Human Cruelty Research Articles

Russell’s Metaethics

_Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2602\REVIEWS.262 : 2007-01-24 01:12 Reviews 179 RUSSELL’S METAETHICS Ray Perkins, Jr. Philosophy / Plymouth State U. Plymouth, nh 03264–1600, usa perkrk@earthlink.net Michael K. Potter. Bertrand Russell’s Ethics. London and New York: Continuum , 2006. Pp. xiii, 185. isbn 0826488102. £55.00; us$110.00. Hardcover. his book is a very illuminating examination of Russell’s emotivist ethics. In This Preface, Potter acknowledges a large debt to Charles Pigden’s groundbreaking work.1 Potter builds on that work and extends our understanding of Russell’s ethics in several areas. In the first two thirds of the book Potter gives the reader a plausible account of Russell’s transition from the objectivist ethics that he shared with G. E. Moore during the first decade of the last century into a “proto-emotivism” inspired by Ottoline Morrell and the onset of World War i. This immature form of emotivism, he says, can be found in Russell’s writings from 1913 to 1922 until it emerged in a more mature (“enlightened”) form in the mid- to late 1920s and full-blown in Religion and Science (Chapter 9) in 1935. Potter helps us to see the essential elements in this “enlightened emotivism” and shows us the similarities and differences with the better-known versions of emotivism put forward later by Ayer and Stevenson. He argues persuasively that Russell’s version, properly interpreted, though not without problems, is superior to theirs. The key to understanding Russell’s mature theory lies in his notion of the compossibility of desires. Desires A and B are compossible just in case both can be satisfied; they are in harmony. This allows Russell’s ethics to build up the idea of interpersonal subjectivity by invoking the notion of the universality of desire (or wish) as the essence of moral judgment (“X is good” means “Would that everyone desired X ”). A significant degree of moral objectivity is attainable in so far as desires are (or are not) universalizable, i.e. the satisfaction of our desires is (or is not) compatible with the (general) satisfaction of the desires of others. As Potter puts it: “To say a desire can be universalized is to say that it does not conflict with the general desires of most human beings, it is in har1 Charles Pigden, Russell on Ethics: Selections from the Writings of Bertrand Russell (London and New York: Routledge, 1999). _Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2602\REVIEWS.262 : 2007-01-24 01:12 180 Reviews mony with them, it can be realized alongside them …” (p. 94). In the last third of the book Potter undertakes an original exploration into Russell’s ethics by importing Russell’s earlier theories of impulse and desire found in Principles of Social Reconstruction (1916) and The Analysis of Mind (1921). In this way Potter shows how the infusion of these ideas into Russell’s normative ethics can enrich his practical ethics, although he says the concepts of desire and impulse want clarification and the behaviouristic nature of his notion of desire needs radical modification. As Potter explains, Russell’s early emotivism was likely the product of many influences, including Santayana’s Winds of Doctrine and the First World War, which later caused Russell to doubt both the objectivity of good and the desirability of belief in such a thing—he thought it led to irresolvable conflicting claims of moral truth and fostered human cruelty and even violence. Potter, borrowing from Nick Griffin’s work (SLBR, 1: 399), also suggests that Ottoline Morrell, Russell’s lover and confidant in the years leading up to ww1, may have played an important role in getting him to think of ethics non-cognitively. Potter refers to a 1912 letter to Ottoline in which Russell discusses ideals and their connection to religion and writes approvingly that “Man can imagine things that don’t exist … [which] are better than things that do exist” (pp. 8–9). Potter takes this (following Griffin) as evidence that Russell must have been speaking of good in a non-cognitive sense, otherwise Russell’s own theory of descriptions—according to which statements purporting to refer...

Nice idea, but is it science?

In the target article, human cruelty is linked to intrinsic reinforcement from engaging in the behavior without any recommendations for a research program to validate or test for such reinforcement and its independence from ultimate adaptive outcomes. Suggestions are offered in this commentary for such a program.

Cruelty: A dispositional or a situational behavior in man?

Presentation of evidence from multiple disciplines is the most impressive feature of Nell's article. I have observations and objections, however, about the following issues: (1) violence as a by-product of cruelty; (2) the equation of animal and human cruelty; (3) social psychological evidence contrary to the biological model; (4) whether prevention of cruelty best arises from predispositional or situational factors.

Explaining human cruelty

I ask four questions: (1) Why should we think that our hominid ancestor's predation is not just a causal influence but the main causal factor responsible for human cruelty? (2) Why not think of human cruelty as a necessary part of a syndrome in which other phenomena are necessarily involved? (3) What definitions of cruelty does Nell propose that we operate with? And (4) what about the meaning of cruelty for human beings?

