Are You a psychopath?

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Are You a psychopath?

This is a genuine psychological test. It is a story about a girl.
Whilst at the funeral of her own mother, she saw this guy whom she did not know. She thought this guy was amazing, so much her dream guy she believed him to be, that she fell in love with him there and then... A few days later the girl killed her own sister.

Question: What is her motive in killing her sister? DON'T Scroll down until you have thought what your own answer is to this question!!!!!

She was hoping that the guy would appear at the funeral again. If you answered this correctly, you think like a psychopath. This was a test by a famous American psychologist used to test if one has the same mentality as a killer. Many arrested serial killers took part in this test and answered it correctly. If you didn't answer correctly - good
for you. If your friends hit the jackpot, may I suggest that you keep your distance.

chant
Anonymous's picture
i would say that R's definition of what the psychopath is not is, in fact, what the psychopath is. whereas i would label the condition that R claims to have psychosis, which means a disorder of the soul. i think that strictly speaking, the psychopath acts in an emotional state, as a result of suffering, perhaps having been tortured as a child, etc. whereas the psychotic acts without emotion - the disorder being such that he feels nothing for other human beings. i don't know how helpful the 'lone hunter' analogy is, unless your psychotic is living alone on a desert island. what is practical about stabbing someone in a supermarket because they're in the way? there is no practical benefit in being psychotic in society, for society can only exist as a result of cooperative behaviour, and must, in order to survive, exclude cases of extreme individualistic behaviour. it may be the case that people misuse the word moral, just as they misuse say, sacred texts, subverting them to suit their own purpose. but just as the subversion of the sacred text does not render the text itself meaningless, so subversion of the meaning of the word 'moral' does not destroy the intrinsic content of the meaning of the word, unless everyone in the world forgets its intrinsic meaning, or finds a new word to carry it.
Henstoat
Anonymous's picture
The initial post, though, was about identifying psychopaths, and the condition you say is psychosis is surely what the girl who murdered her sister would have to experience - acting without emotion. If Rokkitnite and I have got our definition of psychopathy wrong then, it's because at some point this error has been made earlier and we have failed to correct it. The lone hunter analogy works if you consider your surroundings not as your society, but as a hostile/negotiable environment. It seems clear that the man stabbing the person in front of them in the queue does not think of himself, at least in that instant, as sharing society with his victim. I think to an extent human beings act based on what is good for them rather than their society - it is simply that we have learned defiance or aggression puts us in danger, whereas being polite and inoffensive saves us bother. As for the meaning of the word 'moral,' here we're getting into difficult territory. How many people have to misuse a word before it takes on a new meaning? How long before the old meaning is almost completely forgotten? I would argue the vast majority of people use the word 'moral' and the language of morality, to define things which are an affront and a threat to them - since I don't see how any absolute morality can support the indulgence of the Western lifestyle.
Rokkitnite
Anonymous's picture
'Affectionless psychopathy - a condition in which individuals appear to experience little guilt or emotion, lack normal affection, and are unable to form permanent relationships.' Why don't you accept moral relativism, Chant? Whilst it would be clearly very crass of me to put words into your mouth, I can certainly identify several explanations of why large portions of society do not. Firstly, and I should make this clear, moral relativism is not a veiled form of nihilism, neither is nihilism the unavoidable result of following the precepts of moral relativism to their logical conclusion. At its simplest, it merely holds that what is true for you may not be true for me. This may be for any number of reasons related to the obvious truism that everybody's experience of the world is unique. None of us occupies some Archimedian point of absolute neutrality. Your standards and beliefs are ones that you have formulated and are not external, manifest objectivities in the outside world. A psychopath typically values his or her life with equal disregard to those who he or she might perceive as threats/obstacles. Morality has no objective existence - it tends to be the product of a subjective consensus, ie the tribe all agree that the unprovoked killing of another is wrong. The more detailed the analysis becomes - what constitutes adequate provocation, for example - the more these supposedly objective values fracture and become personalised, as is shown by the ferocity of debates over abortion, which may or may not be murder depending on your views. As for society excluding cases of extreme individualist behaviour, I humbly submit that it is precisely such conformist tendencies that contribute to the onset of mentally aberrant symptoms. The psychopath tends to have poor impulse control, so they may be susceptible to behaviour which is not in their best long-term interests, but - to them at least - is entirely appropriate in the short-term. I myself have various absolutes and invioable principles that combine to form my personal sense of morality that can be summarised under such wishy-washy abstractions as honesty, integrity and compassion, but I accept as an individual that my world-view is inherently provisional and corrigible. Within the idiosyncratic framework I have constructed, many of the acts a psychopath would not balk at appall and sadden me, but I am quick to recognise that many of my own actions (eating meat, refusing to accept Allah as the sole creator of mankind) would appall and sadden many, many others around the world to a similar extent or perhaps even more so. I don't feel any need to alter my behaviour in order to conform to their expectations (and doing so would merely bring my actions into censure by another faction) but, at the same time, I feel it would be rather untenable to declare that I am the first human being to get everything absolutely right. Here's a link that you may find relevant: http://www.attachmentexperts.com/attachmentdisorder.htm
chant
Anonymous's picture
aha. you gave me the long answer to the question, H. i was really hoping to push you towards a one-word adverbial response, something like... 'justly'. R, you keep wanting to equate non-self-advantageous moral behaviour with loss and suffering. why? i don't feel any loss or suffering when i give money to the homeless, even though i don't gain directly from the donation. the other problem with your argument, which miss_ and H are homing in on, is that it seems to eliminate other, non-human life from the moral equation. "I don't feel it's selfish in the pejorative sense to prioritise one's own needs and desires." what other sense does the word 'selfish' have than a pejorative one? "If the principles are universal then one has a moral imperitive to treat oneself with respect and to work towards filling one's life with joy." agree with the first half of that statement. what i would like to say is that in your example, the chemist is not treating himself with respect by denying the medicine to the poor man (as well as not treating the poor man with respect). the second half of your statement is more problematic, as 'working towards filling one's own life with joy' can just mean ruthlessly pursuing one's own self-advantage. H, putting oneself in someone else's shoes is certainly pretty key to morality. indeed, without this faculty, i'm not sure we could ever have arrived at our conception of things like 'cruelty'. you seem to want these conceptions to exist independently of our humanity. of course morality is largely centred around humans. how could it be otherwise? everything we know is centred around humans. the human perspective on life is the only one we have. furthermore, in as far as suffering is concerned - and you seem to make the lack of suffering a strong part of your conception of justice ("the best course of action is the one that costs people least in suffering") the terrain must be a predominantly human one, as not all life on earth is capable of suffering (an awful lot of it lacking the requisite self-awareness and central nervous system), and we may very well be the only kind of creature on the planet capable of recognising suffering in other life forms and feeling sympathy towards them on account of this fact. i can't understand why you want to take humanity out of morality, or, if you reject the word morality, however you privately phrase right conduct towards the external world.
