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Do you believe people are born inherently good/evil?
- Thread starter Deleted member 23212
- Start date
As a person with two of the four mental health conditions you've listed, and some comorbidities besides, my objection is to the moral categorisations being applied. Sociopathy is a thing, "Proclivity to anti-social behaviour" is a hair's breadth from vintage race science.
From what I've read, people, like most other animals, are evolutionary driven to do things that benefit others. We get a serotonin and dopamine kick when we do something that helps other people. Its an interesting quirk in evolution where even though it didn't help that specific individual survive and reproduce, it helped the species as a whole do that, so that's why we now all like being friendly and shit
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My opinion as well. We're not born innately moral (or clever, or determined, etc), but we are born with tendencies and predispositions. nurturing dictates how we evolve and grow from there. If we're lucky, at some point we get autonomous enough to course correct ourselves.
"Good" and "evil" are relative, but no.
Different people have different predispositions. "Nature" will determine the boundaries of our potential and any risk factors. "Nurture" will push us in a certain direction along that spectrum. Environmental factors can have a varying effect; this can include epigenetics due to the environment of the womb (whether intrinsic to the mother or due to something she ingested), exposure to toxic chemicals (esp. from pollutants), and diet.
"Inherent" implies, to me, that people are a certain way at "conception", but there is a lot that happens between then and birth, as well as all the years of development after that. So depending on how you frame it, I guess the answer might be...maybe, but probably a lot less than many assume. And I don't think it's a useful or ethical line of questioning to pursue. People that try to link certain behaviors to certain groups miss the fact that there is more variability within a (e.g. ethnic) group than between them. Biology is extraordinarily complicated.
Different people have different predispositions. "Nature" will determine the boundaries of our potential and any risk factors. "Nurture" will push us in a certain direction along that spectrum. Environmental factors can have a varying effect; this can include epigenetics due to the environment of the womb (whether intrinsic to the mother or due to something she ingested), exposure to toxic chemicals (esp. from pollutants), and diet.
"Inherent" implies, to me, that people are a certain way at "conception", but there is a lot that happens between then and birth, as well as all the years of development after that. So depending on how you frame it, I guess the answer might be...maybe, but probably a lot less than many assume. And I don't think it's a useful or ethical line of questioning to pursue. People that try to link certain behaviors to certain groups miss the fact that there is more variability within a (e.g. ethnic) group than between them. Biology is extraordinarily complicated.
I do think it's as black and white as nuture trumps all, other factors play into it but no, you're not born evil.
As has been discussed here already in the posts before, the only way you can be born good/evil is if the definition of good/evil being a thing that can be decided unanimously. I have always believed that the goalposts for good/bad move so frequently and wildly that it would be impossible to be born that way.
Regardless I think it's a dangerous line of thought to suggest people are predisposed to act certain ways, it removes accountability for "bad" actions.
Regardless I think it's a dangerous line of thought to suggest people are predisposed to act certain ways, it removes accountability for "bad" actions.
No, and an unimaginable amount of hurt has been done because of belief in people's "innate" goodness or evil.
Most if not all 'evil' acts are born out of brain abnormalities anyway, so it's a pointless distinction
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/when-your-child-is-a-psychopath/524502/
"Proclivity to anti-social behaviour" is straight up considered a valid diagnosis in children by professionals
The above article is quite long, but it's really interesting
Are you making some ham-fisted phrenology reference here? lol
How about join the conversation and make an argument for nurture.
Well it's the capacity for evil that's in question. Most people don't seem to be arguing for OP's initial premise ("babies are born bad"). Obviously, all humans have the capacity for evil, but some, in my earnest opinion, have more than others due to their brain. Does this make them "evil" at birth. Well, no. But that is not a great term here because its ambiguous and subjective. I prefer selfish for evil and compassion for good. Or we can just call it what it is and describe it as "capacity to conform to a social contract based on cultural mores". Society dictates that being selfish is evil and being compassionate is good, we are measuring it by how we treat others versus how we treat ourselves. That capacity is, at least initially, natural, in my opinion.
For a large portion of people? No. Your are often a product of your environment and past experiences.
But there are those rare few that are born clinically psychopathic lacking any emotion.
But there are those rare few that are born clinically psychopathic lacking any emotion.
Sociopathy is literally not a thing and hasn't been for decades. Antisocial personality disorder is. Hence using the term "antisocial."
Some big brain armchair psychiatrists in this thread.
My mother was a child minder for over 30 years, and we have been able to predict how childs would turn out simply based on how parents were educating/raising them. I'm sure there is a few extreme exceptions and that there is still some level of predispositions which mean that obviously not everyone raised the same way will end up with the exact same personality.
