1) Belief because you think something’s true.

For instance, you may think that the evidence supports the idea that you will eventually find love, or you may feel convinced by logical arguments you’ve heard in favor of god’s existence.

2) Belief because you think it’s useful to believe. 

Regardless of whether you predict something’s true, you can predict that believing it will be more helpful than harmful to you in the long term, and so be motivated to believe for that pragmatic benefit.

For instance, you may intuit that you’ll be better off long-term believing that you will eventually find love (because that will make love more likely) or perceive that you’ll be happier believing in god (even if it turns out there is no god).

3) Belief because it feels good in the moment. 

Regardless of whether it’s true or helpful to you in the long term, you may be motivated to believe something because it feels good right now (or prevents you from feeling bad). 

For instance, you may feel comforted right now by thinking you’ll eventually find love or feel good in the moment, believing a god is watching over you.

Rationalists typically recommend striving to have your beliefs be of type 1: believing based on what’s most likely to be true.

Pragmatists often recommend aiming for type 2 beliefs: believing based on what’s ultimately most useful to you.

I favor striving to have type 1 beliefs rather than type 2 beliefs, in part because I intrinsically value truth, but also because I think that for beliefs in category 2 that are *not* actually true, there are typically some beliefs in category 1 that will help you just as much, but which have the advantage of also being true. So often (but not always), there is a low cost to replacing beliefs from 2 with beliefs from 1 that have the added benefit of being true.

I also think that if you allow yourself to indiscriminately hold type 2 beliefs, it makes it hard to suddenly switch to rigorous truth-oriented thinking when it’s important to figure out the truth (e.g., when you have to make a very important decision based on evidence).

On the other hand, many people have lots of type 3 beliefs, and all of us, myself included, have some type 3 beliefs. Whether you think that type 1 or type 2 beliefs are ultimately preferable, I think a valuable aspiration is to replace some of our type 3 beliefs with either 1s or 2s.

It’s very, very easy for us humans to delude ourselves based on what it feels good to believe at the moment because the reward cycle is so fast. Type 3 beliefs are immediately rewarding, incentivizing more such beliefs. But they are like the social media addiction version of believing, where you pursue what gives the greatest instantaneous reward rather than what’s actually good for you.

This piece was first written on April 20, 2024, and first appeared on my website on May 7, 2024.

But I think approximately everyone has at least one of those beliefs; it’s just not that obvious because many of these strange beliefs are idiosyncratic, and people often hide them from each other and sometimes even from themselves (by avoiding thinking about that belief, or by not reflecting on how crazy the belief would seem to others).

For one person, the weird belief may be their lucky coin (see this lovely essay that I learned about from @mariellevolz after writing a first draft of this essay).

For another person, it may be an unsupported belief that they are unlovable.

For a third person, it might be an attachment to a certain diet that they’re convinced would solve all sorts of problems if everyone would just go on it (like they did).

Or it could be a strange belief they learned from their childhood religion, which everyone except adherents of their exact denomination of their religion sees as ridiculous.

And so on.

Because I think just about everyone has strange false beliefs like this, I try not to judge people too much based on the fact that they have a “weird” belief that I think is way out of alignment with reality. Of course, even if I’m right, that doesn’t mean everyone is an equally “bad” thinker.

Some people think, “That person believes X, what an idiot,” and write the person off. I aspire not to do that based on one crazy belief but rather to look at a person’s beliefs and how they arrive at their beliefs more holistically.

Being an effective thinker is better measured by how we do, on average, on the important things (weighted by their importance) rather than the worst thinking we do on any single topic.

I also believe that with time and consistent effort, we all can get better at thinking clearly and that it’s a worthwhile investment for most people.

But even with hard work, we’re unlikely to get to zero weird false beliefs.

This piece was first written on February 2, 2024, and first appeared on my website on March 7, 2024.

Ethical force 1: Emotion 

The vast majority of us experience empathy and compassion. We tend to feel happy when seeing others happy and feel bad when we see others suffering. These feelings guide our ethical behavior at an interpersonal level, causing prosocial behavior. For instance, people who behave kindly tend to have more compassion than average.

Ethical force 2: Mimicry 

Most of the time, most of us copy the behaviors of our social peers without even thinking. If everyone stands up, we’ll stand up. If everyone dangles a funny piece of fabric around their necks, we’ll do it too. Copying seems to be deeply rooted in us.