Henstoat
Anonymous's picture
I don't want to take humanity out of morality - it is, one would suppose, the cause. But if morality is indeed the struggle to do good, even it is disadvantageous to yourself, then surely in the pursuit of good one has to reach beyond the notion of what is good for their race, just as they have to reach beyond what is good just for them. To put it another way, surely we should be struggling against cruelty and general nastiness itself, rather than opposing it only when it acts upon those we have extended our compassion towards. Otherwise, we surely see arguments arising such as, "By voting for Arafat, the Palestinians have forfeited their rights. Thus, we can do whatever we like to them." I've actually heard that argument put forward - rather than talking of 'rights' and how to defend them, and who has what rights, shouldn't we be against the actual elements of human nature that cause people to abuse them? Is cruelty any more acceptable when it is acted out towards someone who you feel has 'asked for it', or indeed, something you feel rights don't extent towards, such as animals?
chant
Anonymous's picture
interesting points, R. can't respond now - boss has just arrived in office. will post later this evening.
Henstoat
Anonymous's picture
If you wrapped up everyone's moral convictions into one giant code, then not a one of us could breathe without being disgusting, appalling, vile, outrageous, contemptible, pathetic, monstrous, sickening, hideous and evil. Yet we should respect everyone's opinions! Absurdity, absurdity, I cry. Not Littlejohn-style absurdity of people-who-are-not-like-me, but Camus' absurdity of life.
zyzyha
Anonymous's picture
Phew, what a relief. It dosn't look like I'm a psycho. I thought the guy was interested in or dating her sister. That was pretty clever.
Rokkitnite
Anonymous's picture
There are many people whose commitment to humanitarianism, environmentalism, religion, science, literature or philosophy I admire greatly. I would never dismiss their achievements as absurdity. For me, the implications of cultural and moral relativism are not that heartfelt convictions are to be mocked or denounced. We live in a real world and there is a vast array of issues we are constantly being called upon to pass judgement over, however provisional that judgement may be. I find (or at least I hope) that recognising my limitations engenders within me a certain degree of humility. Having an awareness of one's perennial ignorance can be humbling in a positive way. The problem with cultural relativism and the reason (I suspect) that it gets certain people's backs up is because it can be appropriated to support crass, selfish acts on the basis that we are all flawed in our perceptions, so who are you to judge? I would say... well, I would say I don't know. Who am I to judge?
hovis
Anonymous's picture
I thought she'd killed her mother and the bloke was her father...and they both wanted her sister out of the way. See I'm Miss Marple uncovered.
Henstoat
Anonymous's picture
Absurdity of the situation, the human condition, of life, I stress, not absurdity of the individual. The individual is always remarkable and fascinating in his or her attempts to reconcile motives and logics that appear to contradict each other. However, the result of billions of individuals doing this is a complete and utter shambles, which is what we have, and have always had. Individual's achievements are largely internal - they are significant to other individuals in the global society, but like morals, have little objective worth. The exceptions are obviously those who save lives, or change the effect we have on the planet, one way or another. Arguably, we have stumbled towards enlightenment through the efforts of such individuals, but we still have a knack for producing dictators and madmen, whose effect is largely destructive. I would certainly not want to belittle the internal achievements though - as these are worth a lot to me personally. Cultural relativism is attacked largely because people think it "justifies" or "excuses" behaviour they don't like. I've found these people are often completely unable to tell the difference between justifying something (saying it is fair and proper,) and explaining it (saying it has a logical reason for existing.) Excusing is out of the question anyway, as far as I'm concerned, since it is to do with withholding punishment, reconciling the future rather than the present. "Who am I to judge?" is a question more people should ask themselves more often. I would argue that our judgements, ultimately, have limited objective value, and mostly serve our own satisfaction.
hovis
Anonymous's picture
and I think the more accurate term now is 'sociopath' - which sounds less dramatic and covers individuals who have strong and possibly dangerous anti social behaviour, which can result in self harm as well as social harm. Psychotic is a term used in psychiatry to suggest someone suffering from a psychosis along with neurotic/neurosis - the latter meaning having insight into your behaviour/condition and other meaning the opposite. But you probably could have a neurotic sociopath who has no idea his axe swinging obsession is loosing him friends.
Rokkitnite
Anonymous's picture
Aha - so we seem to be approaching an admission that the term 'psychopath' along with similar terminology such as 'sociopath' are defined by their incompatibility with current societal mores. I know it sounds like a fatuous comparison, but homosexuality was until recently classified as a psychological disorder and 'treated' with such measures as Electroshock Therapy, hormonal injections, and the kind of nasty behavioural conditioning Anthony Burgess features in A Clockwork Orange, a book which, incidentally, examines the very themes of this thread in great, albeit somewhat didactic detail. Another book I heartily recommend is The Dice Man. It's quite flippant in tone - and sometimes extremely shocking, more so than A Clockwork Orange - but the arguments it puts forth, as well as its deconstruction of preconceived notions of 'sanity' and 'morality', are robust indeed, and great reading even if you totally disagree. Hey wow, I brought it back round to literature, on a literary site. Yay me!
Henstoat
Anonymous's picture
Ooooo, I got in *so* much trouble for comparing homosexuality to paedophilia via the used-to-be-demonised link! If only I'd thought to add in "I know it's a fatuous comparison..." I could have saved myself a lot of explaining!
