Yes all killers are insane
@dave31415 I can't replace any part of that definition, as that's part of the definition of "legal insanity". While every state has a slightly different standard, that's the central part of it.
What you're talking about is the standards that a society uses to decide what acts are acceptable and what aren't. That's a very different conversation.
@Parad0x that's an interesting overview. Suggests every serial killer but the 'born evil' type is delusional in some way.
Having a similar educational background and just finishing the movie i at no point thought JD was insane. His behavior was of clear sound and mind. As irrational as his behavior was he was rational in his thought process to get rid of the body and the different methods he used. He had a compulsion and acted out on it. So as far as having a personality disorder...yes. insane...absolutely not.
@dave31415: What I'm doing is answering the original question.
According to the legal definition of insanity, here and now, in the current cultural context shared by me and the OP, some serial killers are sane. Are all serial killers legally insane? No, not all serial killers are legally insane.
What you're doing I hesitate to say.
@DaringSprinter the op's question had a very simple straightforward answer, which you, I and many others offered long ago. Would you prefer that people keep offering it?
It's clear what @dave31415 is doing. He's having a civil conversation about the slipperiness of insanity, right and wrong as concepts. I see no evidence of bad faith. Given that the thread had died before he intervened, I can't imagine why anyone has a problem with this.
What do you think he's doing?
I'm curious what the clinical diagnoses tend to be for killers that successfully plead insanity. Is it always schizophrenia? It seems the term insanity in the legal definition could use an update, to something more medical. Insanity isn't a diagnosis in psychiatry, and has a lot of cultural baggage.
I have no interest in playing devil's advocate just for the sake of trying to appear smart and edgy, so I will just second @quixotic_life and say "Dude! 🙄"
The short answer is yes. They have no regard for life.
@PlantDaddyPHL: Throughout history and across all cultures, there have been and are people who kill at least three other people who—for whatever reason—they shouldn't kill, over a span of time longer than 30 days. Today we call those people "serial killers."
Throughout history and across all cultures, there have been and are people who do that not knowing that they're doing it, or not knowing that they shouldn't, and/or unable to refrain. Today we call those people "legally insane."
Not all serial killers are legally insane.
Some humans kill other humans knowing they're killing other humans, knowing they shouldn't, and perfectly able to not kill them. Some serial killers are legally sane. Question answered, thread over, hooray, knowledge for everyone.
What Dave is doing is trying to redefine "insanity" so it means "being in the minority."
I object to that.
@DaringSprinter i don't know why you felt the need to talk to me like a child ...well, actually I do, but I 'hesitate to say', as you might put it. Your penultimate sentence was all I required. Obviously the answer to my question about preferring repetition of what's already been said is an unambiguous YES.
You seem to think I've endorsed everything Dave believes. I have explicitly not done that. I've simply endorsed his making this conversation more interesting than people who repeat what's already been said, and then say 'dude' at someone who's saying something else. Unlike some others -- who I hesitate to name -- he's managed to say quite a lot without being snide, dull, or presuming bad faith. If nothing else, he's shared some interesting facts about mores in other periods and cultures. Color me shallow, but i don't care about his motives for being more interesting than most other contributors, including you, though I have no reason to doubt them.
I don't think you have correctly encapsulated what he is trying to say, by the way. He began this conversation by saying insanity as a label is meaningless, or something to that effect. He's not trying to redefine it as 'being in the minority.' He's saying that it is less a clinical term than a tool of social discipline and, as such, that's what it effectively means. Anyone familiar with how psychiatry has been weaponized against women, minorities and political dissidents has to recognize some truth in this. As I've said, I think this critique applies to people who would label Jeffrey Dahmer obviously insane because his behavior is so far outside conventional morality. I think his argument is less successful against those, like you and me, who think mental incompetence is a material thing separate from giving moral judgments a clinical gloss. HTH.
@PlantDaddyPHL The majority of IST verdicts are indeed due to diagnoses of psychotic disorders, but it's far from a guarantee.
@Finnegan2017 Oh yeah, I know that successful insanity pleas are very rare. Was just wondering what the clinical diagnoses tend to be when they succeed. I haven't really dug. So far I've found schizophrenia and post-partum depression.
@PlantDaddyPHL you can find several different diagnoses, but they tend to mostly fall in the psychotic disorder family. Kind of tough to make a defense with other ones.
I’m pretty sure having a psychological evaluation to stand trial is just that- the question is “is this person sane enough to answer honestly and recall details accurately as it’s pertinent to the case”, does this person know the difference between right & wrong”
So once you determine the person is able to make that distinction (between right&wrong) they are considered “sane” in the eyes of a court & criminals if they’re prosecuted and proven guilty. This evaluation is done before trial& really trials are how we determine if people really committed any crimes or not.
I think it’s really important these things are viewed on a case by case basis especially when there’s such a stigma surrounding mental health as it is. Sanity/insanity are legal terms and applying them to some personality & behavioral disorders is just kind of generalizing and counterproductive, no? I don’t even see a place for the word when we’re talking about mental health.
If Dhamer& Bundy were evaluated & considered legally insane by the court, they wouldn’t have even been held accountable for the atrocious shit they did, they would have lived out their lives comfortably on a grippy sock vaycay. Hope that makes sense.
Sure, you can point to a legal statement that attempts to define insanitary. But all definitions legal or otherwise just move the responsibility to other terms. And this system of reference between words is a cyclical graph not a directed graph pointing back to a few universals.
“…understands whether their actions are right or wrong “
Great! Now insanity is defined as long as we can agree on what “understanding” means in this context and what constitutes “right and wrong”.
And these are .., wait for it… just the populate opinions in one particular culture at one particular time.
