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?
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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.