Mr Andrew Platt thinks he has found a way of establishing that ‘addiction’ can exist even though its own proponents are abandoning the claim that it is a ‘disease’ and even though there is no objective test for its presence in the human body.
His main line of attack has been that there is no objective test for some other things that are generally agreed to exist.
One of these is ‘love’.
While I’m afraid this is a bit too reminiscent of the linguistic philosophy that nearly drove me to distraction at York in the early 1970s, there’s an interesting point here. But only determined readers should attempt this paper.
Mr Platt and I first grappled thus, on the ‘Addiction is not a disease’ thread. The original idea came from Mr ‘Phil W’, who wrote: ‘Mr Hitchens, 'Addiction' is an internal mental state. It is not possible to prove addiction objectively exists since it is not an object. This doesn't mean that internal states of mind don't exist. You believe in mental illness and you believe in love but you couldn't provide the 'objective proof' for those either. Can you address this simple point that I and other contributors have made?’
Mr Platt intervened to say : 'Mr. Hitchens is still reading this thread. What a shame he has not answered Phil W’s excellent point: “You believe in mental illness and you believe in love but you couldn't provide the 'objective proof' for those either.” Of course, he has not answered because he has no answer.'
I answered: 'Good heavens, I had no idea anyone seriously expected me to bother with such stuff. I don't 'believe in' mental illness. There's no need to. People behave irrationally, and against their own interests, generally as a result of some sort of physical damage, sleep deprivation, or extreme terror or grief. That is mental illness. The difficulties arise , as I have said here many times, in categorising it, for it takes many forms, and in treating it. Nor do I 'believe in' 'love'. There are many and various experiences and affinities which go by that name, and most of us have experienced them subjectively, though we could not define them objectively. Poets and other artists have attempted to describe aspects of it. But nobody has sought to overturn the entire system of morality and law on the basis of love of any kind. You cannot be excused from responsibility for your actions or from penalties for your crimes, or excused from supporting yourself, or excused from telling the truth, because of love. And if anyone suggested that you could, then we would all be entitled to demand that it should be objectively defined and definable. Fortunately for us and for love, this is not likely.
Mr Platt responded :'I thank Mr. Hitchens for his reply, which I was not expecting. Not for the first time, he moves the goalposts. Whether anyone has “sought to overturn the entire system of morality and law on the basis of love” is not relevant. What is relevant is that love exists, yet it is not possible to provide objective proof for it. Mr. Hitchens admits as much. Now we have agreement that certain mental states exist for which there can be no objective proof, how can he continue to use the lack of objective proof for addiction to argue it does not exist? If addiction is a fiction, then so is love. I feel we have been over similar ground before with the coffee argument. For someone who likes to think he knows how to argue this ought to be basic stuff: concentrate first on something we are familiar with (love), establish a principle (it can exist despite lack of objective proof) then apply it to the thing under consideration (addiction). The logic is really not that difficult.'
! wrote: No, it isn't. I have not 'moved any goalposts'. This is a useless metaphor in a matter not comparable with football. The word 'exist' means different things in each proposition. The tests of existence in each case are different, and the weight which can be placed upon the things whose existence has been demonstrated is different. 'Addiction', whose existence cannot be demonstrated by any objective test, is even so allowed to influence the objective administration of law and the objective practice of medicine. 'Love' is a word which has many separate meanings and indeed in Greek is described by several different words, is a concept wholly incomparable with 'addiction'. Nor is it used to influence the practice of law or medicine.
