Antisocial Personality Disorder - Page 10

07-22-2006, 10:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Flint

@Pangloss: I'm just grabbing your quote out if convenience:

I reject the word supernatural. There is nature that we understand, and nature that we don't yet understand (and maybe never will). But there isn't anything outside of nature. Nature is simply what is.

You have hit on a peeve of mine, I hate the term "unnatural", no such thing. It is a cop-out.

9th Engineer · 07-23-2006, 07:44 PM

I know that when someone does something horrendous like raping and murdering children it bugs the heck out of me when the neighbors say things like "I don't how a person could do this". Plus calling them inhuman monsters, wake up news folks! there are no such things as monters, only people. The guy who murdered 15 people is as human as you.

skysidhe · 07-25-2006, 10:00 AM

my point was the lightning striking a tree might have been unexplainable in scientific terms to the supposed cave men but it didn't make it any less scientific.

supernatural was not the right word obviously.

but there 'could be' something outside of nature. No one can know this for sure.

Flint · 07-26-2006, 02:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by skysidhe

but there 'could be' something outside of nature.

Clearly that depends on your definition of nature. Nature, to me, is what is. So, if something is, it is nature. So, in that case, no, it's not possible for anything that is to be outside of nature.

Ibby · 07-25-2006, 10:13 AM

But how can it be outside nature? Wouldnt anything that exist be, technically speaking, part of nature? This includes man-made stuff, too... when a bird makes a nest, do you call the nest outside of nature? Humans are animals too, we're just better with our tools... and more destructive.

07-27-2006, 01:32 AM

Everything is.

skysidhe · 07-27-2006, 01:37 AM

too many ins and outs , is'is and is not-ers

9th Engineer · 07-27-2006, 11:42 AM

Come to think of it, can any personality disorder really be called a disorder?

Flint · 07-27-2006, 11:49 AM

Ritalin Cures Next Picasso

WORCESTER, MA—Area 7-year-old Douglas Castellano's unbridled energy and creativity are no longer a problem thanks to Ritalin, doctors for the child announced Monday. "After years of failed attempts to stop Douglas' uncontrollable bouts of self-expression, we have finally found success with Ritalin," Dr. Irwin Schraeger said. "For the first time in his life, Douglas can actually sit down and not think about lots of things at once." Castellano's parents reported that the cured child no longer tries to draw on everything in sight, calming down enough to show an interest in television.

© Copyright 2006, Onion, Inc.

Shawnee123 · 07-28-2006, 12:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Flint

Ritalin Cures Next Picasso

WORCESTER, MA—Area 7-year-old Douglas Castellano's unbridled energy and creativity are no longer a problem thanks to Ritalin, doctors for the child announced Monday. "After years of failed attempts to stop Douglas' uncontrollable bouts of self-expression, we have finally found success with Ritalin," Dr. Irwin Schraeger said. "For the first time in his life, Douglas can actually sit down and not think about lots of things at once." Castellano's parents reported that the cured child no longer tries to draw on everything in sight, calming down enough to show an interest in television.

© Copyright 2006, Onion, Inc.

That almost made me sad...then I saw it was from the Onion!

Pangloss62 · 07-31-2006, 02:55 PM

When I read the below this past Sunday, I couldn't help thinking about this string. I think there are some serious flaws in its reasoning, but I'm curious what you guys think. They acutally invoke the "automaton" notion that got so many people stirred up here in the cellar. Have at it:

The Insanity Defense Goes Back on Trial

By MORRIS B. HOFFMAN and STEPHEN J. MORSE
Published: July 30, 2006

IN June, the Supreme Court upheld a narrow Arizona test for legal insanity, which asked simply whether mental disorder prevented the defendant from knowing right from wrong. Last week, a Texas jury used a similarly narrow test to decide that Andrea Yates was legally insane when she drowned her five children in a bathtub, allegedly to save them from being tormented forever in hell.

Many scientists and legal scholars have complained that tests like these, used by the law to determine criminal responsibility, are unscientific. Given recent advances in our understanding of human behavior and of the brain, these critics argue, the legal test for insanity is a quaint relic of a bygone era.

