Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Sculptor1]

Note the case of psychiatrically ill criminals. There are cases that have been diagnosed severe psychiatric disorders and but are very intelligent excellent actors nevertheless manipulating their interviewers into thinking that an applied therapy has been successful. Thus some have been set free just to take up their criminal behaviour again.

I agree. The infamous serial killer Ted Bundy was a known manipulator. Many of his interviewers believed what he said, though luckily he ended up in death raw. But such skilled people are quite rare. Yes, there are intelligent psychopaths who might pretend as being cured and then continue to carry on with their doings. Best thing is to keep such people detained for a certain time though it will raise human right related issues.

Nothing was gained by killing Bundy. He could have made a great guinea pig for psychological study and help to recognise the signs of emerging psychopaths.
Killing him is just a primitive form of vengeance of no help to the vicitms and their families.

I am not sure whether the family members of his victims felt same about his death. When your loved ones are harmed you expect some sort of justice, and I think the capital punishment gave them the feeling that justice was served. And I am personally stand with the concept of capital punishment because it will set example to atleast some of the criminals and also it will help the world to get rid of atleast one criminal.

Countries with capital punishment have more violent crime.
Countries with no capital punishment have less violent crime.
Your deterence argument does not seem to be working.
I disagree with capital ;punishment because the law is an ass, and many innocent people have died because of it.

And for the scientific experiments, it is widely accepted that experimenting on humans against their will is unethical. This has to be applied to a criminal as well. If the court decided to keep him and use him for researches, don't you think he will gain a set of followers who will go on rioting demanding either to release him or to stop experiments on him?

I did not suggest experimenting on Bundy.
There is no ethical problem with studying his behaviour, and he gave his consent whilst he lived for many interviews.
I think it is somewhat contradictory that you are willing to protect him for ethical reasons but you are not willing to preserve his life for any reason.
I think you might want to think that through a bit.

[Sushan]

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) says that cognition and behavior are inter-related and have an influence on each other. If we want to modify behavior, we have to change our thoughts in the first place. The tension that we develop is a result of our perception and the thinking based on that perception. So the change of thinking pattern is the only thing necessary for a positive outcome as per CBT.

But I think our behavior is not only directed by cognition. Our personality traits, our bonding and attachment (emotional factor) with our relations, environmental factors, genetic factors, and traumatic events make us behave differently than we normally do. And they will affect our brain and mentality as well.

So will a change of thinking will change the rest, or will it need a wholistic approach?

I imagine that if mood is the cause of bad behaviour, CBT is unlikely to change much behaviour. Bad moods are often caused not by lack of reasoning but by hormonal changes , illness, reasonable fears, or fatigue.

But bad moods create the hormonal changes, so modifying your behaviour changes the production of hormones.
This is a no brainer CBT works .
One method is to acknoweldge subconscious fears, rather than allow them to fester and change your cheminstry. KNowing what bothers and and owning that helps you deal with problems and avoid them.
We all know that avoiding a fight in the street means that your body will not produce the adrenaline that joining the fight would initiate. The same is true of many other situations.
Your mental state is not a cause of chemistry, it is the chemistry. Moods and chemistry go hand in hand.

Hormonal changes are complex. I read "the pituitary is the conductor of the endocrine orchestra". I agree moods and chemistry "go hand in hand". Environment influences hormonal change as your example of a street fight illustrates. So we have internal environment and external environment and each influences hormonal change.

The internal environment and the external environment are closely connected in experience. As Spinoza said "The mind is the experience of the body".Modern biologists would express that from Spinoza with reference to the organs of special sense by which the mind or central nervous system gets to know the body(internal environment) and also the external environment.

BTW I don't believe in Jungian subconscious.

I think we all have more than just sexual fantasies and related stuff in our minds, which is described in Freudian unconscious. Even Freud himself has mentioned about remnants in our mind which are unable to be linked to a cause or a source. Carl Jung developed his theories on this and presented collective subconscious. I haven't studied much about this concept, but the populations are prone to think alike regarding common things. So maybe Jungian subconscious is having some base after all. This may explain why similar psychiatric therapies affect differently to different patients.

[Sushan]

I agree. The infamous serial killer Ted Bundy was a known manipulator. Many of his interviewers believed what he said, though luckily he ended up in death raw. But such skilled people are quite rare. Yes, there are intelligent psychopaths who might pretend as being cured and then continue to carry on with their doings. Best thing is to keep such people detained for a certain time though it will raise human right related issues.

Nothing was gained by killing Bundy. He could have made a great guinea pig for psychological study and help to recognise the signs of emerging psychopaths.
Killing him is just a primitive form of vengeance of no help to the vicitms and their families.