Human cruelty is rooted in the reinforcing effects of intraspecific aggression that subserves dominance motivation

Intraspecific aggression (IA), in service to dominance, has far deeper roots in animal behavior and human evolution than does predation. The reinforcing properties of such aggression are most likely to be a major source of human cruelty.

A murky portrait of human cruelty

In this commentary, I review diverse lines of research conducted at both the macrosocial and microbehavioral level that dispute the view that cruelty is inherently gratifying. Expressions of pain and suffering typically inhibit rather than reinforce cruel conduct in humans. With regard to functional value, cruelty has diverse personal and social effects, not just the alluring benefits attributed to it.

Considering the roles of affect and culture in the enactment and enjoyment of cruelty

Research on aggression and terror management theory suggests shortcomings in Nell's analysis of cruelty. Hostile aggression and exposure to aggressive cues are not inherently reinforcing, though they may be enjoyed if construed within a meaningful cultural framework. Terror management research suggests that human cruelty stems from the desire to defend one's cultural worldview and to participate in a heroic triumph over evil.

Epigenetic effects of child abuse and neglect propagate human cruelty

The nature of children's early environment has profound long-term consequences. We are beginning to understand the underlying molecular programming of the stress-response system, which may mediate the destructive long-term effects of cruelty to children, explain the evolutionary stability of cruelty, and provide opportunities for its reversal of early trauma.

The Humanity of Animals and the Animality of Humans: A View from Biological Anthropology Inspired by J. M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello

In his novel Elizabeth Costello (2003), J. M. Coetzee's title character espouses philosophical perspectives on cruelty and the human condition in a series of fictionalized lectures. In particular, she takes on the question of human cruelty to animals. As novelist, Coetzee relies on lyrical statements about the nature of cruelty, analogies between the atrocities of fascism and factory farms, and ethical elitism to address these issues. In this article, I use anthropological data to investigate such constructed notions of “human cruelty” and “human nature.” I end with a discussion of cross‐cultural variation in animal use by humans and of the current animal rights movement. The goal of this article is to engage, anthropologically, perspectives on cruelty in human natures and our relations with other animals.

Of Animal History and Human Cruelty in the New England Tradition

Among the unexpected memories of my urban childhood is an unsettling old photograph (ca. 1940) of an Irish barnyard in winter, in which an enormous, wolf-like canine hangs high in a tree like a convicted criminal, with a noose around its neck. Standing below are three men, one holding a rifle: the animal's anonymous executioners. I remember thinking it was a wolf, although I had no idea why it met this gruesome fate. What, after all, could warrant a mere dog to deserve such an elaborate ritual of human punishment? Puppies were commonly culled by hanging in early modern Britain, and the last Canis lupus sighting in Ireland took place in the eighteenth century, so this was almost certainly a dog that ran afoul of vengeful local farmers. Yet this image suggested more than mere culling. Judging from the manpower that attended the event, the violence that clearly occasioned taking the photograph, and the triumphant pose for posterity that it records, it seems that for these three men at least, to parse canines was to assert a distinction without a difference. Whatever maleficium this dog had committed-that is, whatever evil deed had been attributed to it, determining the manner of its death-this was a wolf to them. That I retained such a memory at all caught me by surprise. Wolf sightings in mid-twentieth-century Manhattan were limited to two-legged varieties, so I had forgotten (or happily repressed) this now lost representation of a fragment of the grim reality of pastoral life that was, in any event, far outside of my experience in the big city. Forgotten, that is, until I opened Jon T. Coleman's Vicious, and quickly learned that the wretched animal in my photograph may have been one of the lucky ones. This is not a book for squeamish readers. I work on subjects in which stories of human martyrdom and torture are commonplace; nevertheless,

The balance of human kindness and cruelty: why we are the way we are

The balance of human kindness and cruelty: why we are the way we are

The Holy Letters, and: My Jewish Name (review)

