Intellectualize it all you want, she says, but conscience is based on love. It's only a heartbeat from there to conjecturing that conscience — "the nexus of psychology and spirituality" — is science's name for the soul. Since her professional qualifications do not permit her to make pronouncements on metaphysical matters, Martha is skittish about coming out with it, but it's apparent from this equivalence that psychopaths must be soulless. Science has no cure for such a thing. -- Paul Kiel, review of The Sociopath Next Door, by Martha Stout
While conscience is based on love, that love hints at "having a soul." However, to define "conscience" as "the soul," Kiel is muddying the waters.
IMHO the soul is that which is constructed by God, and loaned to a person at birth. By age 4, when the child has the theory of mind figured out, the soul has all it needs to develop conscience in the mind.
Thus conscience is "a sense of obligation ultimately based in an emotional attachment to others". Yet it is formed by the mind in response to both verbal and non-verbal cues.
Philosophically-speaking, a sociopath does have a soul. However, his soul is "obscured" by an ignorance about the ramifications of his inaction - given that all people are at heart good, and that evil is the result of inaction of inherently good people.
Likewise, it is possible for a sociopath to develop a conscience, but it takes longer for him to develop one than other people.
It can also be added that sociopathy is like a form of autism in that all the lies and manipulation obscure the sociopath's ability to empathize with other people.
Just think of it as a moral autism, or what the Buddhists call spiritual ignorance.
Thus sociopaths are not soulless.
No comments:
Post a Comment