Was Ayn Rand a psychopath?
07 Oct 2012, 1:50 pm
GGPViper wrote:
TM wrote:
GGPViper wrote:
I want to believe you, I really do. But when a core concept of psychopathy is a complete lack of moral emotions, then perhaps "pure evil" is not an entirely unjustified label... The rest of us are just plain and simple ass holes.
Consider this, if morals and your conscience is just an animal instinct, you would be able to ignore it much like its possible to ignore being hungry or wanting to bash someone's face in with a Texas Instruments BA II Plus Financial Calculator.
What would compel an individual to ignore an instinct... other than a more powerful instinct?
Could you please define "moral emotions" before we continue. The whole reason why I went off on that morals tangent was because in my interpretation in order for an emotion to be moral, there would need to be a definition of what exactly constitutes "moral".
If you're merely talking about conscience then we are more or less in agreement.
GGPViper wrote:
TM wrote:
There is also the question of, exactly what kind of a moral emotion are we talking about, deontological or consequencialist ethics?
Deontological, I'll agree it becomes somewhat of an issue, however it would entirely depend upon which rules one bases what is a moral or immoral act. According to Kant, and the categorical imperative, in the naturalist formulation "So act as if your maxims should serve at the same time as the universal law (of all rational beings)", meaning that we should so act that we may think of ourselves as "a member in the universal realm of ends" However, let's say that one of my maxims is that stupid people should be chlorinated out of our gene pool, that would indicate that I would want all people who encounter a stupid person to drown them in chlorine. So, I'm moral!
If we are speaking in terms of consequentialism is somewhat solves itself, because its in essence based on the morality of actions being judged based upon their consequences. So, to use the same scenario as above, if I think stupid people will be the cause of the demise of the human race, it follows that killing them off would be a "good" act. There is also a matter of to whom the consequences need to be "good". Vic Mackey from "The Shield" is an amoral consequencialist, views acts as justifiable and "right" based on the consequences they have for the people he cares for.
In both cases, it would be entirely possible for a psychopath to be moral. However, that is of course depended on whether one views the world as having universal morality in a large majority of human beings on which one can base a standard of rigorous morals that the psychopath could be judged to be in violation of, or having a lack of.
Deontological, I'll agree it becomes somewhat of an issue, however it would entirely depend upon which rules one bases what is a moral or immoral act. According to Kant, and the categorical imperative, in the naturalist formulation "So act as if your maxims should serve at the same time as the universal law (of all rational beings)", meaning that we should so act that we may think of ourselves as "a member in the universal realm of ends" However, let's say that one of my maxims is that stupid people should be chlorinated out of our gene pool, that would indicate that I would want all people who encounter a stupid person to drown them in chlorine. So, I'm moral!
If we are speaking in terms of consequentialism is somewhat solves itself, because its in essence based on the morality of actions being judged based upon their consequences. So, to use the same scenario as above, if I think stupid people will be the cause of the demise of the human race, it follows that killing them off would be a "good" act. There is also a matter of to whom the consequences need to be "good". Vic Mackey from "The Shield" is an amoral consequencialist, views acts as justifiable and "right" based on the consequences they have for the people he cares for.
In both cases, it would be entirely possible for a psychopath to be moral. However, that is of course depended on whether one views the world as having universal morality in a large majority of human beings on which one can base a standard of rigorous morals that the psychopath could be judged to be in violation of, or having a lack of.
None of the above. I (and a lot of authors) believe that morality makes no sense at all to a psychopath. Deontology versus consequentialism, a major discussion within moral philosophy, is of no greater interest to a psychopath than the price difference between apples and oranges.
See this site for a brutally honest description of the mind of a psychopath:
http://www.sociopathworld.com/
In essence, my whole reply to you depends on my understanding of the term "moral emotions" because of morality being such a widely discussed concept. The whole tangent on morals was an argument to the fact that a sociopath could have something akin to morals, but which is not exactly what a "normal" person would call morals.
I'm not sure how good you are with with analogies, but it comes down to something that I can illustrate with a Bill Maher quote "But thinking that the world is 6000 years old isn't really a morals or values issue, it's just stupid."
Quote:
To quote American Psycho (heavily influenced by "The Mask of Sanity"): There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman; some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable... I simply am not there.
That sounds more like depersonalization rather than sociopathy. It could allude to a flexible sense of self, which is a trait in psychopaths from what I've gathered.
07 Oct 2012, 2:19 pm
TM wrote:
GGPViper wrote:
TM wrote:
GGPViper wrote:
I want to believe you, I really do. But when a core concept of psychopathy is a complete lack of moral emotions, then perhaps "pure evil" is not an entirely unjustified label... The rest of us are just plain and simple ass holes.
