know it's wrong
Sep. 29th, 2003 01:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
overoceawhilst researching my criminology essay I frequently come across:
psychopathy, the term forensic psychology uses to refer to something almost the equivalent to antisocial personality disorder; put simply, someone with no remorse, empathy or conscience.
conscience!
1. The awareness of a moral or ethical aspect to one's conduct together with the urge to prefer right over wrong.
2. A source of moral or ethical judgment or pronouncement.
3. Conformity to one's own sense of right conduct.
definitions of words thoroughly confuse me, because words seem far more than their literal meanings. my dictionary would have at least two pages per word.
conscience. of course it is difficult in a world of a thousand various forms of parent per person to not have grown up to know the difference between right and wrong, the consequences of them both and the collective one's preference between the two. thus when choosing between right and wrong, justifications aside, one almost invariably knows which is which!
the knowledge alone can't be conscience, as psychopaths know what is wrong, they just choose wrong anyway.
are remorse, guilt, shame, pity, empathy, moral outrage! self-disgust/reproach, et cetera part of conscience?
if you know to murder is wrong, yet feel no shame, remorse or empathy and commit it anyway, you've no conscience. obvious.
if you know murder is wrong, yet would feel shame, remorse or empathy and commit it anyway... your conscience is a pussy and your id reigns supreme.
if you know murder is wrong, yet would feel no shame, remorse or empathy, yet do not commit it because you know it's wrong?
psychopathy, the term forensic psychology uses to refer to something almost the equivalent to antisocial personality disorder; put simply, someone with no remorse, empathy or conscience.
conscience!
1. The awareness of a moral or ethical aspect to one's conduct together with the urge to prefer right over wrong.
2. A source of moral or ethical judgment or pronouncement.
3. Conformity to one's own sense of right conduct.
definitions of words thoroughly confuse me, because words seem far more than their literal meanings. my dictionary would have at least two pages per word.
conscience. of course it is difficult in a world of a thousand various forms of parent per person to not have grown up to know the difference between right and wrong, the consequences of them both and the collective one's preference between the two. thus when choosing between right and wrong, justifications aside, one almost invariably knows which is which!
the knowledge alone can't be conscience, as psychopaths know what is wrong, they just choose wrong anyway.
are remorse, guilt, shame, pity, empathy, moral outrage! self-disgust/reproach, et cetera part of conscience?
if you know to murder is wrong, yet feel no shame, remorse or empathy and commit it anyway, you've no conscience. obvious.
if you know murder is wrong, yet would feel shame, remorse or empathy and commit it anyway... your conscience is a pussy and your id reigns supreme.
if you know murder is wrong, yet would feel no shame, remorse or empathy, yet do not commit it because you know it's wrong?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-09-28 03:56 pm (UTC)Because of that, I don't think that anything is wrong. I just think that people have preference, there are likes and dislikes, I would not like to be raped, but that doesn't make it wrong.
The world is too large with too many opinions for one universal inherent set of wrongs and rights I think.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-28 05:47 pm (UTC)if you would not like to be raped, yet are despite, then that would be wrong, if only to you. if everyone in the world would not like to be raped, but were despite, then that would be universally and perhaps inherently wrong.
not that everyone in the world would not like to be raped, but since we're quite sure the majority would not, it is far easier to say "rape is wrong;" since nothing is 100% universal and/or definite.
or, another way:
even if you personally do not think anything is wrong, i'm sure you can see (or at least are aware) how those with consciences, thus the majority, do. thus, even if you do not think anything is right or wrong, you know what is considered right and what is considered wrong.
you can regard the entirety of the above, and everything I ever say, a question. although an answer isn't required, only desperately longed for. :)
no subject
Date: 2003-09-28 06:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-29 07:36 am (UTC)or: do we have to interrogate the way in which the fifty million discourses running through our brains operate to construct and maintain identity hierarchies through the reification of natural or pre-inscriptive and embodied practices? and, specifically, does the division of activities into the categories of 'right' and 'wrong' only serve to create a class of deviant practices against which the normal practices of the centre are constructed and legitimated?
and who stole my cigarettes?
no subject
Date: 2003-09-29 09:08 am (UTC)If you take a descriptive approach to morality and ethics, instead of starting with the premise that morality and ethics are necessarily prescribed, things are gauged on a range from most right to most wrong; the most right actions are lauded while the most wrong actions reviled. Also: Actions which are socially acceptable may not be considered "right" even by the society in which they occur (and are subsequently accepted), because an act can be defined in several ways, and the uncertainty in words, again, used to justify wrong acts. Mass cognitive dissonance may interfere to make an act like "genocide" be called "crusade." People think genocide is wrong, but crusade acceptable, and thus, the Minitrue prevails. Similar uncertainties of scale occur. Murders are unallowable, but collateral damage is accepted.
