The Limits of Community for A Theory of Recognition

Should madness be recognized as grounds for identity? Should society recognize and validate madness as diversity, be it psychological, behavioral, or emotional? To answer these questions, we might turn to medical consensus about which mental, behavioral, or emotional states count as mental illness. Unfortunately, the criteria for determining which mental health phenomena fall within the boundary of mental illness remain open to debate, creating what is known as "the boundary problem." Common approaches to resolving the boundary problem include naturalism, a position that aims to answer the problem by positing a scientific concept of disorder based on value-free judgments about species-typical functioning. In An Approach to the Boundary Problem: Mental Health Activism and the Limits of Recognition, Rashed (2021) rejects naturalism. He proposes an alternative approach to the boundary problem by focusing on the identity claims that should be excluded from the scope of recognition. After highlighting important elements of Rashed's argument, I raise concerns about the role for community arbitration in defining the boundaries of recognition.

Rejecting naturalism's concepts of disorder, dysfunction, disease, and distress as the criteria for determining which states should be included within the boundary of illness, Rashed returns to normativity to address the boundary problem by proposing a theory of recognition. A theory of recognition requires an addressee; an individual subject who falls within the parameters of the theory and is accountable to its standards and ideals. Like other normative theories, a theory of recognition navigates the unavoidable tension between autonomy and dependence, between self and others. To emerge from the tension requires an embrace of mutual recognition, the process through which an autonomous subject's selfconception is confirmed by other subjects. In other words, the subject claims an identity that demands a response from others in their community. This identity demand can be met by a response of either recognition or denial, thereby determining who is included or excluded within the boundary of normativity.

Rashed offers three criteria by which to determine who falls within the scope of recognition. The first criterion is epistemic and dictates the validity of an individual's claim to an identity based on certain facts about that identity and features that establish the determination of that identity. The second criterion is diachronic unity, or one's persisting identity over time that enables a rich sense of agency that in turn permits one's pursuits of valued projects over time. The third criterion is synchronic unity, which requires a sense of unity across one's values and circumstances—who one is and who one wants to be. Careful consideration of each criterion is required to decide which identity claims are outside the boundaries of recognition. It is the failure to meet any one of these criteria that pushes one outside the scope of recognition, thereby rendering them subject to different moral, medical, and social responses.

The upshot of this new approach to the boundary problem is the possibility of expanding and modifying the boundary of mental illness in response to the requests for recognition by mental health activists without embracing all "madness" as recognizable grounds for identity.

For Rashed, identity is the "totality of my self-conceptions" (2021, p. 304). To claim an identity is to adopt a self-conception of oneself and to project it out into the world. Crucial to the success of an identity claim is the recognition it receives from others; part of one's success as an agent is for others to "recognize me as having the social status and identity I attribute to myself" (Pippin, 2008; Rashed, 2021, p. 303). The truth of a claimed identity is confirmed by someone other than oneself. Identity claims, therefore, require others for their success and validity. Subsequently, if self-conception is met with resistance from the community, which creates tension, then the agent must navigate the tension between their claimed identity and society's resistance to their claim. Depending on the outcome of this negotiation between agent and community, the identity may or may not be included within the scope of recognition. Thus, the community to...