Mr Platt retorted: 'More obfuscation from Mr. Hitchens! If he does not like the goalpost metaphor then let me spell it out in plain language: please stop bringing things into the discussion which are of no relevance. Neither the Greek language nor medical and legal practices have any bearing whatsoever on the issue. Has he never carried out a thought experiment to test a hypothesis? It seems not! Someone holding a ripe banana might proclaim “all fruit is yellow”. We can test this hypothesis by recalling all the different fruits we have encountered to see if we can think of one that is not yellow. As soon as we think of an orange the hypothesis is discredited; where oranges grow and what they are called in other languages has no bearing on the matter. When someone says “addiction does not exist because it cannot be demonstrated by an objective test” we can do a similar thought experiment to test the hypothesis. We try to recall all the mental states we can think of whose existence is beyond question and ask if there are any that cannot be demonstrated by an objective test. If we can think of any then the hypothesis is discredited. Nothing else is relevant. Phil W (who really should be arguing this, not me) performed such a thought experiment and came up with the good examples of love and mental illness. If Mr. H accepts their existence then his hypothesis is discredited. Note that we have not proven the existence of addiction through this line of reasoning; we have merely removed the objection concerning the lack of objective evidence for it. As far as I know, however, that seems to be the only objection Mr. Hitchens has. I do not wish to get side-tracked by all the spurious information Mr. Hitchens has brought up, but in passing I would note that perhaps love and addiction are not as incomparable as he seems to think. Both can cause unusual behaviour; neither necessarily last forever, but can be overcome; addiction always leads to harmful behaviour and sometimes death, but even love can do that too in certain circumstances.
To which I now reply.
I am surprised at his curt dismissal of my point about Greek, in so many ways the parent of all modern language. As C.S.Lewis points out in his ‘Four Loves’ Greek has four different expressions which English generally translates as love – Philia, the bond of friendship, Agape, the unconditional love of God, Eros, the non-physical side of sexual love, and Storge, empathy and familial love.
Each can be fairly clearly defined, in my view. These are all so deeply different that many of us will not have experienced all of them, some will have experienced one or two but not the others and some sad souls may never have experienced any of them. But the point is that the experience necessary to conclude that these exist would be entirely different in each case.
In each case, to say that they exist objectively is to make a qualitatively different statement. And the evidence we would require in each case would be different.
If that is the case within the single word ‘Love’, then it is even more the case *between* the wholly different words and concepts ‘Addiction’, ‘Love’ and ‘mental illness’.
There is a closer congruence between ‘mental illness’ and ‘addiction’ as it is significant in both law and medicine.
And one of the very interesting things about ‘mental illness’ is the way in which it can be misused as soon as it strays from the strictest possible definition, that is to say, the objectively observable overthrow of the ill person’s reason.
Most of us have called a political opponent or an enemy ‘mad’ at some point or other. Thousands of defence lawyers have tried to claim that their clients are ‘mad’ to save them from prison. Some political regimes have also claimed that their opponents are insane as a way of torturing and incarcerating them, most notably the USSR. In some ways worse, in some ways not, psychiatrists in free countries have subjectively classified as mentally ill, or disordered or otherwise afflicted, persons who in the view of many are perfectly sane, and have then imposed upon them objective and potent biochemical or physical treatments, such as powerful psychotropic drugs, electric shocks or lobotomies.
This is why I insist on the most narrow precision when using the term, and think others should too.
I simply do not think that ‘love’ needs to be treated with such precision or such caution, as the law does not use it to excuse crimes and the medical profession does not use it as a pretext for prescribing medication or for requiring ‘treatment, let alone invasive brain surgery. The clever-clever but ultimately unconvincing attempts to drag the love of God into the law-making process is a dud. There is obviously not a parallel for the use of the term ‘addiction’ to allow criminal drug abusers to be sent for ‘treatment' rather than punished according to law. Nor is there a parallel in medicine for the drugs prescribed to ‘treat’ ‘addiction'. No such drugs are prescribed to ‘treat’ love of any kind.
If ‘addiction’ is an ‘internal mental state’ then it cannot conceivably be used as a reason for changing our behaviour towards lawbreakers who claim to be influenced by it. If ‘love’ is in fact comparable to ‘addiction’, in the sole sense that that its existence can be claimed without objective proof, then that is the only similarity between the two, either in general usage or in application.
DRUGS AND THE RIGBY MURDER
I have also been challenged by various contributors over my original point about the Lee Rigby murder, that its perpetrators were unhinged and that this is the principal reason for their action.
I should emphasis here that ‘Principal’ does not mean ‘only’. Some have said they cannot find my original posting. These are the two earliest articles which I published in the Mail on Sunday, and which would therefore have been published here too.
I wrote on 26th May 2013
‘WHEN a soldier was murdered on the streets of London, what use was it to anyone that the Prime Minister flew back from Paris? What use was the fatuous committee, grandiosely called COBRA (SLOW-WORM would be a better name), that gathered portentously in a bunker, as if the Blitz was still on? This is just street theatre - a bunch of powerless people pretending they can protect us from the wholly unpredictable.
What use are the expensive spooks who track, snoop and file, who want the power to lock us up for weeks and to peer even more deeply into our lives? They failed to prevent this, though they knew all about the suspects.
As for the police, living on a reputation they won decades ago and no longer deserve, wouldn't a constable on old-fashioned foot patrol have been more help on this occasion than the squadrons of armed militia who appeared long after the event, blazing away in the street? The police force in this country is now bigger than our shrunken Army, but it is extraordinary how its members are never, ever there, except to protect the powerful. Too busy patrolling Twitter, perhaps.
Now look at the suspects. Oceans of piffle have been written (as usual) about the mythical bogey of 'Al Qaeda'. We are in yet another frenzy about the 'hate preachers' who are the inevitable result of 40 years of state multiculturalism. The English Defence League (even stupider than the liberal elite) is 'defending our way of life' by throwing bottles at the police.
But nobody has seen any significance in the fact that Michael Adebolajo's life changed utterly when, as a teenager, he began taking drugs, especially cannabis. Use of this drug, particularly when young, is closely correlated with irreversible mental illness. That's also when he embraced the barmy version of Islam that seems to have him in its grip.
There are plenty of other young drug users roaming our streets. Most of them couldn't even spell 'Al Qaeda' and won't embrace Islam. But many of them will become mental patients. Some of them, alas, will be 'released into the community' to commit awful acts of unhinged violence that barely make the local TV news.
No Prime Ministers will fly back from Paris. No Whitehall committees will meet. No noble statements of defiance will be made. And yet, if we strengthened and enforced our drug laws, instead of watering them down to nothingness as we have done, much of this would be preventable.’
And I wrote on 22nd December 2013
‘BACK in May, I pointed out that at least one of the Woolwich killers had wrecked his brain with cannabis from an early age.
Now we know that both of them had done so.
My point was this - that the murderers of Fusilier Lee Rigby were among the large number of British criminals sent mad by this terrible drug.
Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale both acted like drugged madmen on the day of the killing. For instance, Cheralee Armstrong said in a statement read in court on December 2 that Adebowale 'looked mad, like he'd escaped from a mental hospital'.
We now know that, for a week before the murder, Adebolajo was living in a house where there was a cannabis farm. Both men were habitual users of cannabis, and had been since their teens. The correlation between the use of this drug and severe, irreversible mental illness is very strong, especially in the young.
Many violent criminals, most of them having nothing to do with politics or Islam, are long-term cannabis users.
The important element in this case is not the religion. It is the dope. Many young men become militant Muslims but never kill. Many young men never embrace any religion, but take to skunk and become mad and violent. What, then should we be worrying about more? Skunk? Or Militant Islam? But cannabis has so many friends and secret users in the political, legal, and media establishment that this crucial connection is repeatedly ignored.
Rather than indulge in secret police fantasies about somehow guarding against 'extremism', we should treat cannabis as the menace it is, and severely punish all those found in possession of it.’
To emphasise one cause of an event or one explanation is not to say that there is no other influence on the event. My point was then, and is now, that to attribute the Rigby killing to some sort of Islamist conspiracy( as much of the media has done) is a ludicrous misunderstanding of a crime mainly attributable to the severe mental illness of the perpetrators. AS for 'total exclusion' Let's try it this way: Was the killer's choice of victim influenced by their Islamic beliefs? Probably. Had they not been Muslims, would they have killed someone else under a different pretext? Almost certainly Had they not been mentally ill, would they have killed anyone at all? Almost certainly not. Therefore their adherence to Islam, while playing a part, was not the central question. How do I reach these conclusions? By adducing several cases of grotesquely violent murders involving obscene mutilations of the victim using knives, including beheadings conducted by persons who were not Muslims but who were insane and who were known drug abusers. I have not been able to find comparable cases in which the killers were Muslims but *not* drug abusers. If anyone wishes to argue against this, I'd be obliged if they'd do so without trying to claim that I'm excusing Islamic fanaticism, or any similar rubbish. It's demonstrably false and I have no such aim. And can someone explain to Mr Owen that to say that a) is the principal cause of something is not to say that b) or c) played no part in it. It is to say that a) was the principal cause. no more, no less. ***