Rokkitnite
Anonymous's picture
Doubtless being called upon to explain your thinking allowed you develop said thinking to a higher level of exactitude than if your argument had not been couched in such woolly language and you had not been called upon to explain your thinking. *inhales* I was just pre-empting people pointing out the blindingly obvious and saying that one's sexual proclivities and the way one views and responds to the world are not wholly analagous. Oh, and I only said it 'sounds like' a fatuous comparison, not it is. If I wanted to make a straight fatuous comparison I would have said: 'You know Paul, rehabilitating a sociopath is much like making love to a beautiful woman. You've got to talk to them in a soothing voice, gain their trust, get to know what makes them tick. Then you lock them in a darkened room where they make groaning noises and pull odd faces.'
iceman
Anonymous's picture
I thought the bloke she saw was also dating her sister, so she got rid of the competition.
Rokkitnite
Anonymous's picture
Saying human being have 'rights' is prescriptive. We can choose as a society to afford one another certain basic privileges as a minimum, but these are adornments rather than self-evident entities. My position on animal rights is that in the animal kingdom species are feeding off one another and killing one another all the time - this is not cruelty, simply instinct and the will to survive. However, human beings, as sentient life forms, are conscious of the options they have and aware of the ramifications of any suffering they cause to an animal. Therefore it becomes cruelty rather than the morally neutral acts of a mole devouring worms or a cat chasing a bird. "what other sense does the word 'selfish' have than a pejorative one?" I'm reappropriating what I feel is an oft misused term. I don't think there's anything wrong in prioritising one's own interests - in fact, I think one would be rather foolish not to. This isn't the tip of some 'In Defence of Greed' capitalist tract iceberg, just something I feel is a sound moral principle. If the notion of working towards "filling one's life with joy" sounds morally dubious, or even something one might use to justify an excess of hedonistic indulgence, then I take that as evidence that the general perception of the importance and moral validity of self as the fulcrum of one's existence is badly skewed and needs redressing. Incidentally, I use 'self' in the loosest sense possible. I subscribe to the Buddhist school of psychology, where the personality is a dynamic, constantly changing entity with no real 'fixed' identity.
Henstoat
Anonymous's picture
The idea that you can take rights away from someone if they behave in a certain way seems to me evidence of how easily the language we associate with morality is distorted to serve people's needs. Yes, they're misusing the concepts, but I feel the concepts have to be flawed to begin with to be so easily abused. In the case of rights, it seems to me that establishing a moral 'property' or possession, that every human is entitled leads to people making the assertion that certain humans are *not* entitled to them, and indeed, that animals are not entitled to them. Rather than suggest that our behaviour should be coordinated around who and what possess which 'rights,' would it not be better to place the emphasis on yourself ie. on the the person who acts, rather than the person or thing that is acted upon? Does it not make it harder to abuse the meaning and rules of morality if we establish that it is the actions we take that are wrong or right in themselves, not the fact that they inflict upon someone else's 'rights.'
donignacio
Anonymous's picture
Yes, I thought they were dating, too. I'm also disappointed with myself for not figuring out the real answer, because I knew it couldn't have been as simple as that! Regardless, I'm still pretty sure I'm a psychopath.
Rokkitnite
Anonymous's picture
Two pieces of tarmac are sat in a bar. The door opens and in walks a third. One turns to the other and says: 'Watch him, he's a cyclepath.'
Vicky
Anonymous's picture
Yeh, did this test the other day Karl...and came up with the idea that maybe the man of her dreams was the vicar.... Don't know if that makes me a psycho or not... but I'm hiding all sharp objects away from sight anyway....
andrew pack
Anonymous's picture
One of my most popular characters (popular in the sense of well-liked amongst the few people who read the story) was modelled on the 21 characteristics diagnostic of psychopathy - I wasn't aware of this until the rewrite, when I happened to note that by chance she possessed 15 of them, and I just added some more in, that fitted perfectly with her character anyway. I've met quite a few killers, and a lot of people that would be described as sick by most folk, but I've never actually met a psychopath, so far as I'm aware. It is about an inability to see that other people's needs and wants count for as much as your own, and as Chant says, that they can be perceived as obstacles. Psychopaths don't go around indiscriminately slaughtering people and will often use charm to get what they want, but they would be less likely to discount the idea of force to get what they want than others might.
chant
Anonymous's picture
okay. backtracking a bit. "The lone hunter analogy works if you consider your surroundings not as your society, but as a hostile/negotiable environment. It seems clear that the man stabbing the person in front of them in the queue does not think of himself, at least in that instant, as sharing society with his victim. " well quite. the problem is that he DOES share society with his victim, whether he thinks he does or not, and society will underline this fact to him by imprisoning him, which is presumably an undesired consequent effect. R has called the psychotic pragmatic, but what is pragmatic about an incapacity to envisage negative consequent effects which results in action that is punished? i think the analogy with the hunter breaks down because, though both may pursue their end with great purpose, the psychotic is unable to envisage possible negative outcomes, and may employ a means to achieve his outcome which, by its very nature, denies the possibility of success. "the vast majority of people use the word 'moral' and the language of morality, to define things which are an affront and a threat to them." people may misuse the means of describing moral activity, and yet still be capable of moral activity. just because i use the language wrongly doesn't necessarily mean i won't dive into a river to save a drowning man. what are you driving at exactly? do you think that all morality is merely self-interest. that if i warn a bully against bullying someone else, i am merely doing so to ensure that i don't myself get bullied? with regard to R's affectionless psychopathy, i think i am wanting to make a distinction between those people who lack a capacity for awareness of other people's feelings through suffering (in childhood, mostly) which has somehow neutralised the capacity (affectionless psychopathy), and those people who are born that way (psychotic). "At its simplest, it merely holds that what is true for you may not be true for me. This may be for any number of reasons related to the obvious truism that everybody's experience of the world is unique." this is certainly the case. for the congenitally blind person, the physical world as a visual phenomenon does not exist. for the sighted person it does. here, we would want to say that the different experiences of the physical world are not equivalent - the blind person lacks something which reduces the world, and makes it considerably less manageable. similarly, i would want to say that the psychotic lacks a sense of the existence of other people which reduces his world and makes it considerably less manageable. "Morality has no objective existence - it tends to be the product of a subjective consensus." i think that philosophers, both traditionally and to this day, are a lot less certain about this than you. the classical formulation of moral relativism vs objective morality must occur in Plato's Protagoras, where Protagoras' challenge that 'man is the measure of all things' is countered by Socrates' claim that 'all the virtues are one thing - knowledge.' countering claims to moral relativism may run along various lines. they may say that 'moral altruism' is hardwired into us as the most successful strategy for a group to survive. alternatively, that morality is something like perception, with the amoral person being 'colourblind'. or that God, or absolute forms 'order' the universe such that morality is an intrinsic part of existence. traditionally, the claim that morality is merely subjective consensus is attacked by use of the 'etiquette' argument - we may override good table manners without the psychological effects that overriding morality seems to have on us. metaphysical arguments by their very nature evade unequivocal answers. you can claim that morality has no objective existence. you can't prove it. "I feel it would be rather untenable to declare that I am the first human being to get everything absolutely right." surely morality isn't 'getting everything right', but rather, the struggle to do so?