I agree executing Ted Bundy was not a "gain". It probably saved a few dollars in elder care costs but overall was a wash. The very real and important issues of equity and reliability of the justice system did not come into play in his particular case, but are overriding negatives of capital punishment.

We have a weird situation ATM where putting people in Death Row turns out to be more expensive than life imprisonment.
But I've never thought that saving cash was any kind of reason to kill a person.
I recently watched a Netflix series from the POV of his partner. I was mostly horrified ho easy it was for him to jump the state line to avoid detection and how poor the forensice evidence was to convict. But worst of all the compliment given to him buy the judge who admired his self presented defence. Made me quite sick.

Technology was far from development those days. So any criminal could get away from the law enforcing authorities just by going far away. So were the forensics that criminals could easily get away from their punishments because they were not proven to be guilty for their crimes. But today both aspects are well advanced and no one can simply get away from his/her crimes.

And for that judge's compliment, there is a high chance that it was used to give some hype to the Netflix series.

[Sushan]

I imagine that if mood is the cause of bad behaviour, CBT is unlikely to change much behaviour. Bad moods are often caused not by lack of reasoning but by hormonal changes , illness, reasonable fears, or fatigue.

But bad moods create the hormonal changes, so modifying your behaviour changes the production of hormones.
This is a no brainer CBT works .
One method is to acknoweldge subconscious fears, rather than allow them to fester and change your cheminstry. KNowing what bothers and and owning that helps you deal with problems and avoid them.
We all know that avoiding a fight in the street means that your body will not produce the adrenaline that joining the fight would initiate. The same is true of many other situations.
Your mental state is not a cause of chemistry, it is the chemistry. Moods and chemistry go hand in hand.

Bad moods may be caused by some ideas, and there may be evidence that a bad mood causes lasting physical effects. I would not know.

There are a lot of bad moods that originate willy nilly in biological events such as premenstrual tension, lack of sleep, or low blood sugar.

All true, but being "mindful" of those biological causes and acknowledging them for what they are, offers a better coping mechanism than not recognising them.
I remember of several occassions being in the deep midst of a completely irrational arguement with my female partner and realising in the middle that it was that time of the month. Most of my partners accepted my observations and we were able to draw back on the heat of the debate. There was one woman that took it as an insult and was never able to let herself make an adjustment for her irrationality.
I get irritable myself as I have a problem with chronic neck pain and subconsciously ignore it for several hours. Eventually it is too much but this often expresses itself as shortness in temper. Luckily my partner knows why and understands. But I have ot be reminded sometimes.

An illness may well be a cause for a mood change. When someone is in stress due to an illness he/she can easily get irritated. Understanding such a situation and controlling one's self will be the best option as you suggested. Maybe that is the whole scenario related to pre-menstrual, menstrual and pre-menapausal unusual behaviours as well. But I am doubtful whether the impact of hormones can be totally excluded from the scene.

[Sculptor1]

Nothing was gained by killing Bundy. He could have made a great guinea pig for psychological study and help to recognise the signs of emerging psychopaths.
Killing him is just a primitive form of vengeance of no help to the vicitms and their families.

I agree executing Ted Bundy was not a "gain". It probably saved a few dollars in elder care costs but overall was a wash. The very real and important issues of equity and reliability of the justice system did not come into play in his particular case, but are overriding negatives of capital punishment.

We have a weird situation ATM where putting people in Death Row turns out to be more expensive than life imprisonment.
But I've never thought that saving cash was any kind of reason to kill a person.
I recently watched a Netflix series from the POV of his partner. I was mostly horrified ho easy it was for him to jump the state line to avoid detection and how poor the forensice evidence was to convict. But worst of all the compliment given to him buy the judge who admired his self presented defence. Made me quite sick.

Technology was far from development those days. So any criminal could get away from the law enforcing authorities just by going far away. So were the forensics that criminals could easily get away from their punishments because they were not proven to be guilty for their crimes. But today both aspects are well advanced and no one can simply get away from his/her crimes.

And for that judge's compliment, there is a high chance that it was used to give some hype to the Netflix series.

It's not much better today.
Forensics can and are faked all the time. The honeymoon period is over when old cases have been overturned by new DNA evidence. Now the police just make sure your DNA appears at the scene if they think you are guilty.
There is still no warrent for execution, as there is no appeal from death. When a state kills, it is no better than the killer and this shames us all.

