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I noticed that in society, people use mental illness labels such as "psychopath", "autist", "narcissist" or "schizo" to dehumanize individuals and invalidate their thoughts, feelings and opinions on the basis that they are crazy and their philosophies are irrational (For example, a psychopath with narcissistic tendencies may try to preach his philosophy of egoism to others and people automatically label him first and assume he has nothing useful to offer)

But mental illness is a subjective concept, right? Mental illness is esentially just a sign of someone's brain-functioning and behaviour deviating from the general pattern of someone "normal". When someone goes to get diagnosed for a mental illness they are "not mentally ill" when they enter the room and "mentally ill" when they leave, so we don't actually know if anyone is mentally ill based on a subjective criteria (Greg might have just been a sad guy before he went to the doctor but now he has clinical depression). And mental illness is also hard to diagnose based off of deception as well. The psychopaths who are diagnosed are usually low-functioning ones but the high-functioning ones are skillful enough to hide it and therefore don't get diagnosed. And thus the image of a psychopath is associated with the low-functioning version, one who is emotionally unstable and impulsive because they are the ones who get caught, I'm sure if we knew what their motives were, many CEOs would be considered severely mentally ill as well. And each individual might see individual behaviours as crazy even though they are not officially mentally ill.

So would these peoples' philosophies still be accepted as valid philosophies by the philosophy community or would they be rejected on the basis that they can't think properly? After all, certain philosophies align with some of these mental illnesses, egoism, for example, aligns with a psychopath's instinct to preserve himself over others. Or a narcissist may hold the philosophy that the self has infinite potential. Or someone with autism may believe that humans have the same intrinsic value as all other objects (materialism?) due to lack of cognitive/affective empathy. Or someone with clinical depression may follow a pessimistic version of nihilism. Where do we draw the line?

