"It illustrates the reasoning error called a 'Category Mistake', committed when something from one epistemic class of things is deployed to help establish a proposition from another class."
Indeed and see Thomas Szasz who states in the Myth of Mental Illness that the concept of "mental illness" is a "logical category error". One cannot have an illness of an abstract concept, the mind - cf brain disease which is disease of the physical organ, the brain.
Re "God," it depends what one means. How about "the mysterious source of everything which can sometimes sense" (attrib. Einstein)?
Isn't there some danger in your argument against "sides" that one might end up not believing in anything? Surely it's better to know, subject to change, where one is but at the same time acknowledge others' points of view.
I didn't know about Szasz and that's an interesting point because I've long felt dissatisfied with the concept of mental 'illness' and see it more as a label for certain ways of thinking and behaving rather than an actual description of something akin to cancer or a viral infection. Somewhat similarly to how addiction is depicted as an 'illness' (or even a 'thing' kind of living in the mind and manipulating it). Thanks for that tip !
Re the closing point ... yes, there is a danger but it's a bit downstream of not believing in anything. I think the danger is that if you don't believe in an objective morality (as indeed I don't) one might end up using that to justify intentionally causing suffering or not caring at all about causing suffering.
"Re the closing point ... yes, there is a danger but it's a bit downstream of not believing in anything. I think the danger is that if you don't believe in an objective morality (as indeed I don't) one might end up using that to justify intentionally causing suffering or not caring at all about causing suffering."
I'm not sure whether or not I accept "objective morality" and this whole subject requires a lot more thinking! And discussion over the proverbial cup of coffee!
Thomas Szasz was remarkable (I met him twice). Two more quotes (of many): "When we don't like a TV program, we wouldn't call a TV repair man. Why then, when we don't like the way a person behaves, do we call a medical psychiatrist?" "When a person acts as if he were speaking to God we say he is praying, but when he acts as if God were speaking to him we say he has “schizophrenia” — and we look to medical science to “cure” him of his “mental illness.”
I was in therapy with Anthony Stadlen and then attended a number of his seminars, which is where I met Thomas Szasz and Raymond Tallis (among others). Sanity, Madness and the Family was life-changing for me; I have read it many times. Likewise the Myth of Mental Illness, though read less often.
This piece is brilliant and manages to almost entirely capture my thinking on the idea of morality and describe it better than I could.
To me, there's always been a simple core to my views on morality: if you want a universal, objective morality, that can only come from outside of ourselves, because we are individuals and do not all share the same feelings under the same circumstances; we are subjective. Identifying anything outside of ourselves as universal morality simply introduces our subjective identification of those values, making the external, internal again. People posit god as the escape from this, but since our identification of god (a thing we only posit abstractly) is again, itself a subjective act.
So. We can't be objective within ourselves (our very "self" is not objective). Every attempt to understand the things outside ourselves is tainted by the mediation of our subjective interpretations, even "god". What do we do?
We bring in faith, which functions as a way of saying "in this special situation, I can get outside myself and my subjective interpretations and see Truth." While I suspect this is self-delusion, and I get somewhat annoyed that people have the arrogance to believe that they can do this, I only really object to it when they try to impose it on others.
In any case, this has always led me back to the idea that morality is simply your own internal feelings dressed up in several layers of abstraction. And I don't devalue the abstraction! Ethics and moral philosophies are very helpful in getting us to understand how we *feel* about things. I look at utilitarianism or deontological ethics as tools, and these tools can help us better understand our feelings and better explain them to others. But it's never occurred to me that they were actual moral prescriptions unto themselves. Any time your ethical system is at odds with your internal feelings, the problem is most likely with your ethical system. (Ethical systems can sometimes help us work out conflicting or incoherent feelings, but I don't actually think this is necessary; sometimes we're simply not coherent.)
So many things in what you say that either chime or make me want to explore them further. Your point about the value of 'standalone' ethical systems being tools to correlate with our intuitions and identify incoherence will occupy me further, because it points toward a practical use for them beyond the 'normative' job they're usually assumed to be performing. Great stuff !
The other useful aspect of ethical systems is that they can help us persuade others that our feelings about morality are worthy of consideration. Our feelings change, often in response to our understandings of the thoughts and feelings of our fellows.
"It illustrates the reasoning error called a 'Category Mistake', committed when something from one epistemic class of things is deployed to help establish a proposition from another class."
