psycho-philospohical questions that need answering

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DON'T

TELL

ME

WHAT

TO

DO

IN

CAPS.

go away now.

I have known two sociopaths in my life, one male, and one female. I don't really know what purpose their lives could possibly serve. I wish I did.

I figure everybody can have cold, selfish tendancies, but sociopaths are at the extreme end of that particular spectrum. I try to think it is possible for these sociopaths to someday feel genuinely sorry for hurting people, and want to change.

I am slowly working towards forgiveness of the sociopathic man (stepdad) who abused my baby sister until she lost her hearing, and part of my way of doing that is hoping he will eventually change. It's a better alternative than hatred, at least. There has already been too much hatred, we don't need any more.

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Last edited by claire-333 on 21 Apr 2009, 5:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

There is no such thing as a mind or a soul. There is only brains at work. Cognitive function is one of the ways our brains work.

In general all that exists are atoms and energy in space and time. There is nothing else.

Demokritos and Lukippus were right, even if they were a bit premature.

ruveyn

you've tried to convince me of this before, on different posts, with the same results. i just don't agree with you. there are aspects of reality that exist that we are unaware of, that we cannot comprehend. yes, existence is atoms and energy and space and time, constructed of these things....but the patterns behind all things, the patterns that emerge when these factors all interact with each other--it is more than the sum of it's parts. simplifying by excluding what we can't observe directly, now, with our limited knowledge....i will never accept this as appropriate and preferable. you can't change my mind on this one. i will not presume to say that i know exactly, solely, and exclusively how and of what existence is constructed. to do so is arrogant and foolish. we have so far to go in our understanding. we have only begun. to not acknowledge that, to not be constantly mindful of our intellectual infancy as a species, is to close one's mind to new possibilities of understanding.

i would like to believe there is hope for them, too. i don't know if i do, but i would like to. and i agree that forgiveness is so important, and the only way to take the power out of hatred, to keep it from spreading. hatred serves no purpose other than to propagate despair. the world has enough of that, too.

I didn't. I've just run into too many recently who have been like that, so I did it reflectively. I apologize if you were offended.

Hmm... the egoist's response would be that other forms of existence are false, and that egoism is the more life-verifying means of existence, because it exists for it's ends rather than suffering for the ends of another. In any case, egoism is probably the counter-philosophy you are trying to contend with.

I *was* referring to NPD, which is narcissistic personality disorder, which is the extreme variant of this, and I did so because the OP was referring to extreme cases in psychology, as she also mentioned "psychopaths", where psychopath is the layman's term for antisocial personality disorder.

I agree with you about violence, I am less certain about the change just being due to laws, as I think that economic situations are also a part of it, as on margin, the losses that others will inflict on you are lower in this society than in another. Also the culture is probably more inclined to be moderate, as dueling used to be socially acceptable but no longer is. I mean, the best argument from laws is likely the Hobbesian argument that fear leads to war. In any case, yeah... violence isn't a matter of just diseased minds, but a lot of it is bad situations, and the impulse to kill isn't even that bad.

ruveyn, her point is one that would be accepted by almost anyone, period. I mean, people cannot rationally function while boiling down their lives to scientific principles. The reason being that scientific principles do not have motivational force, while these other abstractions do. Given the universal necessity of non-scientific abstraction, it thus is a valid point for analysis.

Because you cannot truly love all of humanity(note, not to necessarily be taken as a fact, I do not want to get into a theological discussion about Jesus, but rather just a possible argument from human limitations). Because some elements of humanity might not deserve love. Not only that, but how do you love something that rejects what is good? Can you love a person and hate their cause and lifestyle? The answer is no, unless you accept a fundamental personness that you can love about them, and some people reject personness.

Last edited by Awesomelyglorious on 17 Apr 2009, 9:23 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I am not surprised, some ideas and conceptions might be inconceivable until we experience them and their richness from within.

In any case, I think I just posted, that the egoist views their ideas as the most self-affirming ways to live. Where as other conceptions enslave you to nothings, egoism is the only position that is consistent with freedom and self-determination, and positions that reject that are thus empty and slavery dressed up in a constructed costume of nobility and honor.

You may value it, and it indeed may be objectively valuable, but I wasn't claiming that the notion of love wasn't valuable. I'm saying that blind love isn't valuable, and furthermore actually cheapens the value of true, established love that has an actual reason to be.



