Predatory killers often do far more than commit murder. Some have lured their victims into homemade chambers for prolonged torture. Others have exotic tastes - for vivisection, sexual humiliation, burning. Many perform their grisly rituals as much for pleasure as for any other reason.The article goes on to describe some of the ways scientists are attempting to measure evil. Other scientists object to any such efforts claiming that the word carries too much baggage, theological baggage specifically, to be helpful in legal and medical matters. I suspect I will use the article in class when we discuss the Problem of Evil.
Among themselves, a few forensic scientists have taken to thinking of these people as not merely disturbed but evil. Evil in that their deliberate, habitual savagery defies any psychological explanation or attempt at treatment.
The Depravity Scale is mentioned so I took the time to investigate and take the depravity survey. It is aimed at those in the criminal justice professions but I wanted to see how they were gathering the data in their attempt to conceive a scientifically standardized definition, for legal purposes, of "depravity."
My initial thoughts were critical: some of the questions are too vague and the examples they provide vary wildly--so much so that it seems they should not be included as different examples of some kind of depravity. For instance, one question includes the following as two of the examples designed to illustrate potential depravity: 1) intentional genital mutilation during rape and 2) the intentional destruction of highly valued or irreplaceable art or cultural artifacts like the giant carved Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban in Afghanistan. By including both of these as two examples of one general sort of potential depravity, the survey is implying that these acts are somehow equivalent.
Another, lesser, complaint: the survey collects some demographic information and one of the questions asks about one's religiosity or lack thereof. The possible options are divided according to "traditional" or "not traditional." That's vague enough right there. Then there are two non-traditional options: 1) not traditional, but spiritual or 2) not traditional, not spiritual. On some level this just reflects the increasingly meaningless and incoherent ways we as Americans talk about religion. But if the goal is to accrue reliable empirical data, the survey designers should have done better. There was no one option for religion that I felt comfortable with, and perhaps that says more about me, but there are plenty of people who approach the question(s) of religion in a similar fashion. Making "agnostic" a choice would have been a simple but appropriate choice.
I suspect that those who put the survey together did not go out of their way to get any outside input. A philosopher or two, and a theologian or religious studies scholar would have helped.
But it is an interesting exercise if you have a few spare moments.
