Was Hitler evil?

[Colin Bower]

I have been troubling myself with a question I can’t answer, and a problem I can’t resolve. It arises from a magnificent essay on Hitler by one Ron Rosenbaum. (ttps://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/hitler-continued-afterword-updated-edition-explaining-hitler-search-origins-evil)

Rosenbaum reports the view (without agreeing with it) that we are not entitled to regard Hitler as evil, and that indeed we are not allowed to regard anyone as evil – that there can be no such thing as human evil. This is a view that has apparently been articulated through the centuries, and can be traced back to Socrates. Hitler was (apparently) quite convinced he was doing the world a service by getting rid of the Jews and other “racial undesirables”. If he genuinely thought he was doing good, how can he be regarded as morally blameworthy?  A similar argument could be presented in connection with Verwoerd. Or the man known as Prime Evil. For the sake of brevity I may of course be putting the matter simplistically.

It is furthermore held that the only reason human beings do bad things is because they have no perception of their badness.  By definition a person can only do something bad because they have no conclusive inner consciousness of the badness of what they do or have done.  My fellow schoolboy who at primary school took a fiendish delight in squashing live frogs under the heavy roller or conducting live dissections of mice – horrifying to me – was only able to do so because he had no perception that what he was doing was bad. In terms of this theory, no human being is able to do something bad knowing that it is bad. When “good” people do something mildly bad, as no doubt most do, it is done on the basis of the perception that it is only modestly bad, and from “only modestly bad”, they elide to a view that what they have done is not really bad at all, and this is what has enabled them to do it.

If true, it would make the whole notion of punishment irrelevant and absurd. Even if he shot his girlfriend intentionally, should Oscar Pistorius be punished in any way whatsoever? At the time of shooting her (if he shot her deliberately), he did so under the conviction – momentary or otherwise – that she deserved to die. That is to say, he did not believe that what he was doing was bad. If we don’t punish, how do we deal with the consequence of his behaviour: a dead person? And if punishment is irrelevant and absurd, how does society protect itself against bad acts that hurt and harm it?  Is any educational or socialising process that seeks to encourage probity and goodness equally irrelevant and absurd? Does our only protection against bad acts lie in pre-emption? But this course has obvious limitations and fallibilities.

In the absence of anything in people we could call evil, do we then simply have a consequential kind of morality in terms of which we hold people accountable form the harm that they do? But this is not so straightforward as it sounds, given the fact that it might be difficult or even impossible to achieve any kind of universal concurrence on what constitutes harm. If we were able to bring Hitler back to life he is likely to insist that the only thing wrong with killing six million Jews was that he didn’t kill more. The more you think about it, the legitimacy of the “doing harm” point of view loses legitimacy if people cannot agree on what constitutes harm. South Africans who murder Somalian shopkeepers clearly don’t consider their actions to be harmful.

I imagine that Trevor and others would respond with alacrity: harm is easily defined as action taken against a person without his or her consent. Whilst I respect the consent principle as profoundly as any other libertarian, the limitations of this principle have been regularly pointed out on this network.

Finally, the consequence of this position would also be to deny the existence of human virtue To go through life not stealing  could not be regarded as virtue if it were the case that the only reason we don’t steal is because we view stealing as bad, and – according to the theory outlined above – nobody is  capable of knowingly doing a bad thing. Are we moral agents at all? If not, are we in any meaningful way agents of anything?

Whilst I would like to hold the position that Hitler was evil (and that people are indeed capable of doing bad things knowing very well that they are bad), I have to admit that Hitler’s decorum, behaviour, obsession and commitment do seem to represent the case of a man doing bad things under the confirmed impression that they are good things.

It all gets quite confusing ... which is part of my problem. Of course none of this is necessarily of interest to the libertarian imagination.

Colin B.

[Schalk Dormehl]

The number one experience one has when dealing with evil people is confusion. 

-M Scott Peck 

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[Schalk Dormehl]

M Scott Peck has some great stuff on the topic of human evil. His theory on human evil is quite insightful even if you don't agree with his theology or philosophy. It is probably best applied to dealing with one's own evil and correctly categorizing those confusing people as at the very least "dangerous". 

[albert nelmapius]

That is the same question as "Should the insanity defense be allowed?"

Famous libertarian psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Szasz (famous book= The Myth of Mental Illness") claims there is no such thing as mental illness as described by modern day psychology and psychiatry.
He wrote multiple books and articles on the subject and he claims that mental illness (rough defenition is according to a psychiatrist he (patient) does not understand what is wrong or right) and it is used to imprison millions of innocent people in asylums for life with no chance of parole.
Consequently he claims that so called "mental illness" is used as the insanity defense which allows millions of guilty to go free.- so it should be abnolished.

Any person above a very basioc IQ having survived 20 years of life or more knows what society thinks is right or wrong. They may have a personality trait that makes them not agree, but they know committing murder will get you life in prison or the death penalty and assualt or theft will have consequences and if you get caught society will consider you evil.. The mental ability to foretell consequences is all that is needed, not a moral agreement with it.

Albert Nelmapius

[albert nelmapius]

I am not all that interested in whether ivory tower philosophers think that evil needs the guilty to have a conscience or they cannot be classified as evil.
Albert Nelmapius

[Colin Bower]

I apologise for opening up a discussion that might seem like an unappetising warmed up dish from last week, but Albert's response, which I appreciate, encourages me to believe that my point has not been disposed of. Let's forget other issues like consent and insanity, for neither have relevance to my suggestion. Can a person be punished for an act or for acts they genuinely and authentically believe to have been right, irrespective of how we may feel about them? The South African woman who "murdered" her three severely handicapped children: to cut to the chase - she kills her children for a number of reasons, firstly as an act of self defence, because she knows that the level of care her children require is killing her, secondly she acts out of her own sense of compassion for children who have zero quality of life, and maybe there are other reasons.  Yes, she knows all about the injunction against murder, but ultimately she acts on the basis that she believes she is doing right. Many people may not agree with her line of reasoning, but they can't deny that she acted in what might be called good conscience. How on earth can she be punished for having done so? Then there is the example of Hitler. Yes I know, he is an extreme example who has been done to death, as it were, in arguments about right and wrong and good and evil. Yes, let us quickly say that we all agree that Hitler's actions had as their consequence the death of millions of innocent people over whose lives he had no rights of disposal. But from everything I have read, from newsreels I have seen, from his own writings, I believe we can draw the conclusion that in no way whatsoever was Hitler troubled by a sense of having done wrong. Let us remember he might even have felt (erroneously) justified in his belief in a higher level of civilisation achievable by a pure Aryan race, where arts and literature would thrive, and great achievements be made, on the basis of the writings of (say) Wagner, Nietsche, Heidegger, even other writers who appeared to worship "the blood" like D H Lawrence.  By establishing a "superior" civilisation he believes he is serving the human race. We think he is a deluded mass murder, but that is not the point. He has no remorse and dies wishing he had succeeded in exterminating all Jews. Yes, we might kill such a man in our personal self-defence, in the defence of the things and the people we love and cherish, and in defence of our freedom, but what ethical justification is there for punishment?
Colin B.

On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 4:54 PM, albert nelmapius <sac...@earthlink.net> wrote:

I am not all that interested in whether ivory tower philosophers think that evil needs the guilty to have a conscience or they cannot be classified as evil.
Albert Nelmapius

--

[albert nelmapius]

So you are arguing that only those who profess to "feel guilty" should be punished?

Albert

[Frances Kendall]

The information available to Thomas Szasz has been completely superseded by modern brain scanning technology which shows that mental illness is not a myth. The effects of mental disease can be clearly seen on FMRI scans.

[Stephen vJ]

I am in moral disagreement with taxation. Sadly the society around me considers that evil and insane. They are willing to lock me up if I don't pay. I know these consequences, do not consent, but pay them anyway. The money is used to further propagate this perception in society by means of propaganda billboards next to the N1... and the N1. Evil me. I feel guilty. Maybe I should be locked up.

