hey. yeah, i'm seeing the horse! i'm even seeing a bridle or halter on the horse. horse has a ewe neck though...

> Actually, I think Maybe.

:-)
cool.

> Here's the thing: I don't have an interest in thinking this deeply about life.

i've been known to say something similar. by supervisor back home used to say 'i feel your pain'. sometimes i hear arguments back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and eventually i'm thinking 'whooooooo caaaaaares' and whatever was originally interesting about it seems to have been lost.

i'm feeling that at the moment. sigh. unfortunately... its what i do so i have to persist. (you, on the other hand, have the rather enviable luxury of not having to bother once it gets too boring). sigh.

the DSM never used to even bother defining mental disorder. thats not uncommon for a system of classification. biological classifications of flora don't typically start with a definition of flora they just do the stupid classification already. the trouble was that homosexuality was down in the DSM as a mental disorder and there was considerable pressure from the lobby groups for the DSM people to JUSTIFY how they determined that some conditions were mental disorders whereas others were not. there was a requirement for a definition of mental disorder that captured the cases we wanted to capture and... ruled out homosexuality, basically. this was the DSM III. first time a definition appeared. upshot was the harm requirement so if someone felt harmed by being homosexual then that counts as some kind of gender disorder (still is in the DSM i believe) but if they are happy with being homosexual then it does not. pedophilia, likewise is considered to be a mental disorder when the individual is severely distressed about their thoughts / feelings / actions. if they are not distressed about it then it is not a mental disorder (though of course to act on it constitutes a criminal activity).

because the DSM was silly enough to offer a definition theorists from all over have jumped on board. psychologists (campaigned successfully for the definition of disorder to not exclusively mention biological malfunction or that the disorder was to be treated by doctors - they were concerned they would no longer receive insurance reimbursement if this was part of the definition of mental disorder).

there is quite a debate currently... and next edition of DSM is due out in... 2011 i believe (or close to that). so i guess there will be a bit of a spate of definitions and counter-examples and amended definitions and counter-examples and so on and so forth. yawn. sigh.

what i'm kinda interested in is what we are doing (or what we jolly well *should* be doing) when we are attempting to define mental disorder. people seem to be trying to figure out an appropriate elucidation of the concept. but surely the NATURE of mental disorder is more important to us than the CONCEPT of mental disorder. I guess I want to step back and say 'hey! stop stipulating necessary and sufficient conditions from the armchairs people. too easy for the world to not cooperate and then you are left in the unfortunate position of having to conclude that there isn't any such thing as mental disorder. instead... we agree on central cases... let the scientists see what (if anything they have in common)... feed that back into the definition... and so forth.'

i don't know.

i've clearly drunk too much tonight (this isn't going well right now).

how are you supposed to argue against such a grin?

http://www.nyu.edu/socialwork/our.fa...wakefield.html

and how the hell does he manage to be so %#@&#! productive??? type A thing do you think???

sigh.

> If we don't have standards, then anything can be acceptable, and that just doesn't work for me.

well... i'm not arguing against standards in general... just an objective standard of what people are supposed to be doing.

> By your logic, who gets to decide that rapists and murderers are abnormal? Maybe they're here to weed out the weak? There are all kinds of ways to look at it.

their behaviour results in harm to society. so... we prevent their harming society like that by keeping them from society and rehabilitating them if possible. skinner talks about how we can have legal responsibility in the absence of free will (but i grant we have free will though i probably mean something a bit different by free will than the majority of people in the world).

> I don't think there's any way of finding an answer when anything can be anything.

(((maven))) (if safe)

i feel your pain. i really really do.