These criticisms misunderstand the nature of criminal responsibility, which is moral, not scientific. On the other hand, legislation that has eliminated or unduly constrained the insanity defense, often in response to unpopular verdicts of not guilty by reason of insanity, is likewise off the mark. Between these two attacks, the concept of the morally responsible individual seems to be disappearing.

For centuries we have had a rough idea of the categories of people whom we should not hold criminally responsible. Early cases labeled them “the juvenile, possessed or insane.” The idea was that only people capable of understanding and abiding by the rules of the social contract may justly be declared criminally responsible for their breaches. Someone who genuinely believes he has heard God’s voice command him to kill another does not deserve blame and punishment, because he lacks the ability to reason about the moral quality of his action.

In an effort to hold most people accountable, and recognizing both the difficulty of establishing what was in the defendant’s mind at the time of the crime and the defendant’s incentive to lie about it, the law sought to establish strict standards for responsibility. As a result, legal insanity tests were drawn quite narrowly. They did not excuse most defendants whose intentional conduct broke the law, even if they might have suffered from mental disorders or other problems at the time of the crime.

The rise of various materialistic and deterministic explanations of human behavior, including psychiatry, psychology, sociology and, more recently, neuroscience, has posed a particular challenge to the criminal law’s relatively simple central assumption that with few exceptions we act intentionally and can be held responsible. These schools of thought attribute people’s actions not to their own intentions, but rather to powerful and predictable forces over which they have no control. People aren’t responsible for their crimes: it’s their poverty, their addictions or, ultimately, their neurons.

Lawyers and policymakers brought these academic explanations into the courts and legislatures, many of which responded to the pressure by expanding the doctrines of mitigation and excuse. Predictably, however, the public tired of many of the broader uses of the defense, especially after John Hinckley Jr. was found not guilty for reason of insanity for the attempted murder of President Ronald Reagan and others. Congress responded by adopting a narrow insanity defense, and many states followed suit. Four states have abolished the insanity defense entirely.

Once we agree that there may be some small percentage of people whose moral cognition is seriously disordered, how can the law identify those people in a way that will not allow the materialism of science to expand the definitions of excusing conditions to include all criminals? That is, if paranoid schizophrenia can provide part of the basis to excuse some criminal acts, why not bipolar disorder, or being angry, or having a bad day, or just being a jerk? After all, a large number of factors over which we have no rational control cause each of us to be the way we are.

The short answer is that we should recognize that the criteria for responsibility — intentionality and moral capacity — are social and legal concepts, not scientific, medical or psychiatric ones. Neither behavioral science nor neuroscience has demonstrated that we are automatons who lack the capacity for rational moral evaluation, even though we sometimes don’t use it. Some people suffer from mental disorder and some do not; some people form intentions and some do not. Most people are responsible, but some are not.

Punishing the deserving wrongdoers among us — those who intentionally violate the criminal law and are cognitively unimpaired — takes people seriously as moral agents and lies at the heart of what being civilized is all about. But being civilized also means not punishing those whom we deem morally impaired by mental disorder. Convicting and punishing a defendant who genuinely believed that God commanded him to kill is not unscientific, it is immoral and unjust.

We should be skeptical about claims of non-responsibility. But, if insanity-defense tests are interpreted sensibly to excuse people who genuinely lacked the ability to reason morally at the time of the crime, and expert testimony is treated with appropriate caution, the criminal justice system can reasonably decide whom to blame and punish.

Wrong insanity verdicts are possible, of course, but wrong verdicts are always possible. We should not respond by abandoning a defense that justice requires. A sensible test for legal insanity, fairly applied, can help prevent the concept of the responsible person from disappearing, either because the law naïvely accepts a cacophony of untestable excuses, or because cynical legislators overreact by permitting the conviction and punishment of blameless defendants.

Morris B. Hoffman is a state trial judge in Denver and a fellow at the Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research. Stephen J. Morse is a professor of law and psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania.

