h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If we really want to test the hypothesis that moral attributes are (at least to some extent) innate, the standard methodology is to study their correlation between pairs of identical (monozygotic) twins. Any instance of one of a pair being bad/evil and not the other would surely refute Novo's case.

This isn't my area of psychology, but maybe someone could enlighten us from existing knowledge or a bit of surfing. I haven't the online time.

No more bizarre than a river goddess perhaps?

Novo

Yes, monozygotic twin studies have been used to examine nature vs nurture in relation to various attributes, including personality. Such studies - *especially* when it comes to personality can be a little shi... - er - suspect.

'Wickedness', though, isn't a personality attribute. It's bound to be multivariate. And even if one were to try to measure it...I don't believe one could adequately control for environmental aspects. How might we arrange for parents with identical parentic styles and economic circumstances, etc to bring up each twin while experiencing identical life events. In field studies, the available sample would be so small as to be uninformative.

But that's not the point. Let's allow that it is theoretically possible that one person might be more genetically disposed towards wickedness than another. The point is that we can't tell. Therefore the only civilised thing to do is to act as though children's undesirable acts are the result of their upbringing. This should govern how we treat them.

Now let's imagine that we *do* have a genetic test that would allow us to decide that a neonate will ineviatbly grow up to be a wrong 'un. Well...surely that's not the wicked baby's fault? (and I guess our Siberian friend was asking whether it's the devil's fault).

But that's a hypothetical. In the real world, it is simply not civilised to label children - whether 2 or 200 of them - as inherently wicked. Hence my righteous ire earlier.

Instead of saying "This child is evil" - isn't it more sensible to ask "Why is this child behaving badly? Is there anything we can do to stop his behaviour from ruining his life?"

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I didn't realise that it's different in the UK. A "marriage" here can be overseen by anyone qualified to marry people - a minister, a rabbi, a Justice of the Peace, an ombudsperson, etc. A "civil union" like they have in Vermont (it varies by state) is the same thing, except I suspect not every minister would be willing to marry a same-sex couple. Massachusetts is the only state in which same-sex marriage is actually legal, but it's really just a difference in terminology from Vermont's.

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Unless you're bisexual. And even if you aren't, you can choose whether you want to hate the "other".

Although we haven't got priests in Congress, we've got a lot of legislators who I expect would like to be.

>>"<>

>>"Unless you're bisexual."

Well, for a child observing couples, all they're likely to see is two people of the same or different sexes.
If one or both people were bisexual (as in 'catholic in preference rather than intermediate in identity'), they're still a couple of either the same or different actual sex.
If there are people of some intermediate gender, that's likely to go unnoticed unless somehow evidenced in their appearance.

>>"And even if you aren't, you can choose whether you want to hate the "other"."

You certainly can choose (or more likely, be influenced into choosing) to hate or not. Whatever the law calls the groups.

>>"Now let's imagine that we *do* have a genetic test that would allow us to decide that a neonate will ineviatbly grow up to be a wrong 'un. Well...surely that's not the wicked baby's fault? (and I guess our Siberian friend was asking whether it's the devil's fault)."

Not its fault, but we'd still need to do something about it, which could effectively involve some equivalent of imprisonment or pharmacological subduing.

you missed the off that one

Re: born bad.

There is some evidence for this occurring. And that it is nature not nurture. BUT this is predicated on the human brain defining the limits of the human mind/person. There is some research which indicates that an abnormally reduced frontal cortex has a high coincidence with individuals who display psychopathic behaviour.
This is not unexpected as the region of the brain which is affected is involved in controlling actions (urges, physical/emotional etc behaviour). See again the infamous Phineas Gage.

So, it can be thought that an individual born with whose genetics are likely to give rise to a reduce frontal cortex is indeed 'born bad'. The problem with that though is that the individual has no choice whatsoever. The lack the ability to control their actions, to understand their effect on the world.

So how exactly can you label them as bad (or evil).

The only way the born bad/evil as a wilful character trait can make sense is if you believe that the human person/mind is in control of the human brain rather than the other way around. This is (to me anyway) obvious nonsense. Therefore there is no born bad or born good.

Just born different. Just like you, me and everyone else was born different.

(btw, brain relation to mind/I and which controls which is not as simple as I have outlined above. But one thing we can say with a fair degree of certainty from experiments and research on brain trauma is that the physical brain does control the conceptual person and that lack of, or reduction in functionality in, brain regions can greatly affect the behaviour of the person without them being able to control it in any way, or even know that they are doing that.)

>>"The only way the born bad/evil as a wilful character trait can make sense is if you believe that the human person/mind is in control of the human brain rather than the other way around. This is (to me anyway) obvious nonsense. Therefore there is no born bad or born good."

>>"Just born different. Just like you, me and everyone else was born different."

Kinda depends *how* different.
There's potentially 'so different that they can't coexist with regular society', whether thats down to them not being able to cope with it, or vice versa.

If some hypothetical person was somehow (how?) *known* to be guaranteed to grow up into someone uncontrollably violent, or someone had grown into someone apparently uncontrollably violent, at some point something would have to be done to stop them hurting people.
Good, bad or evil, and fault or no fault might not be the issue.

