Intention

Overall intention

Sean Spence’s overall intention with this article, “Bad or Mad?”, is to inform readers about the new findings in neuroscience and persuade them to rethink the way they look at evil and at those who commit evil acts. 

Since Spence was both a professor of psychiatry and a researcher in neuroscience, we may also suspect that Spence’s intention is to gain a wider interest in his research, even though he does not mention his own work explicitly in the article.

The nature of evil

The writer begins his article by asking what evil is. To help readers better understand the topics he will discuss in the article, Spence provides Saint Augustine’s definition of evil (p. 137, ll. 8-12). Spence suggests that the distinction between moral and natural evil is appealing even in a secular world, because people need to believe criminals intentionally choose to commit violence so that punishment is justified.

Spence references Uma Thurman’s character “The Bride” in Quentin T...