Q&A: On Psychological Arguments
On Psychological Arguments
Question
Sorry for the length; I couldn’t express the point more concisely.
Your remarks about a psychological argument.
That is: it is not correct to argue with someone and argue against him by diagnosing him psychologically; rather, one should argue/refute the point itself.
It seems to me that there is sometimes room to use a psychological argument, and that it would count as addressing the matter itself.
Sometimes, in psychological diagnosis/treatment, an essential message to which the subject of the analysis is exposed is this:
The anxieties/depressions/thoughts that are loaded into your head and trouble you are not telling the truth.
They were born from a place of vulnerability (post-trauma, for example), and their chatter today, which causes you to believe/act in relation to things, is emotional deception.
This is psychotherapy. But it is not mere manipulation.
It really is so!
Very often, a person’s thoughts/perceptions/ideas arise in him—not necessarily from a place of awareness and understanding, but from a complex emotional situation.
Not only is there no need to discuss that claim/thought on its own merits merely in order to provide relief on the therapeutic level,
rather, it has no credibility in itself on the argumentative/philosophical/ideological level,
because it is clear where it came from, and accordingly what its significance is—its emptiness and its crookedness.
For example,
Micah Goodman argues that the reason Haredim separate themselves and therefore do not study core curriculum subjects
stems from post-trauma from the period of the Enlightenment.
Even though today it is clear that this is a small puppy, not a pack of wolves, as the Haredim perceive it due to the national post-trauma.
For the sake of discussion, I assume Goodman is 100% correct.
If we put this in the form of a discussion:
A Haredi person: I don’t study the core curriculum because I’m afraid I’ll be corrupted.
Goodman: The reason you don’t do that is because you have post-trauma.
And therefore there is no room for your argument about corruption.
At most, you would need to undergo a psychological process that would free you from it.
According to your claim, there is no place for Goodman’s diagnosis as an argument, because it is about the person and psychology,
and not about the matter itself.
It seems to me that this psychological argument really is about the matter itself.
To the extent that I reach the conclusion, and present it to you in the discussion,
that you are in a “false state,”
post-trauma,
which by its nature is an internal deception and not worth discussing—
that is a claim about the matter itself.
It covers over and empties your argument of content.
Of course, I would have to explain and validate it. But even if I remain at the level of the psychological argument, the argument will do its job.
More than that,
very often a substantive/factual argument is embedded within the psychological argument.
So too in the analogy, when I say to the Haredi person: you are suffering from post-trauma,
a de facto fact is embedded in that:
today there is no concern about corruption, etc.
And again, all this happens when I approach the discussion with a toolbox of psychological arguments alone
Answer
You are mixing together two planes of discussion. Of course there are psychological influences on a person, various biases and the like, that lead him to make claims that have no justification in themselves. Who said otherwise? But when you are in an argument with someone, the claim that his words stem from a psychological bias is not a relevant argument. You need to show him that what he says is incorrect in its own right. After you have shown that, you can add a psychologizing remark and suggest an explanation that his error is rooted in a psychological bias. But a claim that attributes a position to a psychological bias is not a relevant argument. That is what I have always said, and that is what is correct, and there is nothing in your words that contradicts it. So perhaps your words stemmed from the well-known Syndrome X… 🙂
Discussion on Answer
Obviously, if you can bring prior psychological evidence pointing to biases, you may perhaps take it into account (although even then one should focus on the substantive arguments). I am talking about a diagnosis that you yourself make instead of presenting substantive arguments.
Goodman’s argument is indeed not relevant to the matter itself. By virtue of the principle of charity, I assume he thought it was self-evident that the Haredim are substantively mistaken, and therefore saw no need to explain that. So he only came to explain psychologically what caused them to be mistaken.
Obviously, a manipulative and condescending “diagnosis” cannot replace an argument.
But very often, the diagnosis is the substance of the argument, and goes to the matter itself.
That is, a psychological argument can be relevant and justified as part of the discussion when it exposes biases that lead to mistaken claims, provides essential context for understanding the claim, and contains important facts within it.
That is exactly what it does in Goodman’s argument.