in graduate school, and also it is a hobby of mine to study theology and philosophy [with concentrations in ethics, theological social ethics, political theology, and political philosophy]).
For example, you describe your actions as essentially utilitarian on the basis that you behave in a manner that is instrumentalist in attaining objectives. This is a misunderstanding of Utilitarianism as Utilitarianism is necessarily communitarian. Clarifying, policy X cant be accurately denoted as utilitarian unless X is aimed toward a maximization of communitarian well-being/happiness/interests. This is because meta-ethically, utilitarianism is based on the presupposition that all ethical agents are objects of ethical reflection and application thereby demanding a communitarian social framework when implementing policy.
Rather, the ethical philosophy that is accurate for your own moral code here it seems is Stirnerite Egoism (or just egoism). Egoism prizes the autonomy of the individual and views concepts such as ethics, religion, etc as being societal constructs that do nothing but restrain the expression of the self. Other forms of egoism include the view that what is ethical is whatever is in my self-interest, that people are not obligated to do what is outside their self-interest, etc.
Also, your proof against Moral Realism is lacking as well (I am rusty on my meta-ethics so this paragraph may be a bit lacking). Your view is called Moral Non-Cognitivism, aka the view that ethical propositions do not express factual statements and are only capable of indicating personal views. However, the proof you use for support of this view is known as Moral Descriptivism, which is known as the view that moral propositions can only serve as descriptive statements and that as such, percieved disparities indicate inability to hold truth value (I may be reading into your post however, but this view seems to be the closest to what you expressed even if they aren’t identical). Both of these views go out the window if one were to accept Kant’s meta-ethics of morality being categorical norms identified through rationalist self-legislation (deontology). Under Kant’s view, “moral cognitivism / moral realism”, moral statements serve as prescriptions whereby the validity of the ethical statement (i.e. “It is unethical to engage in murder” vs “murder is completely okay, ethically”) is its’ correspondence with what is reasoned through rationalistic self-legislation. In other words, according to ethicists like Kant (and many many many other ethicists from other schools of thought), consensus about ethical norms is irrelevant to their truth. For an example of some ethical works by academics, read “Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals” by Kant, “Critique of Practical Reason” by Kant, and “Rethinking Democracy” by Carol Gould. Keep in mind, none of this is extensive.
Also, you diffrentiate between ethics and morals. Most academic philosophers do not recognize a difference and merely recognize “ethics” as the academic term and “morals” as a colloquial term. There are some thinkers who do mark a difference, but most dont.
Now to my favorite part. I see you dislike Divine Command Theory, and I do as well. My reasoning, however, is very different. You may think it is wierd that I dislike DCT because I’m a Quaker, but I will refrain from explaining that and will merely explain my proof against DCT:
DCT may be defined as the ethical program in which a deity or supreme being is an ethical sovereign.
Therefore, DCT holds that if deity X commands Y, Y is now an ethical law.
Classical Theism holds that God is intrinsically, and inseperable from, good.
Therefore Classical Theists who affirm DCT believe that God is both a moral legislator and intrinsically of positive ethical value.
(We will now assume the beliefs of the CT to show why they are impossible)
If DCT is true and the will of God determines ethics, then his will precedes moral truth / goodness.
If God’s will precedes moral truth and goodness, God cant be intrinsically good because God’s goodness is contingent upon norm creation, making his goodness contingent and therefore not intrinsic.
Therefore DCT is false because DCT doesn’t allow God to be intrinsically good.
Therefore, God either doesn’t exist or morals need to be derived elsewhere [maybe even both!] (such as Kantian Deontology, for example).
I apologize for the lengthy essay-comment. I enjoy talking about this stuff. I also feel obligated (ha) to mention that I enjoy seeing your posts because Psychopathy intrigues me very deeply, even if it creeps me out.
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James 18:42 on March 7, 2018 Permalink |
The less said about Kantian deontology the better. I have yet to read anything that persuades me that Kant and his ilk can chuck any version of moral relativism out of the window.
