Natural Science Knowledge: Being Bad

The natural sciences are academic disciplines that differ from any other we have studied so far. The natural sciences studies the physical and natural world, these include the physics, chemistry, and biology. In the social sciences, we learned that they find patterns and human behavior in order to investigate and come up with conclusions. In the natural sciences study the patterns of the physical world, the biological and chemical aspects that makes up humans as the reasoning to human behavior and in the case of our class, human bad behavior. Therefore, by running different tests on the brain and nerves and reactions of people, natural scientists try to determine, if the results have to do with being bad or good.

Kevin Glenn presented to the classroom the case of a 57 year old college-educated, married man with a worsening pattern of altered behaviors. His family reported that he was constantly lying and when he was confronted about it he pretended like he did not know what had happened. The study aimed to assess the neuropsychological bases of deception in a case of pathological lying.The study discussed that it was questionable whether pathological lying was a conscious act and whether liars always had control over their lives. The lies were often unplanned and impulsive. In conclusion to the study, "the first observation of pathological lying as a symptom of a neurodegenerative disorder" describing maybe its neurocognitive bases (Poletti, 2011).

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In the study "High prevalence of brain pathology in violent prisoners: a qualitative CT and MRI scan study" by Kolja Schiltz we learned that a high percentage of prison inmates sentenced due to violent crimes suffered from structural brain pathology. This was detectable by using routine cerebral imaging with CT or MRT. Therefore, the study was able to find that brain damage was more prevalent in the violent perpetrators than in the non-perpetrator controls and also more prevalent than in the non-violent perpetrators. This tells us that pathology appears to be much associated with violent offending in many prisoners. 

Now to think that the pathological liar had any controllable fault to what he was doing would make him bad. Yet, reading and learning through the natural sciences that a neurological condition was at fault for pathological liars and often times, violent offenses, allows for me to see that it is not necessarily the human that is bad, but their condition.

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This helped gain a better understanding of our theme of what makes humans bad because I am learning that the answer is merely not so simple. We cannot just say it is the fault of ones mental state, or something in their genes, but it can be causes of the outside world, society, the natural that can change a human being. Based on research and facts, the natural scientists conclude that things just happen, events and just another day can change a persons behavior, and that is something they may not have full control of or maybe any control of at all. Therefore, saying if they are bad or good becomes very difficult and I can say that as a Liberal Studies major, I do not have an answer to do that.