07-28-2006, 12:12 PM

We are losing sight of something... legally (and rightfully so) if you know the difference between right and wrong, you are sane, period.
Just because it is difficult for some of us to control our tempers does not excuse them from doing so, not at all.
I am dyslexic, have a mental disorder and had a rough childhood... I am not a criminal, worked my ass off and graduated from college with honors. I had to work harder than others to do so and did not care that it was not fair, was just my lot.
We are not all created equal, but we all have the same ability to make choices. That is the great equalizer.

It is simple, perhaps not easy (or as easy)for some, but it is simple.
If we don't know the difference between what is right and wrong, cannot make ethical distinctions, then that person has no business ever being in public anyway... problem solved.

Happy Monkey · 07-28-2006, 02:33 PM

Unfortunately, it's one of those Onion articles that tells a real story in a sarcastic way. Stuff like that happens all the time.

wolf · 07-31-2006, 06:20 PM

The M'Naughten Rule, or whether the individual suffers from such a defect of reason that they are unable to tell the difference between right and wrong is not the legal standard for insanity in all jurisdictions.

Insanity defenses are actually quite rare. Off the top of my head, it's used in less than 3% of cases, and is not usually successful.

Pangloss62 · 08-01-2006, 07:49 AM

Much of the discourse about this issue presupposes all people agree as to what is "right" and what is "wrong." Even the most cursory overview of world culture will show that right and wrong are subjective. For some, let's say tradional Ethiopians, FGM is the correct and proper thing to practice. For some Afghanistanies, it is wholly correct for a 13-year-old girl to be the second bride of a 53-year-old man. Look at our own debates about mercy killing (murder?).

I'm not saying we should abandon the prosecution of "justice" because morality is subjective, but we should at least admit that is the case and come up with some universal criteria based upon the nature of the illegal act and its effect on the victim; yes, a more rational approach. Keep morals out of it.

07-23-2006, 07:44 PM	#2
9th Engineer Bioengineer and aspiring lawer Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Pittsburgh Posts: 872	I know that when someone does something horrendous like raping and murdering children it bugs the heck out of me when the neighbors say things like "I don't how a person could do this". Plus calling them inhuman monsters, wake up news folks! there are no such things as monters, only people. The guy who murdered 15 people is as human as you. __________________ The most valuable renewable resource is stupidity.

07-25-2006, 10:13 AM	#5
Ibby erika Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: "the high up north" Posts: 6,127	But how can it be outside nature? Wouldnt anything that exist be, technically speaking, part of nature? This includes man-made stuff, too... when a bird makes a nest, do you call the nest outside of nature? Humans are animals too, we're just better with our tools... and more destructive. __________________ not really back, you didn't see me, i was never here shhhhhh

07-27-2006, 11:42 AM	#8
9th Engineer Bioengineer and aspiring lawer Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Pittsburgh Posts: 872	Come to think of it, can any personality disorder really be called a disorder? __________________ The most valuable renewable resource is stupidity.

07-27-2006, 11:49 AM	#9
Flint Snowflake Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Dystopia Posts: 13,136	Ritalin Cures Next Picasso WORCESTER, MA—Area 7-year-old Douglas Castellano's unbridled energy and creativity are no longer a problem thanks to Ritalin, doctors for the child announced Monday. "After years of failed attempts to stop Douglas' uncontrollable bouts of self-expression, we have finally found success with Ritalin," Dr. Irwin Schraeger said. "For the first time in his life, Douglas can actually sit down and not think about lots of things at once." Castellano's parents reported that the cured child no longer tries to draw on everything in sight, calming down enough to show an interest in television. © Copyright 2006, Onion, Inc. __________________ **************** There's a level of facility that everyone needs to accomplish, and from there it's a matter of deciding for yourself how important ultra-facility is to your expression. ... I found, like Joseph Campbell said, if you just follow whatever gives you a little joy or excitement or awe, then you're on the right track. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Terry Bozzio**