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

[Colin Bower]

@Albert - I am beginning to wonder whether there is actually any ethical basis for punishment. I am certainly beginning to question whether the state or indeed any community of people have rights of punishment, except in cases of agreed contract. Wouldn't our societies be more just if capital crimes were left entirely to the involved parties to resolve?  A case in point is the Pistorius trial, which seems to me to be an expensive charade.  When Oscar killed his girlfriend recourse against him should have been left entirely in the hands of other involved parties. Yes, vengeance and vendettas would result ... but are private vendettas any more heinous than the endless miscarriages of justice in our courts .... and a continuing murder rate of catastrophic proportions? Shouldn't the justice system confine itself entirely to material restoration? This was the case with the wonderful medieval Sallic Code. When did the state start to regard itself as a party to private wars between people? 

Colin B.

[Erik Peers]

A dog has no sense of right or wrong. But punishing dogs who behave in socially unacceptable ways does correlate with better behaviour.

Is it relevant whether Hitler thought he was good or evil. He needed to be stopped.

Most pedophiles don't see harm in what they do. Neither do priests. Doesn't change what they do.

The consequences of someone doing harm to others, ie non consensually, is normally worse when it is done with good intentions. Malema,  Vervoerd,  the Pope, the list goes on.

[albert nelmapius]

 Frances,
I disagree and I would like to discuss that with you. I do not want to hijack Colin's thread though, so if it is of interest, we can start another thread about Thomas Szasz
He foretold the possibility of some things being classified as "mental illness" in the 1960s in future being diagnosed as physical diseases.. That would reclassify them not as "mental illness" but as a specific brain disease.That does not discredit his theories, it only will move what used to be treated by psychiatrists to being treated by neurologists or neuro surgeons or onchologists.

Most of the "refutations" of Szasz in the literature were done, financed and sponsored by those heavily vested in the mental health industry.
Albert Nelmapius

[Stephen vJ]

The person doing the Bad Thing is obvious a poor judge or indifferent or mentally ill or perfectly rational given the subjective benefits... who knows. In any event, the actor's opinions of his acts are irrelevant or should be. But the question is then, who gets to decide what is evil and what not or who should pay, how and how much ? Society in general (democrats), interested parties (anarchists), government (statists / collectivists)... I have a problem with government deciding, but mob rule is also only a solution for me relative to how bad the other options are. Surely we don't want the wise owls to decide one day that Libertarianism is Evil. So who decides ? Certainly government shouldn't. How would they know any better than say a small council of elders or a group of libertarians throwing darts at a board of options. Who gets to say Malema is wrong or the Pope right ?

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

[albert nelmapius]

Colin,
The original premise was whether or not Hitler and the like can be called "evil"
What created confusion is because we did not specify by whom. By his family? by his shrink, by the law, by his peers, by some future philosopher... all these will have different answers.

What we are now discussing is another question. Is there "efficacy" or even justification for punishment or incarceration by the state.
This is a far more practical and interesting topic to me.
Libertarian law has been discussed and debated many times.

I agree with you that the state has no mandate to deliver punishment other than the sheeple submit to it. As with anything else the state does it is grossly inefficient and most of the time ineffective. All this is only a function of the fact that there is "publicly owned" property in all current states.

If all property were privately owned, there would not be a monopoly on policing and punishment. Different jurisdictions would have private law that applies to their private property only. Visitors to such private property would have to consent to abide by the private rules.
There would be free markets and competing systems for the best forms of justice. Certainly the perpetrators would not be housed at the taxpayers expense.
They would be allowed to live in private prison facilities that would allow them to continue working so they can pay room and board and pay restitution to the victims.
Each prison might have different rules like no contact with children or the internet or heavy machinery.
Some would allow the death penalty and some would not, some would encourage geniuses to keep contributing to society while finding ways to limit their danger to society. Some would allow eye for an eye, while others might only consider monetary damages. So you murder my child, the court decides that is worth one million dollars in restitution to me - that would also imply that I can save the million dollars until you come out, I can murder you and return the million dollars to your estate.
Whatever, as with anything else free markets will creates solutions.

Albert Nelmapius

[Stephen vJ]

There is also the issue of degree. In my view, Hitler was particularly bad, but only a short step ahead of Franklin D Rooseveld, for example. My neighbour is quite evil too - his dogs bark incessantly and has cause me to contemplate the value of gas chambers on many a Saturday morning - but he is clearly less evil than FDR. Is there anyone on this planet who has no ounce of evil in him at all ? Surely I have some badness too. So at what point exactly does the level of evilness reach a threshold where someone (government, society, nobody, everybody) should take action ?

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

[Stephen vJ]

I like this kind of wild speculation. What happens when a privately imprisoned inmate flatly refuses to work or even acts destructively ?

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

[albert nelmapius]

The same as if a "NON prisoner" citizen refuses to work or acts destructively. The bedding and eating utensils he destroyed would not be replaced by the taxpayer and it would make life miserable until he buys new ones, which he likely won't destroy.He probably won't be able to afford a rainproof and air conditioned room and because there is no state sponsored  charity, he would probably go hungry until he finds something of value to trade.

Nobody can foretell the future of free market solutions exactly.
Fifty years ago, if I told you that that heavy black rotary phone in your house would eventually fit in your pocket and have a camera and computing capabilities far better than any machine invented at that time, you would have called it wild speculation.

Albert Nelmapius

[Colin Bower]

Questions:

1.) Depending on which stats you believe, there are about 35 0000 murders every year in South Africa, possibly a lot more. Would we have more murders or fewer murders if we abandoned all state or institutional sanction against murder? Yes, that's right: people can murder without facing the consequence of any state or institutional punishment of any sort whatsoever. Mad? I'm not sure. Perhaps not. Whilst you face no state sanction for murdering me, I face no state sanction for murdering you. One can reasonably expect a state of mutual self-preservation based  either on mutual self-interest or on fear (who cares which). Remember, all the system I am proposing has to do is result in fewer murders in order to be a better and a more effective system than the current one. But, I hear you say, this means that, if a person breaks into my house at night, and I make the mistake of challenging him, he knows he can kill me without state or institutional consequence? Quite right. But now consider the corollary. Any man contemplating breaking into my house must know that he faces the risk of being summarily killed (murdered, executed, assassinated, whatever) by me at me sole discretion, and with no state or institutional consequence to deter me if or when I challenge him. Will you end up getting vengeance killings and vendettas? Certainly. Vengeance is not altogether and universally a bad thing. Vendettas? Knowing the consequences, people will have the free choice of whether to involve themselves in vendettas or not. We can, to some extent at least, rely on the human instinct for self-preservation. Whether we believe PIstorius killed Steenkamp or he murdered her, if Steenkamp's brother, father or friend took it upon himself or herself to kill Pistorius, and did so, would we have an outcome more unjust than the outcome that the hideously dishonest and expensive charade called a murder trail will deliver? What happens if, in search of vengeance, you inadvertently kill the wrong person? Well, bear in mind that - although we no longer have the death penalty - the current system is also quite capable of punishing the wrong person by sending him or her to prison for a crime they didn't commit, sometimes for life. But I submit that the ordinary person, subject to the risks involved with killing the wrong person would make a better job than the courts currently do of identifying the right person, especially since he or she understands the danger of retaliation whatever action he or she takes. And by the way, do not assume that everyone will want to take vengeance. Forgiveness and mercy are prevalent instincts.

2.) Wouldn't it make sense to abandon completely the notion of "punishment"? What is punishment? The deliberate infliction of pain to achieve either a functional outcome or a moral outcome. I am not sure it is justified in either case. Even animal trainers - from what I gather - achieve the best results without punishments (I have read Monty Roberts the American horse trainer on this subject).

3.) Wouldn't we be better off returning to a judicial system guided solely by the principles of (a) adjudication in the event of contract disputes and torts, and (b) restorative justice in the event of common law crimes (with the sole exception of death, since life can never be restored, and so no restoration is possible)?

Here follows an excerpt taken on an arbitrary of co-incidental basis from the Internet that gives some relevant context to my suggestions:

"For every 1000 crimes committed in South Africa, only 430 criminals are arrested. Of these, only 77 are convicted and barely 8 of these are sentenced to two or more years of imprisonment. It is also calculated that South African convicts have a 94% recidivism rate (that is, 94% of all persons released after serving a sentence immediately become involved in crime again)."