Social mimicry limits bad behaviors that aren’t the sort of thing that our peers do. For instance, in most subcultures in the US, punching someone when you feel angry is considered wildly inappropriate. So mimicry, in this case, can reduce violence.

Ethical force 3: Punishment 

Most of us have a strong desire to belong. We don’t want to be ostracized, which encourages avoiding unethical actions that our social group condemns. If we hurt someone, they may personally take revenge on us. And nobody wants to go to jail, which helps reduce the frequency of people committing crimes.

Some unethical behavior is avoided just to avoid punishment.

Ethical force 4: Belief 

Many people believe in specific ethical systems. Examples include Christians who adopt God’s commandments and the subset of Effective Altruists who adopt a flavor of utilitarianism. Belief can guide ethical behavior even in the absence of the other forces.

Individual Differences

People differ in how strongly they experience each of these four ethical forces. For instance, sociopaths (by definition) have a diminished capacity to experience #1 (especially empathy and compassion). From my observations, they also seem to be less influenced than usual by #2 (mimicry) and #3 (punishment). Hence, unless they have a strong #4 (belief system) or are especially fearful of punishment, they can be at a greatly elevated risk of unethical actions.

When someone engages in unethical behavior, we can return to this Four Forces framework to help make sense of their action. Most people would avoid that behavior due to some combination of the four forces described above. So, which of those forces were missing in this person’s case?

These Forces Can Also Promote Unethical Behavior

It’s also worth noting that each of these four forces can work in reverse. Whereas compassion discourages unethical behavior, emotions like anger can cause it. 

Whereas mimicry encourages good behavior in some ways, in an unjust society, it can encourage bad behavior (e.g., you may harm the outgroup because your ingroup normalizes it).

In a society with highly unjust laws, punishment can actually promote unethical behavior (e.g., requiring that you discriminate against a certain group).

And some belief systems lead to unethical behavior as well (e.g., if you join a cult whose leader teaches you that you must commit mass murder to become a martyr). 

Situational Factors

Some situations have little to no influence on one’s moral behavior, whereas other situations tend to create a strong pull toward or away from ethical behavior.

For example, there are some situations that would cause a substantial percentage of normal people to behave unethically. For instance:

• When there is a very strong social mimicry force in favor of unethical behavior (e.g., everyone you know thinks it’s good to hurt people from group X)

• When there is an extremely large personal gain to be made from behaving unethically, with no risk of punishment and with no identifiable victim (e.g., you have a chance to steal ten million dollars by taking pennies each from lots of people and it’s almost impossible for you to be caught)

• When there is an extremely large punishment for not behaving unethically (e.g., you’ll be tortured if you don’t commit a heinous act) 

So when we’re considering whether a person will behave unethically, we need to consider both personal factors (e.g., do they experience strong compassion for others) and situational factors (such as those described above).

This piece was first written on December 9, 2022, and first appeared on this site on January 7, 2023.

Here is what they said.

I posed the following open-ended questions:

1. “What are your views on abortion?”

2. “If you oppose abortion, why do you oppose it?”

3. “Under what circumstances do you think it should be legal to get one?”

The open-ended responses fell into these categories:

• 90% said abortion is wrong because it is murder (i.e., wrong like killing an adult is wrong)

• 24% said abortion is forbidden according to their religion

• 14% said they think it violates the rights of the unborn child

• 10% said Roe v. Wade misinterpreted the constitution

Note that the reasons listed above were those that people spontaneously wrote in their open-ended responses. Some wrote multiple reasons, which is why the probabilities exceed 100%.

Here are typical (exact quotes of) responses I received:

• “I believe that life starts at conception and abortion is the murder of innocent children. It is evil and immoral.”

• “An unborn baby is still a life. People who are pro-choice are not giving a choice to the baby”

• “I am against taking the life of an innocent baby. However, I am also careful not to judge those who are caught in a situation of rape, incest or life of the mother.”

• “I’m against abortion because it takes a human life. That’s really all there is to it! It’s simply murder”

• “I oppose it because I believe that God is in control of the pregnancy to begin with and we should not attempt to alter God’s plan.”

• “It goes against God’s Word, which teaches that life begins at conception”

• “the constitution of the United States does not speak to the legality of abortion, so it must be decided by legislators.”

