Sociopaths and anarchists

This is sort of an interesting blog post from an anarchist criticizing the comparison between sociopaths and anarchists that Robert Hare draws in his book "Without a Conscience". The anarchist is insulted to be compared to sociopaths and actually refers to sociopaths as an anarchist's "natural enemy", but only for the same reasons that sociopaths would be a natural enemy to anyone who considers themselves a potential victim.

The article is sort of interesting and sort of wrong, but has a certain charm to it because it is written from the point of view of one abnormal mentality regarding another abnormal mentality, in a way that Pakistan criticizing North Korea's nuclear policies might seem charming. The gist of the argument:

So once we realize that, we must examine legalism both from the aspect of outer rules and from the aspect of inner rules. The Anarchist rejects only part of the former, but the sociopath rejects both. Seen from that perspective, the sociopath is seen to correspond perfectly to the concept of atomistic individualism: an individual who lives as if he is in a vacuum, making decisions in complete disregard of society or any part of society.

It's an interesting distinction to make. I don't know anything about the anarchy movement so I can't comment on that part of it, but I think he is trying to say that anarchists still have internal moral beliefs and sociopaths don't. This assertion is not quite right unless you define "moral beliefs" quite narrowly, not just excluding little rules of thumb like "eat breakfast when you can," which sociopaths definitely can have, but also excluding certain value judgments, e.g. preferring strength over weakness, which sociopaths also seem to have to some extent. And I don't think you can have a principled definition of morality that excludes those types of value judgments unless you simply define morality as "everything that I innately believe and nothing else."

My favorite part of the article, though, is this mini review of Hare's book:

I wasn’t exactly bowled over by the book itself. Many conclusions were unsupported and obviously were only adopted by Hare because they are more conducive to him getting money. There are also some logical gaps. All in all, it’s a spotty piece of writing.

He makes that comment about money as if it were a bad thing. I myself don't mind being a cash cow for psychologists, in fact if Hare gave me kickbacks or otherwise paid me off, I would stop writing this blog today and/or jump on the Hare bandwagon. Hare, if you are reading this, I can be bought. For cheap. Cheaper than you might think. Unlike anarchists, I apparently don't have any inner rules or sense of morality to prevent me from doing so.