The neuroscience and philosophy of evil

It’s more complicated than a cartoon villain

The most obvious example of modern evil: Hitler. Image from thetimes.co.uk.

How is it possible that human beings commit atrocities like the Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide? Or torture people like the Spanish Inquisition did, and ISIS and similar groups still do today? That’s a question that has been debated in philosophy at least since the time of Socrates, who had some very insightful things to say about it, as we shall see. Nowadays, the study of evil is shaping up as a multidisciplinary inquiry, where natural science, social science, and philosophy interact constructively.

In this context, I’d like to highlight certain concepts from a fascinating article that appeared in the excellent Aeon magazine: “How evil happens,” by Noga Arikha. Arikha covers a lot of territory, and I highly recommend reading her essay in full, but here I wish to focus on an aspect that is both important and yet difficult for many to accept: “evil” is often done by perfectly normal people, who are moreover convinced that they are doing the right thing.

Consider for a moment Heinrich Himmler’s speech in Poznan in 1943. Among other things he said: “We have the moral right, we had the duty to our people to do it, to kill this people who wanted to kill us.” Sure, you may dismiss Himmler himself as a psychopath (though was he, really?). But you can’t likewise dismiss the millions of Germans who acted accordingly, either in direct support of the Nazi regime or by way of complacency. They were not all psychopaths, nor is it tenable that they were all acting under the threat of a gun to their head. (If you are not convinced, read this review of two books exploring ordinary lives under Nazism.)

Arikha’s interest focuses on research concerning the neural correlates of “evil” behavior, and highlights how it is pharmacologically inducible: “the amphetamine Captagon—used, inter alia, by ISIS members—affects dopamine function, depletes serotonin in the orbitofrontal cortex, and leads to rigid, psychopathic-like behavior.”

Luckily, though, she doesn’t fall for a simplistic “your brain on X” kind of approach. She recognizes that just because we can induce a given behavior artificially, and because we find neural correlates of that behavior, it doesn’t mean that the neurological level of analysis is the only one that matters, or even necessarily the most important one. She elaborates:

“Much as the neurosciences are an exciting new tool for human self-understanding, they will not explain away our brutishness. Causal accounts of the destruction that humans inflict on each other are best provided by political history—not science, nor metaphysics.”