Actually he just preserved the woman's face in a jar, I'm not sure about the shoebox or the belt, but all Gein is really famous for was putting heads in jarsMr.Numbers said:
What is "True Evil"
- Thread starter Albino Assassin
- Start date
Actually this is what makes them evil. Some were insane true, but John Wayne Gacy was perfectly sane when he did the things he did, as was the Citzen X.Russian_Assassin said:
Both enjoyed illustrious careers in the public eye, and Gacy was hailed for his commmunity service work, even meeting the First Lady to commend him for his work.
You learn one thing around police officers, gentleman.
Never ever underestimate human sadism.
Because evil is based entirely upon someone's opinion. You find that evil, but I don't. This is because in most cases there are compelling factors that cause things like this to happen, like sociopathy (where your mind cannot comprehend emotions properly), or poor intelligence. Coupled with loads of other factors.Mr.Numbers said:
People have been killing each other since the dawn of our species in very cruel ways; it's better to view it as a sad fact of life, and finding ways to prevent it. Pigeon-holing it as inherently good or evil behaviour neglects the actual causes of this behaviour, meaning future behaviour may not be noticed.
And even though no-one in your list deserves to be called evil, they all did very sick things and deserve punishment/rehabilitation. Society commonly denies them that. For example, the Yorkshire Ripper, who killed several women in the 70's, is pretty much cured from what was mental illness (this is the opinion of one psychiatrist I personally know). However, he's never being released because politicians are fucking around with the prison system.
Why is someone who is effectively cured being held for the rest of his life because voices in his head told him to kill women? Because the public views murder in terms of good/evil, and no politician has the guts to do the right thing.
After reading most of the Walking Dead comic, I can safely say that the governor is truly pure evil.
He makes people food for the zombies, rapes Michonne repeatedly and then killed half the survivors in the prison. He is one sick bastard
Mr.Numbers said:
All these seem evil to you, but if you enter the mindset of these people, this, in their heads would be the right thing to do. There is no such thing as evil, just different ideals of what is good. To me for someone to be evil they have to know what they are doing is evil, have complete control of what there doing is evil, and no that no good will ever come from what they have done, and I don't think anyone has ever acted in that way, EVER.
-Serial Killers, NOT EVIL- most of the time their actions are out of their control.
-Dictators, NOT EVIL- Greed by all definition can't be considered evil
Even the most notorious evil man himself
-Adolf Hitler, NOT EVIL-He was aspiring for something better, a superior race, being wrong does not make you evil, It makes you a complete fucking idiot (Who did deserve to die along with all the other Nazis) does not make you evil.
Racist- ignorance is not evil
Humans are never truly evil
Good and bad are subjective, thus no true good or true evil exists. Just more leaning to one side or the other. Rape being the only example of the top of my head that I'm cool with people denoting as objectively evil.
Hmm....Albino Assassin said:Okay so the title pretty tells you everything but just incase...
I want to know what the escapists idea on "True Evil" is. No I am not doing this for any particular reason I am just curious...
Right now, probably this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrvDhSB7GHk
I consider evil anyone that demands the sacrifice of another for any reason especially on the grounds of "need". I can think of nothing more repugnant than a society in which my money is taken from me and distributed to others because of their "need". There are other things I consider evil but that is the greatest I've yet to discover.
Honestly I would say that evil is subjective what we consider evil now is not what has all ways been considered so.
Paedophilia is considered evil but only a couple hundred years ago it was completely natural for 12-13 year old's to be married with kids.
Human sacrifice is considered evil but the Aztec's believed it was a way to appease their gods.
I am also going to go ahead and say that anyone you call evil is to mentally twisted to even begin thinking of themselves in such a way.
Paedophilia is considered evil but only a couple hundred years ago it was completely natural for 12-13 year old's to be married with kids.
Human sacrifice is considered evil but the Aztec's believed it was a way to appease their gods.
I am also going to go ahead and say that anyone you call evil is to mentally twisted to even begin thinking of themselves in such a way.
the people who stop a microwave before it's done and leave it saying something like 2:24 so then all day when you look at it for a split second you think it is 2:24.
Okay. This is tricky, but bear with me.Wuggy said:
Being a Human Construction does not make it Fantasy. There might be rules and conditions under which a particular act can be deemed "Good" and "Evil", and as long as such rules are determinate in the public sphere for any given action then that's a sufficient condition for objectivity.
Take money. Your bank notes only have value in terms of deference to a central monetary authority (or to the stock market, consumer confidence etc.). But this authority has structure and a public licence to do so, so confidence in fiscal currency is maintained and the notes can be widely used to make trades and purchases.
