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Is Douglas Wilson a Psychopath?

This question has been raised many times by people who have had to deal with Wilson in face to face conflict like I have. Wikipedia defines and describes Psychopathy in the following way:

… These days, psychopathy is defined in psychiatry as a condition characterized by lack of empathy or conscience, poor impulse control and manipulative behaviors. Though in widespread use as a psychiatric term, psychopathy has no precise equivalent[1] in either the DSM-IV-TR, where it is most strongly correlated with antisocial personality disorder, or the ICD-10, where it is correlated with dissocial personality disorder.

…Hare describes psychopaths as “intraspecies predators who use charm, manipulation, intimidation, and violence to control others and to satisfy their own selfish needs. Lacking in conscience and in feelings for others, they cold-bloodedly take what they want and do as they please, violating social norms and expectations without the slightest sense of guilt or regret.”[2]

[Go to Wikipedia’s page for their many embedded links.]

I have been arguing that Wilson’s latest review of Sam Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation has given almost conclusive evidence to the fact that this hypothesis is indeed true, as least with regard to “lacking in conscience and in feelings for others.” This was my primary argument in my last post about this. Wilson’s continued response to Harris’ appeal to human empathy is at best bizarre, at worst, revelation that Doug Wilson has never had normal human empathy for another person. This morning Wilson has another post up interacting with Harris’ book, and we see the same evidence all over again:

[quoting Harris:] “At this very moment, millions of sentient people are suffering unimaginable physical and mental afflictions, in circumstances where the compassion of God is nowhere to be seen, and the compassion of human beings is often hobbled by preposterous ideas about sin and salvation” (p. 37). Every time you speak this way, I want to bring you back to the fundamental question about suffering. Given your principles, what is wrong with it? If I am living here in North America, and my nervous system is not connected to those who are suffering in Africa, given your principles, why should I care. If ten people die in agony on the other side of the world, or if ten million do, if the word never gets to me, and the pain never registers in me, then why should I care?

Don’t get me wrong. I believe we should care … I am asking you why pain that never registers as pain in me has any obligation for me. In addition, if I am living here in the great jacuzzi of consumerism, enjoying the heck out of it, then why should I surrender all that in order to go suffer through what it takes to bring relief to others? Who cares? Before I cared, no pain in me. After I cared, lots of pain in me. Please explain to me why I should exchange pleasure for pain in the only place where pleasure and pain register, and if pleasure and absence of suffering are the highest good.

You are assuming a great solidarity of nervous systems, and I do not see how collective moral obligation arises out of this — particularly since the pain and pleasure calculus you use does not jump from one nervous system to another. On top of that, what gives pleasure to certain sub-groups of human nervous systems is pain in other sub-groups. How are we to sort this out? If pain and pleasure are the real things that count, it would seem that we have to side with the bigger tribe because they are carrying around more nerve endings. They would experience more pleasure and the defeated tribe would experience less pain. And after the genocide, the defeated tribe would experience no pain, and far as the atheist is concerned, that problem is permanently solved. I know that you are appalled by this kind of reasoning, and say that it does not represent your thinking, which I grant. But I want to know why it does not. Why do you assume a solidarity of all humankind as opposed to a tribal or racial solidarity?

One other brief comment. You point out that many abortions occur naturally, and draw a rather strange inference from it. “There is an obvious truth here that cries out for acknowledgment: if God exists, He is the most prolific abortionist of all” (p. 38). You do not appear to understand that God is the giver of life, and so, if He takes that life away, we bless the name of the Lord. We cannot take life away, apart from God’s clear scriptural authorization, precisely because we did not give it in the first place. God, “if He exists,” does not have to fill out a police report down at the station every time someone dies of a heart attack.

I really do not think Wilson realizes what he is admitting to us in this book review. All the elements are communicated once again. First, Wilson can only understand human suffering and happiness in terms of raw feels, and even theses feels are conceptualized as the mere physical workings of “nerve endings.” More importantly, he claims that the suffering of other people does not register in any way in him. Wilson is emphatic about this point. There is no natural, causal, social connection between the nerve endings of one person and the nerve endings of another. Wilson could be standing by watching the woman getting raped and her baby’s head decapitated, and there would be no natural formation of pain in him. Wilson could not be clearer. This is why he cannot understand the first thing about Harris’ very simple and common sense appeal to human empathy. We have no evidence elsewhere in the Wood for a different explanation of Wilson’s bizarre handling of Harris’ claims, and this is certainly not taking Wilson’s words out of context since Harris’ appeal to human empathy is precisely what Wilson is rejecting here.

