You’re sitting under pale, fluorescent lights in a cinder-brick room. Sitting across from you is an old, gaunt Charles Manson. Those little rat eyes dancing around, they finally settle on you, and you begin to read off the question on the pad in front of you.
“Mr. Manson, did you feel that having those people killed was wrong?”
Manson: “What do you mean, Wrong? What does it mean to be wrong? Who’s wrong, what’s wrong? Everyone ask me if I think I did somethin wrong—but nobody tells me what it is. I’m not wrong. I’m just me.”
You: “Everyone knows what wrong is”.
Manson: “I don’t know what wrong is. It’s a ghost. It’s fake. I’m not delusional—you’re delusional. There ain’t no thing called wrong.”
How do you respond?
Could you show him what wrong is? If so, what is it?
If you can’t locate moral qua moral—and not as moral as instinct or as social construction or a feeling—which are pragmatic, behavioral and psychological concerns, not moral considerations—then there seems to be no thing that is moral or immoral, qua moral or immoral, worth talking about because it is not accessible in any meaningful way. Moral is inaccessible to inquiry and immoral seems to fade away into a mistake of action. If this is the case, then should we through moral language and metaphysics to the scrap heap, pluck what we can and simply talk about these things as What-Was-Once Considered-To-Be-Moral or Immoral ? If we do toss out moral as a metaphysical entity, then that means that someone like Manson is not evil, but he is simply broken and dangerous—less like the devil and more like an evolutionary throwback who couldn’t control his instinct and had no reason to.
Besides the consequences to Manson himself, what reason did Manson have to not kill if he wasn’t born with or didn’t develop with empathy?
What could you have told him to keep him from committing those atrocities, before he started their motion, and didn’t have to do with social rejection or empathy?
What could bind the hands and strong, vile instincts of a man with no empathy and no need for social approval or concern for disapproval?
Can Moral or Immoral be reduced to regions of the brain, learning and neurotransmitters?
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While I appreciate the moral discussion this post could generate, I have something to say first.
If Charles Manson actually felt no empathy or no sense that killing people was wrong, then why did he always manipulate someone else to do his dirty work?
I’m sorry, but I cannot buy that Manson did not feel that what he was doing was wrong, no matter how matter how many times he shouts it from the rooftops. I’ve heard about psychological studies that suggest that some serial killers lacked the chemical reactions that produce “empathy”, but a) those studies are still fairly marginal so far as I know and b) none of those studies suggest Manson as one of the affected (several other serial killers, perhaps, but not Manson).
Manson is a brilliant manipulator, and that is what enabled him to destroy so many lives.
There is evidence to this in both the video that you posted, and the stories of the women who killed for him. He jumps around from saying he killed them but who cares, to saying that he didn’t kill them. I’m not a psychologist, but that is the epitomy of defense mechanisms. He tells himself that since he never actually killed them himself (and actually, I think there was evidence, but not enough to convict, that he had at least once), he isn’t responsible. Look how agitated he gets when asked about his “lack of remorse”, and listen to the excuses he gives for his actions (lack of parents, etc.). You don’t give excuses if you don’t feel guilty.
Furthermore, those same psychological studies also link situations such as Manson’s (particularly rough childhood) to serial killers, not just chemical abnormalities. As of yet, there is no evidence that a simple chemical abnormality can (without other non-biological factors) lead to this so-called lack of empathy for other human beings. In the end, is may predispose someone towards violence, but it does not make them lack empathy. Also notice how alike his description of the “real world” is to the things other street folk say.
Ultimately, I do not think there is reason to think that there is anyone who totally lacks empathy. There are those who ignore their empathy, and must delude themselves to deal with it, and that is what Charles Manson is.
(Oh, and all that talk about what he’ll do when he gets out…that’s just the delusion talking.)
Stephanie:
There is obviously something wrong with the way Manson is wired. He had people killed, needed power like I need water and prefers prison to the actual world. When you refrain from killing someone do you think this is wrong, so I will not do it; or, do you simply not have a compulsion to kill or have people killed?
The point of this post is not so much concerned with what the cognitive, chemical, neurological structures are that create the feeling and compulsion or revulsion, assent or rejection that we call moral or immoral, but if moral is the kind of thing that can be reduced to those things. Is there actually some metaphysical entity called moral? Or, is it simply biology interacting with circumstance, family and culture that creates what we call moral?