Henstoat
Anonymous's picture
As far as morality goes, Chant, I don't think that moral actions (at least, what I would class as moral actions,) are self-centred. In your example of the bully, you feel sympathy for the victim. What I'm driving at is that you wouldn't do such a thing based on a moral reasoning with yourself - you'd do it almost instinctively, or out of feelings that you already possess. When morality comes into conversation, it seems to me it is primarily used to justify selfish or unhelpful actions - chiefly by people wishing to convince themselves as well as other people. Why ever wage a war? For justice, they say, or to free people from a dictatorship, or to make the world safe from a dangerous enemy. But we all know the principle reasons people wage wars are fear and greed. Morality becomes a diplomatic ally for convincing people who may not be emotionally involved to side with your actions - sometimes bludgeoning them into it by threatening a contemptuously regarded status if they don't comply. eg. "You're either with us, or against us." While these tactics used to be the reserve of world leaders trying to manipulate their people, the skills seem to have been passed on to most people now, so you cna readily denounce anyone against you as corrupt in some form another. Us liberals are morally bankrupt whingers after all, aren't we? I think there is a point where an action stops being the result of actual morality, and starts being instead assisted by the perception of morality. That is, some actions are taken because people believe them to be for the better - others are taken in order to sate an emotional desire, and *then* justified as being moral. I think coolheadedness is a good measure of this. I'm not convinced anyone can be morally angry - people may get angry because their values are upset, but I don't believe there is a moral reason for the resulting anger, or hatred. It's an emotional reaction to the ideals you've constructed being trampled on. My question is still how long must people use morality for their own ends before it becomes recognised that this is what they mean when they speak the lingo. How many people must pursue "Justice" before it becomes clear, in terms of definition, that justice is the slave of their pursuit, not the pursuit itself? If morality is indeed the struggle to get everything right, then people are, from time to time at least, moral creatures. But I think the idea of what is 'right' is also twisted round in people's minds to suit what they want anyway. In any case, people's ideas of what is right contrast with each other so wildly that in the ensuing struggle to do what is right, we will, as has been suggested many times, destroy ourselves. In which case, is trying to do right actually, ultimately, right?
aj
Anonymous's picture
No, but I know a few!!
chant
Anonymous's picture
"you wouldn't do such a thing based on a moral reasoning with yourself - you'd do it almost instinctively, or out of feelings that you already possess." i disagree. you may very well have to reason with yourself. you may very well have to weigh up your fear of reprisals from the bully against your moral instinct to correct his behaviour. in fact, the more moral you are, the more of your mental life you spend reasoning with yourself about what you should and shouldn't do. this is what is interesting about morality, the way what we want to do can conflict with what we feel we should do. i agree that the language of morality is usurped by the immoral/ignorant to suit their own ends. this is clearly dangerous, as you say, if people are taken in by it. it also degrades the language of morality, such that people may come to see morality itself as pure rhetoric. "I'm not convinced anyone can be morally angry - people may get angry because their values are upset, but I don't believe there is a moral reason for the resulting anger, or hatred. It's an emotional reaction to the ideals you've constructed being trampled on." an argument that has been employed to demonstrate Christ's imperfection on account of his anger at the house of God being turned into a marketplace. in the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle says that there is such a thing as righteous anger, which he defines as feeling anger at the right time, towards the right object, and to the correct degree. a man who did not feel anger if his parents were being tortured, says Aristotle, would be neither human nor good. and he is right, i think. consider yourself walking into a Nazi death camp. i suspect that the anger you would feel would be more than just that of your values being upset (in the sense of a check to the ego). it might be born out of feelings of helplessness and shame at being human and pity, none of which are necessarily bad things to feel in the circumstances. hatred, on the other hand, is always to be rejected. "I think the idea of what is 'right' is also twisted round in people's minds to suit what they want anyway." that may be the case, but, as i said above, i think morality can often present itself as being a desire for something other than what we want - what i want to do vs what i feel i should do. the better at self-deception you are, the easier you will find it to confound the two, of course.
Jay
Anonymous's picture
Hi Chant thanks for fitting me somewhere back there, I wouldn't say I was fine more like somewhere in the middle and because I read everything above and came out none the wiser I'm going to play it safe and agree with you all. Great debate though even if it did all go over my head also hats off to the one who started it the one and only>>>>>>> *Karl*...
miss_tree
Anonymous's picture
yes. it's that log in the eye thing isn't it?
ely whitley
Anonymous's picture
I assumed it was like this ONE WEEK AFTER MUM'S FUNERAL: sister1: "How you feeling today?" sister2: "Oh, you know, still a little sad, I miss her" sister1: "Me too, and I feel a little guilty that I get feelings of happiness from the memories of that day as I found love there too" sister2: "Don't be silly, mum would have been glad that one of her girls found some happiness through her death, it kind of makes sense of it all somehow" sister1: "Thanks, you're right, I love you sis, we'll be fine together, come here" puts her arms out and gives sister a great big hug sister2: "huh....hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" sister1: "I know sis, I know." turns back to chopping board as sister 2 silently sinks to the floor sister1: "Roast beef on a Sunday as usual, family traditions never die, now where did I put that carving knife?" Youcan kill your sister by accident too, it doesn't have to be intentional or even related to the love interest. Maybe you're all evil for assuming murder was afoot?