On multiple-choice questions, here are the percentages of respondents who felt it should be ILLEGAL in different situations:

• 86% thought abortion should be illegal in normal circumstances (NOT an instance of rape, medical issues, incest, etc.)

• 67% thought abortion should be illegal for incest/genetic abnormality

• 53% thought abortion should be illegal when birth poses a 50% chance of death to the mom

Who were these respondents? I recruited them using our platform for running studies, Positly.com.

Regarding demographics: 42% of the respondents were women, 58% were men, and the average age was 45.

Only 12% consider themselves “not at all religious,” with 63% considering themselves “very” or “extremely” religious, and 79% considering themselves at least “moderately” religious.

51% of respondents live in the suburbs, and 22% in rural areas, with 27% in urban areas.

Choosing labels for themselves (with the ability to pick more than one) 34% of the respondents chose Christian Conservative, 26% Traditional Conservative, 25% said that they were actively against giving themselves a label, 12% selected Libertarian, and 8% selected Centrist. None were Liberal or Left-wing.

The qualitative responses above were collected as part of a broader study that involved a total of 396 people on Positly.com sharing their reactions to Roe vs. Wade being overturned. Of these, approximately 30% were very happy it was overturned, 10% were a little happy, 15% were indifferent or neutral, 7% were a little unhappy, and 38% were very unhappy it was overturned. (Not all of the qualitative responses made by those who were very happy it was overturned were analyzed to produce the summaries above; instead, a smaller subset was chosen at random for analysis of their qualitative responses.) 

In the same study, I also asked all participants when they consider someone a living human person that it would be wrong to kill. Here are the response selections made by 120 people in the survey who said they have left-of-center (liberal) political views and 190 people in the survey saying they have right-of-center (conservative) views (right-leaning participants were purposely over-sampled in this study):

Notes on this chart: Respondents selected one time point from the following multiple-choice list of options (note that each is recorded in the chart as time since conception, as opposed to time since the most recent period the mother had, which is approximately 2 weeks prior to conception): At conception (i.e., when a human sperm enters a human egg/ovum), 4 weeks after the woman’s last period (about 2 weeks after conception), 6 weeks after the woman’s last period (when the beating of fetal heart tissue is detectable), 13 weeks after the woman’s last period (the end of the 1st trimester), 24 weeks after the woman’s last period  (when the fetus is viable, that is, capable of living outside the uterus), 26 weeks after the woman’s last period  (the end of the 2nd trimester), Just after birth, At one year of age, At three years of age,  At five years of age, At 10 years of age, At 18 years of age). The following responses were not included: 1 person said 18 years, 1 person said 1 year, 1 person said 3 years, and 1 person said 5 years (the first 2 outliers were on the political left and the second 2 outliers were on the political right). The total number of responses from people on the political left (including the 2 outliers) was 122 and the total number of responses from people on the political right  (including the 2 outliers) was 192.

This piece was first written on June 27, 2022, and first appeared on this site on June 30, 2022. The last section was added on July 5, 2022.

The question of how to achieve true happiness has been debated for thousands of years. In this article, we’ve summarized ten approaches to happiness, new and old, that are popular today. 

How do you think about being truly happy?

You might find that your personal views on this topic are captured by one of these ten popular theories. We hope that understanding these different theories will help you to better refine your own views of happiness and understand the perspectives that other people take towards living a good life!

For each of these theories, there are lots of different variants with subtle differences – we’ve aimed to capture some central representative ideas that many variants have in common. 

We’ve also included some resources you can use to try and increase your happiness levels by applying these different methodologies!

Positive Psychology

A growing scientific field, positive psychology applies the tools of psychology to the question of what makes life most worth living.

“Gratitude is an antidote to negative emotions, a neutralizer of envy, hostility, worry, and irritation. It is savoring; it is not taking things for granted; it is present-oriented.”

-Sonja Lyubomirsky

How to achieve true happiness: Keep a gratitude list, cultivate positive relationships, find ways to use your strengths/virtues, do activities that get you into a flow state, savor pleasurable things in the moment, anticipate fun things in your future, reminisce about meaningful things in your past, buy more experiences and fewer things, avoid the hedonic treadmill.

Useful Clearer Thinking tools: 

• Building Happiness Habits
• Tactics for Happier Living
• Savor Your Life
• Become a Great Listener

Other resources:

• To be successful, should you focus on your strengths or your weaknesses? (Podcast episode)

Stoicism

Stoicism is an ancient school of philosophical thought from 3rd Century BC Greece and Rome, which is now experiencing a resurgence in popularity.