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    It's the "illness" part that is subjective so as to whether a deviation from the norm is an illness or just different. So that illness is often not defined as deviation but as something that is harmful to the individual itself. That being said the features associated with that deviation don't need to be subjective. – haxor789 Jan 08 '23 at 02:34
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    why is everyone using 'subjective' to mean 'skepticism' @haxor789? actually, psychopaths [tend](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2840845/) to be quite good at moral reasoning. words like "psychopath" do to an extent just mean "i think you are evil", as it is also an informal term. the misuses of clinical terminology like 'borderline' on-line etc. i just find sad. but then i'm really such a depressive (haha) –  Jan 08 '23 at 03:07
  • you may want to read about the stigma associated with mental illness. that's all any of this means. negative stereotypes, prejudging people etc. –  Jan 08 '23 at 03:30
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    Philosophers do not reject or accept philosophies based on name calling or mental deviance, [egoism](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/egoism/) is a perfectly fine philosophy, which is developed, discussed (including by non-egoists and without name calling) and has vast literature written on it. On those rare occasions when "mental illness" is used as more than *ad hominem* to discount claims, what is meant is not "deviance" but impaired judgment, i.e. that the person is less capable of arguing soundly, and so, given limited resources, it is impractical to have the claims discussed on merits. – Conifold Jan 08 '23 at 08:21
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    Does a carpenter's physical illness imply that his furniture is non-functional? It is imaginable that a carpenter might have a physical illness which caused him to make shoddy furniture (and more imaginable that a mental illness might lead a philosopher to an unsound conclusion), but "imaginable" is a long way from "implies". – kaya3 Jan 08 '23 at 10:26
  • @Conifold That's very nice and all but *practically* if an egoist walked into the diagnosis room how would the counsellor tell the difference between the two? The egoist believes that is moral to act in self-interest, so he does it regularly. The psychopath has no regard for others and also acts in their own self-interest. The egoist doesn't believe it is wrong to exploit others for personal gain, as does the psychopath. The egoist doesn't utilise empathy/remorse since it would be against his philosophy to act purely benevolent without expecting reciprocation, so does the psychopath. –  Jan 08 '23 at 10:26
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    Why discuss person's philosophy with a counselor in a diagnosis room? There are academic journals for that, *that* is more practical. And persistent antisocial behavior that characterizes psychopathy is often not in one's self-interest (because it prompts massive adverse reactions and leads to inferior outcomes in common "prisoner's dilemma" situations), so consistent egoists themselves have a lot to criticize psychopaths for. Seriously, you'd be surprised how popular [thoughtful egoism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_egoism) is among philosophers, read e.g. Mackie's Ethics. – Conifold Jan 08 '23 at 11:32
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    I would be careful with the trivialisation of mental conditions you do there. The ones you mention do involve serious biochemichal/neurological deviations that do not need labelling for being what they are. In fact, the way you wrote this question may feel like a belittling of mental conditions and be quite hurtful to those suffering under them, especially if they *cannot* find a doctor who "labels" them accordingly and enables due therapy. For example, just because peers are unable to identify Greg's depression as what it is it does not mean he didn't have it before, maybe for years. – Philip Klöcking Jan 09 '23 at 05:10
  • Also, you muddle conditions that have no impact on cognitive functions (only mainly executive functions like depression and some flavours of autism, or emotional ones like psychopathy and sociopathy) with those that can have serious problems in sorting reality perceptually (schizoid disorders). Overall, please inform yourself about these labels before using them. People not doing that is the main reason for the thinking that they are mere mental labels for people that are not "really" ill. You wouldn't say someone didn't have cancer before the doctor said it, would you? – Philip Klöcking Jan 09 '23 at 05:24
  • After reading a long history of philosophy it would not be unusual to be plunged into a temporary episode of insanity. Kierkegaard was a little nuts, as one example, but he produced valuable work. In our contemporary world, most of the good people are insane anyway. The bad people aren't bothered by our world today. – Gordon Jan 09 '23 at 04:03
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    I did call into account that mental illness is subjective, **especially** when anosognosia is seen. I don't think anyone has the right to label someone mentally ill and having a 'lack of insight' if the person themselves doesn't believe that to be the case and **actively doesn't want therapy** (psychopathy, narcissism and maybe autism) unless it severely impacts society (law-breaking, not hurting people's feelings) , which in most of these cases is not apparent (someone having 'too much' of a narcissistic personality does not warrant a label against their own will, it sticks on their record) –  Jan 09 '23 at 23:33
  • What really matters in an argument or theory is the soundness and validity of it. Attacking the person who articulates the argument and not the argument is a classic case of *ad hominem attack* which is largely irrelevant to argumentation per se. – Nikos M. Jan 12 '23 at 13:04

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To draw a conclusion as to the validity/soundness of a proposition/argument based upon the mental state of the person making it would be to commit a non sequitur.

Why? Because even a severely mentally ill person might, despite their illness, be more than capable of constructing perfectly cogent claims. A person's mental state is not a reliable predictor of the quality of the claims a person makes. A condition with paranoid and/or delusional traits might lead a person to more frequently make claims that fail to bear up to scrutiny, but the condition alone is a woefully insufficient indicator as to the truth value of individual claims made by a person suffering from such an illness. It would constitute a similar error to conclude that a person of entirely 'healthy mind' (if such a thing exists), will adhere to some imaginary flawless philosophy or will provide only unassailable arguments and irrefutable claims.

A claim is typically best evaluated against evidence and logic. This protects against a whole raft of logical fallacies, such as ad hominem, appeal to authority and appeal to faith (to name but a few).