Henstoat
Anonymous's picture
"you may very well have to reason with yourself. you may very well have to weigh up your fear of reprisals from the bully against your moral instinct to correct his behaviour." But a 'moral instinct to correct someone's behaviour' is the reason people might put to correct gays, or anti-patriotic feeling, or anything differing from the norm. When does it stop being a self-defence mechanism based on someone's fear of what is different, and start being motivated by a desire to improve people's lives? Even in the bully situation, I would argue that part of the drive to stop him is based on the disturbance he causes to your perception of society - thus, while you may not fear him directly, fear would play a part. Or, at least, discomfort. Discomfort affects people in different ways - some try to ignore it, others confront it. At what point, in what situation, does it change from being reasonable people and unreasonable people to cowards and crusaders? More than person has tried to 'correct' my behaviour with harsh language. As for moral anger, I readily concede that in certain situations ie. the one's you describe - anger is natural in a person with a conscience. But I would suggest that this is because they learn to react angrily to things which assault their idea of what is good - their subconscious regards it as a solution. It is not because they reason that anger is the best way to react. Where my own anger is concerned, it is *never* a good way to react - I always end up making the situation worse, even if I'm angry for these moral reasons. For example, if I foolishly read the Sun or the Mail letters pages, I become angry at other people's selfishness and prejudice. This is surely the kind of anger Aristotle would have me feel, but does it help? Not really - it usually just makes me a pain in the neck for the next half hour while I complain bitterly to whoever's around. Anger at Nazis may well be an appropriate reaction, but how does hunting them down with moral vengeance and justice in mind help repair what they've done? It doesn't - it just sates a desire again. And again - I can assure you I myself have been on the receiving end of much 'moral' anger, simply for having the wrong opinion. There surely isn't a clear dividing line between someone being angry for selfish reasons and being angry for moral reasons. There is surely a crossover - it makes sense that if people's sense of what is right and good is threatened, they themselves, as a representative of right and good, feel threatened. If I am angry at the attitudes of the right-wing, of social sheep, or anyone who discriminates against someone else, it is often because they represent a threat to my individuality and freedom. If I were to be logical, I would know that they will probably never in my lifetime number enough to overthrow the social perceptions that allow me to exist as I am - but my anger is not logical. It is reactionary. If you enter a Nazi death camp, and you feel angry, can you deny that it may be in part to do with the distant idea that, had you been born a Jew in the 1930's in Germany, you'd be among the dead? Surely that's what compassion is?
justyn_thyme
Anonymous's picture
I misunderstood the question. I thought the girl fell in love with the guy directly, not from afar, and then found out that he was sleeping with her sister, or some such thing. Does that make me a dumbopath?
chant
Anonymous's picture
"a 'moral instinct to correct someone's behaviour' is the reason people might put to correct gays, or anti-patriotic feeling." this, no doubt, is why philosophers have always emphasised the importance of reason. you keep seeming to want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, to say that because immoral action is so often couched as moral action, or moral action is carried out for the wrong reasons (self-defence mechanism), it is meaningless. "At what point, in what situation, does it change from being reasonable people and unreasonable people to cowards and crusaders?" i don't know that the two have to be separate entities. i can be a reasonable man who is afraid to speak out, or a reasonable man who speaks out with too much fire on account of my belief. alternatively i can be an unreasonable coward, or an unreasonable crusader. it is obviously problematic if the world is full of unreasonable crusaders, and reasonable cowards. if, on the other hand, the cowards are only reasonable in so far as they don't want their world disturbed, then reasonable is probably the incorrect word to apply to them. "More than one person has tried to 'correct' my behaviour with harsh language." well, if you were always running off with my room keys i'd get pretty p.issed off too! "This is surely the kind of anger Aristotle would have me feel, but does it help?" Aristotle makes it clear though that anger is only appropriate if felt to the correct degree. i suspect he would fault your behaviour in that you tend to exhibit the kind of anger towards an article by Richard L which might be more appropriate, in degree, to seeing your parents tortured. "There surely isn't a clear dividing line between someone being angry for selfish reasons and being angry for moral reasons." while this may be the case, it does not mean that it SHOULD be the case. the whole point of living an examined life is surely that one should learn to detect within oneself when one is acting morally, and when one is acting selfishly. and, as Socrates put it, "the unexamined life is not worth living." "had you been born a Jew in the 1930's in Germany, you'd be among the dead? Surely that's what compassion is?" what? feeling sorry for someone on account of the fact that it 'might have been you'? no. that's not how i define compassion. i would want to say that compassion is having feelings for other life on the basis that it has feelings like you and you value those feelings in the same way that you value your own feelings.
Rokkitnite
Anonymous's picture
"had you been born a Jew in the 1930's in Germany, you'd be among the dead? Surely that's what compassion is?" I'm nursing a hangover, otherwise I'd have weighed in earlier - but I call Godwin on this one.
Ari
Anonymous's picture
I figured maybe she just hated her sister and the events were unrelated.
