--- mirah@... wrote:

> > I think the answer to all these
> > three questions is obviously no unless you already had a set of moral
> > ideas consistent with killing people with a boning knife.
>
> This does not explain why seemingly normal people suddenly change their
> behavior, for instance, when they are drunk.

I'm not entirely sure how we got to man on a knife rampage to alcohol, but
okay I'll bite. Jeffrey Schaler wrote an excelent book called 'Addiction is
a choice' in which he explains research on alcohol and other drugs. One of
the experiments he describes went a bit like this. The researchers made up
some drinks that tasted as one would normally expect alcoholic drinks to
taste, but which did not actually contain any alcohol. They also made up a
bunch of drinks that didn't taste as one would normally expect alcoholic
drinks to taste but which did in fact contain alcohol. Then they gave the
drinks to alcoholics and social drinkers, both of whom drank more of the
drinks that 'tasted alcoholic'.

I think it goes a bit like this. A person's sensations can be altered by
alcohol and he may interpret those sensations in such a way that he acts
strangely. Moreover, when a person drinks a liquid that he thinks is
alcohol he might act differently from normal because he expects to behave
differently from normal. A person who is deemed to be a party animal might
act boisterously, an alcoholic might drink a lot and so on.

> I.m.o. people who have murdered should be locked up to protect the
> public. Why they did it is totally beside the point. All speculation
> about it is useless, because we can never be certain about someone's
> reasons anyway.

Yes.

Alan



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