greatunpublished.com, 2000, Title No. 65. 86 pp. $11.99 (p); $7.99 (e-book). greatunpublished.com 2002, Title No. 251. 127 pp. $11.99 (p); $7.99 (e-book). Nancy Shiffrin's poetry, collected in The Holy Letters, is reminiscent such feminist poets as Margaret Atwood, Audre Lorde, and, especially -- because the highlighted Jewish themes -- Adrienne Rich. The Holy Letters is a book to set alongside these other writers' and to cherish for richness emotions and vividness metaphor. There is no shrinking or prudery here; the author confronts the body frankly, patriarchal repression with rightful anger. The contemporary world, environmental depradation, poverty, inner-city suffering, is harsh and cruel, and the poet responds with great sadness and a search for hope, ending her book with a section entitled For Life. Other sections deal with geography and memory, pregnancy and abortion, unhappy or traumatized children, aging, love, death, and multiple longings: for art, for skill, for erotic adventure. Several poems indicate Jewish themes explicitly through their titles -- Yom Kippur, Shabbat, Kosher, Seder, My Holocaust, Yahrzeit, and Rosh Chodesh -- and many others grapple with Jewish culture and history. Interestingly, the poems most concerned with Jewishness are clustered near the beginning and end the volume, suggesting that the author finds her origins in Jewish culture and returns to those origins ineluctably. One poem is actually entitled Return, and describes the poet's visit to Romania, where her zada came from. The penultimate the volume's ten sections, Covenant, deals exclusively with Jewish religion. Shiffrin clearly falls into a tradition politicized Jewish poets alert to abuses power. The little girl who speaks to us in her naive child's voice mysteries such as the Passover story, neighborhood Jew-hatred, and the gas chambers mutates into the grown woman who feels within her own self the universality human cruelty. In Grief, the persona seeems almost faux-naive, observing the savagery cats and nasty children, reading of Pol Pot's Butcher, research[ing] theories evil, witnessing a murder virtually on her own doorstep, yet unable to name or fully inhabit her own response. A few pages later, though, in Gardening, she is haunted even as she weeds by the idea genocide as weeding-out, and feels implicated in such evil merely by her human tendency to seek cleanliness and control, and therefore to destroy some living things while nurturing others. The poem ends in anguished, disappointed hope: I want to place stone on stone, restore myth rebuild grand processional stairways. …

Terror and triumph: the nature of black religion

Scholarly and eminently readable, Anthony Pinn's thoroughly researched and authoritatively presented history will be welcomed by students, scholars, and general readers alike. With exquisite attention to cultural detail and a brilliant interpretation of interdisciplinary sources, Terror and Triumph is essential reading for all who want to understand better the terror of human cruelty and the triumph of embodied resiliency.

Fear of death and human destructiveness.

We are in possession of the technical knowledge required to provide for the material needs of all of humanity without systematic plunder and extermination of others, yet, systematic plunder and genocidal extermination continue to thrive. Understanding the psychological underpinnings of human violence, in hope of ameliorating or at least attenuating human cruelty and destruction, should thus be one of the most important priorities of the natural and social sciences. For almost two decades we have been developing, testing, and refining a theoretical account of human behavior that we believe offers some important insights about human violence. In this chapter, we present the intellectual roots and core propositions of this theory, review the large body of evidence supporting it, and discuss the implications of these ideas for understanding and ameliorating the viciousness that has characterized so much of our species’ history to date.

I Love To Hate You/All You Need Is Hate

I Love To Hate You/All You Need Is Hate

Refuge Upon the Sea: Captivity and Liberty in The Florida Pirate

Refuge Upon the Sea:Captivity and Liberty in The Florida Pirate Daniel Williams (bio) In the final scene of The Florida Pirate, the escaped slave Manuel languished in a Charleston prison, awaiting execution for piracy. When his one remaining friend in either race visited him shortly before his death, he exclaimed: "Ah, is it you, sir? . . . you are the person I most wished to see. How kind it is in you to visit a poor negro! for I am no more now. I am glad to be treated as a rational creature by at least one white man."1 Here, in a jail cell a few hours before his death, Manuel lamented that he was nothing more than "a poor negro." Like the walls around him, the racist conventions that reduced him to being nothing more than an irrational creature awaiting ignoble execution held him captive. A prisoner of both criminal and linguistic codes, he was forced to become what his captors perceived him to be. Yet at his death Manuel also alluded to his having been something greater in life. While declaring his readiness to die, he stated: "I had a weary life of it. I was chased from the land, and took refuge upon the sea; but notwithstanding that, I could not escape the blood-hounds of the Southern States of America." Manuel's "refuge upon the sea" was a pirate ship. After suffering extreme abuse and even mutilation on land, he escaped into piracy, where—according to his narrative—he discovered an alternative social order that allowed him to exist as a free, rational creature. Once able to determine his own fate, he displayed his natural talents, ultimately becoming the captain of a pirate ship. Ironically, his downfall resulted not from southern bloodhounds but from his own rationality. As a rational creature, as a man of reason over passion, he refused to allow his crew to murder the survivors of their last pirate attack, but his compassion directly resulted in his destruction when three of the survivors led an American warship back to his ship's location. Thus, in the movement from slavery to piracy the narrative tracks Manuel's journey of self-realization from subjugation to liberation. Yet the pirate's rational self-governance made him ill suited for either extreme [End Page 71] and inexorably led him back to the ultimate negation of self in the ritual of execution. For English and American readers during the 1820s, the story offered a sensational tale of violence, love, and revenge while featuring two of the period's most dramatic subjects, slavery and piracy. Beneath its textual surface, however, the narrative carried turbulent currents concerning the limits of rationality and the near limitless capacity for human cruelty, mitigated only by momentary acts of charity. Strangely, by juxtaposing their cruel excesses, the narrative linked slavery and piracy. Although representing opposite polarities of human liberty, the two displayed similar levels of ruthless brutality and vicious self-interest. Manuel's fictional tale, The Florida Pirate, was first presented to Anglo-American readers in the August 1821 issue of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. The story was engaging enough that within a year Sylvester T. Goss, a New Hampshire printer in Haverhill, advertised his own edition of the story as the Life and Adventures of Manuel, the Florida Pirate. The following year W. Borradaile, a New York printer, thought the story was marketable enough to invest his own time and energy in producing three separate editions, all of which were printed in 1823 under the title The Florida Pirate, or An Account of the a Cruise in the Schooner Esparanza. Five years later another New York printer, S. King, still considered the story a marketable commodity and produced two separate editions in 1828. Six years later, in 1834, two Pittsburgh printers, Felt and Cook, published the final American edition of The Florida Pirate. Thus, in a little more than a decade, and at a time when few texts were reprinted in multiple editions, Manuel's story of slavery and piracy was printed a total of nine times on both sides of the Atlantic. Such relative frequency of publication clearly indicates that several American...