Consider this, if morals and your conscience is just an animal instinct, you would be able to ignore it much like its possible to ignore being hungry or wanting to bash someone's face in with a Texas Instruments BA II Plus Financial Calculator.
What would compel an individual to ignore an instinct... other than a more powerful instinct?
Could you please define "moral emotions" before we continue. The whole reason why I went off on that morals tangent was because in my interpretation in order for an emotion to be moral, there would need to be a definition of what exactly constitutes "moral".
If you're merely talking about conscience then we are more or less in agreement.
Not an easy task. If I succeed, I probably deserve a Nobel prize (yes, a real one, JakobVirgil). I will not succeed.
The German badass game theorist Fritz W. Scharpf proposed a model where an individual could have both individual preferences and preferences for the utility of others. Interestingly, he did not automatically assume that an individual would hold a preference for positive utility in others. A sadist, in other words, has social preferences just like an altruist has.
Bottom line: In my opinion, anyone who includes the utility of others in his/her decisions has a "moral" decision structure. A purely selfish person is neither altruistic nor sadistic.
And the currently available evidence suggests that psychopaths are purely selfish. Unfortunately, they are also impulsive, which make them very dangerous.
TM wrote:
GGPViper wrote:
To quote American Psycho (heavily influenced by "The Mask of Sanity"): There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman; some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable... I simply am not there.
That sounds more like depersonalization rather than sociopathy. It could allude to a flexible sense of self, which is a trait in psychopaths from what I've gathered.
It is a quote from a work of fiction. No need to over-analyse it.
One minor problem, though: He is me.
07 Oct 2012, 2:35 pm
donnie_darko wrote:
GGPViper wrote:
There is substantial scientific evidence supporting that psychopathy is in fact real. The PCL-R uses a threshold, however (a score of 30 out of 40), so it does not mean that people with some psychopathic traits are wholly evil. You actually have to be a serious ass hole to score even 25 on the scale, so the term only captures the worst of the worst.
I don't consider psychology a 'hard' science in the way physics is so I remain skeptical. I think the idea of a psychopath is popular in our culture and even academics are not immune to its influence. Believing a person is pure evil is just as illogical as believing a person is totally good.
I don't think "evil" is that simple a concept. It's not as simple as lack of morality or harmfulness alone. It is when these traits are seen associated with a higher-order sentient being we can empathize/relate with enough to attach the label "human" to it that we get the greatest emotional response of "pure evil".
Personally, people like serial-killers are so far gone from my ability to relate that it's hard to muster any outright hatred towards them. I view them more like I would view a rabid pit-bull or wild man-eating lion that just happens to have human intelligence. Incredibly dangerous but not truly "evil" in my view.
I feel more disturbed by "lesser" evil in the world that is not so cartoonishly monstrous and that I can't even identify with it at all. I'm much more seriously disturbed by the "evil" that can reside even in supposedly "good" people under the influence of cultures, institutions, and ideologies. I almost see Hitler the man as less evil than the people and culture that propped him up.
Really, if being a psychopath is mainly genetic and will always be limited to a small fraction of the gene pool there's really a limited amount of harm they can do. Psychopathy is not contagious like culture/ideology that spreads and causes ordinary human beings to do great evil. Even if psychopaths gain positions of power and leadership, I find more blame with the culture of the masses that allows such people to rise to power.
Last edited by marshall on 07 Oct 2012, 2:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
07 Oct 2012, 2:47 pm
GGPViper wrote:
TM wrote:
GGPViper wrote:
TM wrote:
GGPViper wrote:
I want to believe you, I really do. But when a core concept of psychopathy is a complete lack of moral emotions, then perhaps "pure evil" is not an entirely unjustified label... The rest of us are just plain and simple ass holes.
Consider this, if morals and your conscience is just an animal instinct, you would be able to ignore it much like its possible to ignore being hungry or wanting to bash someone's face in with a Texas Instruments BA II Plus Financial Calculator.
What would compel an individual to ignore an instinct... other than a more powerful instinct?
Could you please define "moral emotions" before we continue. The whole reason why I went off on that morals tangent was because in my interpretation in order for an emotion to be moral, there would need to be a definition of what exactly constitutes "moral".
If you're merely talking about conscience then we are more or less in agreement.
Not an easy task. If I succeed, I probably deserve a Nobel prize (yes, a real one, JakobVirgil). I will not succeed.
The German badass game theorist Fritz W. Scharpf proposed a model where an individual could have both individual preferences and preferences for the utility of others. Interestingly, he did not automatically assume that an individual would hold a preference for positive utility in others. A sadist, in other words, has social preferences just like an altruist has.