How many people could be identified before starting to do things is another matter.

Fair enough. I hadn't realised that novo had made a psychopathological diagnosis on two children. How advanced of him. It's not normally nailed down until adulthood.

Granted, yes, but I was dealing just with the issue of 'born bad' and showing that there are people who would fit that category but that they aren't really bornd 'bad' just different.
And yes, society does need to work out how best to deal with those who cannot, for whatever reason, abide by the socially accepted norms for that society.

The how is a good question. Those who are congeitally 'bad' is the easier one to address, since there would be something in their genotype that would dictate the probable brain development. I can see, for example, how the genotype could be used to predict such development but only the limits thereof. Whereas those who end up that way through trauma or some other physical event cannot be predicted.

I think what I am saying is that I think there are two different clases here that are being combined together. On the one hand there are those who appear to be born without the ability to develop or understand certain rules, or without the ability to control certain actions.
Whereas the second group would be those in whom such traits develop during their life due to trauma, disease.
Actually, lets make a 3rd category which would be those who develop such traits in the absence of any physiological change. Perhaps through need, through conditioning or other environmental process.

Of course, there is nothing stopping someone in category 1 also being subject to the same effects as those in 2 and 3, thus complicating things further.

To me though there is one big question over all of this. And that is whether you can have a person who is seen as 'bad' yet has no environmental, physiological or congenital difference. But this would lead to the question of 'difference from what?' and that leads to a idea of some standard of 'normal' which I would dispute exists.
The reason I find this question difficult to answer is that I do not know how subtle a change could be to produce such behaviour. Does it have to be as large as difference in frontal lobe volume? Or could it just be a few missing neuronal connections?

>>"But this would lead to the question of 'difference from what?' and that leads to a idea of some standard of 'normal' which I would dispute exists."

Not a standard of normal, but a range of acceptability.
Generally defined by laws as to what people can and/or can't do.
Driving a car? - Normal/acceptable.
Random violence, or killing and eating people? Not normal/acceptable.

Ultimately the bad/evil tag can fade to relative irrelevance if someone does serious enough 'bad' stuff, except in as much as it affects their future propensity to do bad stuff again.

So...surely, then, the 'bad' label belongs to deeds, not people?

Take someone with paranoid schizophrenia. A small (very small!) proportion of these enter a psychotic state in which they believe it reasonable/ necessary to harm people. Their evil is certainly caused by the illness. But it doesn't follow, does it, that people with the same illness are therefore evil?

(Note that I'm discussing this in the context of psychopathology. I'm *not* saying that no person deserves the label 'bad'. But I'd argue strongly that we reserve that for non-pathological adults.)

"Random violence, or killing and eating people? Not normal/acceptable."
Except, of course, for when those actions are deemed acceptable.
Random violence acceptable you say? Well, it has been 'acceptable' at various points in history. OK people have looked back and said it was wrong, but that is to apply the rules of today to yesterday. Riots, wars, etc all havehad this element within them and ecuses given as to why it was ok.

Killing and eating people? Again, there are cultures where this is acceptable, in a given situation. And even in cultures where it isn't there are situations which are contentious and one could argue it is ok.

"the 'bad' label belongs to deeds, not people?"
This is perhaps where the problem lies and the mistakes are made. The actions or deeds cannot be bad, they just are. Is killing and eating someone bad (to take a recent example) ? What if your culture says it is ok to do that in battle - indeed that it is an honourable thing to do to honour the dead hero? What if both participants (killer/eater and killee/eatee) are quite happy with their role in the deed?

Bad or evil is a moral, value based judgement. Only a self aware individual can make that judgement. The act itself is just an act. It is the contect, the social environment, the prevailing social attitudes which define it as bad.

"Their evil is certainly caused by the illness. But it doesn't follow, does it, that people with the same illness are therefore evil?"
This is certainly one of the arguments which to my miond shows that the act is not the bad thing. It is the judgement, the reason of the person performing the act which makes it bad.

To turn it round, to tell someone you love them would usually be construed as a good act. Yet if it is done with the intent of unsettling the person, of sowing doubts in their mind as to the love and care and affection of that persons family and social circle in order to move their dependancy to your suicide cult then it is a bad thing (in reference to my cultural values).

amd the extension of that is that if the person performing the deed is incapable of making the moral judgement as to whether their action is contravening the prevailing social environment then the act is not bad (or evil).

This of course means that psychopaths who have no understanding or ability to comprehend the effect of their actions are not bad or evil. They just have a different viewof the world, of how to act than those who do have the ability to perform such social calculations. The question then is how to deal with them. You can't really punish them as it is pointless. They will never understand why you are punishing them or why what they did was worng. Not really udnerstand (though they may understand as an intellectual exercise). And you can't just let them carry on as innocent people will suffer. And you can;t really treat with current medicine or surgery other than to alter their personality.
But there you have another issue. The culture I live in would say that altering someones personality against their will - effectively changing the person, killing the old identity and creating a new one - is wrong. Yet perhaps in this case it is ok?