“Choose not to be harmed — and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed — and you haven’t been.” 

– Marcus Aurelius

How to achieve true happiness: Deeply appreciate what you have now since it all could be gone tomorrow, only try to control what you’re actually able to, remember you’re not entitled to anything, learn to love doing the right thing rather than the pleasant thing, seek value in all that happens. Through these practices, aim for equanimity in the face of any circumstance, no matter how bad.

Useful Clearer Thinking tools:

• Reframing Negative Emotions
• Resolving Harmful Situations

Books:

• Meditations – Marcus Aurelius
• Stoicism and the Art of Happiness – Donald Robertson

Christianity

Based on biblical scripture and church traditions, many practitioners of Christianity view it as including rules and guidelines for living a good and happy life.

“The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water.”

– C.S. Lewis

How to achieve true happiness: Be humble, love God with all your heart, love your neighbor, accept Jesus Christ as your savior, worship God, pray, have faith, be thankful and take joy each day in all that God has given you, be a devoted wife/husband/father/mother/child, obey the Ten Commandments, don’t cast the first stone, avoid lust, greed, wrath, sloth, gluttony, envy, and pride, avoid hell at all costs, live for eternity in heaven with God.

Books:

• Winning the War in Your Mind: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life – Craig Groeschel

Insight Meditation

Vipassanā, or insight meditation, is a Buddhist practice popular before the 10th Century AD, which gained widespread popularity in the late 20th Century, including in the USA. This practice emphasizes mindfulness meditation as a path to gaining insights into the nature of reality.

“As the fletcher whittles and makes straight his arrows, so the master directs his straying thoughts.”

– Buddha

How to achieve true happiness: Follow the eightfold path, train your concentration through meditation until it is stable and precise (e.g., practice maintaining subtle focus on the breath), use your refined concentration to carefully observe the true nature of reality, mind, and self, realize the three marks of existence (impermanence, dissatisfaction, non-self), learn to stabilize your new experience of reality, become free from craving and aversion.

Books:

• The Art of Living: Vipassana Meditation as Taught by S. N. Goenka – William Hart
• Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha: An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book – Daniel M Ingram

Other resources:

• Waking Up (meditation app)

Traditional

This set of values may strike you as a familiar blueprint to a traditionally good life.

“The great Error of our Nature is, not to know where to stop, not to be satisfied with any reasonable Acquirement; not to compound with our Condition; but to lose all we have gained by an insatiable Pursuit after more.”

– Edmund Burke

How to achieve true happiness: Work hard, marry a good person, have multiple children, spend time with family, fit into your role, remember that many others have it worse than you, don’t complain, avoid vices (gambling, excessive drinking, drugs), don’t waste money, achieve stability in life.

Useful Clearer Thinking tools:

• The Relationship Review
• Managing Arguments in Relationships

Common sense

A common-sense approach to happiness focuses on meeting all your needs and making sure you have stable sources of fulfillment. No surprises here!

“Philosophy is common sense with big words.”

– James Madison

How to achieve true happiness: Sleep enough, eat healthy food, exercise, spend your time with people you like, have a pet, seek work that’s enjoyable/challenging/meaningful, make sure your basic needs are met, try to make enough money to achieve financial security, save for retirement, marry someone you love who treats you well, have a fun hobby.

Useful Clearer Thinking tools:

• 40 Winks: Better Sleep Made Easy
• Your Greatest Sources of Pleasure
• Career Fulfilment Diagnostic

Other resources:

• Choose a fulfilling life path using these five exercises from “Designing Your Life”

Introspection

Introspective theories say that the path to true happiness is through truly understanding yourself, healing your past trauma, and being authentic with others.

“Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”

– C.G. Jung

How to achieve true happiness: Use psychedelics for self-exploration, listen to and get in touch with your body, engage in self-care and self-compassion, investigate and heal your trauma, find a daily practice that works for you (e.g., meditation/yoga/prayer), be vulnerable around the people that you trust, share your true feelings, explore and have compassion for the different “parts” of yourself that are afraid of and desire different things, investigate your “true self” and be true to it, learn to pay attention to your intuition, find a way to look at the world that resonates with you. 