Bottom line: In my opinion, anyone who includes the utility of others in his/her decisions has a "moral" decision structure. A purely selfish person is neither altruistic nor sadistic.
And the currently available evidence suggests that psychopaths are purely selfish. Unfortunately, they are also impulsive, which make them very dangerous.
It's fairly well accepted that a psychopath will elect him or herself over everyone else, IE gun to the head, the psychopath will not die for anyone. Will pursue gratification of him or herself as a "prime directive" with little and most likely no regard for others.
If we differentiate between "high functioning" psychopaths and "low functioning psychopaths" as some researchers have done, Robert Hare does something of that nature in his book "Snakes in Suits" then a lack of social preference for the utility of others is not implicit in that. It can manifest, but only as a function of combined impulsiveness, utility and being purely selfish.
This is an interesting discussion, but I fear it may be one of those that get lost in definitions as we go along.
TM wrote:
GGPViper wrote:
To quote American Psycho (heavily influenced by "The Mask of Sanity"): There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman; some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable... I simply am not there.
That sounds more like depersonalization rather than sociopathy. It could allude to a flexible sense of self, which is a trait in psychopaths from what I've gathered.
It is a quote from a work of fiction. No need to over-analyse it.
One minor problem, though: He is me.[/quote]
You start sweating and almost crying when someone has a nicer business card than you?
07 Oct 2012, 3:08 pm
TM wrote:
It's fairly well accepted that a psychopath will elect him or herself over everyone else, IE gun to the head, the psychopath will not die for anyone. Will pursue gratification of him or herself as a "prime directive" with little and most likely no regard for others.
If we differentiate between "high functioning" psychopaths and "low functioning psychopaths" as some researchers have done, Robert Hare does something of that nature in his book "Snakes in Suits" then a lack of social preference for the utility of others is not implicit in that. It can manifest, but only as a function of combined impulsiveness, utility and being purely selfish.
This is an interesting discussion, but I fear it may be one of those that get lost in definitions as we go along.
If we differentiate between "high functioning" psychopaths and "low functioning psychopaths" as some researchers have done, Robert Hare does something of that nature in his book "Snakes in Suits" then a lack of social preference for the utility of others is not implicit in that. It can manifest, but only as a function of combined impulsiveness, utility and being purely selfish.
This is an interesting discussion, but I fear it may be one of those that get lost in definitions as we go along.
I don't think that "Snakes in Suits" deserves to be mentioned in the same sentence as the "Handbook of Psychopathy". I haven't read the former, but the latter lays down the law on the entire subject.
TM wrote:
You start sweating and almost crying when someone has a nicer business card than you?
No. They can have the nicest business cards in the world. It won't make breathing easier when wearing cement shoes at the bottom of a river.
07 Oct 2012, 3:28 pm
GGPViper wrote:
TM wrote:
It's fairly well accepted that a psychopath will elect him or herself over everyone else, IE gun to the head, the psychopath will not die for anyone. Will pursue gratification of him or herself as a "prime directive" with little and most likely no regard for others.
If we differentiate between "high functioning" psychopaths and "low functioning psychopaths" as some researchers have done, Robert Hare does something of that nature in his book "Snakes in Suits" then a lack of social preference for the utility of others is not implicit in that. It can manifest, but only as a function of combined impulsiveness, utility and being purely selfish.
This is an interesting discussion, but I fear it may be one of those that get lost in definitions as we go along.
If we differentiate between "high functioning" psychopaths and "low functioning psychopaths" as some researchers have done, Robert Hare does something of that nature in his book "Snakes in Suits" then a lack of social preference for the utility of others is not implicit in that. It can manifest, but only as a function of combined impulsiveness, utility and being purely selfish.
This is an interesting discussion, but I fear it may be one of those that get lost in definitions as we go along.
I don't think that "Snakes in Suits" deserves to be mentioned in the same sentence as the "Handbook of Psychopathy". I haven't read the former, but the latter lays down the law on the entire subject.
One cannot really be well read in the subject without having read some Robert Hare, the reason I found it interesting was that it presented a different image from the majority of literature and portrayals on the subject and dealt with some preconceptions that are somewhat problematic.
GGPViper wrote:
TM wrote:
You start sweating and almost crying when someone has a nicer business card than you?
No. They can have the nicest business cards in the world. It won't make breathing easier when wearing cement shoes at the bottom of a river.
I'm sure the nicest business cards in the world would have a scuba attachment inspector gadget style. Bateman was somewhat interesting as a character, because you never quite realized if he did what was written or if it was merely psychosis.
07 Oct 2012, 4:08 pm
TM wrote:
One cannot really be well read in the subject without having read some Robert Hare.
You might want to be more careful with your statements, TM.
