u/ragpicker_

I've found this mode of critique recurring in many of my writings. By way of an intro, I'll pose long-termism as the current paradigmatic example. In my view, long-termism has been well discredited, partly by the clear ideological bankruptcy of many of its most fervent adherents, but also because of numerous critiques that have quite effectively damaged the public's view of it. This is a good summary of the main critiques. What I take from these critiques is that long-termism, like many forms of utilitarianism, effectively rehearses a morality completely detached from political concerns or any notion of human freedom, and it does so by projecting anxieties onto a crisis point, and then working backwards from that crisis to establish what should be done.

It's already well-known that much liberal social policy fails because it addresses symptoms while leaving root causes untouched, but attempts to address the root causes from these standpoints (what is in a few contexts, particularly mental health and criminology, called "early intervention") are arguably worse. This is because, having discovered some root causes, one nonetheless reifies the symptoms and then takes them as indexes for the health of the root causes, rather than as mere indicators. Generally, the discourse never departs from the idea that those symptoms themselves represent crises, and so the same must be the case for the root causes.

The problem with this, as with long-termism, is that it applies a hermeneutics of suspicion to the way these underlying systems operate, without having a coherent theory that analyses both root causes and symptoms in light of a value systems. In doing so, it forecloses the heterogeneity of values embedded within different systems and modalities, and the way that all these values work on different timelines. Often, these "early intervention" perspectives are not strictly speaking utilitarian but run parallel to it through their understanding of risk.

Let me give some of my own examples. Terrorism. Terrorism signifies nothing more than a crisis at the symptomatic level, given its contorted and opportunistic definitions at the intersection of "ideological motivation" and "public fear". There is clearly a pathology at work, but it is more like the misrecognition by governments and those afraid of terrorism of what violence is, and what it does to society. The concept of terrorism is used by conservatives to cast a shadow over all sorts of activities, including dissenting speech, material support for resistance groups, and expressions of grief.

Another example- suicide. Suicide is often read as the biggest symptom of mental pathology, yet a cursory look at the statistics around suicide attempts, ideation and generally severe mental health shows it to be merely the tip of the iceberg. It is often used to draw attention to mental health struggles, but in doing so it casts mental health as a kind of being-towards-death, which does no service to those struggling to live good lives. At the very least, it reduces the utility of one's life to the binary of alive/dead. After all, suicide is often a manifestation of the fact that for humans, meaning-creation is inseparable from our notion of living. I've even seen it said that education is a mental health issue; yet education is primary an education issue, and should be valued as such.

I would hazard that this "fallacy" can be used as a heuristic in a range of situations. It can be an opening to understanding how symptoms are often overdetermined in the same way that systems can house many different values. It can change the focus from crisis to the misrecognitions taking place, most importantly by those who make policies based on this fallacy.

What do you all make of this? I have looked a little into Honneth's ideas about crisis in light of his theory of social pathology, which seems to run counter to this as it places a lot of importance on the lived experience of particular symptoms, and runs counter to my thinking which doesn't foreground struggles for recognition. But is it worth looking futher into him? And are there other ideas I should be engaging with?

In my general experience across various contexts, most appeals to common sense happen when someone wants to assert their opinion without any rationalisation, and so they effectively call on a reptilian herd mentality as a lowest common denominator. This is especially true when talking about traffic situations where they don't understand the rules. They will take their observations of repeated rule breaking or general ignorance as evidence that there's an unspoken norm which is somehow more important than the actual law.

For instance, in most (if not all) Australian jurisdictions we have this rule that is very seldom mentioned which says that when turning at an intersection, you must give way to pedestrians crossing the road you're turning into. Very often, when you bring it up online or point out that someone has broken this rule, someone will respond like "well it's common sense that when crossing you wait for cars from all directions to pass".

At worst, this boils down to the idea that you always have to yield to whoever is biggest, fastest, strongest, higher status, or most willing to break the rules, which is the most degenerate way to understand behaviour. So let any turning driver continue without any regard for people crossing, and don't act surprised if they beep at you for trying to cross. At best, it's a call for caution that ends up distorting the law, for it encourages pedestrians, instead of showing any assertiveness, to effectively wait for an indication of permission before doing what they're legally entitled to do, which defeats the purpose of the rule and also slows everyone down. Generally, the commenter won't even acknowledge the actual rule; they'll treat it as useless. They won't even say "yes that is the rule, but we must apply it cautiously"; rather, what they call "common sense" reigns supreme.

I'm tired of this attitude and it shouldn't be tolerated anywhere.