Stigma Objection

Now let’s look at the stigma objection. The stigma objection holds that is unethical to subject someone to stigma, as stigma causes unjustified harms onto its sufferer. So, in our case it would be unethical to diagnose either psychopaths or ASDP, as it would cause their sufferers to be subjected to stigma. So what would happen with a diagnosis of one of these mental disorders? Beginning with the Australian legal system, the diagnosis of either psychopathy or ASDP are understood to be the equivalent of saying that someone is inherently evil . The claim then is that those whom suffer from these mental disorders are innately bad people. This doesn’t seem right, as the sufferers are not necessarily bad people, but rather their mental disorders …show more content…
Stigma, without a doubt, is bad and immoral. But, in our case it appears that there is a moral grounding for this stigma towards our sufferers. To show this I need to borrow from Prinz and Freud. In his account of morality relativism, Prinz argues that morality arises from our emotions . He holds that our emotions inform us of what feels good, and what feels bad. These feelings of good and bad make up ones moral framework, as what it feels good is understood to be moral, and that which feels bad is immoral. How we feel about parts of the world then, tells us what is and is not moral. Now adding to Freud and his pleasure principle to the mix, we can further fleshes out this picture. Freud’s pleasure principle shows us that what people naturally want is to be happy . To be happy is to obtain pleasures, as they cause happiness, and to avoid harms, as they cause unhappiness. The picture I want to draw then is this. Since how we feel about the world tells us what is and isn’t moral, and since pleasures make us feel good and harms make us feel bad, pleasures are moral and harms are immoral. Now, the avoidance of harms is moral to then, as since harms make us feel bad, that which allows us to avoid harms would thus make us feel good, or at least better than how we would have felt if we had not avoided the harm. In our case, stigma is just a type of harm aversion, and hence has moral justification. This is because, our sufferers do cause harms. It’s a natural part of being one of our sufferers to involve oneself in rule breaking behaviors, and there is a strong correlation between rule breaking and causing harm. To make the point clearer, just ask yourself the question are psychopaths and sufferers of ASDP scary? The answer you should arrive at is yes, and the justification for this fear is that it’s not hard to imagine one of our sufferers causing harm to another, as it’s just an aspect of what it is to be one of our sufferers.

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