The point is that social agreement does not simply "discover" this value - it actively determines it. And in determining it in terms of where it comes from, who is responsible for maintaining it and what needs to be done to do so, a publicly evaluable fact of the matter concerning the current value of the pound or dollar is set out.
The same might be true of morality for a particular class of action. If there are determinate conditions under which actions are agreed to be wrong, then those conditions can constitute the objectivity of Evil. And the presentation of case studies in which there is near-universal subjective agreement gives credence to the theory that there can be such an objective understanding.
Alright, I will.Indeterminacy said:
That's true. That wasn't what I was saying though. Morality as a concept and as a system currently in place in human society very much exists. I'm just saying that it isn't objective and there is no way it could be.Indeterminacy said:
No it's not. As long as it's dependent of values of an individual or a group of individuals, it's not objective. For it to be objective it would have to be independent of humans. In other words: For it to be objective it would need to be part of a mind-independent reality. And it's not, it's dependent on human society.Indeterminacy said:
Fair enough. However, this doesn't mean that the system in place is objective. It just means there's a system in place.Indeterminacy said:
Yes, there's a set of rules put in place to guide the value of currency. This is true. However, there's nothing to indicate that the rules are "correct" as it were. Nor that the rules should be there in the first place. This is a matter of subjective view.Indeterminacy said:
That's the thing though. There is no universal agreement on any ethical issue. And even if there were, there's no way to determinate whether or not the universal agreement is objectively right. Consensus does not equal objectivity.Indeterminacy said:
No there isn't. Tell me, what is the universal agreement on one of the most common moral issue: Taking another person's life? There isn't one, there's nigh infinite amount of "but"s and "however"s. There's centuries upon centuries of philosophical speculation of essentially what's the criteria for "good" and "bad". There has never been a consensus. And even if there were, it still isn't objective.Indeterminacy said:
You make fair, thought-out points but the main thing I disagree with is that consensus would a condition for objectivity. The condition for objectivity is that it's independent of a person or a group of persons, not the consensus even if it were universal.
It's been a while since I did the quote-tree thing. Anyway, thanks for taking my post seriously!
Here's one reason to be a little suspicious of it. What is an electron? Well, it's a charge-carrying elementary particle. But in order to understand what that is, we need to engage in the act of scientific theorising. We have historically arrived at an understanding of what electrons are through the experiments that invalidated the Bohr atom model, and currently witness them in terms of the impact our understanding of them has in electronics and chemistry, among other things.
We only think that electrons exist because we have a great model of how things work that posits their existence. You never see an electron directly; only the consequences of thinking it's there. To say that electrons are "mind-independent" thus isn't quite right. Yet if electrons do exist, that is an objective fact. Furthermore, it seems to me like the sense of objective existence of electrons that we try to ascribe to them is the central one of the demonstrable correctness and practical application of statements that talk about them, which is an independent matter to whether or not their fundamental character is as a posit of a theory or as some kind of "thing-in-itself".
Similarly, allow me to propose a "mind-independent" theory of behavioural values. Namely, an evolutionary-cum-neuropsychology account. Here's the idea - in the animal kingdom, where instinctive decision making is an important part of survival, some members of a species by chance become genetically disposed towards a neurology that favoured collective action. Their offspring begin to form groups. In doing so, they learn that each individual has a greater chance of warding off predators, and as a result, more of the group survive to reproduce. Consequently, in a few generations time, the mutated members of the species are thriving. Thus, these values have a very particular and important virtue - facilitation of survival.
I'm not saying either of these are necessarily good points in themselves, but rather that there is something dodgy about "mind-independence" that needs properly analysed. Furthermore, I don't see why "mind-dependence" necessarily means "non-objective". Electrons are posits in such a way that we didn't for a long time conceive of their existing, and there could be a thoroughly biological account for why people make exactly the valuations they do anyway. If you could elaborate on why you think that's not the right way to look at the problem, I'd be interested to hear what you think.
Is this an objectively good reason to trade in cash? Well, it's an objective matter of fact that doing so is less hard work when everyone agrees on it, that everyone else does in fact agree on it, and that you're going to be severely disadvantaged if you don't follow suit. We can postpone the question of value judgements for now, but you are going to be disadvantaged if you don't act accordingly, and this is feedback that you're going to have to deal with in the formulation and retention of your choice of values.
What I was trying to get at was that there might be an objective fact about the values people have that a general consensus would reveal, and that this might highlight an objective purpose or methodology in making the value judgements that they do.