The distinction between “ethics” and “morals” is not important. Rather, the choice of words is not important. We might as well talk about “type 1 ethics” and “type 2 ethics”, or “ghujus” and “felkies”. The distinction I made was between those ethics which are highly subjective depending on whom you ask and where in the world you are, and those ethics which are largely consistent no matter who you are and where you come from, the type of ethics which has the best claim at being universal to human societies
Your argument against Divine Command Theory is simple and effective. There is of course a way around it without rejecting either DCT or the existence of God. We simply have to deny that God is intrinsically good. Whatever laws this non-intrinsically-good God decrees is what is “moral”, the rest is what is “immoral”. Becoming that kind of immortal and all-powerful being is this psychopath’s fantasy.
But away from that, I think there are all sorts of things wrong with intrinsic goodness. To be intrinsically good is not to be effortlessly good, but rather to be necessarily good. If God were intrinsically good, He would have no choice but to be good. The idea of a deity with no choice over how He behaves is absurd. (LONG ASIDE A deity that is not good through any superior moral character, that does not know “goodness” as a result of aeons of reflective pondering of the question of “what is good?” in the manner we are doing right now, and that is not capable of choosing to be anything other than good is not something to be worshipped. It would be like worshipping the sun for being hot or worshipping water for being wet. As human beings, we are strivers. We admire people who struggled for what they have more than those who were handed everything on a plate, those who become good at something through hard graft rather as a result of being effortlessly talented. So the idea of people worshipping a divine form of this has always struck me as bizarre. A god that was capable of doing evil and had done so on occasions in the past but who mostly and consistently chose to do good because He loved His creation and wanted to do right by it strikes me as one who would be a much better object of worship and adoration.) An intrinsically good God cannot decide to be bad, and so He is not anything approaching all-powerful. An all-powerful God necessarily has the ability to do evil, and so cannot be intrinsically good, because His moral character cannot be so great as to necessarily exclude the possibility of His ever doing evil. And since know of power’s great ability to corrupt human beings, it is easy to image how a God with unlimited power but only limited goodness could easily come to exemplify many people’s conception of evil…
But overall, the existence of either type of logically conceivable god (omnipotent but morally imperfect, or morally perfect yet impotent) could serve to explain the nature of the world we live in as much as could a no god situation.
And so we come to my questions. They’re questions which I could ask of almost anyone, but I’m choosing to ask you because you strike me as somebody who will be able to provide a satisfying answer. I could ask them of almost anyone because the sentiments expressed in “Psychopathy intrigues me very deeply, even if it creeps me out.” come up time and time again in these comment threads, so are evidently widely-held. My questions are very simple yet perhaps not so simply answered; why does psychopathy intrigue you? Why does it creep you out?
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Quaker Socialist Anarchist 19:19 on March 7, 2018 Permalink |
I agree, I’m not a Kantian either. I was just using him and his program as an example because deontology is easy to explain.
On the morals-ethics paragraph, I agree there too, I just always have to butt in about the academia usage of the terms because I see it a lot where I’m at. I was just being nit-picky.
On your argument against DCT, that this would diminish God’s omnipotence, I agree but would like to point out that some theologians would counter that omnipotence doesnt encompass logistical impossibility. I think that such a counter would be invalid, however, because such a condition seems to not be warranted by any definition of omnipotence. I dont hold to traditional theology by any means, though, so I am fine with all the problems being dug up on classical theism – in fact such criticisms work with my own program.
As for your questions, I will try and answer them extensively.
Psychopathy intrigues me because, put simply, I have an aesthetic appreciation for the darker facets of the universe. The concept of a pathological condition whereby emotional experiences with ethics and empathy with other people are simply not there definitely fits the bill for that. I guess it is a Lacanian phenomenon (Lacan held that humans have a subconscious attraction and desire to safely observe the alien, dangerous, and creepy).
As for why it creeps me out, I would say its’ because of my nature as highly empathetic. I am more empathetic than most people. I simply cant imagine my life without my emotional experience with ethics. Me thinking about the fact that there are people out there with an inverse scenario, emotional apathy toward ethics and a lack of remorse, sort of unnerves me.