We use morally praiseworthy or blameworthy in arguments, explanations and justifications all the time, but we don’t seem to really know what it means. What does it mean to be the thing Moral? Is there such a thing? If someone like Manson is making a mistake of action because the way he was wired, then he can’t be blamed and he isn’t in prison because of some conflated idea of justice; he’s in prison because we are selecting him out of our population, potentially keeping him from reproducing and keeping him from harming people we care about, the not-criminals—Those we empathize with.
However, I am under the impression as we use moral or immoral now, we are using it to denote something that we have learned to be Intrinsically good or intrinsically bad. This could be dangerous to the purpose of morals, whatever that is, if we don’t figure out how best to associate this evaluative process with the right things. For instance, if I am a Jew in Israel, might believe that Arabs are intrinsically flawed, or morally deplorable; if I am an Muslim in Israel, I might believe that the Jews and the rest of the infidels are intrinsically bad, or morally vile. If they believe that this is evaluative state is a real thing, then it could make peace impossible. Because to make peace would mean to associate with that which is intrinsically bad, morally vile. If they understood moral appraisals as a feeling with little to no truth value, then they might do more pragmatic calculations that could lead to peace.
If morals are simply evaluative feelings attached to some judgement determined by culture and a few biological dispositions remains to be seen. I look forward to the answers in further discussion.
“If they believe that this evaluative state is a real thing, then it could make peace impossible.”
Joel’s example made the meaning of that sentence clear and the concept made a lot of sense to me.
I think I agree with one of the options (if I didn’t misunderstand) that I heard Joel offer us: What we call moral might be biology interacting with circumstance, family and culture. Therefore as biology, circumstance, family or culture change, so can morals.
On another note, the comments (on youtube for that Manson clip) seemed equally as sad as some of Manson’s words. Can we lock up all the people that seem to admire Manson? Are they as dangerous as Manson?
Joel’s post has me thinking about morals and gut feelings. Sometimes we have to go with our gut feelings until we can work out all of the consequences and logical implications. Perhaps that is what moral means….our gut feeling that something is wrong/right…it either helps/hinders us in meeting our ideals (our own self interest) or helps/hinders the preservation (or possibility of attainment) of our ideal society. So perhaps moral should only be the beginning of the thought process. Nothing should be illegal or firmly decided on “morals.” They are simply the stepping stone to a more logical analysis of the problem at hand.
Here is a quote from ‘Examined Lives’ by James Miller:
“Foucault speculated that this problem had gone into eclipse for two reason: first because religious institutions (particularly monasticism) had confiscated the theme of the practice of the true life. And second because the relationship to truth can now be made valid and manifest only in the form of scientific knowledge.” Then a few sentences later…. “Foucault was not the only twentieth-century figure who appreciated that philosophy could be a way of life and not just a study of the most general features of the world and the categories in which we think.”
In case it is not obvious as to why I think that quote is relevant to this post, I will add the following. Have you read the book or seen the movie “Contact?” There is a character that makes the statement “I am a man of the cloth…..without the cloth. I am a seeker of truth.” Matthew McConaughey plays the character in the movie. Can we use religion and science to help us define morals and the good life without those things clouding our vision?
I acknowledge that I used the word “religion” even though I believe that religion is a vague word that can be interpreted to mean many different things.
These quotes are from the thread started by Jon. But they seem pertinent to this thread also.
I wonder if the second set of quotes is Joel’s attempt at defining for us a new framework. I look forward to Joel’s response to Kevin’s most recent request for clarification. This thread is very thought provoking.
The thing about words. Sometimes it seems better to just come up with a new word if the word you’re using has too many inconsistent meanings.
I think I am going to make an attempt to quit using the word moral. I think I will struggle to find better words to say what I mean. The meaning of moral is not clear.
Excerpts from Joel’s posts:
If there is not an *entity called moral* then …. Jon’s argument makes very little sense, unless placed in some new framework.
second set of quotes from Joel’s posts which I interpret to be Joel’s developing that new framework:
I believe morality is a human drive. Not just emotions. We have a drive to label certain things intrinsically bad and certain things intrinsically good—and other things family and culture teach us.
There is something that I think is the progression of what we call moral, and that is the progression of a widening field of empathetic relations, of feeling and moral compulsions.
Elucidating what we mean by morals, what drive them, what they mean to us, and what their weaknesses and strengths could help protect us from easy to escape arguments and ethical principles that condone genocide.
.. the question is not if it is morally impermissible or permissible to do such things, but why should I care or why should it stimulate my drives to reduce suffering or make “moral” judgments?