Violence: No Silver Bullet

From the neighborhood bully berating a meek classmate to the rhesus macaque screaming at a rival, displays of aggression are the weapon of choice throughout the animal kingdom for asserting dominance, challenging a higher ranking individual, or laying claim to food, water, and other resources. Most of the time, these conflicts are resolved peacefully. But on occasion harsh words and snarls escalate into left jabs and maulings. Why do individuals become violent, and how can we prevent them from injuring others or themselves? These are the central questions explored in this Special Issue on Violence. First, a disclaimer. This issue does not attempt to penetrate all the ugly visages of violence, purposefully ignoring, for instance, violence inflicted by predators upon their prey, human cruelty to animals, and that uniquely human capacity for waging war. Rather, the following collection of News stories and research Reviews focuses on violence directed by individuals against members of their own kind. Studying violence can be risky in its own right, at least to one's reputation. Many years ago the field was rife with theories such as phrenology, which held that personality traits, including violent tendencies, could be divined from the shape of the skull. But even while modern-day violence researchers have succeeded in distancing themselves from the discredited ideas of their predecessors, an ill-formulated comparison of inner city violence and the “jungle”—which some saw as equating black youths with monkeys—in the early 1990s helped ignite a fire storm of protest over studies on the biological roots of violence. Although hampered by the controversy, a small band of researchers is pursuing provocative theories that implicate dysfunction of serotonin-containing brain circuits in violent behavior (see News story by Enserink on p. [575][1] and the Review by Davidson et al. on p. [591][2]); suggest that violence is pathological, in that it is “normal” aggression gone awry (see News story by Pennisi on p. [576][3] and the Review by de Waal on p. [586][4]); and indicate that violent tendencies can begin to develop in early infancy (see News story by Holden on p. [580][5]). Social scientists, on the other hand, have benefited from increased federal support for research aimed in part at pinpointing which antiviolence interventions work in which settings, one positive development in the aftermath of the tragedy at Columbine High School last year (see News story by Marshall on p. [570][6]). Were Columbine and other recent school shootings symptoms of a diseased society? In fact, since the early 1990s, violent crime rates have declined in the United States, although rates remain substantially higher than in Europe (see News story by Hagmann on p. [572][7]). Teasing out the factors that drive the ebb and flow of U.S. violent crime rates may help predict future trends and point to productive interventions (see Editorial by Blumstein on p. [545][8] and News story by Helmuth on p. [582][9]), while profiling the personalities of victims—such as the type of police officer more likely to die in the line of duty—could help protect vulnerable subpopulations (see News story by Stokstad on p. [584][10]). There is no silver bullet capable of neutralizing the biological or psychological triggers that set an individual on a path toward violence. Indeed, it's still unclear how much animal studies can reveal about our own capacity for violence. But ultimately, researchers are bound to converge on a common goal: Deeper knowledge of the biology of violence will help social scientists match violence-prone individuals with intervention programs that can steer them onto a path toward conciliation and respect for the sanctity of life. [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.289.5479.575 [2]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.289.5479.591 [3]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.289.5479.576 [4]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.289.5479.586 [5]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.289.5479.580 [6]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.289.5479.570 [7]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.289.5479.572 [8]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.289.5479.545 [9]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.289.5479.582 [10]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.289.5479.584

Unspeakable Truths and Happy Endings: Human Cruelty and the New Trauma Therapy

Unspeakable Truths and Happy Endings: Human Cruelty and the New Trauma Therapy

Unspeakable truths and happy endings: human cruelty and the new trauma therapy

Unspeakable truths and happy endings: human cruelty and the new trauma therapy

Evil: inside human violence and cruelty

Evil: inside human violence and cruelty