Brian SCHIFF (AUP): 'The Hermeneutics of Darkness: Interpreting Perpetrators on their Crimes'

Brian SCHIFF (American University of Paris): "The Hermeneutics of Darkness: Interpreting Perpetrators on their Crimes"

"The Brains that pull the Triggers - 3rd Paris Conference on Syndrome E": international conference convened by Itzhak Fried (Paris IAS / UCLA / Tel Aviv University) and Alain Berthoz (Collège de France), with the support of the Région Ile de France within the framework of the DIM Cerveau et Pensée, and the American University of Paris.

The conference brought together scientists and scholars from the human, social and brain sciences to bear upon the question of transformation of seemingly ordinary individuals to repetitive agents of extreme violence in groups (Syndrome E). The menacing specter of such transformation in the human condition that has caused immense loss of life in the past, is a matter of grave concerns in contemporary civilization with the increase in global radicalization and discontent. In a special editorial, Nature magazine has described the first conference as “…a bold and important attempt to bring interdisciplinary approach to one of the biggest questions facing humanity”.

The aim of this conference was to foster a multidisciplinary approach trying to elucidate the brain mechanisms of this behavior and its collective characteristics, and also to evoke the social, psychological, ethical and juridical aspects.