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James 19:52 on March 7, 2018 Permalink |
The characterisation of psychopathy as one of “the darker facets of the universe”, while vaguely flattering, is also nonsensical. Psychopaths are not in any way “darker” (in whatever sense this is employed) than anyone else. The ‘dark triad’ of personality types really is a tired and tiresome dogma in psychology, and it’s time it was put to bed.
Your Lacanian phenomenon explanation certainly seems plausible, at least with regard to being attracted to the alien. However, you then go and undermine it with what you write next.
Do you see the irony in claiming a superior level of empathy, but being unable to grasp the experience of those not on your level? Do you think that what basically amounts to revulsion in the face of difference best exemplifies an empathic and open-minded person? It unnerves you because it’s not you and you can’t empathise with it, and that serves to underline the limits of your empathy.
This is not an attack but an academic observation. As you have correctly identified, all these kinds of discussions are merely academic to me.
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Garrett Gore 20:25 on March 7, 2018 Permalink |
When I said darker, I used it for lack of a better word. I guess I probably could have used better terminology such as “alien” or whatnot. The point is, attraction to the unfamiliar and prima facie unnerving. I wasnt making some sort of archaic anstract denunciation of psychopathy as much as I was trying to denote my attraction to things I interpret as strange, alien, unnerving, etc.
I also fail to see the underminding of my Lacanian explanation as “dangerous” and “creepy” are not necessary pre-requisites for an experience to classify as Lacanian. You can leave Alien in there (which was what i was trying to get at anyways) and leave it at that and it’d still be accurate.
I have actually thought about that (your point about empathy), very much so in fact. I have an inability to comprehend the worldview of a psychopath and for that reason I am both intrigued and somewhat creeped out by the concept of the psychopath. But going on, it seems that perhaps there was a misunderstanding of what I was hoping to convey when I was talking about my own experience as having a more active emotionality than others. I wasnt attempting to denote a sense of moral superiority by virtue of my status as an empath/neurotypical/whatever, but rather setting the stage for why the concept of remorselessness is alien to me hence my categorization of my scenario as Lacanian and why my own particular scenario exhibited an emotional pathology that may be considered as existing in greater than usual degree. Or to put it in simpler terms, I was moreso attempting to talk about my, frankly overactive, emotionality.
As for your statement about it forcing me to encounter my own limits of empathy, this is something I acknowledge actually. A big part of my own personal philosophical project was formulating how a psychopathic pathology would fit in my (Levinassian) ethical program and this was something that an ethicist I found actually exhasperated to the readers. My statements about my empathy, as I said in the preceding paragraph, were moreso meant to convey a picture about my emotionality using colloquial terms (ironic since I nit-picked you on misusing a colloquial term lol).
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James 06:32 on March 8, 2018 Permalink |
There’s no point writing a longer reply if you’re not going to read it (ever the pragmatist, lol), but I will let you know that I’ll probably be reading your blog from now on, and want to bend your ear about your philosophical project.
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Quaker Socialist Anarchist 20:58 on March 7, 2018 Permalink |
Anyways, I probably wont reply anymore because I’m gonna be going to bed soon and I’ll probably forget to come check back.
But, I do wanna take the time to let you know that your posts have been very interesting to read, and have helped me in understanding psychopathy.
I apologize if anything I may have said seemed backhanded or disrespectful as a neurotypical/empath talking to a psychopath – if I did indeed do this, I would like to make it known it wasn’t intentional and was probably me typing out impuslively (I have a high rate of this one as well lol).
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Quaker Mutualist 13:01 on March 7, 2018 Permalink |
I just saw some mistakes in my long comment. I said you misused the term “utilitarian,” but that was a mistake. I reread the essay and I see that you used it with a communitarian connotation.
I’m sorry for that, I read your essay in a car and was reading (and writing) on my phone.
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James 14:20 on March 7, 2018 Permalink |
Hello, and welcome! I will read your other comment later on; it looks really interesting and worth my time when I’m not pressed.
Since I’m in the final year of a philosophy degree, it would be embarrassing indeed if I had misused the term 😉
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Quaker Mutualist 15:16 on March 7, 2018 Permalink |
I probably made some mistakes myself actually. I havent gotten to graduate school yet and so I am still doing smaller-scale academic work.
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