Of course I realise that these are dense, complicated arguments .... but we are all constrained by time and space.

Colin B.
 

[Stephen vJ]

That's very utilitarian. A tad too utilitarian maybe. I don't have the time to respond thoroughly right now, but would like to suggest also making the moral and evolutionary arguments. Then consider: USA first amendment - say what you like, and second amendment - have a gun to defend what you just said. I think that is about as close as it has gotten in reality.

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

[Trevor Watkins]

Almost all of the issues you raise, Colin, are discussed in my essay on the Consent Axiom. In brief summary, 

I believe morality arises from choice. Lead bullets, cyanide gas and critical amounts of plutonium are neither moral nor immoral, they simply exist. Only a person imbued with a choice of actions needs to consider the morality of those choices. 

You should be judged only by the consequences of your actions, not your intentions.

You CAN define certain absolute moral standards. Life is good. Choice is good. Property is good. 

Inevitable disputes should be settled by invoking the wisdom of a group, such as a jury. 

Punishment is necessary, but should be sensible. Apology, restitution, exile are better choices than no punishment, or no restitution, or incarceration.

I quote the relevant sections of my essay below for those interested

An extreme example

 

Imagine you have spotted a young girl in an Iraqi market wearing an oddly bulging outfit under which you have clearly seen wires and straps. The consent law says you OUGHT to ask her consent, or at least wait until she makes some unambiguous threatening action, before responding. Since the consequences of her threatening gesture may be coming at you at several thousand feet per second, you may well decide to take pre-emptive action and shoot her first. However, if you do this, YOU must now bear the consequences of your unlawful act (and for the sake of order in society, this must always remain an unlawful act). If the 12 year old girl you shot with little or no warning turns out to be a spina bifida sufferer, with wires and straps up and down her poor tortured body, then you can expect a jury of your peers to be quite harsh. If there was more semtex than child under the robe, you might yet get a medal. Its not fair, its just how it is.

 

 

Unintended consequences

 

Every action has unpredictable and unintended consequences. Who would have thought the invention of the atomic bomb would ensure world peace for 70 years? Who would have thought a message of love and peace would result in the crusades and the inquisition? Who knows how many deserving microbes you kill every time you breath? Are you responsible for the unintended consequences of your actions? Well, if not you, then who? God? Fate? Both are difficult to sue. I believe you must take responsibility for the immediate but unintended consequences of any deliberate action, even when lawful in terms of the consent axiom. . However, these consequences must be immediate both in time and place.

 

Society

 

A consenting society is that group of people who acknowledge and respect the consent axiom as the basis of their social interactions.  Members of such a society will understand their mutual obligation to resist and punish consent violations, and to provide jury members for dispute resolutions.

 

Disputes

 

As with all human endeavours, disputes will arise. I believe that the resolution of these disputes is a task for a jury of your peers when other avenues such as compensation and apology have failed.

 

The size and composition of the jury must be consented to by both parties to the dispute.  If agreement on a jury cannot be reached in a reasonable time (7 days, for example), both sides select six jurors, and a foreman with a casting vote is chosen by random lottery of the jury members.  Jury decisions are made by a simple majority vote. Any jury decision may be appealed to another jury until one side or the other has 3 identical decisions in its favour. Thereafter the jury decision becomes binding upon both parties to the dispute, and is added to the set of legal precedents for that  society which defines the common law.

 

The Jury

 

The members of the jury alone determine the rules for the hearing. They may be guided by well-established rules of legal procedure and evidence, but they are not bound by it. They may appoint a judge or judges to guide them, they may invite or allow lawyers to represent the parties,  they may call witnesses, conduct investigations, seek the opinion of experts, or do whatever is required to reach a decision. They will be funded equally by the parties to the dispute during the hearing, but may finally decide on any allocation of costs they see fit.

 

Because it is a matter of chance as to which side obtains the casting vote on the jury, it will be important for both sides to select jurors committed to acting on the merits of the case, rather than jurors blindly supporting the side which appointed them. I believe that a class of professional, impartial jurors will arise whose primary asset will be their reputation for fair decisions. This class of jurors will provide the pool from which most parties to a dispute will make their jury selection.

 

 

Consent violations

 

If someone does take action without consent, then that action is unlawful and should be punished.  Who will punish  such a violation? In the first instance, the victim of the violation, if capable, is the most obvious candidate for exacting judgement and punishment. The punishment may vary from an apology, or compensation,  through to capture and removal from the consenting society.  Failing this, in the second instance, members of the victim’s social network, such as family, friends and colleagues will assist in exacting judgement and punishment against a consent violator. If this second group is not capable, then in the final instance, the unrelated members of the consenting society must take responsibility for the consent violation, as a cost and obligation that they bear by virtue of their membership of that society.  It is likely that formal structures, such as  police forces and judiciaries, would be setup by most societies to fulfil this obligation, funded by consenting members of that society.

 

It is likely that any response by a victim or society against a consent violator may not enjoy the violator’s consent. In this case, the original violator may declare a dispute and the matter would be decided by a jury, as described above. In other words, responses to consent violations are themselves subject to the consent axiom, and must not violate a jury’s sense of reasonableness.

 

Punishment

 

What punishments may a jury impose on a convicted consent violator? It is my belief that a jury may impose any punishment it pleases (subject to later appeal), except one.  A jury may not decide to take the life of any individual under any circumstance.  Generally, a jury would be guided by existing precedents for crimes and punishments.

 

My personal suggested scale of punishments is as follows:

 

  Apology - the violator apologises to the victim

  Compensation - the violator compensates the victim

  Humiliation - the violator is humiliated before the victim and society

  Incarceration - the violator’s freedom of movement is restricted for a period

  Removal - the violator is removed from the society, by exile or internal imprisonment

 

Morality

 

Morality arises from choice, not coercion. I believe there are discoverable "absolute" moral values. Such an absolute value would optimise the success (survival, comfort, wealth, happiness) of its adherents in the majority of environments, whether they be humans, microbes or aliens from Alpha Centauri. I believe the consent axiom represents such an absolute moral value or proposition.

 

Trevor Watkins 

[Colin Bower]

Trevor - under "normal" circumstances I would agree with every word you have written. But over the last few days I have been confronted with persuasive evidence that Hitler had at no time any sense whatsoever that what he had done was wrong. Far from it: he believed that he had done the world a favour. I believe the same could be said of his generals. For instance,Eichmann declared “he would leap laughing into the grave because the feeling that he had five million people on his conscience would be for him a source of extraordinary satisfaction.” In my view as well as in the overwhelming consensus view they were responsible for mass murder, but my point is to ask whether the punishment of a person who has no conception of having done any wrong is itself ethical, and in my view it cannot be.  And this is actually in-keeping (I think) with the argument you outline under An Extreme Example - that any individual for any reason whatsoever arising form his own conscience should have been or should be allowed to kill Hitler (or Mugabe or even Zuma), but of course they would have to accept the consequences of their action as you outline in your example. One of the best lines ever written in any movie comes at the end of that masterpiece Unforgiven. The Eastwood character has the Hackman character on the floor of the bar and is about to kill him. "But I don't deserve to die" says Hackman. "Deserve ain't got nothing to do with it" says Eastwood, and kills him. Hackman was right: from a judicial point of view he didn't "deserve" to die; from Eastwood's point of view he did.  He judged him by his individual conscience, and took the consequences of his action. Why is the individual conscience less trustworthy than a wanked out over educated sleepy judge sitting on the bench of the Supreme Court? That this conclusion creates problems I don't deny. But you don't make the problem go away by ignoring it. Garth is a a supporter of Nietzsche, and the point I have been making is, I believe, purely Nietzschean, so I would really like to hear Garth's take on this.

In your post Trevor I don't see you engaging with the suggestion that it is unethical to punish those who have no sense of having done wrong. I also don't see you engaging with my proposal that we would have fewer murders in South Africa if we we decriminalised murder.

Colin B.
..

[Stephen van Jaarsveldt]

My concern is, what if the society around you is insane ? What if you have a jury of socialists ?

S.