Futilitarian
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  • This is technically correct and its basic point could be elaborated easily with many more subtle answers. Such is subtlety I guess haha –  Jan 08 '23 at 00:07
  • @Crisis. I expanded para 2 slightly, but I'm more interested here in merely identifying the fundamental fallacy. Others may wish to further investigate the intricacies of mental health as it bears upon perception of and assessment of truth claims. – Futilitarian Jan 08 '23 at 00:31
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    This only applies to a third person. But what if you have a mental illness? Should you not take that into account and as such evaluate your judgments more closely? I would argue you should. It seems unreasonable to think a paranoid person wouldn’t let his fear affect his reasoning from time to time – seeker Jan 08 '23 at 00:34
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    @temptrt. The question is, "Does mental illness imply that a person's philosophy is invalid?". The answer is clearly no, and I hope I've provided a relatively succinct explanation of why. The question of whether or not a person who suffers from a mental illness is capable of assessing their own claims is a different one. – Futilitarian Jan 08 '23 at 00:36
  • Good comment @temptrt which was replied to well. That's - how this answer replied - how I took the question "would these peoples' philosophies still be accepted as valid philosophies by the philosophy community" –  Jan 08 '23 at 00:51
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    One notes that even invalid reasoning does not preclude a valid conclusion. – Mary Jan 08 '23 at 01:11
  • Fair enough. A more fruitful question would have been to ask if mental illness makes one’s philosophy more likely to be invalid – seeker Jan 08 '23 at 01:12
  • do you mean "true" conclusion? @Mary if schizophrenics could not reason at all they would all die of starvation as soon as they asked how to feed themselves. this entire conversation is solely insulting haha –  Jan 08 '23 at 01:46
  • @Futilitarian You say "typically", I'm very interested now, when would you consider logic *not* to be a best evaluation for a claim? I would have thought logic is undeniably the only true evaluation no matter how controversial it is. –  Jan 09 '23 at 23:00
  • Because my knowledge is very limited, I often couch my assertions in qualified terms, in an attempt to avoid error. Hence my use of 'typically' in this answer. I'm often surprised by answers and comments which point out errors in my assumptions. My recent claim that a decision is either voluntary or involuntary was attacked as a misapplication of the law of the excluded middle. – Futilitarian Jan 10 '23 at 01:56
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So far the discussion has taken quite a "Mentalistic" approach - that since the conditions are enumerated in phenomenological terms that might be prone to societal or contingent trends, the proposed link from mental illness to illegitimate philosophical theorising can't be maintained.

However, a more "physicalistic" approach to this question would seem to hold some thought around evading this line of argument. Let's take, for example, Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's has a very clear physical interpretation - the sufferer's brain cells are dying, the brain is atrophying, and this is giving rise to the cognitive degeneration that is most clearly evident in their behaviours.

It seems uncontroversial to me to say that someone whose physical brain has degenerated to the point of being incapable of logically coherent thinking can no longer be held to be intentionally producing philosophical insights, however tragically far they may have fallen from their previous capability in the field. The parallel here is with other physiological disability conditions like blindness, deafness, paralysis - you are simply no longer capable of perceiving or acting in ways you were before, and so you are e.g. correctly not trusted to drive as a blind person until corrective surgery or some other form of rehabilitation takes place.

So, the question now becomes, what physical conditions do we include in this list? It seems incorrect to merely say that someone exhibiting sociopathic tendencies is automatically disqualified from weighing in on moral agency - however, if someone literally does not have a part of their brain that performs certain ethical calculations, shouldn't we at least recognize that their positions are going to be limited in their scope and application by this incapability?

Moving the discussion to the realm of the physical seems to evade the "subjectivity" opposition that would dominate in a purely mental conception of the personal subject.

Paul Ross
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  • "If someone literally does not have a part of their brain that performs certain ethical calculations, shouldn't we at least recognize that their positions are going to be limited in their scope and application by this incapability?". It may not be wise to rely upon them for ethical insight, but it remains a fallacy to discount any claim they make on the basis of their incapacity alone. The claim should generally be weighed upon its logical merits and evidentiary support. – Futilitarian Jan 08 '23 at 12:15
  • @Futilitarian, one could also make the same argument of randomly computer generated sentences, but the problem is how this contributes to the development of substantial philosophical positions, not just the truth value of an individual sentence. I'm not going to off-hand dismiss the potential truth in something my grandfather suffering from advanced dementia might say, but to defer to him as a source of philosophical authority in any coherently constructed area would be a very unwise decision. – Paul Ross Jan 08 '23 at 12:38
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    To defer to _anyone_ as a source of philosophical authority on the basis of anything but the demonstrable quality of their work (again, evaluated against logic and evidence) would be a mistake. No matter how bad his dementia is, if his arguments stand up on their merits, so be it (although this might of course be unlikely). When I read a philosopher's claims (no matter how great their reputation), I am assessing the claims alone, not any presumed or actual state of mind, or any professional status. – Futilitarian Jan 08 '23 at 12:51
  • The problem is *exactly* evidence, right? If someone is physiologically separated in some way from the body of facts that are at stake in the discourse, then even if they happen to say interesting sounding things, is what they're talking about the same thing? I'm not aiming to draw this line here in respect to metaethics or any other philosophical field, but to say that all that matters is the quality of the position invites the potential for some conditions to physiologically impede the formation of good positions, and if this question is to be resolved, that's where to look. – Paul Ross Jan 08 '23 at 13:04
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"Your argument is invalid because you are X" does not follow, but "Your argument is untrustworthy because you are X" can be a perfectly reasonable inference.