Indeed and see Thomas Szasz who states in the Myth of Mental Illness that the concept of "mental illness" is a "logical category error". One cannot have an illness of an abstract concept, the mind - cf brain disease which is disease of the physical organ, the brain.
Re "God," it depends what one means. How about "the mysterious source of everything which can sometimes sense" (attrib. Einstein)?
Isn't there some danger in your argument against "sides" that one might end up not believing in anything? Surely it's better to know, subject to change, where one is but at the same time acknowledge others' points of view.
I didn't know about Szasz and that's an interesting point because I've long felt dissatisfied with the concept of mental 'illness' and see it more as a label for certain ways of thinking and behaving rather than an actual description of something akin to cancer or a viral infection. Somewhat similarly to how addiction is depicted as an 'illness' (or even a 'thing' kind of living in the mind and manipulating it). Thanks for that tip !
Re the closing point ... yes, there is a danger but it's a bit downstream of not believing in anything. I think the danger is that if you don't believe in an objective morality (as indeed I don't) one might end up using that to justify intentionally causing suffering or not caring at all about causing suffering.
"Re the closing point ... yes, there is a danger but it's a bit downstream of not believing in anything. I think the danger is that if you don't believe in an objective morality (as indeed I don't) one might end up using that to justify intentionally causing suffering or not caring at all about causing suffering."
I'm not sure whether or not I accept "objective morality" and this whole subject requires a lot more thinking! And discussion over the proverbial cup of coffee!
Thomas Szasz was remarkable (I met him twice). Two more quotes (of many): "When we don't like a TV program, we wouldn't call a TV repair man. Why then, when we don't like the way a person behaves, do we call a medical psychiatrist?" "When a person acts as if he were speaking to God we say he is praying, but when he acts as if God were speaking to him we say he has “schizophrenia” — and we look to medical science to “cure” him of his “mental illness.”
See also Anthony Stadlen https://anthonystadlen.blogspot.com/p/why-existential-psychotherapy-is-not.html
And Sanity, Madness and the Family by Laing and Esterson but be careful to read the preface/s.
And Professor Raymond Tallis, super brilliant (met him a few times too).
Thanks for this - as a beneficiary of therapeutic support a few years ago I'm interested in all this
I was in therapy with Anthony Stadlen and then attended a number of his seminars, which is where I met Thomas Szasz and Raymond Tallis (among others). Sanity, Madness and the Family was life-changing for me; I have read it many times. Likewise the Myth of Mental Illness, though read less often.
I'm envious!
This piece is brilliant and manages to almost entirely capture my thinking on the idea of morality and describe it better than I could.
To me, there's always been a simple core to my views on morality: if you want a universal, objective morality, that can only come from outside of ourselves, because we are individuals and do not all share the same feelings under the same circumstances; we are subjective. Identifying anything outside of ourselves as universal morality simply introduces our subjective identification of those values, making the external, internal again. People posit god as the escape from this, but since our identification of god (a thing we only posit abstractly) is again, itself a subjective act.
So. We can't be objective within ourselves (our very "self" is not objective). Every attempt to understand the things outside ourselves is tainted by the mediation of our subjective interpretations, even "god". What do we do?
We bring in faith, which functions as a way of saying "in this special situation, I can get outside myself and my subjective interpretations and see Truth." While I suspect this is self-delusion, and I get somewhat annoyed that people have the arrogance to believe that they can do this, I only really object to it when they try to impose it on others.
In any case, this has always led me back to the idea that morality is simply your own internal feelings dressed up in several layers of abstraction. And I don't devalue the abstraction! Ethics and moral philosophies are very helpful in getting us to understand how we *feel* about things. I look at utilitarianism or deontological ethics as tools, and these tools can help us better understand our feelings and better explain them to others. But it's never occurred to me that they were actual moral prescriptions unto themselves. Any time your ethical system is at odds with your internal feelings, the problem is most likely with your ethical system. (Ethical systems can sometimes help us work out conflicting or incoherent feelings, but I don't actually think this is necessary; sometimes we're simply not coherent.)
So many things in what you say that either chime or make me want to explore them further. Your point about the value of 'standalone' ethical systems being tools to correlate with our intuitions and identify incoherence will occupy me further, because it points toward a practical use for them beyond the 'normative' job they're usually assumed to be performing. Great stuff !
The other useful aspect of ethical systems is that they can help us persuade others that our feelings about morality are worthy of consideration. Our feelings change, often in response to our understandings of the thoughts and feelings of our fellows.
Yes, and this points to such systems as useful social tools.