Second, thus lacking the capacity for human empathy, Wilson thinks that Harris’ appeal to human suffering and happiness can only be construed in terms of an impersonal utilitarian calculus. Whereas Harris has clearly appealed to natural empathy between people, Wilson claims that the best way to understand Harris’ point as grounds for morality is to merely add up the total amount of raw feels of pleasure or pain for a given social group. According to Wilson’s way of feeling about things, the best way to apply Harris’ appeal to human empathy is to commit acts of genocide.

Third, because of his lack of natural empathy Wilson can only dismiss “the problem of evil” as a mere game of “authorization.” Harris points out that God causes or permits far more abortions than do people each year, which is an implicit reference to the traditional problem of evil argument. But Wilson claims there is nothing to this point since God gave the life in the first place. Obviously, this answer is vacuous; but Wilson cannot see this. Once again, since the issue can in no way be about emotion, horror, or empathy, it must rather be about moral maxim, of brute “obligation.” The only meaningful issue for Wilson is who is “authorized” to kill and who is not.

In at least four posts now on Harris’ book, Wilson has revealed little about Harris’ argument but much about Wilson’s own emotional capacities. I am reminded of the time when Wilson was on a definition trip about “love.” At the time, love was nothing more than obedience to God’s law as applied to other people. Wilson reasoned that one could love X not only while putting X to death, but by putting X to death, since putting X to death was simply the appropriate application of God’s law to X in that circumstance of justice. My friend was eating it up and I vigorously apposed this view, arguing that it was highly reductive to remove the idea of wanting good for X, seeking X’s own flourishing, from the very meaning of the phrase “to love X.” Perhaps I can love X while putting X to death, but I do not express my “love” for X by the very act of putting X to death. There might be certain exceptions, as when the condition of X or X’s crimes where so horrible that it is mercy to X to go ahead and end his life. But since we were talking about a redefinition of “love,” such exceptions where not the point; the point was understanding love as reference to nothing but obiedience to God’s law as applied to other people. My friend went to Wilson and explained my disagreement. Wilson told my friend that I was just a sentimentalist. I really think that much of Wilson’s attempt at social dominance and his working out of various theological themes is his way of trying to make sense of his incapacity to experience empathy.

Sam Harris Is Apparently Talking Some Sense

As we learned during Wilson’s book review of A Generous Orthodoxy, most of Wilson’s followers will not read the books he spends much effort critiquing; this is so even when there is an insubordinate shouting things like: “Wilson is lying; he is continuously misquoting the book. This is not what the author is saying. Read the book.” So Wilson knows what he can get away with while blogging book reviews. In this regard, I have had little motivation to track his recent book review on Sam Harris’ work. However, in skimming the last two posts from Wilson, I have noticed a problematic theme continue that I have already addressed. I want to briefly take deeper note of this theme:

In his thus far second to last post on Harris’ book, Wilson compares ‘unprotected’ and immodest daughters of our modern times with ancient women sex slaves, and he equated the prison system with the institution of slavery—thereby disqualifying him to participate in this moral discussion. Yet, Wilson goes on to offer what he thinks is a devastating critique of Harris’ position. With respect to slavery:

There is nothing wrong with it on your principles, where the universe is just time and chance acting on matter. Why does it matter if the master matter acts on the slave matter? Who cares?… On your principles, why is slavery wrong? You make a superficial attempt to answer the question, but it answers nothing, and addresses nothing. “The moment a person recognizes that slaves are human beings like himself, enjoying the same capacity for suffering and happiness, he will understand that it is patently evil to own them and treat them like farm equipment” (pp. 18-19). This appears to be an argument that nerve endings disqualify one from being a slave or being treated like farm equipment. But what about farm animals? They have nerve endings, and they certainly have a capacity for suffering. …