[Leon Louw (gmail)]

This is the kind of intellectual masturbation I like. One of my favourite ponderings is what it would be like to spend time with 'evil' people, getting to know them and getting to hear their case for whatever 'evil' they perpetrated. A related pondering has been what the case of losers might be, given that victors write the history book. A very bright, very well-informed, and very well-known libertarian, Tom Palmer, spoke a few times at FreedomFest, which I attended the week before last. In one of his talks he gave a compelling argument against either the US or Britain entering WW2, boiling down essentially to querying the victor's version, that Hitler would have colonised everyone in sight but for 'the allies'. 

All that aside, my mundane contribution is to suggest that whether we define someone as 'evil' is not philosophy, but semantics. Sorry to be graphic, but it seems necessary to make the point; if X takes you 3yr old baby and rapes and tortures him/her over many days, gauges eyes out, severs body and eats parts, burns flesh and breaks bones, until all there is a nominally alive and conscious head attached to a mutilated body, the word to describe it in English happens to be 'evil'. You could undertake elaborate philosophical or psychological enquiry into why, and you could object to using the word 'evil', but it would not obviate the need for a word. We could day Hitler, Amin, Stalin, Mugabe etc are 'blingleblob' or 'fanglefudge'. Either way we need words to communicate ideas, and 'evil' is the one that does so best for now.

A question with which I like to tease born-again objectivists is to ask them to do  something irrational. They can't. Well, not unless we accept a colloquial meaning of the word. If they hold their arms in contorted positions and make weird quacking noises whilst rolling their eyes and peeing in the pants, we could rationally call it both rational and irrational. Both would be correct depending on what we mean. It would be irrational in that it's silly (which word could, in turn, take us down the semantic road) or rational in that it is a rational way of demonstrating what's they mean by irrational. Something like this happened at an FMF Christmas lunch, where an irate objectivist picked up a cheque someone brought to hand another, and tore into small pieces. "That's irrational" he said. You decide, was it?

We could define many or most words into oblivion by the same process applied here to 'evil'. Doing so would be linguistically evil, philosophically virtuous, sociologically obnoxious and, for most people, nuts.

Leon Louw

work:  +27-11-884-0270

mobile:  +27-84-618-0348

www.freemarketfoundation.com

In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of.
In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.
Confucius

[Erik Peers]

Colin why are are you so hung up with whether the perpetrator of the deed thought he was doing good or not. Why do you regard this as relevant at all?

[Frances Kendall]

OK, well numerous studies using neuro-imaging techniques as well as examining post mortem brain tissue show many parts of the brain are affected by schizophrenia (my main area of interest).  See Surviving Schizophrenia p.127. There doesn't seem to be any debate over the truth of this, and the studies include unmedicated schizophrenics so although some of the damage may be caused by meds certainly not all is.

So you say then it's a brain disease, not a mental illness, and will be treated by neurologists not psychiatrists. But in truth it's a brain disease that causes mental illness.  The neurologists study the brain and try to work out which areas are implicated and what the consequences might be ie how the different areas connect to the symptoms. But the symptoms include not only delusions and hallucinations but also behavioural changes, cognitive difficulties, emotional changes and even changes in movement. Eg it is not uncommon for schizophrenics not to swing their arms in the usual way when they walk ( our daughter has this symptom). None of these symptoms can be treated by neurologists, neuro surgeons or oncologists.

I am not keen on the medications available (which effect the neuro-transmitters) and consider them crude tools, nonetheless for individuals suffering from terrifying delusions they make life bearable, and for those whose paranoia leads them to violence the meds, or incarceration in a mental home,  are essential to protect others.  I have read a great deal about schizophrenia and been on many websites, chat rooms etc.  For the families of violent schizophrenic young men (almost 100% violent schizophrenics are male) it is truly terrifying -- they need protection. 

Leon and I were keen on Szasz 30 years ago -- but having a schizophrenic daughter (unmedicated) and keeping up with the current research it is impossible to still believe mental illness is a myth.

[Erik Peers]

Frances I agree totally. Mental illness is a reality.

However there are those who exploit this reality to claim mental illness and a physiological (chemical) cure where there is no disease.

[Leon Louw (gmail)]

Good questions, Stephen ... and what if there's green cheese in the middle of the moon?

[Leon Louw (gmail)]

Yes, Colin, why does it matter? If I'm run over by a bus, I'm just as dead either way.

In you defence, though, centuries of jurisprudence -- with very clever people pondering such questions in situ have taken intent, motive etc into account. They developed some basic principles, such culpa, dolus and mens rea.

That counts, as a rule, for criminal liability. Civil liability tends toward "strict liability", ie no account taken of intent.

I return to my first comment that 'evil' means whatever we want ti to, or what it means in plain language. 

1. A can say "I regard B's state of mind as the determinant of evil." 
2. B can say "I regard it as irrelevant." 
3. C can say, "I think gassing Jews is evil". 
4. D can say "I think gassing Jews isn't evil." 
5. A teacher can tell the class that "The Holocaust was evil."  
   

All five can be correct.

The only one in contention in this thread is (or aught to be) the teacher. However, what s/he says is sufficiently representative of the established view (in the society in which she teaches) that she too is correct. She doesn't have to add eg "But there are some people who disagree, some who have no opinion, some who've never heard of it, some who are undecided and some who debate it on LibSA." If she did, she'd have to say it after every sentence --- which should be more common, I admit, but not where something is what lawyers call "trite knowledge" or of which judges can take "judicial notice".

[albert nelmapius]

Frances
Lets take this conversation to my new thread.
Albert

[Stephen vJ]

Leon, are you saying that a jury is infallible ? Surely not.

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

[Erik Peers]

Stephen, what he is saying is always keep some toast with you, as it makes the cheese more palatable.

[Stephen vJ]

I'm not sure it will go with my tinfoil hat.

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

[Leon Louw (gmail)]

Not sure how you read that into what I wrote, please explain.

Meanwhile, I'm against juries. I'm also against judges and magistrates. In fact I'm against judicial processes per se because they, by their nature, they entail discretionary power, which I'm against. 

It might surprise you to know that mine if the common jurisprudential view, shared by everyone involved in the evolution of judicial processes since the first dispute resolution in the cradle of mankind.

That's why they evolved elaborate and, for the most part, ingenious checks and balances (virtually none of which apply in the executive) eg:

• public proceedings, 
• hadeas corpus
• pleadings
• discovery
• cross-examination
• formal unambiguous charges
• precedent
• legal certainty
• right of appeal
• presumption of innocence
• non-retroactivity
• judicial independence
• tenure of judicial officers
• the right to face accusers
• etc etc etc

Since there must be dispute resolution, and since no one has come up with a way of doing it without discretionary power, reality presents no option but to have judges and/or juries. Given that choice, I'm for judges -- properly trained, experienced, respected by peers, truly independent, with tenure, not politically appointed etc.

The obvious flaw with juries is apparent from the fact that they were abandoned by the apartheid regime, Why? Because they could not give blacks a fair trial. They were so bad for black that even anti-black racists rejected them. A black accused of raping a white (or vice versa) could not be fairly judged; black jurors would acquit, whites would convict, mixed juries would not agree. They have many other relative deficiencies. 

Watching the Oscar Pistorius trial reminds me of why judges (sometimes with assessors) are the least bad option.

[Stephen vJ]

Well, Leon, I didn't know how to read your bit about the moon cheese below. I criticized juries and you then seem to say in response that my criticism of juries is like thinking moon = cheese. If I misread that, then please explain what you meant... or, actually no, rather don't - just accept my apology for misinterpreted your cheese comment. I'm still feeling a bit sensitive about the animal rights thing.

I am very glad to read your view on judicial system(s) below, since I have been meaning to ask you about it for a long time. I don't think it is normal or typical to find someone trained in law to make a living from promoting less of it (generally speaking). You have made some very good arguments for property rights and for anarchism, for particular legal positions and also the drawbacks of particular laws.

Contradictions in your thinking would have been very uncharacteristic though, so to find a reconciliation like you write below, satisfies that question for me. It is something which I have found very hard to do - to have a theoretical view of how things should be and a more practical view of how things can be.

