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Merry Christmas Harv!

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Posted by Alan on December 24, 2003 06:14:13 UTC

Hi Harv,

Quote: "Fortunately for all of us, the profession of psychology/psychiatry is not going anywhere,"

others do not share this view!

"and mentally ill people"

they are not sick; why you use this language when you know that their "illnesses" would be kicked out of psychiatry into real genuine medicine if they were sick?

"will continue to be diagnosed"

it is not medical diagnosis; it is diagnosis of heresy by confused de-facto thought police

"and symptoms"

they are no more "symptoms" than "symptoms of un-Americanism"

"will continue to receive medications"

tranquillising someone into submission is torture; compulsory cosmetic medical intervention is battery; chemical weapons are not medicines!

"to help eliviate those symptoms."

When Ghandi went on hungerstrike no doubt his "symptoms" of defying authority could be "alleviated" by torturing him? Why do you subscribe to the Taleban-like evangelical rhetoric of a modern day inquisition by pyschiatric propogandists?

"So, quoting a crackpot is not going to change anything."

Show me precisely where his arguments are wrong! Explain to me how it is that "disorders" defined in behavioural terms are anything but speculated diseases.

"There are no categorical errors in labelling a series of serious symptoms a disease since, if that were so, a disease could only be called a disease only once the disease was understood."

A disease can only be called a disease when there is demonstrable patho-physiology. Otherwise it is "speculation". If only identified as forbidden behaviour, it is category error to call it "disease".

In "Insanity. The Idea And Its Consequences" you can read graphic details of how "mental diseases" are invented and dis-invented by a horse-trading political process that has shocked some participants who were expecting something scientific.

You have continued to avoid my point it seems: that for decades pathophysiology texts ignored "mental diseases" as if they were a figment of psychiatric imagination. As if they were not medical.

Those texts that mention them now: look at the difference! The "mental" entries differ markedly from the genuine medical entries. Be rational! Have a look for yourself!

The category error is that you took a list of alleged identifiable behaviour patterns; compared them to an objective or value you have; and decided that (without any scientific backing) these unacceptable behaviours were evidence of physical medical defects.

The father of American psychiatry, Benjamin Rush, apparently thought black Americans needed to be "cured" of their "blackness" and become white! ("The Manufacture of Madness" by Thomas Szasz).

You are not being rational if you are deaf to argument and refuse to face the arguments he has e.g. at www.szasz.com

"Disease" is a theory; see "Insanity. The Idea And Its Consequences" a book by Thomas Szasz. He goes into this in great detail. So-called "mental diseases" have the same type of logical character as "drapetomania", a "mental disease" that supposedly caused slaves too run away. The cure was thought to be filling the lungs in useful work for white man.

If an unknown medical disease is postulated; then for clarity this should be made explicit. Simply labelling dissaproved-of-behaviour as "mental disease" introduces a muddying of the issue. Facism thrives on this kind of muddled thinking. Please abandon psychiatric fascism, if you embrace it!

"Saying that mental illness is a value judgement is ridiculous since everything is a value judgement."

True that real physical medicine involves making value judgements about alleged "wrongs" to be "righted". This is why forcing physical medicine on a person is regarded in law as assault and battery. Ivan Illich shows that there is a danger of dictatorship in regular medicine.

My point is that the VALUE involved in "mental illness" IS NOT A BONA-FIDE PATHOPHYSIOLOGICAL CATEGORY. IT IS DISSAPROVAL OF BEHAVIOUR.

"Saying someone is addicted to drugs and needs a substance abuse program is a value judgement, so is any medical claim where pain and or death are involved."

Correct; but "addiction to drugs" is not a medical illness; it is a claim about behaviour. While it is possible that physical medicine can become involved (the body may become accustomed to certain balances of hormones after adjusting itself to influence of drugs; this may generate a craving like a thirst for water.) But the responsibility remains that a person chose to take drugs; Gandhi's hunger-strike reminds us that even taking of food is a free choice influenced by bodily state but not solely determined by bodily state.

The dissaproved-of behaviour of choosing to take drugs is no more illness than if you dissaproved of mountain climbing. Climbing at altitude may give you pulmonary oedema but that doesn't make the practice of climbing itself an illness. Drug-taking may make you sick but lifestyle choice is not a physical medical sickness like pneumonia. To think it is would involve robbing people of their moral agency and defining free humans as defective objects.

Ultimately your body/ freedom are so interdependent that one could describe everyone as sick/well; that is in the Kingdom of Heaven no one person gets to force a counting base on others; all categories are by free agreement. For this reason I can not say you are wrong or I am right; I can only bear witness to the Kingdom of Heaven as best I can ....................