So if we agree that “right and wrong” are culturally relative and we define insanity in terms of right and wrong, then clearly insanity is also culturally relative.
I don’t think this is such a hard argument to follow. I don’t understand why anyone thinks this is so blasphemous or why some get upset over it.
@dave31415 You're trying to have a philosophical discussion? So you're talking about ethical relativism. But there are universal truths - "fundamental and universal principles of morality include individual rights, freedom, equality, autonomy and cooperation".
(Ignoring the actual definition of insane/legal insanity) according to your definition, someone isn't insane if it's normal in their society to kill people. But if that society is ok with killing people, it doesn't follow the universal morality of individual rights, etc., so the entire society is wrong.
@Moxytocin Who says those are universal truths? History certainly would disagree. Many cultures even today don’t subscribe to those. Those are typical norms of very recent Western societies.
With your line of thinking, you could say that slavery in the US was perfectly fine or right because enough people in our culture agreed at that time that it was.
"... already been said, and then say 'dude' at someone who's saying something else." ~ @PlantDaddyPHL
My utterance of "dude" was not because he said something different. It was because the post was an all over the place mess of stuff that I didn't feel like doing the mental gymnastics needed to try and follow it, let alone figure out how it applied to the conversation that had been happening.
Also, though likely just a reflection of my irked bitchiness, or some underlying snarkiness at best, my other comments were just what fell out of my mind after reading even more absurdity coupled with an arrogance that just rubbed me wrong.
I think it's super great you're still enjoying whatever all that is (you're clearly a more patient and tolerant being than myself). But to be fair, it's you that has repeatedly told someone else to stop repeating themselves, while defending someone else who is also repeating themselves. So perhaps you're not as patient or tolerant as one may have thought. Don't know, and don't really care. Enjoy and have a nice evening or day or whatever it is in your time zone.
@dave31415 It's not merely cultural bias that makes me think science gets reality more right than anything that has preceded it. The proof is in the results. So I don't think the nature of, say, people who feel called by God to kill is a simple matter of culturally relative opinion. There is evidence for psychosis, whereas there is no evidence for a God that talks to people who are in every respect completely healthy. Societies that think schizophrenia is a spiritual state, or that God accompanies them into battle are simply wrong.
Therefore, while I ratify a lot of what you say on the provisional nature of morality, and on the use of 'insanity' as an enforcement mechanism, I don't think it undermines the legal definition of insanity, which confines itself to the material state of a person's brain.
@quixotic_life
But to be fair, it's you that has repeatedly told someone else to stop repeating themselves, while defending someone else who is also repeating themselves. "
I didn't tell anyone to do anything. I simply stated my own preference for what Dave was doing vs what his detractors were doing. As the thread was already dying by the time you entered to say what several others had already said, I couldn't understand why the turn in a different direction was so provocative.
I feel like some of these posts should begin with "well actually " said in a high pitched yet strained voice punctuated by holding your pointer finger up as though to point at an overhead bird
@pmvines On the contrary, in fact, that would be the middle finger as if aimed forward, towards not necessarily a flat earther per se (for example) but some such person ipso facto not correctomundo and so forth. Wait... Actually, that's still pointing up. Nevermind.
This is a pretty interesting discussion and I hope I'm not making anyone uncomfortable by answering this.
"Criminally Insane" is less of a psychological term and more of a legal one.
Serial killers are all mentally ill obviously. But being mentally ill isn't enough to get you the insanity plea. The biggest factor is the motive and intent behind the deed, or the complete lack thereof. I'm talking in the context US law, I'm not sure what the laws in other countries are in regards to this.
This video is pretty good at dismissing the stereotype of what an insanity plea looks like
The man who got the plea admitted to everything, and then requested the death penalty. Then you can see when the detective tries to understand the motive behind the murder, it's like his brain can't conceivably conjure up any reason as opposed to avoiding the question entirely. He did this for literally no reason as far as anyone can tell.
So if a person is aware of the crime they committed during the act of committing it, and the potential consequences they may face for it, then this isn't enough for an insanity plea defense.
If we are talking about the morality behind convicting a mentally ill person, then that is a much different topic. But you may want to check out the video. It talks about how most of the time the insanity plea nets a person a larger punishment than going to prison would give them.
@dave31415
And these are .., wait for it… just the populate opinions in one particular culture at one particular time
so what, though? the defendants are part of that culture. If the legal definition of insanity is meaningless because ideas about sanity, right and wrong vary across time and place, then all jurisprudence is meaningless too for the same reason. Why single out 'insanity.'
The legal definition seems rooted in science, not morality. It aims to identify psychosis, a material thing. What's the problem?
I swear on Thor's abs that I've been to family reunions that are nicer than some of you folks - which is saying something, since most of them I would gladly have arrested - again. I further swear that some of you want to argue just to argue and never fail to belittle others on a thread if they don't align with your precious world view and myopic experiences. I'm not happy when it feels like I, or the other mods, have to hand out timeouts to stop the incessant bickering - so I'm offering this free advice:
If you can't play nice, if you can't be a contributing member of this community, and if you MUST demonstrate your superior intellect, please go offline and get a PhD and THEN come back, but make sure it's long after I'm not a moderator here, because this constant "I'm right" bullshit is working my last nerve with the number of flags on this thread. Don't like a topic? Move on. Don't like someone's answer? Okay, Don Quixote - find a windmill elsewhere, and leave the personal attacks and our (@Babichev and @Shake49 and @reurbo ) aggravated mod sensibilities alone. /rant
Closing this up temporarily - and let folks understand that the mods are feeling timeout-trigger happy... now.
Reopening.
Behave.
Squire Sancho here. Mr. Quixote has left the building.