Suppose I observe that the prior probability of people with characteristic X making false conclusions under certain specific circumstances, P(False) is not small.

I observe characteristic X and those specific circumstances.

I observe that I have a nonnegligible false positive rate, P(Agree|False) in identifying true conclusions on cursory examination of such arguments.

I observe that I agree with such arguments in general at a certain prior rate P(Agree) = P(Agree|True)+P(Agree|False).

Calculate the probability that if I consider your argument and agree with it, it is false, using Bayes' theorem:

P(False|Agree) = [P(Agree|False) * P(False)] / [P(Agree|True) + P(Agree|False)]

If the left hand side is not small, it is reasonable for me to ignore your argument, even if I can't identify a flaw in it, if all that I know about you is that you have characteristic X and the circumstances are as specified.

g s
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Psychopathy is no mental illness. Its just different wiring of brain. Same for autism. Narcissism can be called mental illness if present in large enough quantity.

Neither of these de-humanize anybody. We don't call a machine narcissist or an animal autistic.

Mental illness is not subjective. There are very objective ways to tell whether a person is clinically insane. The most objective way to tell is whether a person's reasoning is correct i.e. if premises leads to conclusion. We all make logical mistakes but a person for whom not making a logical mistake is a rarity is ofcourse not right in head. Another test is, if the premises themselves are wrong.

For example a person see things others dont and such things have no reason to be there then such a person will be certified insane by a qualified doctor.

"Mental illness is esentially just a sign of someone's brain-functioning and behaviour deviating from the general pattern of someone "normal""

No, thats not how mental illness is defined. Its not fashion. You dont have to go with the crowd. You can be as different as you want. We don't label Einsteins and Newtons of the world insane. Its because they show us what they see and after they have shown us we can usually see too; and their reasoning makes sense because their premises (which we already usually verify) do leads to their conclusions usually (we check the facts about conclusion independently that the results do exist).

If you insist that there is a banana hanging in air and I cannot see it, nor touch it etc, and you are serious, then I will doubt a bit about your sanity. Its because what you tell don't match with data I have.

If you insist that you are getting weak because your late aunt's spirit steal all the food from your stomach then since we see you still making defecating materials we will doubt your sanity. In this case even though your premise is correct (you are getting weak, we can see that) your reasoning is wrong (if food is stolen from your stomach your body wouldn't be making the defecating materials because it need to have something to make something else, you don't make defecating materials on empty stomach, we have seen that many times).

As long as we keep data above we can verify both your premises and your reasoning.

There is another problem in your question. You are not distinguishing moral shortcoming with mental illness. See, you don't have to be insane to kill innocent people. You can be very clever as well as morally corrupt.

Atif
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Irrationalism

Irrationalism is a philosophical movement that emerged in the early 19th century, emphasizing the non-rational dimension of human life. As they reject logic, irrationalists argue that instinct and feelings are superior to the reason in the research of knowledge. The term has often been used as a pejorative designation of criticisms against rationalism as a whole.

The heart has reasons that reason cannot know. ~ Blaise Pascal

Paraconsistent Logic

Dialetheism

Contradiction tolerant logics, the two above. The hallmark of "insanity", its pathognomic symptom, was/is contradiction.

A delusion (classic symptom of "madness") was once defined as clinging to a belief despite being offered strong evidence to the contrary (excludes religious & cultural beliefs). The bedrock of philosophy is evidence (re rationality/rationalism).

There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line. ~ Oscar Levant

The eccentric genius is an easily recognizable character in many plays, novels, and films. Is it just a stereotype or is there a grain of truth in it?