…This brings us back to your basis for morality, which was basically pleasure and pain. “Questions of morality are questions about happiness and suffering. This is why you and I do not have moral obligations toward rocks” (p. 8 ). Okay. Whose happiness and suffering? Why ought one individual, with one set of nerve endings, be concerned about another set of nerve endings entirely? They are not connected, except through cultural teaching. That teaching, in our case, is grounded in the will of God. In your case, it is grounded in bare assertion. What you need to do is sketch for us the bridge between one set of nerve endings and another, and show us why that bridge of yours creates an obligation that two sets of nerve endings must share.

Did you get all that? I thought Harris’ suggestion for a nice starting moral premise regarding slavery to be right on the money; again:

“The moment a person recognizes that slaves are human beings like himself, enjoying the same capacity for suffering and happiness, he will understand that it is patently evil to own them and treat them like farm equipment” (pp. 18-19).

This certainly seems right to me. But given Wilson’s emotional void when it comes to such matters, we should expect him to baulk. And he does. I do not want to be too hard on Wilson on the argumentative level since I really do not think he has the capacity to understand just what Harris’ point is in the first place. It would not surprise us to find Wilson intentionally creating a straw man argument, but I’m not sure that is what we have here. Wilson thinks this statement from Harris “addresses nothing,” and he reduces Harris’ argument to raw feels of pain and pleasure, those sensuous qualities he boils down to the mere physical working of “nerve endings.” Thus, for Wilson, recognizing via intuitive empathy that a slave is a person just like you, with the same kind of capacities for suffering and happiness, is no different than trying to figure out the moral significance of the slave’s physical nerve endings. The only way for Wilson to try to distinguish the slave from a piece of farm equipment—outside religious, authoritative maxim—is to look at the fact that the slave has nerve endings.

But of course, nerve endings are not pain and pleasure; further, raw feels of pain and pleasure are not what we typically consider basic human suffering or human pleasures. Further still, higher level human pleasure does not amount to anything like “happiness,” and basic human suffering does not amount to our full capacities for “suffering.” Suffering and happiness, of the kind Harris refers to, clearly point to our distinctively human experiential knowledge. As J.L. Mackie pointed out (Mind 1955), mere suffering is only a first order evil; but we have a second order kind of evil in the world, the kind we often associate with forms of slavery: “malevolence, cruelty, callousness, cowardice….” I see no reason to suppose Harris is leaving out this second order shape of human suffering, which is on a entirely different moral plain than the mere feeling of pain, the mere result of having “nerve endings.” And following Aristotle, we usually use “happiness” to refer to the highest level of human capacity; happiness cannot be reduced to mere pleasure. Even that utilitarian John Stuart Mill was sure to point out that he would rather be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied. For Aristotle, in fact, the total “happiness” of a man’s life cannot be fully assessed until that man’s life is over and seen in its full unity. Patrick Hogan grounds emotion and narrative universals in prototypical forms of “happiness,” whether in heroic dominance, romance, satisfaction of hunger, or redemption. Thomas Aquinas saw human “happiness” to be the primary purpose of human law. Conservative Christian moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, following Aristotle, believes that the goodness or rightness of a given action is grounded in what is the true happiness of man, his natural flourishing, his nature: “is” does produce “ought.”

But Wilson fails to understand all of this. I’m not so interested in pointing out Wilson’s fallacious straw man argument as I am in pointing out how sad it is that Wilson apparently lacks some of the most important and basic human capacities for grasping the true nature of human empathy, happiness, love, and evil.

I have detailed Wilson’s alternative pattern elsewhere, which is apparently his only form of recourse; in a previous post, I noted:

What people “want” reduces to “morality,” morality reduces to “right and wrong,” and right and wrong reduce to axiomatic authority and power. This just is one face of the theonomists timeless approach to “law.”

