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Overcoming The Desire To Kill Whilst Overcome With Emotion
Overcoming The Desire To Kill Whilst Overcome With Emotion
Overcoming The Desire To Kill Whilst Overcome With Emotion
Sorial (2019) puts forth the idea that loss of self control is a misleading term to describe
the psychological mechanisms at play that give rise to emotionally motivated killing. Rather,
Sorial (2019) argues that “an assessment of the defendant’s reasons for acting… can be grounded
in a normative moral rights-based theory. In assessing a defendant’s reasons for acting, we would
need to scrutinize the initial wrongdoing or provoking conduct, and whether it constituted a
violation of a person’s rights, in order to determine whether the response was justified” (p. 266).
This moral framework is an “ontological account of normative ethics that grounds moral
judgment in a theory of rights”, which would count abusing women as moral wrongs that
undermine their rights or autonomy (Sorial, 2019, p. 266). In order to evaluate Sorial’s argument,
I will break it down to define self-control, then discuss what constitutes justifiably being
wronged.
In defining self-control, we need to discuss the subjective test and desires, which would
have implications for intentionality. For example, irascible and drunk people would fail the
subjective test. If one’s mental faculties are impaired, we should not consider their lack of self
control as a result of a certain provocation; rather, it is that they have lost it long before the
provocation or they never had self-control. According to philosophers Holton and Shute (2007),
self-control can be defined as a) consisting in the ability to bring one’s actions into line with
one’s second-order desires, and b) to bring one’s actions into line with one’s judgments about
what is best to do. A first order desire is a desire for anything other than a desire; a second order
desire is a desire for a desire. Loss of self control is succumbing still to one’s first-order desires,
and thus is intentional; we can control which desires or emotions drive our actions. Sorial (2019)
illustrates her idea that “while it is the case that persons may have little control over feeling
certain emotions, they do have significant control over how those emotions are expressed” with
an example of becoming angry with one’s spouse: “I can respond by shouting at him…or I might
negotiate some time off when he returns” (p. 258). Anger does not make us kill; it is the intention
to kill that we choose to indulge in that results in the action. If one’s argument to loss of self
control is that they did not intend to kill someone, just to hurt them slightly, then the argument
still wouldn’t hinge on emotional self-control, but rather control of one’s strength. It follows that
we need to make a distinction between emotionally motivated killing and accidental excessive
We must also discuss the slippery slope of the term “wronged” and what constitutes a
justifiable sense of being “wronged”. Sorial (2019) claims that focusing on the provocation’s
impact on the offender can be “potentially leading to subjectivist interpretations” (p. 266). In
cases of hate crimes, what if one feels as though someone’s existence wrongs them? What
reaches the threshold of being wronged differs from person to person and such a varying
interpretation would be unjust to those who do manage to control themselves upon being
wronged. We should have clear lines about what would constitute a valid set of reasoning to
justify killing: I argue prioritization of one’s own safety when there is an obvious threat would
count. Hence, I agree with Sorial (2019) that we should focus on whether the provoking conduct
violates someone’s rights or autonomy, which would constitute a “justifiable sense of being
Employing the process model of emotion regulation, there are various ways we can
regulate our emotional expression at different stages. Take the example of arguing with your
sibling, leading to you killing them out of anger. This is a result of failure to regulate emotions at
each stage. You couldn’t have predicted that this argument would have happened (situation
selection) but you could have chosen to leave (situation modification). As for cognitive change,
you could reappraise their insults as the result of a frustrating day or displaced aggression.
Finally, you failed to regulate your emotion at response modulation by choosing to respond by
fatal physical attacks. Once again, these regulation methods are only calling for regulating one’s
expression of an emotion and not succumbing to first-order desires to fatally hurt someone.
To explore how first-order and second-order desires are at play when impacting
emotional expression, I propose analyzing it through the lens of multiple valuation systems.
Gross (2015) suggests that a multiple valuation system is when an agent is being pulled in
different directions by conflicting valuation systems, such as killing someone who has wronged
you, which would be good for you (a first-order desire) versus not killing because of punishment,
which would also be good for you (a second-order desire). Someone who supposedly “lost
control”, I would argue, actually just chose one valuation system over the other. However, I
believe some valuation systems are more valid: for women killing their abusive partners, their
valuation system has to do with their safety, so they are more justified to think that killing would
truly be good for them. Though, any intentional act that could have reasonably been avoided if
The purpose of this discussion primarily is to determine legal penalties for “loss of
self-control” killings, which should be approached with nuance. Referring back to the subjective
test, I believe individuals with severe mental impairment should not be held to the same standard
as the general population, and thus be given appropriate treatment in the form of psychiatric
help. According to the distinction made between intentional emotionally-motivated killing and
accidental excessive self-defense, the latter should count as manslaughter; if the valuation is
valid, which is when autonomy or rights are legitimately violated, even though the act of killing
References
Gross, J.J. (2015). Emotion regulation: Current status and future prospects. Psychological
Holton, R., & Stephen Shute. (2007). Self-Control in the Modern Provocation Defence. Oxford
Sorial, S. (2019). Anger, Provocation and Loss of Self-Control: What Does “Losing It” Really