Posted by Chairman_MAO on March 9, 2006, at 21:11:12
In reply to Do we expect too much of ourselves these days?, posted by mike99 on March 8, 2006, at 19:19:17
Attributing teleological intentionality to evolution is one of my major qualms with today's "pop science"--as well as consciousness-negating closet-epiphenominalist philosophers such as Daniel Dennett. I must point out that evolution itself is a theory (the best one we have so far, but one nonetheless), and as such it seems foolish to imbue it with human characteristics such as purposeful action. At best it is a precision-ground lens through which we can get closer to the truth.
However, as Hume (giving a shout out to Him because you brought him up, heh) said, "The ultimate springs and principles are shut out from our observation" (or something like that). We cannot know what evolution planned because evolution itself is a description of reality, not the reality of the description.
That said, I agree with you that psychiatic "disorders" (the nom-du-jour of those honest enough to admit that these do not pass muster as medical diseases) obviously are contextually based. However, the person pointing this out in the article obviously lacks the insight that ANY description of human behavior is contextually based, because we need a context to operate in. There would be no "ADHD" if there were nothing to pay attention to. Saying that those with attentional problems would be fine if we lived "naturally" is nothing more than a hypothetical bromide. The obvious reality is that there are people with this deficiency, which is not so much of attention per se than of the attentional and executive faculties _relative to the individual's other cognitive faculties_.
This is all a fancy way of saying that if people have problems concentrating and there are drugs which help, they should have the right to take them. Everyone knows psychostimulants help; people have been using them to concentrate well before psychiatrists "discovered" ADHD ("hyperkinesis") and stimulant treatment thereof (1937 in children, much later in adults).
See: "Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine" by Harry "The Hipster" Gibson, circa 1944. He obviously was "hip" to it.
poster:Chairman_MAO
thread:617202
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060304/msgs/618119.html