Agent Smith
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This is an excellent question as per the title but the details of your question assume a lot of things. First, mental illness is not subjective. A person with schizophrenia, for example - whether diagnosed or not - exhibits symptoms that are common and unique to other people with the same disease. This applies to many other types of mental illness. You can argue that some aren’t as strictly identifying compared to others, but in general, it doesn’t imply that mental illness is completely subjective.

Now to answer your question, I would argue that it depends on the kind of mental illness. A person who is prone to fearing things may have his/her fear impact his reasoning and thus result in false conclusions. A person who is a narcissist (whether or not you define this as mental illness) may be biased towards things that suit his motives more than anything that does not.

tripleee
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seeker
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    I disagree. Narcissistic Personality Disorder has a few 'flimsy' criteria for the illness. If the narcissist states to his counsellor that he wants to buy a large mansion when he is 25 and he gives reasons for why it might be possible, it will be either an ambitious aspect of his personality or a 'fantasy' depending on how jaded the counsellor is. Another example with ASPD, "manipulation", "has no empathy/remorse", "arrogant" do these sound like objective symptoms? Arrogance and confidence are basically interchangeable in many situations. The counsellor is biased in context of diagnosing ASPD. –  Jan 08 '23 at 00:12
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    I don’t see why wanting to buy a large mansion would be a signal for narcissism by any psychiatrist. It seems that you just don’t understand how these illnesses are diagnosed. In terms of ASPD, that can also be measured. If a person reports zero empathy and in his actions can regularly be measured to have none (say, by being very hostile to others regularly), I fail to see how this can’t be identified in an objective way. – seeker Jan 08 '23 at 00:31
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    Both examples are in the context of a person being diagnosed for the illnesses (the counsellor is listening to the patient talk to tick off any possible criteria signalling the correlated mental illness, in that case the narcissist prompted/unprompted brought up one of his fantasies). Objective things are something that everybody agrees on, all violets are blue, for example. To give a person's dialogue to a random bystander and ask them whether they think they are mentally ill or not will elicit varied responses and therefore it is subjective, even in the context of trained professionals. –  Jan 08 '23 at 00:36
  • If you fantasise a lot, that is in the DSM 4 criteria for NPD @temptrt "(e.g., unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love)" that is not sufficient mind –  Jan 08 '23 at 01:05
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    "Both children and narcissists have fantasies of never - ending power , wealth or beauty" developmental psychology p177 "The narcissist knows that his grandiose fantasies are incommensurate with his accomplishments, knowledge, status, actual wealth (or lack thereof), physical constitution, or sex appeal - yet, he keeps behaving as though this were untrue." etc. –  Jan 08 '23 at 01:09
  • There’s two problems with your argument. First, just because people disagree on something, doesn’t mean there isn’t some underlying cause. If a person has a tendency to be hostile to others, regardless of whether you think he is anti social or not, it can be measured. What matters is how often he is hostile, not the label that is attached to it. Secondly, even if diagnoses were completely subjective, why would this not impact reasoning? Why would someone who is paranoid about spiders be just as reasonable when dealing with situations involving spiders than others? – seeker Jan 08 '23 at 01:09
  • the fact that we can define something (schizophrenics believe X, art is beautiful) does not make it objective. "mental illnesses" are objective in a sense, but it's better to think of them as intersubjective, i.e. also subjective... (the inter rater reliability of diagnoses is like 9/10 at best) anyway, distress is real, they are not natural kinds, covers my analysis of any interesting questions here. i mean clearly they are subjective for the sufferer! haha –  Jan 08 '23 at 01:16
  • let's take an example. maybe all kindness is loving. would that mean that kindness is not subjective? i can define the experience of spatial extent as being geometrical, obeying math. does that mean it does not exist? NO. is no word in the dictionary, which gives sufficient definitions (any building for human habitation can be called a house), about subjectivity? only if subjects do not exist, in which case why are we having this conversation? mental illnesses do not exist without subjects. –  Jan 08 '23 at 02:02
  • i suppose anything can be called a house if you want. i've seen philosophers joke about the madness of doing so haha –  Jan 08 '23 at 02:05