Say for instance you ran a trial with some particular questions, and came back with the result that everyone thought that murder was wrong. That of itself doesn't tell us anything about whether murder actually is wrong or not.
But suppose you ran brain scans on people while they were making such judgements, and it turns out that everyone who made one particular judgement activated one part of the brain and everyone who made a different judgement activated another. This would tell you something interesting about the ways in which people arrived at the judgements they did.
What I propose is that there might be an objective fact of the matter as to why some moral value judgements might be more prevalent than others. Furthermore, it is also possible that this fact points to a standard, such as survival, reproductive success, territory etc. or even social conformity itself, that is something which you will be objectively punished or disadvantaged for not adapting to.
Or to paraphrase a friend, "street markings might be purely social constructs, but when you ignore them and crash your car, it hurts like hell".
One of my problems is with the deference to "mind-independence" you make here. I would like to draw out the precise meaning of that.Wuggy said:
Here's one reason to be a little suspicious of it. What is an electron? Well, it's a charge-carrying elementary particle. But in order to understand what that is, we need to engage in the act of scientific theorising. We have historically arrived at an understanding of what electrons are through the experiments that invalidated the Bohr atom model, and currently witness them in terms of the impact our understanding of them has in electronics and chemistry, among other things.
We only think that electrons exist because we have a great model of how things work that posits their existence. You never see an electron directly; only the consequences of thinking it's there. To say that electrons are "mind-independent" thus isn't quite right. Yet if electrons do exist, that is an objective fact. Furthermore, it seems to me like the sense of objective existence of electrons that we try to ascribe to them is the central one of the demonstrable correctness and practical application of statements that talk about them, which is an independent matter to whether or not their fundamental character is as a posit of a theory or as some kind of "thing-in-itself".
Similarly, allow me to propose a "mind-independent" theory of behavioural values. Namely, an evolutionary-cum-neuropsychology account. Here's the idea - in the animal kingdom, where instinctive decision making is an important part of survival, some members of a species by chance become genetically disposed towards a neurology that favoured collective action. Their offspring begin to form groups. In doing so, they learn that each individual has a greater chance of warding off predators, and as a result, more of the group survive to reproduce. Consequently, in a few generations time, the mutated members of the species are thriving. Thus, these values have a very particular and important virtue - facilitation of survival.
I'm not saying either of these are necessarily good points in themselves, but rather that there is something dodgy about "mind-independence" that needs properly analysed. Furthermore, I don't see why "mind-dependence" necessarily means "non-objective". Electrons are posits in such a way that we didn't for a long time conceive of their existing, and there could be a thoroughly biological account for why people make exactly the valuations they do anyway. If you could elaborate on why you think that's not the right way to look at the problem, I'd be interested to hear what you think.
Well when it comes to economics, there's actually a pretty good reason for why the rules are in place for fiscal exchange. Lugging all your stuff around to trade and barter is pretty inconvenient in comparison with a bank card, and most people aren't going to accept a chicken in payment for a cup of coffee. Anyone who has to make every kind of exchange with material goods is going to suffer when other people want to trade in a format that's more convenient for them.Wuggy said:
Is this an objectively good reason to trade in cash? Well, it's an objective matter of fact that doing so is less hard work when everyone agrees on it, that everyone else does in fact agree on it, and that you're going to be severely disadvantaged if you don't follow suit. We can postpone the question of value judgements for now, but you are going to be disadvantaged if you don't act accordingly, and this is feedback that you're going to have to deal with in the formulation and retention of your choice of values.
Sure, absolutely. I hope that wasn't what I said. People can be absolutely wrong about stuff despite everyone agreeing.Wuggy said:
What I was trying to get at was that there might be an objective fact about the values people have that a general consensus would reveal, and that this might highlight an objective purpose or methodology in making the value judgements that they do.
Say for instance you ran a trial with some particular questions, and came back with the result that everyone thought that murder was wrong. That of itself doesn't tell us anything about whether murder actually is wrong or not.
But suppose you ran brain scans on people while they were making such judgements, and it turns out that everyone who made one particular judgement activated one part of the brain and everyone who made a different judgement activated another. This would tell you something interesting about the ways in which people arrived at the judgements they did.
What I propose is that there might be an objective fact of the matter as to why some moral value judgements might be more prevalent than others. Furthermore, it is also possible that this fact points to a standard, such as survival, reproductive success, territory etc. or even social conformity itself, that is something which you will be objectively punished or disadvantaged for not adapting to.
Or to paraphrase a friend, "street markings might be purely social constructs, but when you ignore them and crash your car, it hurts like hell".