I think of "right" and "wrong" as theoretical certainties (and I don't think that a logical fallacy, but perhaps a redefinition of the words), the asymptote to which limited sentience aspires. In practice, people accept wrong acts and revile right ones due to any number of combinations of flawed reasoning, illness, prejudice, misled sentiments, loyalties, et cetera.
As a result, we can never "know" what is wrong, but have a moral and ethical responsibility to make the best approximation possible. Do you really think discourse is as influential as they say? Doesn't that nullify the whole question of morality?
thanks for thinking so hard and making me do the same. my prophecy: i think some guy named alan has your cigarettes.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-30 08:48 am (UTC)i do agree with much of what you say. most, in fact. but i feel compelled to counter with (randomly) elizabeth grosz who says, "[t]here is no 'natural' norm; there are only cultural forms of bodies, which do or do not conform to social norms." so while i do acknowledge the responsibility of self to regulate behaviour (or, in your words, to make the best approximiation as possible, yes) i think there is difficulty when all bodies, whether socially understood as "normal" or "right" *are* inscriptive surfaces, differently inscribed through the confluence of cultural, historical and social forces. i'm not sure if discourses are as influential as they say, but this is not to suggest there is only pure cultural constructions. rather, maybe we can adopt a paradigm of morality as the (someone said, escapes me who now) "indeterminate constancy", where morality is the lived-in cultural sign; a destabilising force transgressing the boundaries of nature/culture dichotomies. then, within such a quasi post-structuralist context, the choice to "wrong" creates a 'deviant' practice that implicitly challenges modern conceptions of fixity. the impossibility of regarding the deviant "wrong" as natural similarly undermines the naturalism of the normative practices?
i think it was maybe robert young (?) who said that culture is fundamentally an oxymoronic concept, characterised by an antagonism between culture as universal and cultural difference. and yeah, i'm assuming culture = our understanding of right/wrong, which is a leap. but in this, culture is at once both anthropological culture – the customary beliefs and practices of a social group, and imperial culture – the imposition of "universal" cultural values (those of western white supremacist patriarchy).
so then we (imperial culture) conflate "culture" and "civilization" ("right" and "wrong") and position one cultural tradition as inherently more "cultured" or "civilised" than all others in order to legitimate the transformation of localised into globalised values. so, here's my thing, are debates about right and wrong essentially debates about cultural roles? they seem to be marked by tensions between sameness and difference, stasis and flux and the interpolation of shifting spaces between self and other.
blah blah blah. i bore even myself.
but i bought new cigarettes. and this makes me happy.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-29 07:50 pm (UTC)not that I can speak objectively (which is precisely why we simply can't interrogate the way in which the fifty million discourses running through our brains operate to construct and maintain identity hierarchies through the reification of natural or pre-inscriptive and embodied practices), but the idea that right and wrong are entirely social constructs for solidarity is just yuckie! I do think context probably has more effect than universality, but I also would like to believe that conscience would exist any way, despite the suspicious convenience of "right" and "wrong."
(if you were the bald guy on the bus 4 years ago, I stole your cigarettes. I apologise.)
another factor; how I adore people.
Date: 2003-09-28 05:56 pm (UTC)if you know to murder is wrong, yet feel no shame, etc, yet do not know if you agree with it, but feel you must because the majority does... . I don't like pain, and would not like someone to inflict pain on me. so someone would not like me to inflict pain upon them. so it is wrong. how could I not agree with that, I must.
I should think about this after my 3 pieces of major assessment are done.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-29 02:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-29 04:01 am (UTC)that was interesting.. think i'll cite it :)
Hello.
Date: 2003-09-29 02:57 am (UTC)Do you ever get sick of hearing that? Heh.
Have a lovely day.
=)
Tiff
no subject
Date: 2003-09-29 11:04 am (UTC)murder is not murder if it's war. outright murder can be an ethical and moral act if it saves lives.
conscience and consciencelessness are not like opposites. some people blame themselves for a lot of things. others accept almost no blame. the article refereed to below admits the topic is "hotly debated," but psychology is still somewhat pseudo-scientific, and Tim Watkin's definition of psychopathy as "a personality disorder characterised by... ...things of that sort" does not ring of airtight double-blind reproducible fact.
