Hey. Thank you for taking my post in the spirit it was intended. And thank you for having this conversation with me :-)

> What I mean by not being able to help it is, I can have several explanations for something, but any that don't "ring true" to me, I can't believe. People only believe what convinces them. Beliefs aren't a choice.

I agree. The standard philosophical example of precisely that is Pascal's Wager. Pascal offers a pay-off matrix designed to show us that it is most rational / prudential to believe in God. It is often disputed whether this works... But the main problem that arises from this is that even if one is convinced by the payoff matrix that it would be prudent / better to believe that God exists one can't just come to believe it by force of will.

Pascall's answer to this is that we should act as though we believe it. Go to church and hang out with other believers and embed us in the social practices that believers partake in. While we can't alter our belief directly (by force of will) we can alter our belief indirectly (by choosing to associate with people who do believe it and acting our way into believing differently).

And your example works quite well too :-)

> Just to explain a little more why I can see myself as mentally defective...

> There are certain things human beings are meant to be. We're supposed to be born with two arms and two legs, be able to hear and see, be male or female, etc. I know many people have different opinions, but these are mine.

Right. But I guess the issue is why you believe that this is the way human beings are meant to be. Who decided that? God? I'm wondering why it is that you are of that opinion. People used to think that females were defective males. Now most people want to say that they were wrong. They were mistaken. Their belief was false. Similarly with the male / female case people are trying to say that alternatice genders aren't malfunctioning males or females anymore than females are malfunctioning males.

I'm just providing this as a way of questioning the belief... I do think that thinking things through... Can indeed result in our changing our minds. I change my mind about at least one thing every day. It is kind of what I do, I guess... I try and persuade people to believe what I believe and they try and persuade me to believe what they believe and sometimes I come around to their way of thinking and othertimes they come around to mind and sometimes we still disagree... But thinking it through can often result in a change in perspective if not a change in mind...

> Maybe "defective" isn't the right word in all cases where certain things are missing, but anyone who misses certain things are "not normal," to me.

'Normal' is a term with a few different meanings... One meaning is 'statistically infrequent'. Mozarts musical ability was abnormal in the sense of being statistically infrequent, loss of limb is abnormal in the sense of being statistically infrequent too. I'm fairly sure there are less males than females in the world and hence it is more abnormal (statistically infrequent) to be male than to be female! The statisical infrequency notion doesn't at all imply anything about whether abnormality is good or bad. It is neutral. It is non-normative because it doesn't prescribe that people SHOULD be different or one way as opposed to the other.

> This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Most people who have missing things or abnormalities learn to be stronger in another way. And I'm not saying people like this need to be "fixed." I think it's good if options are available, though.

Here it sounds as though you regard these conditions to be abnormal in the statistically infrequent sense. I agree with you that these conditions are indeed abnormal in the statistically infrequent sense.

To say these conditions are 'defective' is different, however. Mozarts musical ability was statistically infrequent but we wouldn't describe it as defective. Defective seems to suggest that something is 'broken'. What do we do with defective products? We return them. Because they don't do what they are SUPPOSED to do. To say that a person is defective is to say that they are inadequate as a person because they aren't doing what they are SUPPOSED to be doing.

But what is it that people are supposed to be doing?

And when did psychiatrists get the power to decide what the function / purpose of a human being is in order to identify individuals that aren't meeting the ideal?

I have trouble with the value judgement...