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

[Leon Louw (gmail)]

The bit about moon cheese is to challenge your logical flaw. One can advance spurious/vacuous 'what if' arguments in response to anything:

• What if you're not reading this email, but are an interstellar organism dreaming you're a human on an imaginary planet called 'earth'?
• What if juries are right 99.99% of the time, and judges wrong 84.567% of the time?
• What if the German soccer team are prostitutes in drag?
• What if Malema is a Rothbardian libertarian anarchist?

'What if' questions have limited validity, in scenario planning, for instance, but not, in my view, in the context in which you advanced them.

[Erik Peers]

That would go nicely with toast.

[Stephen vJ]

Ok, so it was not my content, but the way in which I argued it. I can work on that.

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

[Leon Louw (gmail)]

You're right, Erik, especially in the South.

[Colin Bower]

Some of the challenges put to me are puzzling

"Colin why are are you so hung up with whether the perpetrator of the deed thought he was doing good or not. Why do you regard this as relevant at all?"

My argument isn't about "goodness" or intention. My proposition is that it makes no sense to imagine that by punishing a person who has a clear conscience regarding his/her actions (whether we agree with him/her being irrelevant) is meaningless and purposeless. We can kill him/her or incarcerate him/her to stop him/her doing the same thing again ... but that would be different from punishment. My case in point is Hitler; I remain unambiguous in my view that, had Hitler survived, it would have made no sense top "punish" him. What would I have done? Let him go Scot free, and indemnified anyone who chose to kill him.
No-one seems interested in responding to my proposition that by decriminalising murder we would have fewer murders.
No-one seems interested in exploring the notion that punishment, defined (by me) as the deliberate infliction of pain, is, from an ethical point of view, indefensible, and from a tactical point of view, questionable.

Colin B.
 

[Leon Louw (gmail)]

Aha, I see where you're going, Colin.

For me, the/your problem arises because of the assumption that there should be 'punishment' in the sense you query.

The default libertarian view ought to be that the some function of law should be compensation and/or due performance (which are arguably the same thing). 

Criminal law is by it's nature socialistic/collectivistic; the notion that people harm 'society' and that 'society' ought to get even by 'punishing' them. 

That there are rights violations against large numbers of people ('crimes against humanity') can be confusing, because of how hard (though not impossible given private class and public interest actions) to have a plaintiff and defendant. Under libertarian jurisprudence, that is, at least in principle, all there ought to be. If no identifiable claimant is harmed or at risk, the libertarian paradigm envisages nothing justiciable. 

As for punishment, part of the problem in this discussion is the ambiguous nature of the word. The only way to compensate a mother whose child had been gruesomely murdered might be to 'punish' the perpetrator. That ought to be a civil law question the same in principle as what should be done if you punch me or destroy mu family bible.

History's great monsters -- Hitler is one of many; by no means the worst -- are puzzling under civil/private law because there are millions of victims, dead and alive. A libertarian solution, I suggest, would be for private people to bring an action in the normal way. They can bring it as victims, a public interest action, or a class action (for a class or group of people). They would ask the court for a severe sentence. It might be death, life, or even torture. They would justify what they ask for by arguing what would be appropriate to (a) protect people from further harm and (b) compensate victims (millions of them). Libertarian jurisprudence would be victim-centered.

That is quite different from what you seem to be questioning, namely criminal-centered punishment. I agree that there does not seem to be a good case for that.

Thus raises a dispute I've had for years with the libertarian axiom about 'victimless crime'. Libertarians ought to oppose crime per se. All crimes are victimless in the sense they are adjudicated as between alleged perpetrators and disinterested third parties called 'government'. If I disable you, criminal law punishes you twice over. Firstly my act, and secondly by my trial and conviction. You are forced to give evidence against me (a victim of time, cost and coercion), and your evidence reduces your chances of getting compensation (to the extent that I am fined and/or imprisoned).

[Connan Negus]

If there is a brain disease causing mental illness, isn’t that exactly what Szasz is saying? Just because we can’t yet treat it properly doesn’t change that fact – it’s like saying AIDS can’t be treated by physicians, so we mustn’t try and instead must rely on sangomas.

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[Frances Kendall]

No Szasz was of the view that strange behaviour could not be the result of a disease.   He said "no behavior or misbehavior is a disease or can be a disease. That's not what diseases are." In Szasz's view, people who are said (by themselves or others) to have a mental illness can only have, at best, a "fake disease."  He believed they were malingerers, seeking attention.

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[Colin Bower]

@ Leon: "Criminal law is by it's nature socialistic/collectivistic; the notion that people harm 'society' and that 'society' ought to get even by 'punishing' them."

Agreed. But I wonder whether this can't be traced back to something even earlier - the Christian notion of collective guilt (all humanity), and collective redemption (I've always been puzzled by the notion that another person [Jesus] can attone for the bad things I have done). I wonder whether the Judaic tradition or other societies and civilisations have such collectivist notions of crime and punishment? .

Colin B.

[Leon Louw (gmail)]

Mental illness, like physical illness -- it seems to me there's no difference in principle -- can be innate or acquired. The 'A' in AIDS is to distinguish to from immune deficiency that is not "acquired". Genetic immune deficiency, for instance, is just as much an illness (or disability) and, for instance, anencephaly (being born without all or part of a brain; for a tragic example see: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2226647/Nickolas-Coke-Boy-born-brain-dies-3-year-miracle-life.html). 

I read Szasz 35 years ago, so don't recall what, if anything, he had to say about such conditions, and milder forms all the way down to being narcoleptic. I assume he would not argue that anencephaly isn't mental illness. I suppose one could argue that as a matter of linguistics, not science, if one wants to reserve 'illness' for acquired and/or treatable conditions. I assume he would regard a stroke as 'illness' even if he'd rather use another word.

Illness most commonly refers to something that makes us 'sick'. We would typically call someone with a club foot 'disabled' and someone with a cold 'sick'. Whether a mental malady is just there (like Mongolism) or acquired (like encephalitis) or an accident (like a head injury) tells us nothing about whether it can be cured. If we insist that only that which can be cured should be called 'illness' then a condition before it can be cured would be called, I suppose, a 'handicap', and after it can be cured, an 'illness'. That makes no sense to me. We should regard all maladies as illness with a view to seeking solutions. To deny that mental conditions are 'illness' runs the risk of denying that they are or might be curable, and that they might be ameliorated by coping mechanisms.

[Leon Louw (gmail)]

You raise a fascinating point about most, but not all, religions, namely that A harms B and gets 'forgiven' by C, whilst leaving B out of the loop. 

C might be a deity, priest or judge. 

I had to do with a woman in her 50s who confronted a family friend who'd raped her repeatedly whilst baby-sitting when she was a child. He'd found the Lord and been forgiven, he said.

Governments do likewise under criminal law when they acquit perpetrators or, like Catholic priests, make them pay fines. Often victims do not realise that they also have grounds for civil actions. The woman Zuma allegedly raped, for instance, might have done better to sue under civil law than lay criminal charges. By laying criminal charges, she handed the matter over to a third party (the prosecutor) without her interest in securing justice.

[Colin Phillips]

Hi Frances,

I see how you could have gotten that from Szasz, but interestingly, I drew from it an almost directly opposite message.  I may just have been reading into it something that wasn't there, but here is what I got out of it:

