Arsonist motivations and methods Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Arsonist motivations and methods - Essay Example The person who commits arson or the arsonist has been categorized into types, degrees by statutes and socio-psychological analyses. This paper discusses this aspect as we try to shed some light to the arsonists and their motivations and methods. There is some degree of debate whether there is such a thing as a universal profile of an arsonist. Goldstein (1996) suggested a psychological profile as explained by Rider of the typical pathological fire setter in his review of literature on the subject: {An arsonist is] an individual of below average intelligence, with a history of poor academic achievement and significant school failure. He or she comes from a large family and a harsh and unstable home environment and displays a clearly troubled and inadequate social, marital, and employment history. (p. 25) In a research undertaken by Bradshaw and Huff (1985), about 52% of the arsonists surveyed burn properties out of revenge, 12% out of excitement while the rest cover those of crime concealment, for profit and those simply without reason. (p. 1-5) For this paper, we will discuss three of the most common arsonists, the arsonists who burn homes and building out of revenge, those who do for profit, out of excitement and those who burn building in order to conceal another crime. As previously explained, the most typical type of arsonist is the one who burns buildings and homes in order to get back at someone for some slight that may be real or imaginary. Somehow this is also related to arson entailing psychological disorder on the part of the arsonist such as schizophrenia which is characterized by excessive and irrational suspiciousness. Fire is used as a weapon or a defense in this case against what is perceived as a threat. According to Rossmo and Kim (2000), targets of revenge arsonist may include individual homes and vehicles, places and symbolic targets or government buildings depending of whether their motivation is to

Philosophie Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Philosophie - Essay Example The second part, on the other hand, will compare some important concepts that have been forwarded by each of them in order to underscore some important lessons. The last part will conclude this paper by stating the relevance of each of their views in the subsequent studies on the philosophy of the mind—how their analyses guided various schools of thought pertaining to metaphysica and the mind-body problem (philosophies of St. Thomas Aquinas, Rene Descartes, and Martin Heiddeger). To Plato, the physical world is nothing but an immitation of a perfect world, as stated clearly in the article entitled "Plato Overview" (Clark 1). Physical objects are construed as beings lacking the state of perfection. In this regard, the humans’ acquisition of sensible experiences gives them what Plato called ’opinions or beliefs’ (Clark 2). Such position, as reinforced in an academic paper entitled "Temporal Platonic Metaphysics," is based on the assumption that: (1) physical objects can only be regarded as imperfect versions of their perfect counterparts and (2) humans’ senses can only grasp these imperfect characteristics of physical objects (Mikovic 1). Following this reasoning and connecting this to his position on the nature of the human mind, Plato then recognized the need to transcend physicality as he regarded humans as more spiritual than physical. In Plato’s renowned metaphor, humans are souls trapped in physical bodies. Such conception of the state of ’being trapped’ is both revolutionary and developmental—revolutionary because it introduced the concept of non-materiality as another facet of humanity, and developmental because it highlighted the proper way through which the spiritual or ideal state of objects could be grasped. While humans gain sensible experiences through the physical contact with physical objects (as mediated by the five senses), such occurrence is made possible by the author and governor of the visible world of appearances called