We might share ideological points of view in several threads, but your emphasis on a single author within psychology will only last a few seconds against my full repertoire. Care to argue against Science, Nature and PNAS?
Oh, and Robert Hare is the co-author of chapter 4 in the "Handbook of Psychopathy".
Perhaps I deliberately disregarded Hare's popular science work because I wanted to focus on the undisputed scientific content of psychopathy.
07 Oct 2012, 4:39 pm
GGPViper wrote:
TM wrote:
One cannot really be well read in the subject without having read some Robert Hare.
You might want to be more careful with your statements, TM.
We might share ideological points of view in several threads, but your emphasis on a single author within psychology will only last a few seconds against my full repertoire. Care to argue against Science, Nature and PNAS?
Oh, and Robert Hare is the co-author of chapter 4 in the "Handbook of Psychopathy".
Perhaps I deliberately disregarded Hare's popular science work because I wanted to focus on the undisputed scientific content of psychopathy.
Well, if you like I can recommend Lykken, Cleckley, Oakley, Blair, Mitchell, Ressler, Simpson, Greely and quite a few others.
The reason I recommended that specific Hare book, is not because I haven't read other material, it is that is does contain some unique material about more successful psychopaths. Whereas much of the research on the topic has been done on "unsuccessful" psychopaths. On that topic, James Fallon is also quite interesting.
*Edit* I should mention that if psychopathy is your special interest, then you most likely know more on the topic than I do, and based on prior experience discussing people's special interests on this board tends to end poorly.
07 Oct 2012, 4:58 pm
TM wrote:
GGPViper wrote:
TM wrote:
One cannot really be well read in the subject without having read some Robert Hare.
You might want to be more careful with your statements, TM.
We might share ideological points of view in several threads, but your emphasis on a single author within psychology will only last a few seconds against my full repertoire. Care to argue against Science, Nature and PNAS?
Oh, and Robert Hare is the co-author of chapter 4 in the "Handbook of Psychopathy".
Perhaps I deliberately disregarded Hare's popular science work because I wanted to focus on the undisputed scientific content of psychopathy.
Well, if you like I can recommend Lykken, Cleckley, Oakley, Blair, Mitchell, Ressler, Simpson, Greely and quite a few others.
The reason I recommended that specific Hare book, is not because I haven't read other material, it is that is does contain some unique material about more successful psychopaths. Whereas much of the research on the topic has been done on "unsuccessful" psychopaths. On that topic, James Fallon is also quite interesting.
And the authors mentioned by you are present in the handbook (except Ressler and Greely).
Lykken is the author of the first chapter, by the way.
Kraichgauer
Veteran
Joined: 12 Apr 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 47,790
Location: Spokane area, Washington state.
27 Dec 2012, 2:01 am
donnie_darko wrote:
Psychopaths are a fad, they do not exist. They're trendy in the same way that zombies are.
YES, psychopaths are very real.
Having dealt with two of them I can confirm absolutely that they exist and much like the Devil, your not believing in them will only serve to make you the next victim. Since you apparently haven't had the pleasure of dealing with one I'll just advise you that the main weapon in terms of detection that you will have is your own "gut feeling". After having a couple experiences with the nasties I'm very aware of the feeling that I get when in their presence. Forget about any checklist- you will "feel" something is not right about them. It's a very subtle feeling but extremely important. It may be some evolutionary warning system that has evolved in normal people, I'm not sure. The less amusing means of detection is to discover their true nature after they've gotten whatever it was they wanted from you- be that your money, or your life.
I strongly urge you to believe in Psychopaths.
27 Dec 2012, 8:02 am
Of course Ayn Rand was a psychopath. She believed that the government is the main source of injustice in our society. That belief and and of itself is clear -proof- of her insanity. What sane person would believe that the government wished to restrict our freedoms, exploit us and abuse us. What sane person could believe that the government is run by corrupt, dishonest and power hungry enemies of our freedom. It is clear as day. Ayn Rand was nuts.
ruveyn
Kraichgauer
Veteran
Joined: 12 Apr 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 47,790
Location: Spokane area, Washington state.
27 Dec 2012, 1:03 pm
ruveyn wrote:
Of course Ayn Rand was a psychopath. She believed that the government is the main source of injustice in our society. That belief and and of itself is clear -proof- of her insanity. What sane person would believe that the government wished to restrict our freedoms, exploit us and abuse us. What sane person could believe that the government is run by corrupt, dishonest and power hungry enemies of our freedom. It is clear as day. Ayn Rand was nuts.
ruveyn
ruveyn
Careful - we are a bunch of Aspies here, after all. Someone who doesn't know you is bound to take you literally.
-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer
