Rational social animals and addiction

Roger Scruton’s book Beauty contains an interesting brief treatment of addiction.  Too much discussion of this topic today overemphasizes neurochemistry.  That is by no means to deny that that aspect of the issue is real and important.  But it addresses only what Aristotelians would call the material and efficient causes of habituation, and not the formal and final causes.  The latter concern our nature as rational social animals, and as Scruton’s discussion indicates, addiction involves disorders related to both the social and rational aspects of that nature.

Of the connection between addiction and pleasure, Scruton writes:

Addiction arises when the subject has full control over a pleasure and can produce it at will.  It is primarily a matter of sensory pleasure, and involves a kind of short-circuiting of the pleasure network.  Addiction is characterized by loss of the emotional dynamic that would otherwise govern an outward-directed, cognitively creative life.  Sex addiction is no different in this respect from drug addiction; and it wars against true sexual interest – interest in the other, the individual object of desire.  Why go to all the trouble of mutual recognition and shared arousal, when this short cut is available to the same sensory goal? (p. 186)

On an Aristotelian-Thomistic natural law analysis, pleasure exists in us largely to bond us to other human beings.  This is clear enough where sex is concerned, but it is even true to a large extent where the pleasures of food and drink are concerned.  In human beings, food and drink are typically (even if not always) taken in the context of a meal, which is a social event which reinforces bonds of family and friendship.  Addiction where sex, food, and drink are concerned is in large part a result of separating the pleasure associated with these things from the social context and making of it a kind of private entertainment, where it can be sought and gratified in a way that bears no connection to others.  In an essay from a few years ago, I discuss in more detail the way that sexual addictions in this way lock one into patterns of feeling and action that erode the capacity for healthy romantic relationships.

As rational animals, we can also understand the ends for which pleasures exist, and follow rules (of morality, etiquette, and the like) that facilitate the realization of these ends.  Because the desire for pleasure is strong in us when we are young but reason is also weaker in us at that time, we initially have to become habituated to these rules by way of parental instruction and social pressure.  When such social norms are weak, and where pleasure is misunderstood as something purely bodily and animal without any essential connection to our social and rational nature – and both these circumstances obtain today – then the pursuit of pleasure is bound to become disordered, and addictions of various kinds more widespread.

Of some other ways in which pleasure-seeking can escape from reason’s governance and thereby become addictive, Scruton writes:

So too is there stimulus addiction – the hunger to be shocked, gripped, stirred in whatever way might take us straight to the goal of excitement – which arises from the decoupling of sensory interest from rational thought… Addiction, as the psychologists point out, is a function of easy rewards.  The addict is someone who presses again and again on the pleasure switch, whose pleasures by-pass thought and judgement to settle in the realm of need.  (pp. 186-87)

This is a fair description of much of the discourse that prevails in social media, which is typically of very low intellectual quality and reflects what I have elsewhere called “associationist” rather than rational thought processes.  That is to say, in their online interactions, people tend to respond to other people, events, and ideas on the basis of sub-rational associations – emotional triggers, causal or historical connections, partisan affiliations, and so on – which do not necessarily correspond to any strict logical connections. 

For example, if someone from a political party you oppose makes a claim or argument, you might be inclined immediately to dismiss it, even if the claim or argument has no essential connection to the specific things you find disagreeable about that party, and even if you would have taken it more seriously had someone else said it.  Or if someone from a political party you support makes a claim or gives an argument, you might be inclined immediately to sympathize with and defend it, even if it conflicts with the principles for which you initially supported that party.  In the first case, a negative sub-rational association leads you to be more hostile to an idea than you are rationally warranted in being; and in the second case, a positive sub-rational association leads you to be more friendly to an idea than you are rationally warranted in being.

Now, as I noted in an article a few years back, because of the brevity of the comments one typically makes on them and the immediacy and volume of responses these comments generate, forums such as Twitter/X, Facebook’s comments sections, and the like have a strong tendency to promote associationist thinking.  Moreover, they make this sort of thinking addictive insofar as they feed what Scruton calls “the hunger to be shocked, gripped, stirred in whatever way might take us straight to the goal of excitement.”  Snap reactions to events and drive-by insults tend to afford the social media user a frisson of self-righteous pleasure.  The approval of fellow members of one’s online “tribe” (as indicated by “likes,” retweets, and so on) yields further pleasure.  By contrast, lengthier and more carefully formulated expressions of one’s opinions are much less likely to be read, and nuance is often attacked by people on one’s own “side” as treasonous accommodation with the enemy tribe.  In these ways, reason is punished with pain and unreason rewarded with pleasure, to the point that irrational habits of thought become habitual.

In his article “The Transfiguration of the Commonplace” (not to be confused with his book of the same name), the philosopher of art Arthur C. Danto makes some remarks that shed further light on our topic:

I think that with human beings – and this is a mark of humanity – pleasures, or at least those pleasures to which we attach any special importance – are dependent upon certain cognitive presuppositions, and will not survive discovery that the relevant beliefs are false.  Sexual pleasure, for instance, will ordinarily not survive the discovery that one is having pleasure with the wrong partner, or at least the wrong sort of partner.  Someone’s pleasure in food similarly presupposes beliefs about the nature and provenance of the food: the ragout turns to ashes in the mouth of an orthodox Muslim when he discovers its main ingredient to be pork, or in any of our mouths, upon information that we have been relishing human flesh, unless we are cannibals, in which case the reverse of this is true when we discover we have been handed veal instead of missionary.  (pp. 144-45)

Addiction often involves a breakdown in this normal dependence of pleasure on cognitive presuppositions.  That is to say, habituation to pleasure can lead the intellect to ignore or abandon what reason tells it is abhorrent and not to be done, to such an extent that it can smother the displeasure one naturally feels upon a revelation of the sort Danto describes.  This is what happens, for example, when a jaded pornography user seeks out novel titillations in images he once would have found repulsive, or a drug addict begins to use harder drugs that once would have horrified him, when the milder ones lose their thrill.

Note that I am not claiming there is always something intrinsically wrong with coming to take pleasure in things one at one time found off-putting.  That can be perfectly normal and healthy, as when one comes to appreciate activities (such as reading), or to enjoy delicacies, that held no attraction when one was a child.  The key is whether there is something in our nature that makes some practice inherently contrary to what is objectively good for us and which people tend therefore to find repulsive, but where repeated indulgence in the practice has destroyed the horror or shame with which we previously regarded it.  That would be an example in which addiction to pleasure has seared the conscience and disordered the intellect.  As I’ve discussed elsewhere, on Aquinas’s analysis, sexual sins have a stronger tendency to do this than any other, because of the unique intensity of the pleasure associated with them.