Wilson continues this pattern here. Two people with a “set of nerve endings,” in a common social context, “are not connected, except through cultural teaching. That teaching, in our case, is grounded in the will of God. In your case, it is grounded in bare assertion.” This statement is remarkable. For me it is a bit horrifying and in fact puts some chills up and down my “nerve endings.” People cannot be “connected” but through “cultural teaching.” In Wilson’s case, this teaching is grounded in the “will of God.” Wilson therefore makes his lack of human empathy clear. Wilson sees nothing in Harris’ point but for “nerve endings,” and can imagine no way he could morally distinguish a slave from a piece of farm machinery but through cultural “teaching,” grounded in the “will of God.” Wilson would perhaps like to be King of a vast world of ants, as long as the ants had special revelation about the will of the anti-hill’s god—all nicely morally “connected” they would be.

Wilson reveals this same lack of moral feeling and insight in the next post on Harris; I’ll leave you with what comes close to Wilson’s conclusion to that post:

This is how you [speaking to Harris] describe it. “Everything about human experience suggests that love is more conducive to happiness than hate is. This is an objective claim about the human mind, about the dynamics of social relations, and about the moral order of our world” (p. 24).

But three questions come to mind. First, why is this not a question of preferences, instead of morality? What’s the difference between individual preferences and moral choices? Second, if “everything about human experience” shows that love is better than hate, why is there so much hate? And third, why do you appeal to the broad range of human experience when it comes to love and hate, and feel free to reject the broad range of human experience in its denial of atheism?

Such a simple point; yet so many questions.

The Slaves Were Happy! The Stockholm Syndrome?

Michael,

Your comparison of slaves to battered wives and your contrast between them and dairy cattle are right on. In wildlife, they’re called “imprints,” because captured animals become dependent upon their captors; their captors take away their independence and program them to be dependent for everything. Similarly, in humans they call it the Stockholm Syndrome:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

Re dairy cattle: Slaves were nothing more than the physical property of their masters — no different than cattle, hence the term “chattel slavery.” White men bought and sold black human beings to hold in bondage just as they purchased steers and cows to keep in pasture.

50,000 Slaves Trafficked in America Each Year

Bill London, a Moscow local (and “intolerista”), recently wrote Doug Wilson an open letter, along with some information about the slavery problems we have in America today:

Doug Wilson:

Human slavery continues today (see the WSU news release below about a workshop in Spokane on that topic).

In your booklet, “Southern Slavery, As It Was,” you clearly state that Christians can own slaves. See page 11–”a godly man could have been a slave owner” — or page 12, “The Bible permits Christians to own slaves.”

If it’s OK for you to own another person, and if there are people available for you to own (as this news release indicates), are you going to buy yourself a slave?

Sure, you say this is a stupid question, and one you will try your best to laugh off….but, the issue is real. You say the bible has no errors, and that the bible OK’s slavery. So, what is there to stop you, or one of your followers from owning another person? as you often say, by what standard could you call slave-owning evil and illegal?

BL

————–

John Goldman, Western Regional Institute for Community Oriented Public Safety (WRICOPS), WSU Spokane, 509/358-7593, goldman at wsu.edu

Stopping Slavery in the 21st Century Workshop set for Nov. 16

SPOKANE, Wash. ¬ A full-day conference entitled “Stopping Slavery in the 21st Century: Searching for a Faith-Based Response to the Trafficking of Human Beings” is scheduled from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Nov. 16 at the Whitworth Presbyterian Church, 312 W. Hawthorne Rd., Spokane……

About Human Trafficking
Human trafficking is a form of modern day slavery which imprisons more than 2 million people worldwide. The trafficking of human beings for profit in the sex industry or labor camps through force and coercion is not confined to Southeast Asia or Africa, as the popular understanding may have it. It is estimated that more than 50,000 people are trafficked in the United States each year.

Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act in 2000 and the abolition of human trafficking is a priority for the U.S. Department of Justice. More than 3,000 cases were investigated in 2005 alone, resulting in more than 1,200 indictments. 1,000 victims have been assisted in recent years and more than 30 federally funded task forces are now in existence to enforce the protection of law.

One such working group is located in the Seattle area. An article in the May 10, 2004 Seattle PI labeled Seattle as a “Hot Spot” for human cargo. The article went on to say, “Washington State’s Basic Law Enforcement Academy does not include any information about trafficking, and a number of local police departments say they don’t have the time and resources to set up special trafficking training.”