IMHO, Tim Watkin's a nut who thinks he's right and has stopped allowing for the possibility that he's not. One thing's for certain--it's not science. no one can know that murder is wrong, because murder's not wrong. it's only wrong in certain cases. in most cases it is wrong, so we say "it's wrong to murder."
some people truly believe that murder is always wrong, but that requires a logical fallacy at some point, which also demonstrates the fact that right and wrong are not switches flipped. if someone is forced to choose between killing one person or killing two people--if both acts are wrong, which path is chosen? the one which is less wrong, and thus more right.
so etc, etc, right and wrong are contextually defined, people who commit murder remorselessly are just exercising self-lying muscles the way everyone can when necessary. logical fallacies make it possible to survive, but everything's double-edged.
right and wrong certainly exist. the knowledge of right and wrong do not encompass conscience, like you said. instead, the conscience is the voice that says you should act based on your knowledge or right and wrong. the volume of that voice is now as conscientiousness, or scrupulousness. there are other bases for action, such as "how it will affect others," or consideration, "how it will affect me," or self-interest. it's hard to rank them.
that may be incoherent and rambling, but man, it's fun to think hard.
--stop.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-29 07:41 pm (UTC)when I say murder, I don't mean war, the common good vs the individual, euthanasia, manslaughter, self defence or anything else that could be given any non-synonymous name other than "murder" (except maybe genocide and dozens of others I haven't thought of) or possibly be adequately justified, because if can be justified it isn't wrong. thus, when I say "murder is wrong," i'm not generalising to all killing, rather am talking about murder that is, in fact, wrong. I apologise for not elaborating on that little facet.
anyone who attempts to divide nature into oversimplified categories is somewhat a nut. rest assured that I believe everything I read, and for everything written there is a contradiction written somewhere else. the very idea that a personality can be disordered is absurd; that it is considered an element of science, whether that sience is "soft" or "social" or not, is !! (words lacking)
I think that someone with a conscience will think (as well as know) that murder is wrong, whereas one without will "know" it's wrong, but not think. how much difference there is between not murdering because you a) think it's wrong, or b) know people will think it's wrong (your knowledge of right and wrong).. but now i'm just talking to myself. i've also realised it's possibly at least partially socially constructed. if you took 20 newborns and kept them in isolation for 22 years, then stuck them in a lab to see how many behaved as if they'd no conscience: how many would possess a voice whispering "it's wrong to murder" (in words lacking or otherwise), whether they based their behaviour on it or not?
and thankyou! my conceptions are expanding at 10million miles a second.
lovlie as always
Date: 2003-09-30 09:42 am (UTC)Anywhoosit... I wanted to toss in a couple thoughts on murder. Like everything else (so it seems), it's all about entitlement and theft: taking what you do not deserve. So, it's only wrong if you subscribe to a non-anarchist ideology that holds that people generally deserve their lives more than you do. Yes, it (and other property rights) do tend to maintain the status quo, but that does not defeat the concept of a universal standard of right and wrong. The problem is that people get altogether too hung up on trying to define a moral state by what actions fit into it, much as one might try to define a God by It's followers. When they can't come up with a "bright line" formula for judging a person's actions, they conclude that right and wrong must not be absolute, just conveniences or necessities of society.
My theory is that right and wrong are certainly absolute concepts: it is our actions that are muddled (see Plato's Theory of the Forms). Right and wrong exist regardless of our awareness of them, and it is that awareness that is imperfect.
So, do right and wrong exist for those who aren't aware of them? At the risk of sparking a "tree falling in the forest" debate, I would have to say yes. How do I know this? I just do. How can I prove it? I just can't. I just believe that feelings like joy and remorse are real, and driven by considerations greater than neurotransmitters.
That's it, yo'... hopefully no one out there feels 'stupider' for having been subjected to this. Be well.
Also, please don't think that just because I speak in certainties that I'm sure all my ideas are right... I have always held that if you're not willing to speak with conviction, you shouldn't say anything.
BTW, Jess- sweet site. I have come to rely on it for my daily dose of unreality.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-30 06:30 pm (UTC)if society proclaimed that murder was absolutely right, and you believed, for example, your own the only true consciousness, thus murder would be tantamount to crumpling a piece of paper, you would likely still question and/or doubt that idea.. that's the nature of the curse of intelligence. thus neither can I believe that right and wrong are entirely relatively constructed.
ah. your theory is imporrible to argue. :)
Imporrible
Date: 2003-10-01 04:47 pm (UTC)I don't believe it can be proven either way (audible sigh from the rafters). The problem for me lies in the popular (and to my mind, inaccurate) classification of morality as only applying to behavior. Without allowing yourself to complete a mental image of yourself committing an act, are you able to first feel malevolent towards someone, and then guilty for feeling that way, even though you have committed no act, and contemplated no specific behavior? Opponents might argue that even without imagining the behavior, you are associating the feeling with immoral acts, which is in turn driving your emotional response. But what if you knew... KNEW that you were completely restrained from ever committing any immoral act against a particular person... do you still think you'd be capable of guilt? Or is it just that your id isn't registering the impossibility of action, and is feeling pre-emptive guilt anyway?
