remnants of remnants

Yesterday was World Mental Health Day, and one of the most interesting blog posts I’ve read on the subject is a reflective piece by Courtney Williams. As well as being a talented student physicist, she’s also a talented communicator with an interest in mental health issues:

I once had… let’s call it a debate with a pair of psychological wellbeing practitioners about the nature of logic in reference to depression and anxiety. It was in response to a list of “rights” given out in a group therapy session (which was neither therapeutic nor conducted with a sizeable group, but that’s beside the point), one of which was something along the lines of “I have the right to make decisions with no logical basis”. An example given of an illogical action was that you could decline an invitation for no other reason besides not wanting to go. I disagreed with this – it is logical, after all, to look after oneself, and one way to do that is by putting your own interests and desires first. When and how much you do that is all down to you.

This idea intrigued me. As Courtney herself suggests a bit later on, her idea basically makes rational action (which I think is what she means by ‘logic’) inescapable. It’s almost analytic: of course every choice I make is rational, because she basically defines ‘rational’ as ‘in line with my desires right now’. Turning down a party invitation simply because I don’t feel like accepting it is rational in this way: I have a desire not to go to the party, and turning down the invitation meets that desire, so all’s well and good. And, according to this interpretation, it doesn’t matter if maybe going to the party might have benefited me because I might have enjoyed it or met some fun people or eaten some nice food… what matters is that right now my desire is not to go, so turning down the invitation is the rational thing to do for me. (If I choose something, I choose it!)

But this is a bit weird. When I receive the party invitation, I might sit there and think: ‘Wow, that sounds like a great party! I really like all the people who’re going, and the host always plays such great music, and the food’s always spot on, and the drinks are all free, and there’s that girl whose pants I’ve been trying to get into, and there’s a good chance I might meet my future employer! And I had nothing else planned for tonight except watching Simpsons repeats and cutting my toenails, both of which I really hate!’. But here’s the thing: if I then choose to say no anyway, just because I feel like it, that would still count as rational in Courtney’s sense.

In other words, it still counts as rational if I consciously choose to give greater weight to my passing whim to do X than to overwhelming weight of evidence that it would be in my interests to do Y. And in fact, since we’re defining ‘rational’ as ‘in line with my desires right now’, and since we include in my desires any inclination on which I choose to act, then it becomes completely impossible by definition for me ever to act irrationally.

In a way this makes sense. As Courtney says, “Why on earth would you want to be illogical, anyway? How could it be good for anyone?”. But in another way, it makes rationality a not-very-useful concept. For one thing, it makes it pointless for me to ask the retrospective question ‘Was that decision a rational one?’. And for another thing, it undermines the comparison that Courtney wants to go on to make with mental health issues. The idea here, if I understand her correctly, is that mental illness is distinctive because it alone makes you choose irrationally:

The only thing that makes you do things that truly defy logic is mental illness. It is mental illness that would have you decline an invitation that you wanted to take up and would do you good – in other words, lead you to respond to situations in a manner that’s only rational within the boundaries of your illness. Each person with a mental illness gets infected with their own bizarre system of logic, at odds with the real world.

There’s a lot of truth in this. I recognise, vividly, that “bizarre system of logic” which works its way into the mind and rewrites perceptions and values. But I can’t quite get my head round how this is supposed to fit with the idea of rationality from a moment ago. If I have some disordered false beliefs, such as the belief that I’m worthless and other people are the only ones of value, then it seems just as rational (in the sense we’ve been using) for me to act on those disordered beliefs as on any other motivations. Yes, acting on a false belief isn’t going to be in my long-term interests, but then neither is rejecting an invitation to an enjoyable and useful party for no reason other than passing whim, and that didn’t stop it counting as rational a moment ago.

(By the way, talking about declining an invitation “that you wanted to take up” muddies the waters a little, doesn’t it? What do we mean by “wanted”? In some sense I can’t possibly want to take it up, or else I wouldn’t be declining it!)

So I’m not sure that I go along with Courtney’s account of what makes mental illness stand out. The problem is that defining ‘rational’ as ‘in line with my desires right now’ seems too broad to allow that distinction: it includes desires that come from disordered ways of thinking just as much as desires that come from passing whims. Both are clearly against my long-term interests, as I’m fully aware even as I make the choice, but in line with my current desires.

I’m no mental health expert, but it seems to me that there’s a different way of making the distinction, and Courtney touches on it when she talks about a “bizarre system of logic”. I suggest that the difference between what we might call a ‘harmlessly irrational’ way of thinking (such as might make me reject an invitation to something I would find useful and enjoyable) and a more serious one that’s characteristic of mental illness is that the latter is systematic. It’s not simply a passing whim, which Courtney’s “psychological wellbeing practitioners” were so keen to point out we all have a right to indulge if we want. It’s a consistent set of false beliefs based on a skewed interpretation of a principle or pattern of experience. And recognising this difference is an important first step towards deciding how to treat it — which, as Courtney points out, is already a complex, non-optimal business without having wellbeing practitioners reminding us that we’re all entitled to act irrationally if we like.

We can define words like ‘rationality’ and ‘logic’ however we like, of course — they’re only words. But I think there’s value in defining ‘rational’ not just as ‘in line with my desires right now’ — instead as something like ‘in line with my acknowledged long-term interests’. That does make it useful to ask a question like ‘Was that decision a rational one?’. And it also makes it possible to draw distinctions between what we might call ‘harmlessly irrational’ choices, like not going to a party just because you don’t feel like it, and the more serious ones, which can be based on disordered thinking of the type Courtney so eloquently describes.