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In Reply to: Re: Born without a conscience posted by anovagrrl on November 04, 2003 at 14:22:06:
Anovagrrl,
You wrote:
"Hare's work is empirical. He has measured traits associated with psychopathy in hundreds and hundreds of cases. In Hare's work, the absence of empathy is
equated with the absence of conscience, i.e., caring whether something is wrong because of the injury it will cause another."
Yes, and you are making my point. Heir is making a huge assumption based solely upon observation of behavior. He may be correct to assume that a lack of empathy equates to a lack of conscience, but it is an unproven assumption on his part. Heir has no scientific means of showing the existence of or non-existence of a conscience, so he has simply taken a scientific-sounding leap of faith that the lack of empathy equates to a lack of conscience.