If that were true, why are you making sure to specifically reference human life constantly rather than simply saying life? At any rate, I wasn't suggesting that you were placing human life above other life, rather that you were making blanket assumptions about the value of life in general. I'm not assuming anything about your personal beliefs, only making inferences based on your stated ideas. At any rate, for argument's sake let's say that I was making pure assumptions... You just basically told me that I was wrong and then immediately went on to actually explicitly confirm them.



It's perspectives like mine that give altruism meaning. I consider perspectives based entirely on arbitrary blanket assumption to work against establishing truth and understanding and thus devalue and cheapen whatever concept they claim to champion, as I just stated with regard to the idea of love earlier. The main problem I have with your standpoint is that, according to your perspective, I would actually be considered a psychopath because I do not feel some inherent, intrinsic and undefinable urge to love all humans, and it's obviously led you to make several untrue assumptions about my outlook and behavior. I didn't say that nobody should value each other nor that I didn't value human life. What I'm saying is that your arbitrary outlook that assumes ultimate value not only provides no actual value, but it actually gets in the way of developing outlooks that do. Human life has no intrinsic value. That doesn't mean it has no value, it just means that we need to provide this value ourselves, through our reason, philosophical and moral outlooks. While I do not believe that humanity has inherent value and, in fact, am actually quite misanthropic when it comes to society in general, I have an extensive philosophical and moral outlook that I have invested a great deal of mental effort in that essentially leads me to the same conclusion as you with regards to my behavior, but for very different reasons. Even though I afford the people I meet token respect and a chance to prove themselves as well as go out of my way to perform altrustic acts and preserve life because I consider them the right thing to do, according to you, I am still evil because my reasons for doing so are based on intellect and moral reasoning as opposed to instinct and an intrinsic faith. Considering what you recently said with regards to the difference between the lack of empathy in autistic people vs. psychopaths, I find that position to be somewhat hypocritical.

Have you read this article by Gary Hull?

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4896 (it isn't incredibly wrong)

I personally found it relatively interesting, as he's saying a similar thing to you, but it is the first time I saw the argument or really thought about the matter.

we may know that something is impossible beforehand, but i don't believe that means we shouldn't strive for it. i know this sounds counterintuitive, but hear me out--perhaps it isn't possible for me to truly love all of humanity, because i am only one person and i have limitations, but i still aim to do that, i gear my choices towards that. it is an ultimate goal, but the likelihood of achieving it isn't what is important--it is the striving to improve oneself, to stretch oneself and challenge one's limitations, that is what matters. i may not be able to love everyone, but i can try, and learn about myself and try to become a better person in the process. i'm sure this sounds naive, but it's genuine, and for me it works. that is to say, it is the most fulfilling way i have found to exist, thus far.

think of this--in the times in your life when you have encountered people who are being extremely obnoxious or rude, very upset, irrational, what have you....have you noticed that one of the only things that ever gets through to those people and makes them listen is extreme politeness, and kindness? it's like by offering them nothing but politeness, they MUST return in kind or there is no escaping that they are the ones being rude/in the wrong. for most people, most of the time, this is enough motivation to make them calm down and at least be willing to listen to your point of view, which is really all we ever want, right? this is just a small-scale example of what i mean. what you extend can radically effect what you receive, and it ripples. every time you are able to reason with a person, to reach them with kindness, they are that much more likely to extend that same kindness to someone else, or to respond more reasonably the next time around....when each person does their part, and tries a little harder each day to be kinder, more understanding, more patient with people--then whole new worlds of possibilities open up.

well we could get into a whole different discussion about individual rights and freedoms vs the rights of the group, but it's too late for me to go there tonight lol--i will say however that since no man can exist outside of all other life, than trying to navigate through it in a completely self-serving manner just doesn't seem like the wisest choice to me. it is foolishly dismissive and wantonly blind. freedom must be balanced with responsibility, or all you have is chaos where everyone just does whatever the hell they want. that obviously is not something to strive for as a species.

well, I'm not saying this is or isn't the case, but we haven't understand our brains completely that we are unable to duplicate them, as far as I know, and understand them completely, which few things are still a mystery for science, heck! even if LHC get some answers about how the universe works, solving the aspect that are still a mystery of our brains, is something that seems to be more difficult than that. Given that, I don't look this type of reductionism and certainty to be that convincing, at least I don't take it that lightly.

Besides, the title of the thread says "psycho-philosophical", that might have give you a hint of what the discussion was going to, if you happened to miss it. And well, saying someone you happened to disagree with your view to "take some meds" doesn't really provide anything to the argument at hand, not only it shows an emotonional response that turns out an invalid way to assert a point, but the lack of assuming something for the sake of argument and wether that being an intelligent response would be something in question.