Henstoat
Anonymous's picture
I'll go reverse order. You're probably right about compassion, but I still submit that there's a factor that comes from putting yourself in that person's position. Even if its purely down to respecting and valueing other people's feelings as much as your own, your anger is still the result of someone desecrating things you value and respect. This is the same kind of anger an ardent patriot would feel if someone declared their contempt for their country, though not on the same scale. Yet I would say the patriot's anger is certainly less acceptable, as it is felt to be against free speech. So is it a justifiable kind of anger to feel at all? Yes, it's natural, and yes, reason suggests we oppose Nazis at every step, but is the actual anger felt justifiable, or is it really just the same as the anger of the patriot? More importantly, is it helpful? Even if my parents were being tortured, what is the good in becoming angry? I should be trying to put a stop to it, but that decision should come from reason rather than a natural reaction. The 'correction' of my behaviour I was thinking of was a load of Americans on another mailing list calling me "disgusting" and "pathetic" for suggesting, as many did post 9/11, that the reasons for the attack be understood before more steps are taken. It outraged their morals and values that I should call into question the idea that the US was the victim, or that violence should be answered with violence. To them I represented cowardice and weakness. Their degree of anger may not have been appropriate, but again, I was attacked because I was in contempt of things they valued and respected. I should have made it clearer that I was referring to Shaw's definition of the reasonable and unreasonable man. The first shapes himself to fit the world, while the second tries to shape the world to fit him. At what point does conceding to other people's whims become not standing up for what is good? I suggest that if there is a line where being reasonable in this way stops being 'good' and starts being 'bad.' The key, to my mind, is reason. I would argue that if you have an objectice - perhaps a moral objective - and live by reason, you have no need of morality. You take an aim or desire that most people would generally agree with - less suffering, say. And you base the appropriateness of your actions on how well it fits the aim. Does standing in the way of a bully lessen suffering? You could easily argue 'yes.' Standing in the way of Nazis? Yes. Standing in the way of someone who wishes to express their dislike of their country? No, although people would debate that. It isn't all simple, of course, but still the key seems to be reasoning it out, so that the decision one arrives at procedes towards the general aim. Where does morality come into all this? Morality seems to be, for the most part, that argument that says we should have war with Iraq for the sake of 'justice,' when the real issue should be, "Will war with Iraw lessen or heighten the suffering of Iraqis, lessen or heighten the potential suffering of potential future victims of Saddam's regime?" Bringing justice into it is just clumsy - it distorts reason. It seems to serve an entirely different purpose - a short-term purpose, such as sating the desire for revenge. I would argue anger too serves short-term self-reconciliation rather than long term benefit. It is a chemical reaction that prepares you for violence, so that you can fend off a threat. It serves no purpose in ultimately working towards this aim.
chant
Anonymous's picture
certainly there is a strong aspect in morality of 'do unto others as you would have done unto you,' and that is a good practical axiom for it, although not without its faults. (it falls down, a bit, if i am into sado-masochism, for example, and you are not). it does not cover the higher actives of altruism, however, where people elect to lose their lives in order to save the lives of others. "your anger is still the result of someone desecrating things you value and respect. This is the same kind of anger an ardent patriot would feel if someone declared their contempt for their country." free speech that causes harm and no good is surely an abuse of free speech. if i say England is s.hit, and x is English, it might be taken as an indirect way of saying x is s.hit. i don't know how helpful it is to talk about the 'patriot's' anger here. if Englishman a and b are standing with Frenchman c and a says France is s.hit, i think c might feel justifiably upset, and b might step in to rebuke a for reasons other than a fear that c would reply that England was s.hit, or that a would say England was s.hit. "Even if my parents were being tortured, what is the good in becoming angry? I should be trying to put a stop to it, but that decision should come from reason rather than a natural reaction." we're steering into complicated waters here, i think. "reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them," said David Hume. you clearly want the passions to be the slave of reason, as did Plato. can reason alone act as an incentive for action? or is passionate anger a necessary fuel to going about stopping the torture? and even if i create a reasoned framework of action, say, 'to bring about no suffering that i can avoid bringing about in the world, and prevent it where i can' isn't some prior desire still required to enforce the reasoning, and won't that desire spill over into an emotional response in particular cases of the framework being attacked? what i think you mean by patriot is someone who holds an incorrect belief about his country, say, that it is the best in the world, and becomes upset when this kind of belief is attacked. here, his anger is morally unjustified, because his belief is a morally dubious one to hold. but the fact that people who hold morally dubious beliefs may react with passionate anger to a challenge to their belief, does not mean that a person with morally sound beliefs should not react in the same way. what is at fault is not the reaction, but the belief. "Morality seems to be, for the most part, that argument that says we should have war with Iraq for the sake of 'justice,'" similar to saying 'Christianity seems to be making war on other countries who don't believe in Christianity'. here, both morality and Christianity are abused terms, but should not be ditched because they have been abused. the argument about justice appears in a strong form in Book 1 of Plato's Republic. Polemarchus initially defines justice as 'doing good to one's friends and harm to one's enemies'. Socrates attacks this definition and then goes on to claim, rather interestingly for the period 'can it ever be just to harm anyone?' justice can be usefully brought into a debate on Iraq, if the meaning of the word is correctly examined. if it is just used as a weapon, then the word ceases to have any interesting meaning, and is simply a rhetorical device.
Henstoat
Anonymous's picture
Socrates' question is interesting. Justice is usually represented as a scales, which suggests its meaning is to do with balance - an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. That is essentially revenge. When people talk of justice, they mean something that makes the situation equal and fair. Just desserts - what people have 'earned.' This all detracts considerably, I feel, from what is actually of benefit to anyone. It seems largely to account for the desire to harm your enemies, as Polemarchus suggested - less so to help your friends. I would argue that you don't need justice to help your friends, or anyone - you just need kindness. So if this definition is true, I don't see what purpose justice serves except to sate a desire for revenge. I don't rightly know what Socrates is getting at with his definition - surely, if he negates doing harm to *anyone*, he associates it only with forgiveness and kindness? This is most definitely not what people mean when they talk of justice these days - in fact, forgiveness could be considered to be the extreme opposite action to justice. "it does not cover the higher actives of altruism, however, where people elect to lose their lives in order to save the lives of others." Surely altruism is simply another factor of taking reasonable action towards a mutually beneficial situation? In this situation, it is allowing certain undesirable events - your death - in return for more desirable events - others living. Again, I don't see why we need to bring the term morality into it at all. It's surely just reason that works towards a desirable aim. Yes, there has to be the desire for less suffering in the first place, and reason cannot exist with that passion. So are we saying that morality is establishing the passion for equality and less suffering as 'good', and the passion for superiority and destruction as 'bad'? Is free speech that causes harm and no good would be abuse, yes. But whose to say what opinions cause no good? To say England is s.hit may have been, at some point, just the kind of statement that made people doubt what they had taken for granted, and prompt a revolution in thinking. If a fellow Englishman reacted angrily to that remark then it is surely that - an emotional reaction - rather than based on his debating with himself whether or not it would do any good. Yet, whether or not he thinks England is the best country in the world, it is his morals that will be offended. If the offender were English too, it's difficult to see how the offender could think he was being attacked directly, since the offender would also be offending himself. In the case of a, b and c, b would stand in the way of a because he values people's right not to insulted. A has desecrated his values, and it is this that provokes the reaction.
chant
Anonymous's picture
"To put it another way, surely we should be struggling against cruelty and general nastiness itself, rather than opposing it only when it acts upon those we have extended our compassion towards." yes, H, i think we're both in agreement about that, though R would seem to be suggesting that those we have extended our compassion towards (and who reciprocate) have priority because of the mutual advantage derived from this. "We can choose as a society to afford one another certain basic privileges as a minimum, but these are adornments rather than self-evident entities." i disagree, R. i think rights may be intrinsic properties in things, and evident in them in the same way as colours are. viewing them is a matter of correct perception. that is all. i think, H, that the language of rights starts to have currency exactly where you say it doesn't. it might be argued that it's a nonsense to talk of cruelty towards, say, butterflies, and especially non-sentient things like trees, because they feel little or no pain. on the other hand, by introducing the notion of rights, and especially the right to life, the right not to be needlessly harmed, we can invoke a mechanism of protection. declaring that something has rights, and then explaining those rights helps us to examine why we think things are important. once again, i don't think the term should be thrown out. "The idea that you can take rights away from someone if they behave in a certain way seems to me evidence of how easily the language we associate with morality is distorted to serve people's needs." can you give an example of when this has been done, unchallenged? we do, after all, tend to talk about inalienable rights, which is to say, rights that cannot be surrendered. on the contrary, then, i would say that the strength of the language of rights is that the concept of non-transferability is built into it. when we talk about human rights, i don't think we ever imagine that they can be taken away under certain circumstances. when we talk about animal rights, i don't think we ever mean rights for elephants and dogs, but not for pandas, or rights for herbivores, but not for carnivores.
Rokkitnite
Anonymous's picture
It seems to me misguided to vaunt altruism as the highest form of good. Taking an admittedly Utilitarian perspective, surely the best, most moral actions are those that are mutually beneficial. Suffering and sacrifice are by no means essential for 'goodness' to make itself manifest. Another's charity aids me no more if they suffer in the process. One's morality starts to look a little shaky if everybody's life except one's own is considered sacred. For me, morality is about the process of decision-making that dictates one's actions, rather than the actions themselves or the person's professed values. With this in mind, I point you towards Lawrence Kohlberg and his proposed stages of moral development. In a similar way to the psychopath test, he used the narrative framework of a (in its raw form somewhat implausible) 'moral dilemma' in order to study the mental processes that underpinned the moral reasoning of his subjects. The dilemma basically unfolded thusly: The wife of a hard-working but poor man falls gravely ill. He goes to the chemist, who has a medicine that can cure her. The medicine, however, is very expensive, and the man cannot afford it. He asks the chemist to let him have it for free but the chemist refuses. Later, at night, the man creeps back, breaks into the shop, and steals the medicine. Was he right to do so? I'd like to hear people's response and their reasoning behind it. I think H's hypothetical patriot might answer 'If he's English, yes - but if he's some malingering Johnny Foreigner, sponging off the state and robbing honest shopkeepers, he ought to be shot at dawn'. The link to Kohlberg's theory, incidentally, is here: http://www.xenodochy.org/ex/lists/moraldev.html Apologies for the whole cut n' paste thing but I don't know HTML from CCTV.
Henstoat
Anonymous's picture
Correction: Reason cannot exist without that passion. That is, reason must follow passion, as you say, but passions contradict each other, and I would argue that reason should follow the culmination of well-meaning passions - that is, the aim to benefit as many people as possible, and reduce as much suffering as possible.
chant
Anonymous's picture
once again, i think you want to dismiss words altogether because there are frequent occurrences of their misuse in modern life. the general definition of justice i find is: "rendering to every one that which is his due." i find no definition in the dictionary of the "eye for an eye" kind. nor is this how the law defines justice. nested in the concept of justice is the idea of a full appreciation of circumstances leading to a fair result. why an attack on Iraq can be considered unjust is that the situation has not been appraised fairly - a full consideration of circumstances and results has not been made. clearly, some people may interpret the 'what is due' part of the equation as 'we bomb you'. but that is a contingent interpretation, and is by no means necessarily entailed. Bush's justice, as he says himself, is the justice of the Wild West. but, as European law courts have been pointing out, that is not what is meant by legal justice, and he is surely taking us back towards a more barbaric conception of the term. you seem to want to say that none of the words in our moral vocabulary are of any value because they are subject to abuse. i think Socrates would have wanted to reclaim the words by investigating the concepts that go into giving them their meaning, and to demonstrate how they are wrongly used by society, politicians. overall, i would say that the vocabulary of morality is useful - these words are the tools with which we approach sophisticated abstract concepts. i understand your distress at the fact that these tools have been misused, a distress that we all feel, i'm sure, but think that it would be more advantageous to reclaim these words, rather than chuck them out altogether. "To say England is s.hit may have been, at some point, just the kind of statement that made people doubt what they had taken for granted, and prompt a revolution in thinking." here, what is being said depends on the intentions of the speaker. if the speaker merely intends to insult, and this is an indirect way of going about doing so, then he is unkind. if he intends to provoke discussion and reflection, then this is surely the means of going about doing so that you have just criticised Pullman for using. "Yet, whether or not he thinks England is the best country in the world, it is his morals that will be offended." i would have said it was more likely to be his vanity that was offended. his thinking that England is the best country in the world is not a moral belief, it is an egocentric belief designed to bolster a sense of confidence in himself. he may respond using the language of morality to defend himself, but it would be morally incorrect to do so, given that it is not a moral belief he is defending.