I'm maybe overestimating how much education/environment matter compared to genetics, but honestly I'd rather be wrong than be one of those ( sadly numerous ) parents I've witnessed push every problem their children had as being either the result of genetics or literally everything else but how as a parent they raised them.
All of this is made worst by the fact it's pretty much impossible to tell a parent that they are making a mistake when raising a child, from the outside you are pretty much forced to witness things go wrong.
I'm maybe overestimating how much education/environment matter compared to genetics, but honestly I'd rather be wrong than be one of those ( sadly numerous ) parents I've witnessed push every problem their children had as being either the result of genetics or literally everything else but how as a parent they raised them.
All of this is made worst by the fact it's pretty much impossible to tell a parent that they are making a mistake when raising a child, from the outside you are pretty much forced to witness things go wrong.
I am against the idea of there being any clearly identifiable biological factors that are present during someone's birth. At the very least it's such a minor factor compared to the goliath that is environmental factors (education, how they are raised, their social background, their experience in society, etc.)
Our brain isn't some fixed machine, it's a complex organ that's shaped and evolves as we use it. Are you aware, for example, that very young children, just a few years old, are better at identifying the faces of apes than older children? As their brains get better at identifying and distinguishing human faces, they specialize into doing one task well, but get worse at the more general, but clearly less useful task of distinguishing animals.
So saying someone has any kind of "capacity" when they are born is beyond silly to me. Selfishness and compassion are learned and trained depending on their nurture, not their "nature" or instincts or whatever.
Believing every child is born with the same exact capacity is just as naïve as believing that someone could be born "evil". Evil is a weird sliding/arbitrary target of absolution. Like everything else in the realm of humanity, there's a spectrum, not a duality.
Behavior is learned, but some children are born with greater/lower natural capacity for empathy, due to their natural hormonal state.
There is no such thing as being born "evil", but some people will certainly struggle a little more than others with being truly altruistic.
Behavior is learned, but some children are born with greater/lower natural capacity for empathy, due to their natural hormonal state.
There is no such thing as being born "evil", but some people will certainly struggle a little more than others with being truly altruistic.
Psychopathy and sociopathy are informally real (and kind of are similiar...don't forget the terms existed about 100 years prior to the advent of the field of Psychology) even if the DSM Dx's don't acknowledge it. Otherwise you wouldn't have tools such as the PCL-R, a literal instrument that psychometrically measures psychopathy and often times used in conjunction with the HCR-20 to attempt to assess risk of future criminal offending.
An example to talk about...not necessarily "evil", but at least non-empathetic is that political ad of the republican dude's whole family attacking him. It shows that he became the way he did not from anything that he grew up influenced by. At least not from family.
Yeah but being like "Antisocial is a NAZI TERM!!!1!" when that's the actual official terminology is goofy. So is saying that sociopathy is more "real" when it's not an officially recognized diagnosis.
Technically, "sociopathy" never has been an actual diagnosis.
I never meant to appear that there is anything wrong with the use of Antisocial or ASPD. You are right. It is the official label of the diagnosis. I was just pointing out the clinical relevance/legitimacy of the terms sociopathy and psychopathy.
But to be quite frank, despite finding assessing and diagnosing fun, I hate it. It is ultimately bullshit because it is all at the hands of the insurance companies. F code this, F code that just for a billable hour. The diagnosis isn't as important as the treatment. You don't treat the diagnosis. You treat the symptoms. Take mood disorders for example. You have bipolar 1, 2 Cyclothymia, Dysthymia, etc. All are going to treated with very similar meds (antidepressants and mood stabilizers, sometimes anti-psychotics) and intensive cognitive/dialectical behavioral therapy to help cope with the medication reducing symptoms. Bipolar is also often confused with Borderline Personality Disorder (many of the same traits, only difference is medication minimally helps those with BPD).
Same thing for Schizophrenia and Schizoaffective. Same line of Rx treatment as above but definite anti-psychotic like Invega. These are just labels, the DSM is just one big book of labels so that it can become a billable hour.
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Yes and no.
You can give them drugs that tone down aggression and stuff (not always done ethically, there was a lawsuit not too long ago where a prison forced a kid to take estrogen to try and "treat" his disorder and it lead to some, uh, physical abnormalities) but treatment is effectively teaching the patient the benefits of following the rules. The impulses don't go away, they are merely controlled.
You can't teach people who are incapable of feeling empathy how to feel what other people feel. You can't teach them why the rules matter. You just teach them how to stay out of jail. Whether that makes them a "good" person or not is up to you.
This is probably the best summary in this theead