07-31-2006, 02:55 PM	#11
Pangloss62 Lecturer Join Date: May 2006 Location: Atlanta Posts: 768	Stop The Insanity When I read the below this past Sunday, I couldn't help thinking about this string. I think there are some serious flaws in its reasoning, but I'm curious what you guys think. They acutally invoke the "automaton" notion that got so many people stirred up here in the cellar. Have at it: The Insanity Defense Goes Back on Trial By MORRIS B. HOFFMAN and STEPHEN J. MORSE Published: July 30, 2006 IN June, the Supreme Court upheld a narrow Arizona test for legal insanity, which asked simply whether mental disorder prevented the defendant from knowing right from wrong. Last week, a Texas jury used a similarly narrow test to decide that Andrea Yates was legally insane when she drowned her five children in a bathtub, allegedly to save them from being tormented forever in hell. Many scientists and legal scholars have complained that tests like these, used by the law to determine criminal responsibility, are unscientific. Given recent advances in our understanding of human behavior and of the brain, these critics argue, the legal test for insanity is a quaint relic of a bygone era. These criticisms misunderstand the nature of criminal responsibility, which is moral, not scientific. On the other hand, legislation that has eliminated or unduly constrained the insanity defense, often in response to unpopular verdicts of not guilty by reason of insanity, is likewise off the mark. Between these two attacks, the concept of the morally responsible individual seems to be disappearing. For centuries we have had a rough idea of the categories of people whom we should not hold criminally responsible. Early cases labeled them “the juvenile, possessed or insane.” The idea was that only people capable of understanding and abiding by the rules of the social contract may justly be declared criminally responsible for their breaches. Someone who genuinely believes he has heard God’s voice command him to kill another does not deserve blame and punishment, because he lacks the ability to reason about the moral quality of his action. In an effort to hold most people accountable, and recognizing both the difficulty of establishing what was in the defendant’s mind at the time of the crime and the defendant’s incentive to lie about it, the law sought to establish strict standards for responsibility. As a result, legal insanity tests were drawn quite narrowly. They did not excuse most defendants whose intentional conduct broke the law, even if they might have suffered from mental disorders or other problems at the time of the crime. The rise of various materialistic and deterministic explanations of human behavior, including psychiatry, psychology, sociology and, more recently, neuroscience, has posed a particular challenge to the criminal law’s relatively simple central assumption that with few exceptions we act intentionally and can be held responsible. These schools of thought attribute people’s actions not to their own intentions, but rather to powerful and predictable forces over which they have no control. People aren’t responsible for their crimes: it’s their poverty, their addictions or, ultimately, their neurons. Lawyers and policymakers brought these academic explanations into the courts and legislatures, many of which responded to the pressure by expanding the doctrines of mitigation and excuse. Predictably, however, the public tired of many of the broader uses of the defense, especially after John Hinckley Jr. was found not guilty for reason of insanity for the attempted murder of President Ronald Reagan and others. Congress responded by adopting a narrow insanity defense, and many states followed suit. Four states have abolished the insanity defense entirely. Once we agree that there may be some small percentage of people whose moral cognition is seriously disordered, how can the law identify those people in a way that will not allow the materialism of science to expand the definitions of excusing conditions to include all criminals? That is, if paranoid schizophrenia can provide part of the basis to excuse some criminal acts, why not bipolar disorder, or being angry, or having a bad day, or just being a jerk? After all, a large number of factors over which we have no rational control cause each of us to be the way we are. The short answer is that we should recognize that the criteria for responsibility — intentionality and moral capacity — are social and legal concepts, not scientific, medical or psychiatric ones. Neither behavioral science nor neuroscience has demonstrated that we are automatons who lack the capacity for rational moral evaluation, even though we sometimes don’t use it. Some people suffer from mental disorder and some do not; some people form intentions and some do not. Most people are responsible, but some are not. Punishing the deserving wrongdoers among us — those who intentionally violate the criminal law and are cognitively unimpaired — takes people seriously as moral agents and lies at the heart of what being civilized is all about. But being civilized also means not punishing those whom we deem morally impaired by mental disorder. Convicting and punishing a defendant who genuinely believed that God commanded him to kill is not unscientific, it is immoral and unjust. We should be skeptical about claims of non-responsibility. But, if insanity-defense tests are interpreted sensibly to excuse people who genuinely lacked the ability to reason morally at the time of the crime, and expert testimony is treated with appropriate caution, the criminal justice system can reasonably decide whom to blame and punish. Wrong insanity verdicts are possible, of course, but wrong verdicts are always possible. We should not respond by abandoning a defense that justice requires. A sensible test for legal insanity, fairly applied, can help prevent the concept of the responsible person from disappearing, either because the law naïvely accepts a cacophony of untestable excuses, or because cynical legislators overreact by permitting the conviction and punishment of blameless defendants. Morris B. Hoffman is a state trial judge in Denver and a fellow at the Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research. Stephen J. Morse is a professor of law and psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. __________________ Things are never as good, or bad, as they seem.