[Sculptor1]

But bad moods create the hormonal changes, so modifying your behaviour changes the production of hormones.
This is a no brainer CBT works .
One method is to acknoweldge subconscious fears, rather than allow them to fester and change your cheminstry. KNowing what bothers and and owning that helps you deal with problems and avoid them.
We all know that avoiding a fight in the street means that your body will not produce the adrenaline that joining the fight would initiate. The same is true of many other situations.
Your mental state is not a cause of chemistry, it is the chemistry. Moods and chemistry go hand in hand.

Bad moods may be caused by some ideas, and there may be evidence that a bad mood causes lasting physical effects. I would not know.

There are a lot of bad moods that originate willy nilly in biological events such as premenstrual tension, lack of sleep, or low blood sugar.

All true, but being "mindful" of those biological causes and acknowledging them for what they are, offers a better coping mechanism than not recognising them.
I remember of several occassions being in the deep midst of a completely irrational arguement with my female partner and realising in the middle that it was that time of the month. Most of my partners accepted my observations and we were able to draw back on the heat of the debate. There was one woman that took it as an insult and was never able to let herself make an adjustment for her irrationality.
I get irritable myself as I have a problem with chronic neck pain and subconsciously ignore it for several hours. Eventually it is too much but this often expresses itself as shortness in temper. Luckily my partner knows why and understands. But I have ot be reminded sometimes.

An illness may well be a cause for a mood change. When someone is in stress due to an illness he/she can easily get irritated. Understanding such a situation and controlling one's self will be the best option as you suggested. Maybe that is the whole scenario related to pre-menstrual, menstrual and pre-menapausal unusual behaviours as well. But I am doubtful whether the impact of hormones can be totally excluded from the scene.

Did I suggest they could?? Hormones are at the heart of mood, generated by pain, or menstruation and else besides. And in exactly the same way a change in circumstances and a change of mind can change the hormones too.

[Sushan]

Rather than think whether Cognition and/or Behaviour needs to be changed for the "better". Perhaps, we need to consider what "better" means? Is there there an implicet assumption that better means "more socially useful, happy, motivated, go getter etc." What if I arbitrarilly decide to change my cognition , behaviour to be more depressed, or to become a poor teamworker or time keeper?
Are we desiring to overlay a cultural template of neatly ordered fir trees over a wild chaotic natural forest - I think we understand the long term effect of that strategy - disease.

The word 'better& may have many meanings, and philosophically it may be defined in many ways. But since we are all social beings, what is generally meant by being better has a great value than what the dictionary says. People can choose to be extroverted, introverted, social, etc. But a depressed, less cheerful, always failing to do tasks, character will e seen as a looser by the society, and such a person will never be accepted willingly as a group member.

[Sushan]

Nothing was gained by killing Bundy. He could have made a great guinea pig for psychological study and help to recognise the signs of emerging psychopaths.
Killing him is just a primitive form of vengeance of no help to the vicitms and their families.

I agree executing Ted Bundy was not a "gain". It probably saved a few dollars in elder care costs but overall was a wash. The very real and important issues of equity and reliability of the justice system did not come into play in his particular case, but are overriding negatives of capital punishment.

I do not think that the courts or judges acted against him. Since the jury system was there the decision could have been biased. But since we cannot resurrect the died ones, atleast the culprit should have a way to pay for his crimes.

I think the gain from his punishment was a social one. It may have shown the society that the justice system is trustworthy, the families of the victims may have felt as justice was served, and atleast several lives of girls were spared.

It is a false choice to imply that the only, or best way to pay for crimes committed is the death penalty. As to trustworthiness, Bundy's case specifically is an example of justice but it is the exception, the vast majority of capital cases are against poor folk without adequate legal representation and police and prosecutors seeking to improve their stats by any and all means, legal or otherwise.

There may be some truth in what you say. Even the poor guy gets some legal support, at the end it is a human who make the final judgement, and such decisions are prone to errors. And there are several occasions the legal systems being corrupted when money and rich people are associated. But thinking like that if we totally remove the capital punishment from the legal system, the back lash will be more harmful than some poor falk paying with his life. I know this sounds insane, but I strongly believe that the presence of punishment act as an example for the going-to-be criminals and it will save atleast some of them from going down that pathway.

[LuckyR]

I agree executing Ted Bundy was not a "gain". It probably saved a few dollars in elder care costs but overall was a wash. The very real and important issues of equity and reliability of the justice system did not come into play in his particular case, but are overriding negatives of capital punishment.

I do not think that the courts or judges acted against him. Since the jury system was there the decision could have been biased. But since we cannot resurrect the died ones, atleast the culprit should have a way to pay for his crimes.

I think the gain from his punishment was a social one. It may have shown the society that the justice system is trustworthy, the families of the victims may have felt as justice was served, and atleast several lives of girls were spared.