Useful Clearer Thinking tools:

• Life-Changing Questions
• Your Primal World Beliefs
• Defining Emotions

Books:

• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma – Bessel van der Kolk
• Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself – Kristin Neff

Other resources:

• How many minds do you have? (Podcast episode)
• The 10 Most Important Components of Self-Compassion
• Could You Be in One of These 8 Psychological Traps?
• How to Communicate Better with the People in Your Life (podcast episode)
• Exploring your Shadow and Healing your Traumas (podcast episode)

Self-help books

Books advocating techniques for self-improvement have exploded in popularity since the mid 20th Century. Each takes a different angle on how to be happy – here, we have collected some common themes.

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

-Thomas Edison

How to achieve true happiness: Repeat affirmations that motivate you, form healthy daily habits, always work on becoming a better version of yourself, try new things, figure out what you really want and then plan to get it, prioritize, set ambitious goals, keep your home organized, think positive thoughts, believe you can do anything that you put your mind to, wake up early, make at least a little progress towards your goals each day, don’t let fear stop you, don’t give up, avoid negative people, surround yourself with people who inspire you and make you a better person.

Useful Clearer Thinking tools:

• Daily Ritual: A Habit Creation System
• Design Your Own Self-Experiment
• Achieve Your Goals
• Get Going: Overcome Procrastination

Books:

• Atomic Habits – James Clear
• The Motivation Hacker – Nick Winter

Other resources:

• How to Achieve Self-Control Without Self-Control
• How to Hack Your Own Brain (podcast episode)
• The Secrets of Effective Learning (podcast episode)
• By the Book (podcast)

Hedonism

As an approach to life, hedonism is all about doing whatever you can to experience pleasure and avoid pain.

“Don’t worry. Be happy.”

– Bobby McFerrin

How to achieve true happiness: Remember that you get just one life, so you might as well enjoy it, live in the moment (don’t worry about the future), dance, party, seek out cool experiences, do exactly what you feel like, ignore societal pressure, have sex, eat tasty food, do fun drugs, spend money on fun things, don’t let others tell you what to do.

Useful Clearer Thinking tools:

• 2 Minute Mood Boosters

Other resources:

• Atlas Obscura – Curious and Wondrous Destinations
• Happiness and Hedonic Adaptation (podcast episode)
• When is Suffering Good? (podcast episode)

Altruism

An altruistic approach to happiness is about devoting yourself to helping others and making the world a better place – the theory says you can gain fulfillment through knowing that other people are better off thanks to your efforts.

“The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.”

– Nelson Henderson

How to achieve true happiness: Give to charity, volunteer your time, choose a career that lets you help others, become a part of something meaningful (e.g., a cause or movement) that is much bigger than yourself, work hard to be kind, generous, and thoughtful, think hard about how you can do good, help strangers, build communities and projects to improve the world.

Useful Clearer Thinking tools:

• Leaving Your Mark on the World
• Charity Effectiveness Test
• Change Behaviour for the Better
• What Causes Match Your Values?

Books:

• Strangers Drowning: Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Urge to Help – Larissa MacFarquhar
• Doing Good Better – William MacAskill

Other resources:

• Four ways to have a positive impact on the world right now

Which of these theories resonates most with you?

It might be challenging to decide whether and how to apply each of these different theories of happiness. An experimental approach could be useful – you could explore the resources we’ve linked above, try applying some of the techniques, and see which theories deliver on their promise of true happiness for you. 

We hope that exploring these theories has helped you conceptualize your own approach to happiness. Which theories of happiness have you lived by previously? How did you choose them, or did you pick them up unconsciously from your environment? How could you tweak these theories, combine them with other schools of thought, or replace parts that are unhelpful for you? What other theories of happiness do people live by?

A big thank you goes to Adam Binks for his help with this post!

Note: To help fund the free decision-making tools and programs that we provide, ClearerThinking.org is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program (an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com). If you buy a book using the links in this article, you’ll be supporting ClearerThinking.org in its mission to make free tools that help the world make better decisions.

It’s when someone has a persistent belief that’s both highly inaccurate and substantially harmful. Here are some examples:

• A false belief that you are unlovable
• Being convinced that God punishes pre-marital with death
• Believing that “no usually means yes” in sexual encounters

Whereas a psychological disorder consists of emotions, thoughts, and personality traits creating distress or impairment, many WITHOUT psychological challenges have “Philosophical Disorders.” All it takes is being infected by false ideas that either harm the believer or lead them to harm others.

