Ron Rosenbaum ponders attempts to find a biological explanation for evil in the brain. In short:
[Many neuroscientists] argue that the time has come to replace such metaphysical terms with physical explanations—malfunctions or malformations in the brain.
Will Wilkinson resists this understanding of evil:
About evil specifically, it seems obvious that people with perfectly normal brains do evil all the time. The interesting empirical question about evil is not whether or not there is any. Anyone who doubts it just confused. For the life of me I can't see what anything about the brain has to do with the evil of chattel slavery, the brutality of colonial occupation and dispossession, the Holocaust, the Cultural Revolution, etc., etc. Rosenbaum gets it right when he says "Evil does not necessarily inhere in some wiring diagram within the brain. Evil may inhere in bad ideas, particularly when they're dressed up as scientific (as Hitler did with his 'scientific racism')." The interesting empirical question is how it is that people who are not in the least lacking in empathy or disposed to psychopathy can, in the right circumstances, find themselves quite ready and willing to torture, kill, and humiliate other human beings — to do evil.
(Image by Flickr user Alex Robertson)
The Dish 