07-25-2006, 10:00 AM	#3
skysidhe ~~Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.~~ Join Date: Apr 2006 Posts: 6,828	my point was the lightning striking a tree might have been unexplainable in scientific terms to the supposed cave men but it didn't make it any less scientific. supernatural was not the right word obviously. but there 'could be' something outside of nature. No one can know this for sure.

07-27-2006, 01:32 AM	#6
rkzenrage Guest Posts: n/a	Everything is.

07-27-2006, 01:37 AM	#7
skysidhe ~~Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.~~ Join Date: Apr 2006 Posts: 6,828	too many ins and outs , is'is and is not-ers

07-28-2006, 12:12 PM	#12
rkzenrage Guest Posts: n/a	We are losing sight of something... legally (and rightfully so) if you know the difference between right and wrong, you are sane, period. Just because it is difficult for some of us to control our tempers does not excuse them from doing so, not at all. I am dyslexic, have a mental disorder and had a rough childhood... I am not a criminal, worked my ass off and graduated from college with honors. I had to work harder than others to do so and did not care that it was not *fair, was just my lot. We are not all created equal, but we all have the same ability to make choices. That is the great equalizer. It is simple, perhaps not easy (or as easy)for some, but it is simple. If we don't know the difference between what is right and wrong, cannot make ethical distinctions, then that person has no business ever* being in public anyway... problem solved.

07-28-2006, 02:33 PM	#13
Happy Monkey I think this line's mostly filler. Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: DC Posts: 13,575	Unfortunately, it's one of those Onion articles that tells a real story in a sarcastic way. Stuff like that happens all the time. __________________ _________________ \|...............\| We live in the nick of times. \| Len 17, Wid 3 \| \|_______________\| [pics]

07-31-2006, 06:20 PM	#14
wolf lobber of scimitars Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Phila Burbs Posts: 20,774	The M'Naughten Rule, or whether the individual suffers from such a defect of reason that they are unable to tell the difference between right and wrong is not the legal standard for insanity in all jurisdictions. Insanity defenses are actually quite rare. Off the top of my head, it's used in less than 3% of cases, and is not usually successful. __________________ wolf eht htiw og "Conspiracies are the norm, not the exception." --G. Edward Griffin The Creature from Jekyll Island High Priestess of the Church of the Whale Penis

08-01-2006, 07:49 AM	#15
Pangloss62 Lecturer Join Date: May 2006 Location: Atlanta Posts: 768	Right or Wrong Much of the discourse about this issue presupposes all people agree as to what is "right" and what is "wrong." Even the most cursory overview of world culture will show that right and wrong are subjective. For some, let's say tradional Ethiopians, FGM is the correct and proper thing to practice. For some Afghanistanies, it is wholly correct for a 13-year-old girl to be the second bride of a 53-year-old man. Look at our own debates about mercy killing (murder?). I'm not saying we should abandon the prosecution of "justice" because morality is subjective, but we should at least admit that is the case and come up with some universal criteria based upon the nature of the illegal act and its effect on the victim; yes, a more rational approach. Keep morals out of it. __________________ Things are never as good, or bad, as they seem.

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