Henstoat
Anonymous's picture
Fair points, Chant. I can see where you're coming from, because I readily admit that my distaste towards the language of morality is due to hearing it used so often to justify people acting in an unpleasant manner both towards me and other people. You have a similar stance to Dentalplan in this matter (I've debated similarly with him,) in that you want to reclaim the words rather than discard them. I find them very nearly too corrupted to ever reclaim, especially when its a minority trying to get them back from a majority. I have to wonder when it's a better solution to let them go and have their new definitions and bring in some new words. I'm puzzled over that definition of justice - it seems to represent a problem in itself. People will always disagree over what someone is due, surely? How are we to judge? To use justice as a fixed concept seems therefore to be a fallacy. Saying we want justice is simply saying we want the best solution, and just as different solutions suit different people, in pursuit of their own interpretaion of justice people will surely conflict. So I would suggest that it should be left out of the argument of what to do altogether, since it is clearly the ends which everyone is pursuing in some way anyway. As far as the misuse of the word goes, it becomes absurd. Since people's view of what they and others deserve is so often based on their judgement of people, and what they hope happens to them, isn't saying you want justice just saying you want what you want? Again, couched in moral language. As for Rokkitnite's scenario, I'll got for more right than wrong. He committed a wrong, but he also committed a right, and I would judge the right as more important than the wrong, because I rate life over money.
Henstoat
Anonymous's picture
I suppose my only examples are those that I've heard argued - they certainly haven't gone unchallenged, as I challenged them. The idea was put forth, repeatedly, when discussing certain characters and groups in the Middle East, that they had 'forfeited' their rights. It seemed to me that what was essentially being argued was that cruelty and violence are fine - it's just that rights stand in their way, and if we declare those rights no longer count, we can have a ball. I would argue that cruelty or rage themselves, even if directed against an tree or inanimate object, are similarly negative - it's just fortunate that the consequences are not suffering, in those cases. I say that from a philosophical standpoint, and from the experience of having acted in blind rage quite violently against computers before....I was undoubtedly not in a fit state of mind and not acting in a positive way, even though the computer didn't really have any rights.
chant
Anonymous's picture
phew! you two are wearing me out! "surely the best, most moral actions are those that are mutually beneficial." so, R, should we phase out unemployment benefit on the grounds that i don't get anything back from the unemployed for the proportion of my taxes that go towards keeping them going? self-advantageous moral actions are surely not moral actions at all. don't have the energy to read Kohlberg's theory. i'll have to get back to you on that one. i've come across the example before. i'd say that it demonstrates the tension that can and does exist in unjust, egocentric societies. if what we have here is the weighing up of someone's life against someone else's financial profit, then someone's life is surely more important. the poor man is right to steal the medicine. if the chemist's wife is also dying from the same illness, and this is the only bottle of medicine available, then he's wrong to steal it. if the chemist is very poor, and losing the sale of the medicine means he goes out of business and ends up dying of poverty, then the theft is wrong. of course, this society can't approve the stealing, because it would set up a precedent for everyone stealing what they needed. but in a just society, the state would provide money for the poor man to buy the medicine, or the chemist would have been brought up to be the kind of man who valued life over financial profit and gave it away freely when the need was very great and the means to purchase it absent.
chant
Anonymous's picture
alright then, H. how would you answer this question? 'how should we treat Iraq?'
Henstoat
Anonymous's picture
Jeez, Chant, that's a loaded question if ever I read one. If it were up to me - if I could control the whole of the West - I'd keep with the diplomacy and remove the sanctions, but ban the sale of weapons to the region. We're undoubtedly being led walkabout in this respect by people who know exactly how to get round it, but it seems to me a better prospect than war. No one has yet arrived at a solution to the dictators that humanity is so good at producing. Even if we ousted Sadam successfully - and I don't see how that's possible without massive casualties - how do we know another one might take his place? A worse one perhaps? Worse, because this one might be entirely the same but for a willingness to cooperate with the US - with such an alteration in place, I don't believe there'd be enough anti-Iraqi feeling in the US government to pose any threat to them. Any government that allies with America goes unthreatened, it seems, no matter what it's regime. I'm working on the premise that the best course of action is the one that costs people least in suffering. The trouble is this is clearly not the premise that everyone involved is working by, whatever they say.
Rokkitnite
Anonymous's picture
"self-advantageous moral actions are surely not moral actions at all." Why? If one's moral standpoint holds that human life is sacred, and that people are to be treated equitably and compassionately, then why should that thinking not extend to oneself? You can't give what you don't have. If one constantly puts others first - to the detriment of their own happiness - then ultimately they will become physically, mentally and spiritually bereft, and thus lose the capacity to help others. I'm not tabling a broad rejection of interdependency or indeed altruistic behaviour, which I feel, provided no ulterior motive is involved, is highly laudable. All I'm proposing is that win-win situations are preferable to win-lose situations, the latter being the kind that altruistic behaviour can generate. I don't feel it's selfish in the perjorative sense to prioritise one's own needs and desires. The most generous, loving and happy people are generally those who are most fulfilled in themselves. When your cup runneth over you have an abundance of positivity to share. Incidentally, Kohlberg's appraisal of his subjects' answers was based not on whether they said the man was right or wrong, but rather how they justified their decision. It's a somewhat subjective hierarchy, but it's how I tend to divide up moral development in my head. People often make the fundamental error of applying love and morality to everyone but themselves. If the principles are universal then one has a moral imperitive to treat oneself with respect and to work towards filling one's life with joy.
Dougm
Anonymous's picture
I got it right!!! But I was just joking! Does this mean I am a psychopath???
andrea
Anonymous's picture
Well, don't look like I'm a psycho then :-)
chant
Anonymous's picture
that was a good one, Karl, but i wish you hadn't given us the answer. that way we could have had our abc psychopaths revealed to us as they posted. i wasn't close at all, searching for motive in deductive fact (woman finds out her sister is already dating the guy / takes guy home and guy prefers sister) rather than inductive hypothesis.

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