Since people will naturally disagree regarding which ideas are false or harmful, I think the term “Philosophical Disorder” is best reserved just for the extreme cases, where it’s easy for an outside observer to see both the falsity and harm of a belief.

Furthermore, much like it would rarely be a good idea to tell someone (outside of a therapeutic relationship or very trusting friendship) that you think they have a “psychological disorder,” telling someone you think they have a “philosophical disorder” is not advisable.

A true belief that causes harm at least has the virtue of being accurate, and trying to change it would imply some form of deception. Some people would rather believe a difficult truth than a comforting falsehood. On the other hand, a false belief that causes no problems can at least be said to be harmless, and one could argue that it’s not worth taking the time to correct it. Philosophical disorders, on the other hand, must (by definition) be both highly inaccurate and substantially harmful – they are the category of beliefs we can unequivocally say are worth correcting.

I require a belief to be “persistent” to meet the definition of philosophical disorder because if it is going to go away on its own anyway (e.g., a temporary harmful, false belief while someone is having a drug trip), it feels like it’s in a fundamentally different category (and action to change the belief is usually not as important since it is time-limited).

— A Better Understanding of “Evil” —

Pretty often, when large groups do what seems to be extreme evil, they are led by either a low-empathy narcissist or a sociopath. But chances are that most of the rank-and-file members of that group have philosophical disorders, not psychological disorders. Pretty often, even the leader has a philosophical disorder.

As an example, consider the case of religious zealots who are truly convinced that blowing up civilians is a holy act. Or the many groups whose members have become convinced they are inherently superior to other groups, whom they then kill or subjugate.

It’s understandable that people call those who commit atrocious acts “evil” regardless of their motivations, but there is a big difference between doing something highly harmful that you’re truly convinced is a good deed and doing a highly harmful act selfishly or with indifference towards the suffering of others.

While plenty of harm is caused by people due to their having some psychological traits, like sociopathy or low empathy narcissism, it may well be that as much or even more is caused by people who are pretty typical psychologically but who have philosophical disorders.

— Philosophical Disorders vs. Psychological Disorders —

Philosophical disorders can cause very bizarre behavior that is easily confused with a psychological disorder. As an example, some school shooters are well-characterized as having psychological disorders (e.g., showing signs of psychosis or sociopathy – like being convinced monsters lived in their basement at home or torturing animals for fun), whereas other school shooters may have been infected with harmful false belief systems (e.g., that others deserve death), hence, they might be better understood to have philosophical disorders. But without a careful inspection, the behavior (a “school shooting”) looks the same. The same outcome is coming from a different cause. I think it can be a clarifying question to ask: is this particular case best explained by a psychological disorder or philosophical disorder (or both simultaneously).

The link between psychological and philosophical disorders is complex. Philosophical disorders can both cause and be caused by psychological ones. For instance, falsely believing that nobody likes you could make you depressed. And schizophrenia can cause false, harmful beliefs (such as paranoid beliefs that others are out to get you).

In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, “negative core beliefs” are sometimes uncovered as being a major factor causing a person’s depression or anxiety. That being said, typically, other factors are at play as well, such as patterns of behavior, reactivity to negative stimuli, disruptive thoughts, and so on.

But occasionally, a psychological disorder can be said to very directly result from a philosophical disorder (e.g., constant anxiety because of being convinced that lustful urges imply eternity in hell). In other cases, philosophical disorders are really not the right level of explanation for a psychological challenge (since emotional reactions, behavioral patterns, disruptive thoughts, etc., may better characterize what’s happening). Additionally, it’s possible to have a severe philosophical disorder without having a psychological disorder.

— Categorizing Philosophical Disorders —

As with psychological disorders, we might attempt to organize philosophical disorders. To do so, we might consider different aspects along which they can vary. Here’s a first attempt:

(1) Who is substantially harmed?

A. Self harmed (e.g., “I will fail at everything I try”)

B. Others harmed (e.g., “people of group X are inferior”)

C. Both harmed, meaning the belief harms both self and others (e.g., a man believing that “no men are trustworthy”)

(2) What is the false belief about?

