Using Your Personal Philosophy to Make Yourself Virtuous

One of the special features of logic-based therapy (LBT), in contrast to other forms of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), is LBT’s matching of “guiding virtues” to “cardinal fallacies.” According to LBT, there are 11 groups of fallacies that are often embedded in the reasoning processes of emotions such as anxiety, depression, guilt, and anger. There, they tend to generate the negative interoceptive feelings and self-defeating behavioral dispositions associated with these emotions.

The Fallacies

1. Demanding Perfection: Insisting on unrealistic, law-like generalizations regarding the approval of others, control, certainty, orderliness, achievement, immediate gratification, treatment by others, and morality
2. Catastrophizing: Exaggerating the severity of potential consequences
3. Damnation: Devaluation of self, others, life, or the world based on a perceived flaw
4. Can’tstipation: Disavowing the capacity to control one’s emotions, behavior, will, or thoughts
5. Bandwagon Reasoning: Mindless conformity to others
6. World-Revolves-Around-Me (WRAM) Thinking: Dictating what is true or acceptable according to one’s own subjectivity
7. Dutiful Worrying: Obligating oneself to worry and to enlist others who are relevantly situated in worrying
8. Objectifying Others: Manipulating or using others without their knowledge or consent, such as in the use of force, intimidation, threats, deception, or chicanery
9. Oversimplifying Reality: Overgeneralizing, stereotyping, or making black-or-white claims
10. Distorting Probabilities: Making improbable predictions relative to available evidence
11. Baseless Conjecture: Providing anti-scientific explanations, including unsupported explanations, false causation, magical thinking, baseless conspiracies, delusions, and paranoid ideation

The Matching Guiding Virtues

For each of these fallacies, there is at least one virtue that can help a person overcome the tendency to commit it. These virtues comprise aspirational goals that can give the client something exciting and liberating to aim at. For example, courage is the guiding virtue of catastrophizing, and global respect is the guiding virtue of global damnation. Unlike other CBT models, including its parent modality of rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT), LBT views the refutation of irrational thinking as a foundation upon which to build positive habits that militate against prior self-destructive or self-defeating cognitive-behavioral-emotional tendencies.

These virtues, matched to their respective fallacy group, are provided below:

1. Fallacy: Demanding Perfection; Matching Virtue: Metaphysical Security (Security About Reality)

2. Fallacy: Catastrophizing; Matching Virtue: Courage (Confronting Fears in the Face of Outcome Uncertainty)

3. Fallacy: Damnation; Matching Virtue: Respect (Unconditional Acceptance of Self, Others, and the World)

4. Fallacy: Can’tstipation; Matching Virtue: Self-Control (Respectively, Temperance, Decisiveness, Tolerance/Patience, Tranquility)

5. Fallacy: Bandwagon Reasoning; Matching Virtue: Authenticity (Being One’s Own Person)

6. Fallacy: World-Revolves-Around-Me Thinking; Matching Virtue: Empathy (Connecting With the Subjectivity of Others)

7. Fallacy: Dutiful Worrying; Matching Virtue: Prudence (Exercise of Rational Judgment in Practical Matters)

8. Fallacy: Objectifying Others; Matching Virtue: Empowerment of Others (Treating Others as Self-Determining Agents)

9. Fallacy: Oversimplifying Reality; Matching Virtue: Objectivity (Making Unbiased, Accurate, and Evidence-Based Claims)

10. Fallacy: Distorting Probabilities; Matching Virtue: Foresightedness (In Assessing Probabilities)

11. Fallacy: Baseless Conjecture; Matching Virtue: Scientific Thinking (Providing Explanations Using Scientific Method)

The Meaning of Virtues

Importantly, virtues are philosophical constructs. That is, their meanings vary depending on the philosophical predilections of the bearer of the virtue. Thus, for an Aristotelian, courage involves rational control over one’s passions. On the other hand, for an existentialist, courage involves living authentically—accepting one’s freedom and responsibility for one’s actions (or inactions), hence not living in “bad faith.”

Of course, there is also a core or shared meaning of virtues. For example, courage always involves confronting one’s fears in the face of uncertainty of outcomes. However, courage rises to a virtue for an individual only when it takes on philosophical meaning for the individual, which depends on the philosophy embraced by them.

As such, LBT provides definitions of core or shared meanings of the virtues (such as those provided above in the list of fallacies and their respective guiding virtues) that all credible philosophical perspectives share. But the philosophical construct of virtue is more than just the core meaning, and this is where different individuals have different concepts of virtue. Hence:

Therapy Essential Reads

Walk-and-Talk Ecotherapy Sessions Could Change Your Practice

Can AI Therapy Replace a Real Therapist?

Virtue (For a Person) = Core Meaning + Personal Philosophical Meaning

For example, for a person S, who is an existentialist, courage means that S confronts their fears in the face of outcome uncertainty by applying an existential philosophy of their choosing.

The core meaning supplies the what, while the philosophical perspective supplies the how. The virtue does not rise to the level of a virtue for an individual until a philosophy is embraced by them.

Enacting Virtues

This means that a philosophy is necessary to enact the virtue: that is, to turn it into a virtue.

A virtue can be said to be fully enacted by an individual when:

• The individual enacts their virtuous philosophy in a (sincere) self-directed speech act
• The individual enacts their virtuous philosophy extra-linguistically, such as by making behavioral changes
• These enactments become habitual for the individual

In other words, the individual habitually practices the virtue, cognitively and behaviorally, from their philosophical standpoint. For example, an existentially-inclined client can become courageous (to a degree) in these circumstances:

• In telling themselves that they are free and responsible for their action (or inaction) and cannot hide behind excuses, the client confronts their fears in the face of the uncertainty of outcomes.
• The client acts in the face of this uncertainty, such as by taking risks.
• The client has become habituated to accepting their freedom and responsibility and taking risks.

Philosophical Mantras

Virtuous philosophies can take the form of mantras that succinctly capture the philosophy and provide focal points for those embracing them. The performance of a speech act that contains a mantra needs to satisfy three criteria to enact a virtue for an individual:

1. The speech act performance must resonate with the individual.
2. It must address the fallacy it is intended to overcome.
3. It must also provide a how of the specific virtue that matches the specific fallacy.

For example, “People thrive through mutual support” can address the fallacy of WRAM thinking because it supports acknowledging the subjectivity of others, not just one’s own. The latter, in turn, also provides a how of empathy, which is the guiding virtue of WRAM thinking. That is, people can connect with each other through mutual support. So, if the speech act performance of this mantra resonates with the client (it provides a sense of relief or release from the negative feelings associated with WRAM thinking, such as loneliness), then it could enact the virtue for this individual if practiced regularly.

LBT accordingly works with clients to help them identify resonant philosophical mantras that they can use to enact their guiding virtues and thereby develop the virtues that match the fallacies they seek to overcome. In this manner, LBT, in contrast to other CBT approaches, systematically addresses clients’ irrational thinking by providing an infrastructure for replacing self-destructive habits with positive, life-enhancing ones.