• The history of psychiatry is dark and sad.  Too often, mental illness was the excuse given for treating people incredibly badly, and stripping them of rights and dignity.  For example, Szasz goes into examples of people abandoning unwanted relatives at psychiatric institutions when that person became too expensive to feed or care for.  Those people were classified as mentally ill to justify holding them against their will, and often experimenting on them.
• Psychiatry as a study grew out of medicine.  When someone began behaving oddly, one of the most common first steps people took was to bring the person to a doctor for examination, and so naturally doctors began to treat odd behaviours, and naturally they approached odd behaviours as they always do, by identifying symptoms and looking for similarities and differences between cases, in order to try to identify a root cause.  As such, odd behaviour began to be called "mental illness" by doctors.
• Because psychiatry as a study began to gain popularity at a heady time of new scientific discoveries and new technology, it was assumed that the root causes of odd behaviours would very soon be identified, and effective treatments would soon be available.  In short, people did not truly comprehend the complexity of the brain, and underestimated it by orders of magnitude.
• Szasz points out that there was a general trend toward labelling all odd behaviours as a stronger or milder form of one mental illness or another.  His problem with this is that using the single broad label "mental illness" implies that all things labelled as such share the same fundamental origin, and that the shared basis of all things classified as mental illness is that the sufferer has a medical issue.
• Szasz points out a double standard in psychiatry:  When a diagnosis is sought, the diagnosis is presented as though the root cause of the issue  is known, but, when people ask for hard physical evidence that the diagnosis is correct, psychiatric practice usually (at least at the time of writing) withdraws into saying that the brain is too complex to be understood in such detail, or alternatively, implies that the only reason no physical cause is found is that the patient is knowingly and deliberately lying for some conscious ulterior motive (malingering).  Szasz points out that these are not the only explanations, just the only explanations that suit the psychiatry profession as a whole.
• The new contribution that Szasz made, as I understand, was to point out that while some odd behaviours might have purely medical root causes (and therefore should be handled as medical issues), others odd behaviours can be better understood as attempts at communication.  Of course, some odd behaviours can be a blend of these two factors, Szasz's contribution was just saying that there is another factor besides medical malady that can explain some, not all, odd behaviours.
• The "Myth of mental illness" then, is not that mental illness doesn't exist, it is that the category of "mental illness" includes some maladies with physical, physiological causes, and also some maladies that do not have such causes.  It is for the latter category that Szasz outlines his theory, that some mental illnesses are failed attempts at communication with a non-standard communication protocol.
• I conceive of it this way.  Imagine that you are magically cursed so that on average every tenth word you say is misunderstood.  This makes communication of your entire message significantly more difficult,especially if you do not know that you are cursed, and you cannot predict in advance which word will be misunderstood.  In frustration, you may resort to something like the game "Charades", acting out the message you are trying to convey.  If you do this, your behaviour will be odd.  But the odd behaviour is not a symptom of a medical issue, it is a symptom of a communication issue.  
• Now, instead of a curse, the reason you are misunderstood is that, by an unlucky chance, your unique life experience taught you to think some things which are very different from the way most people think of things.  For example, if you grew up in a home where the colour green was often associated with big scary dogs, you might assume that green is a colour associated with danger.  So, when you want to be left alone, you shine a green light in their direction as a signal that they should not come closer.  You see that people see the green light, and yet they come closer, and you become distraught and panicky as a result. For some reason, at no point do you question your assumption that green means stop/danger, and nobody thinks to tell you otherwise, and so your behaviour is odd.  Do you then have a mental illness?  Szasz's thesis is that you have a communication difficulty, which could be addressed by providing you with alternative communication methods (like, maybe, using a red light instead).  Now, there might be a pill that makes you colour blind, and thus unable to find any green lights to use for signalling danger, and so it would seem that the pill helped the issue, because you no longer become distraught, but a better way of handling the issue would be to treat it as a difference in communication strategies, and try to harmonise the strategies.
• Of course, there's no reason to say that a person couldn't have both physiological issues and communication mismatch issues, and of course these can feed into each other and make it harder to tease them out.  

The quote you used "No behaviour or misbehaviour can be a disease.  That's not what diseases are" actually works equally well for your interpretation and mine.

Colin Phillips

[Stephen vJ]

Wait a second... so are you saying that punishing a person who believes himself to be innocent, is a waste of time ? In his own eyes he may well be the victim or martyr, if he genuinely believes himself to be innocent. That is different from the original point though... or am I misinterpreting ?

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

[Leon Louw (gmail)]

You're asking me, are you Stephen? 

1. I don't think punishing people is a waste of time; I:
• distinguish between punishment and compensation (which might include punishment as private retribution)
• Think adjudication should be civil, not criminal.
• oppose the collectivization/socialization of law.
2. I don't care about a perpetrator's state of mind -- I'm just as run down by a bus, raped or robbed whether or not the driver, rapist or robber feel guilty. 

[Frances Kendall]

Yes Colin, I think that is a good summary. And I agree with it for the most part until we reach the although I think your interpretation is generous regarding some behaviours having a medical cause.

I suppose the big contentious issue is/was whether people should be forcibly institutionalised and medicated. Szasz did great work pointing out the often dreadful consequences.

Nonetheless if you read the books by Elyn Saks, The Centre Cannot Hold and Refusing Care, she (schizophrenic, lawyer & psychiatrist) makes a good case for hospitalising schizophrenics after a first major psychotic break. Her life was intolerable without meds, although she fought taking them for a long time.

Regarding difficulties in communication and seeing the world a different way and

Sent from Frances iPhone

[Frances Kendall]

Sent before finished;

Let me just say Szasz would probably have characterised our daughter as someone with a communication problem. Certainly she sees a different world from the one we see. She doesn't speak to us unless she wants something. She will not see any doctor. She is emaciated and wears rags. Most of the time she curls up in a chair hidden by a blanket. In between she walks. We would not consider hospitalising her or forcing her to take meds, but there is no doubt in my mind that her brain does not function normally. This is not just another way of communicating (not communicating). Basically at about 22 she began to change into a different person who lives in a different world. She is now 35. If she doesn't die of starvation we hope for some improvement in her 40s & 50s. 

Imagine how great it would be if researchers could find the cause & how to prevent it & save families from the heart-break of losing their loved ones to this terrible disorder?

No prevention or cure will be found if the strange behaviour is regarded simply as strange behaviour.

Sent from Frances iPhone

[Colin Phillips]

Hi,

I've just scanned through Szasz's book, and you're right, I was mischaracterising his position a bit.  Still, I think the mischaracterisation might be an improvement :-)

I do, however, see a difference between a communication issue (where two people can receive the same data, and believe it represents different information), and abnormal brain function (where in some cases a person can literally see objects which do not exist, or not see objects which do exist).  There are some edge cases which blur the line a bit (for example, looking at the same photograph of a face one person might see a sad face and the other an angry face, and it's hard to say whether the one person is noticing different features of the same data,or overlaying their own data), but it does feel like a different category.  

The problem of how to simultaneously respect the rights of an individual and recognising the danger a psychotic break presents is a difficult one.  My prediction is that sooner or later, as a matter of social convention, it will become more and more common to find people making something akin to a "living will" to guard against the possibility of psychotic breaks in the future.  It could be a simple document, that specifies a number of trusted persons or agencies.  If a consensus is reached between these agents that a psychotic break is underway, then these agents are authorised by the contract to take appropriate harm reduction steps, which may include hospitalisation. 

That way, especially since I have a history of "mental illness" in my family, I could specify upfront the conditions under which I would consent to being institutionalised.  The problem is that if I am in the midst of a psychotic break, chances are high that I will be unable to completely comprehend why I am being institutionalised.  In a way, the person I am before a psychotic break and the person I am during a psychotic break are essentially different people with different goals.  It's a bit dubious to enforce the terms of a contract signed by mental state A on to mental state B.  The implicit assumption there is that mental state A is the "true" owner of the body?  I'm confusing myself.  I'm going to bed.

.c.

[Stephen vJ]

I was actually asking Colin, but forgot to put a name and like your response - thanks Leon. That is also my thinking. In addition, I find it interesting, the way Colin made his point, got me thinking about the state of mind of the wrongdoer for the first time in a long time. It highlights the irrelevance of the state of mind of the wrongdoer in a way I did not think of before.

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

[Stephen vJ]

A person close to me suffers from a "mental disorder" (incurable & physical i.e. could also be called a disability). We know exactly which part of the brain is affected, how and why. There are various types of medication on the market for this particular disorder, each with its own set of side effects.

Without the meds she would have been dead a long time ago - we know because she stopped taking the meds a few years ago and it did not end well. The meds are like a wheelchair - it is a cumbersome thing and she is still to some extent disabled even with it, but at least mobile and functioning.

It took a long time to figure out the right combination of meds which works sufficiently and with the least intolerable level of side effects, like picking out the right wheelchair. There are still side effects, but they are tolerable and preferable to death / complete incapacity.

From time to time the wheelchair breaks or wears out - she stops taking the meds for some reason (like the side-effects getting too much) or imbalances in the chemicals involved grow over time or the effect of the meds is not quite enough which also builds up (or depletes) over time. This usually ends in hospitalization.

