Simon Baron-Cohen Professor, Developmental Psychopathology Departments of Experimental Psychology and Psychiatry University of Cambridge

 Four kinds of conditions in people exhibit lack of empathy  Psychopathy  Narcissim  Autism  Asperger Syndrome

 Evil and Cruelty are the result of Lack of Empathy  Not the result of theological category of ‘sin’  Not the result of an incarnate evil-i.e.‘devil’  Not purely the result of social disorder or environment  Not purely the result of a physical condition  Reflect variety of categories and associations

 Six Levels of Empathy, based on Empathy Quotient Questionnaire  MRI evidence of regions of brain operative in empathy—ten in all:  Medial prefontal cortex (comparing oneself with others)  Orbitofrontal cortex ( social judgement, socially disoriented  Frontal operculum (Language processing)

 Inferior frontal gyrus (emotional recognition)  Caudal anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula (pain matrix-both personal and observing)  Temporoparietal junction (intentions and beliefs)  Superior Temporal Sulcus (judging someone’s direction of looking)

 Somatosensory Cortex (coding sensory experience)  Inferior Parietal Lobule, Inferior Parietal Sulcus( Actions & response recording ‘mirror’ neurons)  Amygdala (emotional learning and regulation)

Personality Disorder Borderline: Type B- Extreme saying destructive things to others (Marilyn Monroe) Psychopath: Type P- Total detachment from other’s feelings...cold, calculating, completely selfish Narcissistic: Type N- Total entitlement of self, ‘using’ others, discarding those ‘useless’

 Asperger Syndrome (Avoidance of the social, loneliness, patterning obsession)  Autism (Underactivity in Empathy, without words for emotions, systemitizers to the extreme, innovators)

 Aggressiveness Gene: MAOA-H ‘Warrior Gene’  Emotional Recognition: 1. Serotonin transporter (SLC6A4) 2. Arginine Vasopressin Receptor (AVPR1A) Autism-linked, fear and anger)  Empathy Gene (Several Genes involved)

 Can you develop empathy?  If you have none are you necessarily bad?  Can a state be empathetic (i.e. Ban the death penalty)?  Can one be super-empathetic to the point of being dangerous?

 Daniel Frankfurter: Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Ritual Abuse in History. Princeton,  Social Construction of Evil: Endorsed in Rituals of Political, and Religious Intent  No Notion of Cruelty Universal, it is all constructed locally and from local social and psychological conditions

 Why is the demonic, the chaotic, the marginal regarded cross-culturally as “a realm”?  Why is the definition of evil often in the hand of “authorities”...prophets, presidents, popes?  What role does ‘fear’ play in definitions of cruelty, and evil?  What role does conspiracy play in the meaning of evil?

 Difficulties with his ‘measurement’ of empathy.  Extensive cognitive location of empathy raises critical questions about ‘the circuitry’ ideology  Are cruelty, evil, lack of empathy, etc. one and the same set of phenomena?  Are there differences between personal lack of empathy and the social perception of evil?  Why is evil behaviour apparently limited in time and scope?