Never you mind... I won't rock the boat. We'll discuss morality as applying to behaviors, if only because any oither discourse would be IMPORRIBLE (I super-love that word)... and ultimately self-defeating. The fact is, we'll never know. What remains are two arguments for universal morality: faith, and practicality. I won't waste time on faith, because it can't be argued for or against.
Practicality on the other hand, has its points to make. If moral relativists have truly hit the nail on the head, then moral codes are a function of learned behaviors as to what is acceptable and what is not. The nasty thing is the "pass the buck" effect - someone else can always be blamed for your upbringing.
Moral absolutists have no "pass the buck" effect... they feel bound to their higher values, and responsible only for their own actions. Their limitations lie in the sticky wicket of morality as applying to specific behavior, which may change from time to time. They would find themselves unable to adapt to new ideas. Actually, the evidence supports that most people (over 20) act as if they're in this category - unable to accept new social behaviors that they didn't accept as children.
Utilitarianists split the decision - they essentially measure morality by the greater good, reasoning that the only absolute moral code is to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Very democratic, but it has been the reaonsing behind many of the more well-publicized atrocities throughout history.
So, ramblerambleramble i go, and come finally back to practicality. Absolute morality is easiest. When someone commits an act, you don't have to mitigate by their upbringing, or their knowledge, or the fact that no one told them it was wrong... you just judge their actions. So what does this do to our definition of murder? Nothing. We just pigeonhole our definition to exclude those acts we find appropriate (self defenSe, etc.), and go from there. Simple, practical, and clean... a morality you can take to the bank.
(OK, did I really type all that? Sorry... I'm seeing this the next day, and can't believe that I put down all this. Still, it's definitely an idea... maybe.)
no subject
Date: 2003-10-03 02:38 am (UTC)can't resist attempting the.. uh, imporrible.
regarding the universal/relative morality debate, i'll faithfully assume you didn't simply side with universal because it's easier! it's also easy to blame behaviour on genetics, but when the conscienceless take the stand to claim, "genes made me do it," that will be just as difficult as "my parents made me." it's parallel to all nature/nurture debates that will continue to be pointlessly argued until our downfall, and i've essays to write. :
mmm, that analogy doesn't quite fit.
punishment to fit the crime as opposed to the criminal may be easier, but it's surely not as fair.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-12 03:11 am (UTC)no subject
no subject
Date: 2003-10-18 06:32 am (UTC)since you so bluntly declared No:
I tend to think that they do realise murder, as anything, has consequences. they just don't care. that they do realise there is a difference between right and wrong, they just don't care.
perhaps if they were not surrounded by people telling them, in various ways, the difference between right and wrong, they would not realise/know there was a difference. but you could then argue that in this they may not differ from everyone else; that neither would anyone be aware of that difference, because it is impossible to test.
hope that made sense; i'm not at my most lucid.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-02 06:22 am (UTC)get the fuck out the kitchen, eh?
Date: 2003-10-19 10:17 pm (UTC)http://www.absintheliquor.com/
(swedish essence ..a bit more pleasant than steep.)
right on your face:
Date: 2003-10-19 10:41 pm (UTC)~Alice In Chains
Inside
Always trying to get back
Inside
(But it's so hard to penetrate pig-thick skin.)
I'm 'bout as low as I can get
I'd leave but I can't forget
Still I wonder why it ain't right,
Mmm, it ain't right.
Bout as low as she can get
She'll leave me but she won't forget
And she wonders why she ain't right,
She ain't right.
Now we're as low as we can get
Can't leave and can't forget
We ain't right
Not right.
Well it's hard to believe
Somebody tricked you
When you can see you were only high
It's all up to you
So you gamble
Right on your face and into the fire.
--`-/--@
(I'll always love you. Would have rather you stabbed me in the ass than go sleep with that kid from the cafe.)
But, then.. we're all prone to madness, given the right circumstances.
Wish you ..weren't so proud.
btw
Date: 2003-10-20 01:51 pm (UTC)pretty pointless to keep blocking and banning me.
(the fact is i never go there. not interested.)
these little mails you've been getting from me lately are, simply, what you could call ..closing statements, i guess?
i'm done stressing over you. you're a backstabbing ho, jess.
any way you look at it. Pretty.......Pointless.
i do love you, though. like no other.
:)
no subject
Date: 2003-10-25 08:37 pm (UTC)i attract and am attracted to psychopaths.
how about yourself?
no subject
Date: 2003-10-27 05:05 am (UTC)I am just terribly interested in most minds, and triple so the unusual.
and people attracted to the unusual.
poopface.
Date: 2003-11-01 07:00 pm (UTC)you still know it's wrong, huh?
Date: 2003-11-02 09:21 pm (UTC)unless i meet a girl with horses
Date: 2003-11-02 09:25 pm (UTC)i dream about you all the time..
Date: 2003-11-03 02:32 am (UTC)