It is a false choice to imply that the only, or best way to pay for crimes committed is the death penalty. As to trustworthiness, Bundy's case specifically is an example of justice but it is the exception, the vast majority of capital cases are against poor folk without adequate legal representation and police and prosecutors seeking to improve their stats by any and all means, legal or otherwise.

There may be some truth in what you say. Even the poor guy gets some legal support, at the end it is a human who make the final judgement, and such decisions are prone to errors. And there are several occasions the legal systems being corrupted when money and rich people are associated. But thinking like that if we totally remove the capital punishment from the legal system, the back lash will be more harmful than some poor falk paying with his life. I know this sounds insane, but I strongly believe that the presence of punishment act as an example for the going-to-be criminals and it will save atleast some of them from going down that pathway.

You are free to have that belief though the US is the only country in North America and Europe that has the death penalty yet only three countries in Europe have higher crime rates, 37 plus Canada are lower.

[not a thing]

Whenever you are, plaase look of all man made things that surrounds you.
Are all this things before was made in humans mind ?

[Neil Wallace]

a depressed, less cheerful, always failing to do tasks, character will e seen as a looser by the society, and such a person will never be accepted willingly as a group member.

Quite.. and hence is there essentially a kind of social engineering to projects like CBT. We will make of you the neatly ordered pine tree that is pleasant to the other neatly ordered pine trees.

What if depression has an ultimately life enhancing function? Along with the other taboo emotions "Hate" ," Lust". For why would they have evolved if this were not so.

The pine rows fall quickly with the first wind storm or disease. The gnarly solitary old oak lasts hundreds of years. I know which I prefer.

[Sushan]

But bad moods create the hormonal changes, so modifying your behaviour changes the production of hormones.
This is a no brainer CBT works .
One method is to acknoweldge subconscious fears, rather than allow them to fester and change your cheminstry. KNowing what bothers and and owning that helps you deal with problems and avoid them.
We all know that avoiding a fight in the street means that your body will not produce the adrenaline that joining the fight would initiate. The same is true of many other situations.
Your mental state is not a cause of chemistry, it is the chemistry. Moods and chemistry go hand in hand.

Bad moods may be caused by some ideas, and there may be evidence that a bad mood causes lasting physical effects. I would not know.

There are a lot of bad moods that originate willy nilly in biological events such as premenstrual tension, lack of sleep, or low blood sugar.

All true, but being "mindful" of those biological causes and acknowledging them for what they are, offers a better coping mechanism than not recognising them.
I remember of several occassions being in the deep midst of a completely irrational arguement with my female partner and realising in the middle that it was that time of the month. Most of my partners accepted my observations and we were able to draw back on the heat of the debate. There was one woman that took it as an insult and was never able to let herself make an adjustment for her irrationality.
I get irritable myself as I have a problem with chronic neck pain and subconsciously ignore it for several hours. Eventually it is too much but this often expresses itself as shortness in temper. Luckily my partner knows why and understands. But I have ot be reminded sometimes.

I heartily agree that possessing insight into one's own bad moods makes the bad moods more bearable. Put another way, if I can be objective about my bad mood I can go to sleep, drink water, eat some food, remind myself of what I do next, and so forth. I had not known that CBT taught people to be objective in the sense of insight into the causes of their own moods.

The remedies I listed above are physical depending as they do on the belief the bad mood originates in the body including the brain. I'd feel uncomfortable about some authority figure in a metaphorical white coat telling me my ideas about my outer environment are wrong and that is why I am in a bad mood.

If the white-coated authority tells me my behaviour XYZ is dangerous and alternative PQR behaviour is how I can be more safe and more happy I'd find that a lot more credible than being told changing my mind will sort my mood problem. I imagine CBT is designed for people who have decided to change their behaviour but CBT is not for people who are required to change their minds. Your intransigent friend who could not take your advice perhaps had that sort of personality, or else the trait was a feature of the relationship itself.

(Just a thought about your neck, did you ever try a 'heat lamp' ? (Called infra red to help to not confuse it with an ultra violet lamp) . Physiotherapists used to use them to alleviate local musculo-skeletal pain. )

CBT or any other counseling related method firstly recognize where the patient's mind is at; whether at an acceptable state of advice or not. This is very well seen in treating addictions. The non accepting ones cannot simply be advised and cured. The intention to be better should come within the patient's self and then only the experienced therapist can help. So the insight and the intention and willingness to become better plays an important role.

Sometimes the non accepting nature may be a personality trait. An experienced therapist will be able to distinguish an illness from a personality trait and treat accordingly.

[not a thing]

Were all man made things in human mind before were made ? If so, what you think, you are this will come out.