CONCEPTUAL THERAPY

We ordinarily think of therapy in its application to people, animals, or plants that are believed to suffer from disorders, dysfunctions, or diseases. We are also inclined to apply the word metaphorically in various contexts in which we believe things are not as they should be and therefore stand in need of some type of “therapy.”

Beginning in the 1960s with my doctoral dissertation, I coined the phrase ‘conceptual pathology’ to refer to concepts—not sick people, animals, or plants—that are of a peculiar kind. The very use of such concepts—when we choose to use them, which is much of the time—brings about dysfunctional thinking: thought, that is to say, that leads us astray, paving the way for beliefs and claims to knowledge that are fundamentally nonsensical.

Unfortunately, we very seldom realize that concepts of this peculiar but pervasive variety distort and undermine our thinking, and we become willing victims or dupes to the meaninglessness that they bring with them. From a reflective standpoint, such concepts are genuinely and non-metaphorically pathological—that is, are markedly harmful—because they result in human patterns of thinking, in beliefs and claims to knowledge, that lead to irrational and frequently destructive attitudes, choices, and behavior; they deform and cripple clear thinking. Fortunately, such pathogenic concepts can be proved to be fundamentally incoherent.

Conceptual therapy seeks to eliminate from our vocabulary of concepts those that are conceptually pathological. It is as if we held a selective sieve and poured the ideas with which we attempt to make sense of the world through it, allowing the sieve to filter out those that would otherwise infect our thinking with meaninglessness.

Conceptual Therapy: An Introduction to Framework-relative Epistemology was written by me as an introductory text for university classes in which I taught applied skills in epistemological analysis. Such a skill-based approach to epistemology is unusual; most courses in epistemology are to a greater or lesser extent historically based. They tend either to focus on the epistemological thought of historical figures in philosophy, perhaps in relation to contemporary responses, or they study selected epistemological propositions and arguments that other thinkers have propounded. Such courses are typically discussion-oriented, and do not focus on methods of proving that assertions are compelling and cannot, if one is rational, not be accepted. If students gain in their general abilities to think more clearly and analytically as a result of discussion-centered classes, as I have observed this as a student and later as a professor, it is as a result of vicarious contact with the epistemological reflections and analyses of others.

The degree of improvement I have seen students achieve as a result of the traditional approach to teaching epistemology is modest. I wanted to see students leave my classes in epistemology with a more substantially improved set of thinking skills. To this end, I wrote Conceptual Therapy and used it in classes with, I felt, considerable success as measured by the improved thinking skills of my students. To be specific, “improved thinking skills” in this context means improved logical reasoning, greater self-conscious reflective ability, self-conscious avoidance of concepts that the students themselves were convinced could not be used without incurring meaninglessness, and, most importantly from an epistemological standpoint, increased ability to identify and distinguish claims to genuine as opposed to specious knowledge.

Given my general frustration with and aversion to the often micro-managing mentality of peer reviewers, editors, and publishers, I have not sought to have Conceptual Therapy reprinted commercially. The work was originally published by a small press in a limited edition. As a result, Conceptual Therapy has not been widely distributed and copies are difficult to come by. I have therefore decided to make Conceptual Therapy available to interested teachers, students, and readers on a free, open access basis. For further information about the book, click here.

A related paper, “Philosophy as Conceptual Therapy,“ was published by the Educational Resources Information Center. A PDF copy of this paper can be downloaded here.

Another related paper, “Cognitive Skills in Philosophy, was published in the journal Aitia. A PDF copy of this paper can be downloaded here.