A. Self (e.g., “My angry thoughts prove I am evil, even if I don’t act on them”)

B. Humanity (e.g., “Pretty much everyone is a bad person”)

C. People of importance in your life (e.g., a false belief that “my wife is cheating on me”)

D. Future events (e.g., “It is inevitable that the world ends in a nuclear holocaust sometime in the near future”)

E. Past events (e.g., “Mistakes my parents made when raising me have forever doomed me to being miserable”)

F. God (e.g., “God hates group X”)

G. Reality (e.g., “What if the whole world is just my imagination, and nobody else is real? I can’t prove that anyone else other than me exists.”)

(3) How was this belief acquired?

A. Caregivers who raised you (e.g., “you’re a bad child, nobody is ever going to love you”)

B. Culture of your region (e.g., “female circumcision is an important right of passage”)

C. Religion (e.g., “you will be rewarded in heaven if you die as a martyr killing the enemy”)

D. Group membership (e.g., falling into a social circle that has a shared philosophical disorder, for instance, a cult or movement)

E. Argumentation (e.g., reading an essay that convinces you that humanity should be wiped out)

F. Personality (e.g., narcissists tending to believe they are inherently superior to others)

G. Drugs (e.g., when someone forms an upsetting false belief while on drugs that persists afterward, such as that nothing is real)

H. Psychosis (e.g., the paranoid beliefs that schizophrenia sometimes causes)

I. Previously accurate but now resolved (e.g., you have a belief that people are not trustworthy because when you were young, the people around you really weren’t trustworthy, but you haven’t updated your belief even now that you are around mainly trustworthy people)

Of course, there are a lot of overlaps between the categories above.

When you hear of someone engaging in really a harmful behavior, it may be worth asking whether it better fits the hypothesis of a psychological disorder or of a philosophical one.

This essay was first written on July 20, 2020, and first appeared on this site on November 19, 2021.

Click here for a high resolution version of this image.

As you can see in the diagram, there were well over 60 Abrahamic religious splits, each of which changed one form of religion into another. Since I made the diagram quickly and used Wikipedia as the source for a lot of it, I’m sure it contains plenty of mistakes and typos and still leaves lots of splits and denominations out (my apologies for any egregious errors!)

I learned some things from making the diagram that I think most people don’t realize:

(1) We tend to view the religions of today as a linear progression from religions of old (perhaps with some modification in ideology along the way), but in fact, a more accurate model is that religion has minor schisms over and over and over again but most of those offshoots die out. It’s like a branching tree where most branches have been removed, so what we end up seeing is a tree with only a few branches that each seem to have had a smooth progression from the root. We see a few winners and assume those were the only ones in the race. We do see a bunch of twigs at the end of the branches, though (which represent the newest offshoots – presumably, some of these will die out as most of the offshoots did in the past).

(2) Where one should draw the line at something being an entirely new religion now seems a lot more arbitrary to me than it used to. The most clear-cut cases are when an entirely new religious text is added which gains widespread popularity (e.g., Christianity branching off from Judaism), but with new religious groups offshooting regularly, there are a lot of minor branches that are now separated from each other by so many prior splits that they seem so distinct as to essentially be different religions despite happening to use the same religious text.

It’s also interesting to consider that almost every one of these groups believed or believes its religious doctrines and practices to be more accurate or good than all the other groups. Religious truth has never been something we humans have been able to agree on!

This piece was first written on August 3, 2017, and first appeared on my website on June 16, 2025.

1. Murder violates an abstract principle that I would like all people to live by.

2. The Bible (or some other religious text) forbids murder.

3. As a result of evolution and natural selection, most people have an innate emotional “moral” aversion towards murder.

4. Murder is against the law.

5. Murder is labeled as “immoral” by most people in my society.

6. Murder usually reduces the total net happiness of society.

7. The idea of murder provokes in me a morality-related emotional state of “wrongness”.

8. Nearly all philosophies forbid murder or say it should be avoided.

9. Nearly all societies have laws that punish murderers or have customs that ostracize them.

10. Most people would feel a sense of guilt if they committed murder.

Unfortunately, dictionaries cannot clarify for us what the word “moral” means. For instance, one dictionary defines “moral” as “conforming to a standard of right behavior”. Looking up the relevant definition of “right”, we find “being in accordance with what is just, good, or proper”. But the definition given for “good” is just as vague and circular as were the definitions for “moral” and “right”. Checking another definition, the result is no better. It defines “moral” as “conforming to accepted standards of behavior.” Accepted by whom, and for what reason? The dictionary does not answer these questions, and hence does not provide us with an unambiguous explanation of what “moral” means.