I can see it coming. She does not see it coming at all. There are certain alarm bells, signs and indicators that we are on a downward slope or at least the last steep bit of one. When I start seeing them, there is nothing I can do, because pointing them out at that time leads to denial and conflict... and I have found that people in this branch of the medical profession do not speak to those who see the symptoms, only to those who don't - the patients themselves.

So, we wait for the breakdown. As experience accumulates, I can spot the warning signs earlier and earlier, so we are at last incident about 6 months between first alarm bells and hospitalization. At some point the symptoms get so bad that nobody can deny them any more. At that stage, I can point them out and cite all the warning signs from the last 6 months. Invariably at that point, she asks to be hospitalized.

After a few weeks in hospital and an adjustment period on different combinations or quantities of medication, life carries on. She is used to the new tires on the wheelchair and we can function normally again. At least for the next 8 years or so, at the end of which  the wear & tear starts to show again. I see no need in this case for using force or having a living will... but I can imagine the use of a living will in more chronic or serious cases.

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

[Leon Louw (gmail)]

When I studied law, Stephen, and was taught about various defences, some always left me uncomfortable, such as a plea of 'guilty, but insane' for a cold-blooded gruesome murder. How could someone who commits such an act not be insane, I wondered. Surely, it seemed, some crimes, by their nature, imply insanity. That 'diminished responsibility' is a defence seemed right in criminal law. Do you 'punish' someone who was hypnotized, crashed a red light because had a stroke, left without paying because they were drunk, stabbed someone because they were mentally ill (the parallel discussion notwithstanding) etc?  It seems not. But what about private law? Why should a perpetrator's state of mind matter. 'Strict liability' seemed right for private law, but not criminal law. Many such puzzles remain, for me, unresolved.

I was troubled by much else, such as that a lawyer should defend a client s/he knows is guilty. In other words, lawyers are required to lie and if they don't it's 'unprofessional'. The standard justification, that everyone is entitled to a defence, was appealing, but why that required dishonesty, troubled me. Yet, it seemed perfectly right for unjust laws -- there were many such apartheid laws at the time, and many less obvious to non-libertarians now. But that would mean that every lawyerd would be a judge of just law, 

On one hand, I loved basic rules, such as no hearsay evidence, but anguished over fringe implications. A dying person tells you so-and-so killed him/her, yet the best evidence isn't admissible (though the rule has been relaxed).

I loved jurisprudence precisely because of such tough questions. Lamentably, age and experience raised more new ones than resolved old ones.

[Frances Kendall]

I like the wheel chair analogy. Elyn Saks proposes more or less what Colin suggests in Refusing Care. She suggests hospitalising the individual on first psychotic break, then once they are stabilised asking signed permission to do it next time it becomes necessary.

Our daughter Milly has never had a total psychotic break, though she lives permanently 90% of the time in the world of her delusions. She can move across to our world when she needs to, and has improved at doing that over time., not in the length of time she interacts with us, but in the ease of doing so.

She manages without a wheel chair living in another world we know nothing about. ( except that some years ago she married David Bowie). She is like a raggedy nun in a silent order.

Sent from Frances iPhone

[Stephen vJ]

It sounds like you have, in part and on occasion, tried to join her in her world ? In my experience that is often the best / only thing to do for all involved... though most people find that very hard to do and certainly is only possible for short periods of time.

S.

Sent from an electronic device.

[Frances Kendall]

A few years ago when excited she occasionally let us in, especially her older sister. Now she is tight as a clam. I think at some point she realised we didn't see what she saw and the door shut tight. 

I would give a lot join her there for a while. But maybe less goes on than I imagine.

Sent from Frances iPhone

[Leon Louw (gmail)]

I want to reinforce Frances' points about the dangerous implications of dismissing mental disorders as merely being 'different', as Szasz seemed to be saying, and elaborate what the issue was when he wrote.

I suspect that Szasz, like most pioneers of essentially sound ideas in context, is misinterpreted; that Saszains are more Szaszian than Szasz. 

The problem he faced and the campaign he fought -- with considerable success -- was that two psychologists could 'certify' someone. Once certified, people lost all rights -- no crime, trial, appeal or due process. They were coercively institutionalised and drugged ('medicated') -- essentially lifelong imprisonment with force-fed brain-altering substances. Something like 80% were politically active and 'troublesome' black youth.

If the view that there is no such thing as mental handicap is accepted, it follows that there will be no attempt to find solutions. It also follows that someone who is clearly insane will be tried and judged when they commit crimes as if they are sane. Both would be an unconscionable injustice.

Insanity is quite different from being weird. Libertarians, after all, are statistically weird, an aberration, conceivably certifiable at the time Szasz was writing. Indeed there were libertarians working for civil liberties with black radical groups. I cannot say for sure, but suspect that some were certified.

[Stephen vJ]

So, can one say that errors in logic (or preference contrary to social norms) do not in themselves constitute mental illness ? In other words, the socialist who attempts to kill the world, but thinks that socialism will save it, is not insane... but someone with bipolar disorder does not really want to die, they just occasionally have that inclination induced by their disorder ? BTW, I find this discussion very interesting.

S.

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[Erik Peers]

My experience is on the flip side of the coin.

Yes there are actual mental disorders for instance schizophrenia, that have a biological base and which manifest in abnormal behaviour. If one denies this reality then this makes finding a solution all the more difficult. And yes there are crutches, splints and wheelchairs, aka drugs that are able to do more good than harm.

Yet what happens when you put someone in a wheelchair when there is no underlying disorder? Either because there is no causative biology, or because the disorder itself does not exist outside of the DSM IV or 5.If you put someone in a wheelchair for years, backed up by authoritive medical diagnoses and well intentioned advice, it will become increasingly difficult for that person to become mobile again without the wheelchair.  If consequent to a gallant attempt to walk unaided the person collapses (because or natural atrophy of the leg muscles) the patient is informed that he now needs a stronger wheelchair, and that there is a permanent chemical imbalance and that if he attempts to be mobile without the wheelchair, that he could severely damage himself or die, it becomes all the more difficult.

When the patient complains of the side affects of the wheelchair he is told that they will try a different wheelchair or one with a sheepskin cover, or given medication to counteract the side affects (bedsores or spinal pain).

It is rare for the patient to go against medical advice, to secretly start cutting down on the wheelchair use,  say for 10 mins a day, then after a week another 10 mins until after a year he is walking and after another year running, proving that the wheelchair was the cause of the problem.

If you have read this far you may be thinking that this story is preposterous. And you are right. Totally stupid. In fact if someone recounted this tale as fact you would question it. Because if you don't it presents an even scarier reality. One where the medical professionals can harm us with their cures. A world where we can't trust those in white coats like we want to.

But change the word wheelchair with antidepressant and that is exactly my experience. Verbatim.

[Stephen vJ]

There are quacks who would have you amputate the head to cure a headache. There are also quacks who tell you to take a disprin for a headache, which is in fact a tumor. Bipolar disorder often falls in this group. Then there are the quacks who want to give you chemo when there is really nothing wrong. Almost all cases of ADHD that I have seen, have been in that category - not all, mind you. Then there are the quacks who would have you believe that yoga, homeopathy, crystals or prancing around naked by the light of a full moon will cure your swine flu. I don't know which kind of quack does the most harm.

S.

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[Frances Kendall]

Yes, and what makes it so difficult is distinguishing between the two. Religious fanatics who see angels and speak to god are not considered delusional.

The psychiatrists are very quick to offer meds - what else can they do? But in our case they were also quick to back down when Milly refused & argued with them. She said "you say I mustn't take drugs, they do me harm - so why do you wasn't me to take your drugs?" 

 But some people are very biddable - a young friend of mine in USA given huge cocktails of drugs and a series of electro therapies just a few weeks after she showed psychotic symptoms, with a low IQ and very biddable she just did everything told until she was almost catatonic. Scary.

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[Stephen vJ]

You can convince a walking person that they need a wheelchair, but you can't convince a lame person that they can walk.

S.

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[Frances Kendall]

But, to continue the analogy, some lame people believe they can walk perfectly, and others have the problem!