Dude,

A bit hypothetical, surely? First of all, you seem to be attempting to deconstruct the notion of 'good' and 'bad' as absolute, immutable concepts. That's fairly obvious. Good and bad are defined by our current circumstances. In our world - the only one we can sensibly talk about - random violence or eating people would generally be judged as 'A Bad Thing'.

And then you talk about the hypothetical possibility of changing a hypothetical psychopath's personality. Surely that's only an issue if we hold the immutable human soul as sacrosanct?

It strikes me that ethical philosophising is perhaps akin to religion. Should we bother about absolutes about which we know nothing?

Or should we only worry about real-world questions. Such as "What should our attitude be towards children who behave badly?"

>>"So...surely, then, the 'bad' label belongs to deeds, not people?"

It's certainly more useful there, though if there was someone with a known propensity to do bad things, bad could be a useful 'warning label' even if not a complete character description, maybe even if an innacurate character description.

>>"Take someone with paranoid schizophrenia. A small (very small!) proportion of these enter a psychotic state in which they believe it reasonable/ necessary to harm people. Their evil is certainly caused by the illness. But it doesn't follow, does it, that people with the same illness are therefore evil?"

I'd avoid 'evil' as a term, especially in the context of actions of disturbed people. It'd be even less use to describe a member of a group with a possibility of starting to do harmful things. At the very least it does rather demand a personal history of 'evil' acts.

>>"Note that I'm discussing this in the context of psychopathology. I'm *not* saying that no person deserves the label 'bad'. But I'd argue strongly that we reserve that for non-pathological adults.)"

It's not easy to be sure when or how much people are really responsible.

If there was a vicious gang leader who happened in fact to have some mental problems, a snap judgement and label of 'bad', 'evil' or 'psycho' could be equally good in encouraging people to avoid them, or avoid crossing them. Accurate labelling can wait until they've stopped being a threat and can be examined at leisure.

>>"Random violence acceptable you say? Well, it has been 'acceptable' at various points in history. OK people have looked back and said it was wrong, but that is to apply the rules of today to yesterday. Riots, wars, etc all havehad this element within them and ecuses given as to why it was ok."

In riots and wars, it's not usually random, but does have some understandable pattern and aim.

Clearly, you *could* define anything as normal. You could consider people who saw visions as being touched by deities, and encourage their wildest imaginings, and forgive any harm they did as being heaven-sent and definitively Good. In such societies, some brain conditions we might consider pathgological could be seen as within the norm, even as gifts.

In any society, there will be ideas about what is and isn't normal. Since any practical judgement of or enforcement of normality does require someone to do the enforcing, in any practical situation, a standard will already exist. It obviously isn't an absolute standard across time and all humanity, but there will be some criteria to make judgements by.

>>"Actions or deeds cannot be bad, they just are."
Actions and deeds happen somewhere. That somewhere is likely to have local ideas about what's good and what isn't.
One person may find an action good in one place, but bad elsewhere. To a large extent the issue of pathological abnormalities of minds relates to their ability to understand and conform to local rules.

"Dude,"
Why thankyou, although I fear the label is somewhat inaccurate!

"A bit hypothetical, surely? First of all, you seem to be attempting to deconstruct the notion of 'good' and 'bad' as absolute, immutable concepts. That's fairly obvious."
To you and me perhaps, but at least one poster has poisited the idea of bad as an absolute, which I was trying to refute.

"Good and bad are defined by our current circumstances. In our world - the only one we can sensibly talk about - random violence or eating people would generally be judged as 'A Bad Thing'."
True, but I don;t think that generalisation helps as it is very close to saying that there is an absolute 'bad' or 'good'.

"And then you talk about the hypothetical possibility of changing a hypothetical psychopath's personality. Surely that's only an issue if we hold the immutable human soul as sacrosanct?"
Firstly, no mentions of soul please
Secondly it doesn;t matter whether the personality, the identity is immutable.
I was just trying to provide another example of something which is generally considered bad (forcing a personality change on an individual against their will) but in certain circumstances is considered good (when it prevents that person from performing some socially unacceptable act). By which I hoped to show that it isn;t the act which makes it bad, it is the reasoning behind, the motive for, the act which makes it so.

"In riots and wars, it's not usually random, but does have some understandable pattern and aim."
I was more thinking of the individual acts of looting, pillaging etc that can occur and can go unpunished or explained away.

"One person may find an action good in one place, but bad elsewhere"
Exactly, it is the situation and, indeed, the observer/judge who decides, the act itself is neither good nor bad as an absolute.

>>the identity is immutable

Now there's a can of worms! Indeed, identity is immutable. You can change the handle and the head, but it's still George Washington's axe.

But...you said earlier that it's thought unacceptable to change someone's identity. What does this mean, then? How can it be changed if it's immutable in the first place? Is 'identity' a useful concept?

A Hollywood celeb can change her body by having silicone implanted. Is this unacceptable? Or how about if we have our hair cut?

Bodies mere external fripperies. But since we don't have souls, what else do we have? Personalities? Are we against personality modification? (Which is also, of course, just body modification in the form of changes in synaptic connections or neurochemistry). I'm certainly not against it. I take regular medication to do precisely that.

Explain youself, dudette.