Many well-respected philosophers begin by assuming that morality is a single, well-defined thing and argue about what properties it must have. But if we haven’t defined morality, how can we derive its properties? Are we even talking about the same thing as each other – if we’re not, then of course we can’t agree on the properties of that thing. As the list of interpretations above shows, there are many very different things that we might reasonably call “morality”, including our genetic moral intuitions created by natural selection, the societal rules that are deeply ingrained in us, religious laws, and certain abstract concepts about how to treat each other.

Some people claim that whenever someone says that an action is “moral”, all that person is doing is expressing a feeling or emotion about that action. It’s easily falsified that this is ALL that talk of “morality” is doing – Christians, Kantians, and Utilitarians at least sometimes use the word “moral” to refer to actions that are compatible with biblical teachings, the categorical imperative, and the happiness principle, respectively. These individuals likely have an emotional feeling that their systems of ethics are worthwhile, but nonetheless, they often speak of morality in direct reference to their philosophical systems, independent of their personal feelings. Many people who speak about what is moral at least genuinely believe themselves to be expressing a fact.

Ultimately, before we can decide whether a statement like “murder is immoral” is true, we must first decide what we mean by “moral”. When we don’t know the definition of a word, it is difficult to have a meaningful discussion that relies on it. If we decide that morality is simply whatever the law says, or is determined by what the Bible says, or is a genetic characteristic of human beings, then the question of whether “murder is immoral” becomes an empirical and factual one. We need only check the laws for our country, or search through the Bible, or study human genetics and behavior in order to answer questions about what is moral.

In practice, though, typically when statements about morality are made, there is rarely any explicit or even implicit definition of morality being used. Your average person relies on an intuitive sense of what is right and wrong. This intuitive sense is influenced by many factors, including our genetics, the standards of the society that we live in, the religion that we practice, our personal experiences, and the philosophies that appeal to us. Unfortunately, it appears as though questions about morality are usually unanswerable without further specification about the sense in which “moral” is being used.

If the argument made thus far is true, then how can we understand the fact that nearly everyone seems to agree when it comes to certain ethical statements? For example, how can we account for the fact that almost all people in most of the societies that have ever existed have believed that most kinds of murder are immoral? Well, one relevant factor may be that a strong predisposition to viewing as bad the maurder of close others (especially the murder of family members) is inherent in the human genetic code. More generally, our sense of what is morally wrong appears to be strongly correlated with what we feel an emotional revulsion towards, and those things that we find repulsive are influenced by our genetics. If most humans share a “moral feeling” that is caused by the genes that we share in common, then that provides a plausible explanation of why, for example, murder is generally thought to be immoral.

It is not difficult to imagine that when pre-humans lived in groups, an aversion towards certain types of murder could increase an individual’s chance of survival (perhaps because would-be murderers had a high chance of being killed by their intended victim or the victim’s family). If this were the case, then the process of natural selection could help make a revulsion towards murder a common trait among our ancestors. It may be illuminating to note that many types of carnivores, though feeding daily on other (typically smaller) species, very rarely kill members of their own species (even during fights that break out). This is likely due, at least in part, to the fact that members of a single species are usually fairly evenly matched in strength and fighting skills.

A lion is very unlikely to be killed attempting to kill an antelope. Still, he is fairly likely to be killed or seriously injured when attempting to kill another lion, so lions that focus on eating antelope rather than killing other lions may tend to pass down their genes more effectively (even though there are obvious reasons why one lion might benefit if it does manage to kill another). What’s more, social species may ostracize the members of their group who they feel threatened by, which could dramatically reduce the chance of survival for a “murderer” (by which, in this context, I mean a creature that kills members of its own species). A “moral feeling” would be one possible way, among many, that our genes could urge us not to kill members of our own species.

Another reason for the high convergence in moral views about murder being bad may simply be due to the act itself – it is one that, on nearly any moral view, is bad. But different moral theories, while agreeing on its badness, disagree on why it’s bad and what exactly counts as murder. For instance, they may disagree about whether killing someone in self-defense is murder, or as part of war, or as a punishment for a serious crime.

It’s hard to make progress when discussing moral questions when people mean very different things by “moral,” which, very often, they do.

This piece was first written on July 22, 2009, and first appeared on my website on February 10, 2026.