First, there is an incredible number of cognitive and social biases to which we are prone (some of these may have a little noticed or implicit emotional or psychological dimension which perhaps make it misleading to describe them simply as ‘cognitive’). Second, there are the infamous “seven deadly sins” or moral psychological vices (avarice, lust, gluttony, etc.). Third, there are a number of unconscious, subconscious and conscious psychological dispositions or dispositional traits or debilitating phenomena (e.g., self-deception, denial, etc., as well as full-fledged mental ‘disorders’ or illness) to which most of us are liable. Fourth, there are at least several passions that more often than not are troubling if only for the disruption or chaos they bring to both our intra- and inter-personal (or collective) lives (some evidence suggests they may have accompanying and harmful physiological effects as well): anger, rage, envy, jealousy, and perhaps pride, for example (as we see, a few of these fall under the heading of the seven deadly sins). Finally, our attention is now being drawn to what are described as “vices of the mind” according to Quassim Cassam, that is, “systematically harmful ways of thinking, attitudes, or character traits,” in brief, “epistemic vices.”* These essentially intellectual or epistemic vices are “first and foremost, epistemically harmful and the other harms they cause—including political harms—are a consequence of their epistemic harms.”
I am inclined to believe that while we need and thus benefit from conceptual line drawing, there may be some overlap and thus permeable boundaries among the above items in our catalogue of human folly, foibles, faults and vices. Indeed, Cassam’s treatment of epistemic vices suggests as much, given his discussion of the “list of the intellectual vices that led to the Iraq fiasco,” among them arrogance, imperviousness to evidence, dogmatism, closed-mindedness, wishful thinking, and gullibility. While what is morally, intellectually and psychologically troubling or disturbing here is best examined in its particulars (through psychoanalysis, philosophy, and the arts, for example), that is, at the level of the individual person, it of course requires both the social and psychological sciences (the foremost of which I believe is the science of subjectivity, namely, psychoanalysis) to properly place these phenomena in a structural context, let alone engage in any sort of plausible social science and historical explanation. The fact that our foibles, faults and vices may be interacting and mutually reinforcing is not an encouraging picture of the human heart and mind. Indeed, this picture might assume the shape and color of the dystopian musings and apocalyptic tenor of our time. Yet, to use a clichéd expression, we ignore it at our peril.
* Vices of the Mind: From the Intellectual to the Political (Oxford University Press, 2019)
- To place the aforementioned aspects of human nature within the proverbial big picture, please see the works in this compilation: Human Nature & Personal Identity.
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