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[Colin Bower]

@#Stephen. Yes, quite right. I am saying that punishing a person who believes he or she is innocent has no moral purpose and at best a limited tactical purpose (a tactical purpose to discourage others from doing the same thing). I distinguish between punish, eg. the deliberate infliction of pain, and enforced reparation or compensation, which may be experience as "punishment".

Colin.

[Stephen vJ]

Recommended reading: "Wishful drinking", the autobiography of Carrey Fisher (princess Leia from Star Wars). After reading that, I am very skeptical of psychiatry, especially electro-shock therapy. On the other hand, I am even more skeptical of "think it away", "we'll pray for you", "it doesn't really exist" therapy. It cannot be healthy to be at either extreme of that continuum.

S.

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[Stephen vJ]

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[Garth Zietsman]

My two cents.  (Sorry I wrote this fast with lots of interruptions so my reasoning may be a bit loose.)

Firstly like Nietzsche I don't think something like Morality or Evil (with capitals) exists in the sense of being a metaphysical reality.  They do however exist as morality or evil in the sense of some things being bad or good for us personally - as judged by ourselves.

I think you should see a person's judgement of Hitler in the same way you see Hitler himself - that you cannot judge the rightness or wrongness of that judgement in some kind of absolute or objective sense.  They believe wholeheartedly that their judgement of Hitler is good and right and also that punishment would be somehow good (even if it didn't act as a deterrent to other's contemplating similar actions) so if we don't have justification to judge or punish Hitler we don't have justification to judge or punish his judges.  In the end the moral rules that prevail are the rules of those who have power.  Napoleon was right when he said "Morality lies on the side of the heaviest artillery."  Not right in the sense that of that is how it ought to be but rather in that is how it is.

As to 'what ought to be' I have been unable to find any deontological justification.  (Recall my angst at not finding a compelling reason for privileging liberty like we do.)  The best I can do is to suggest forming a personal morality that is most likely to lead to your thriving.  I would also say that being considerate of other's thriving is very likely to be good for your own and that a lack of liberty and freedom will be bad for everyone's thriving.

This brings me to another of your questions - are laws and policing helpful in reducing bad acts?  Intuitively and empirically I would say definitely.  A good read for evidence on violence is Pinker's Better Angels of Our Nature.  He shows that human groups without some sort of centralized or hierarchical 'government'/policing/dispute resolution institution e.g. hunter gatherers, are a great deal more violent and murderous than those with such institutions.  Obviously such institutions can and do become the means of large scale violence and murder so they need some kind of limitation but on average he shows they have large reduction effects on inter-citizen violence.  Another case I am aware of is the culture of the Appalachian region of the US south.  The inhabitants settled on an equilibrium of very high violence and a honor culture where you need to seek retribution if someone looks at you funny.  Sowell argued that African American's got their culture from that region and that is why they are so much more violent on a per capita basis.  Another region that was had little law and lots of violence was the frontier West .  In both the West and Appalachia violence tumbled when some effort was made to police the areas.  

More modern studies show that extra policing does reduce crime - although it depends on the incentives under which the police operate. In general people will go for the easiest way to obtain the reward. For example if they are rewarded for number of arrests you will get lots of arrests of pot smokers, prostitutes, loiterers, etc rather than a reduction in violent crime.  On the other hand if the measure is the crime rate (weighted for rated badness of the crime) then policing does deliver just that - although it will results in fiddling the stats instead if the police are the source of the stats.  Recently there has been a reduction in police funding and therefore policing in many US localities and the evidence is that crime has increased in those areas.  The most important thing in reducing crime is reliability of prosecution.  Without it severity of punishment has no effect.  Rather severe punishment in the context of a low probability of prosecution comes across as a personal unfairness having nothing to do with the crime per se.  So the stress should be on an effective justice system rather than on punishment.  With respect to South Africa I am of the opinion that crime will either be unchanged or decrease if the police were abolished.  As you pointed out the actual conviction rate is pathetic - 0.8% (<35% for murder) - and the police themselves are responsible for quite a lot of the crime.

I am for the usual libertarian policy of restitution rather than punishment.  I just can't find a slam dunk justification for it and I still think perpetrators would need to be brought to account reliably.  I am not sanguine about the efficacy and trouble freeness of competing private justice systems within the same geographical areas - much as I would like to believe they would work.

Garth

In my Smart Vote studies (and what I have read in the IQ literature) it seems that not many people have what it takes to form a useful personal morality and live by it without causing themselves or those round them some harm.  The masses, the sheeple, do less well without some basic rules as a given.

[Erik Peers]

Of the 80 different quackeries the one I have found to be useful is chiropractic. Sorted out my whiplash injury. As for the rest it's amazing what people want to believe.

[Erik Peers]

Sobering thoughts.  It is dangerous for us to extrapolate our own internal processes to the general population.

[Garth Zietsman]

Stigmata happen - mostly in highly hysterical subjects i.e. prone to psycho-somatic symptoms.  The phenomenon has been observed in a lab with a clean arm encased in a glass tube to prevent tampering and faking.  It is of course not supernatural or a miracle.  No doubt many are fake. 

[Erik Peers]

Psychosomatic phenomena are very interesting. Seem to defy logic.

The power of suggestion also very powerful especially when coming from an "authoritive" source. Yet there remains a sense of self that survives.

It amazed me that despite the authoritive pronouncements of the psychiatrists (three concurred), over a decade, the psychosomatic symptoms which appeared so real and even convinced me; that through it all, that I was still able to say I know better. That I was willing to risk death for what I believed against all evidence and the literature, to endure a year, a full year of withdrawal symptoms, to come out the other side. That is in all humility amazing.

My concern is for the many who lack the Libertarian gene (for want of a better explanation) and who in similar circumstances allow the experts to convince them that they do indeed suffer from depression caused by a "chemical imbalance."

Regarding Libertarian economics this poses a question. The free market system with profit and desire for new markets drives the psychiatry profession to prescribe more and more drugs for new disorders. These new disorders are invented by psychiatrists who are paid well under the table. Is this a failure of regulation or caused by regulation? What is the free market solution?

[Garth Zietsman]

Erik the problem is not with the free market but with the power that goes with licencing psychiatrists.

Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilization might be a good read for those who like Szasz.  His Power-Knowledge concept is relevant.  This is the view that some professions try to monopolize knowledge (usually via licencing) and use it as a source of authority and power.

[Stephen vJ]

Yeah, I was surprised to see chiropractics on the list... but there are people who believe it can cure baldness.

S. 

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[Stephen vJ]

In many cases the medication is the best option.

S.

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[Erik Peers]

Garth following this logic, any interference with the free market skews the outcome.  Only government licensed psychiatrists are permitted to write the DSM 5 which in turn is the manual used by the medical aids to determine what is and is not claimable. Medical aids themselves, in my opinion, are only as strong as they are because of the tax breaks afforded medical aid contributions by the government. So here we have a legally sanctioned system which of course will be used for profit maximisation. The law of unintended consequences applies. One wonders why the medical aids bow to this pressure while they limit other treatments eg psychology, dentistry.

Of interest is that I was supplied the psychotropic drugs by TARA,  a state hospital for free for years without limit. The value was then R600 per month, at least a R1000 now. One would struggle to obtain medical services to an equal value as easily for dentistry of physio from the state.

[Garth Zietsman]

Clearly the way the DSM 5 works is a licence for psychiatrists to write their own cheques, and it shouldn't be a surprise that they do.  As far as I know it's even worse than we imagine in that not only were the people who contributed to the DSM 5 all psychiatrists but they were all directly connected to some or other drug making company.  Talk about a conflict of interests.  I'm surprised there hasn't been some legal inquiry into the whole business.  At the very least I would expect it to be a requirement that the contributing psychiatrists be unconnected to any drug company and secondly that there be an independent evaluation body - of statisticians or scientists from other fields say - to check their reasoning, research and justifications.  Maybe the FDA should have an arm devoted to approving the recognition of 'illnesses'.  (Not my first choice.) There should also be a way for the general public to force a re-evaluation of a listed 'disorder', it's diagnostic criteria and treatment.

I have read talk about medical aid and insurance schemes phasing out payment for treatments with poor to no evidence of efficacy and paying less for those with weak evidence.  Perhaps they will move onto denying payment for illnesses that were made up in order to sell drugs.