"There are religious groups who refuse medical treatment and vaccines for their children because some believe that if it's God's will to heal you, then you will be healed, if not, then you should allow God's will to take it's affect (or some related reasoning process). "

I know.

"The medical community that one should receive medicine those kind of groups see as a secularized value judgement. Some people won't even take an aspirin fearing that they are relying on man to heal them!"

Each to his own.

"So, everything you say is pretty much poppeycock."

You would coerce people?


"If you categorise as "mental illness" anything that associates with failure in society; of course you will get high incidence of these fictional illnesses in homeless etc.

This is an example of your failed 'reasoning'. People walking around talking to themselves in a manner that they obviously believe someone is there are ill."

You are not using "ill" in the sense of demonstrable patho-physiology here; but as a metaphor like "sick economy". You are confusing metaphor for reality it seems. You seem to dissaprove of the behaviour you mention, why not say they are "behaving in a way that is not acceptable to n-persons"?

People once said that run-away slaves were "obviously ill" or similar. Adolf Hitler pioneered a fresh rhetoric of hygiene in the service of political control, according to Szasz. Heinrich Himmler thought the "Jews" were a problem of hygiene" didn't he say? Not nice! Say what do you think? Are you not in danger of falling for a similar trap here say?

"There is no one there. Many of these people are suffering severe mental illness that, in all likelyhood, they would agree with you and Dr.Scazz or whatever that crackpot's name is."

Consider this:

"Talking to an alleged imaginary companion":

first you make a rule prohibiting this?

Then you asume WITH NO PATHOPHYSIOLOGICAL EVIDENCE that they have an illness.

In fact you call the "symptom" the illness. That is not science!

British mountaineer Doug Scott climbed Mount Everest on an occasion when it was too late in the day to get down far. He "spent the night out in China". He was not much below the summit, VERY high altitude. He tells in a book of having a conversation with his frost-bite threatened feet.

He talked to "imaginary person" if you like; and knew he was doing so. In this case there was a physical factor involved; oxygen deprivation at altitude.

But his "talking to imaginary person" IS NOT AN ILLNESS. It points to a physical phenomenon in this case: the real "illness" was oxygen deprivation.

Children talk to imaginary playmates. They are not considered oxygen-deprived. They are considered allowed to do such things.

Whether "people who talk to imaginary people" are oxygen-deprived or not; the behaviour is not an illness. It is surely a category error to think it is!

It is wishful thinking to think one's say prejudices against certain behaviours amounts to defects in the bodies of the dissaproved-of persons.

"My impression: you want to be important. At Counterbalance you reacted to my claim of mapping physics by saying I must be a math-whiz kid. You then said sort of "yeah good for you ". Harv you do not have to put people down to feel good about yourself; they love you regardless.

Alan, I've come to see that you have a severe problem, and based on how you can't even afford simple internet costs, I've come to the conclusion that I should help you."

Nice of you Harv but:

Consider: I do not want say the Afghanistan Taleban to "help me stop listening to music"!
You wouldn't want to risk seeming to come across like that surely!

I freely chose to suffer my financial situation to be poor in favour of pursuing "a kingdom that is not of this world nor of this kind". What say that kindgdom is being revealed to me? It is incredible! I want to share it!

"Afterall, you're comparing nursery rhymes to physics and you are serious! Something is seriously wrong."

I am as serious as far as I go. I thought you would understand the "experiment" in free thinking I am doing by reading my "hidden messages" and "a way of thinking" posts! It's explained there!

It's a deliberate exploration by me Harv!

Also you never faced this argument to me:

top physicist Stephen Wolfram (highly respected!) has ben reported as saying that physics will turn out to be mind-numbingly gobsmackingly simple! (or similar adjectives)

Richard Feynman said the most successful theory in physics, quantum electrodynamics, involves physicists doing something "ridiculous": adding little arrows on a piece of paper!

Dr. Richard Stafford (phD!) claims in his paper that much of modern physics involves circular reasoning.

Jesus Christ told us "Unless you become as these little children, you shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven": what does this mean? Does anyone know?

"So, what you see as me trying to put you down is really the only real caring attempt to help you that you are probably receiving right now."

Thank you for not deliberately trying to put me down! I know you mean well; but you are jumping to conclusions while in an information vaccum about me. Please withold judgement! You do not have to agree with me.

"I'm the only one who cares enough to help you. It's not a put down."

As I say; you do not have enough information. I do not like psychiatric rape of human beings. I do not want to be denied my moral agency.

Best Wishes,

Alan

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