The philosophy of illness - I admit I have no knowledge of who said what in its philosophy, but can with some legitimacy ask just how much knowledge, if any, clinicians have about the philosophy and focus of their attentions - illness.
What the public and the clinicians don’t realise is that illness is never found. It is made. That is, we make a judgement about what physical criteria counts as illness and THEN go about looking for the criteria. Materials and flesh simply don’t mark up “illness”.
I had a chance to question a world-reknown researcher working in the brain sciences in Cardiff University Hospital. He was giving a talk about unique genetic or chemical markers for mental illnesses. I said that there can be no unique genetic or chemical markers for a nebulous concept.
I then asked if his markers for illness actually marked “illness”. He admitted that there can be no markers for illness, and he went on to say that we turn to the doctors judgement to see whether some physical event is an illness or not. And that is my point. There are no physical markers for illness.
Illness is not “found”. A diagnosis does not identify an illness, it labels illness. And there are certainly no physical brain descriptions that identify themselves as mental illnesses.
I think your post simply exemplfies the inherent problems in viewing concepts as so precise that they must be true in all possible worlds. No concept will pass that kind of test.
But our idea that illness is “found” bears significantly on the way we treat people, and the way we deal with experiences that we are uncomfortable with. Thousands die each year in the UK from being presribed drugs on the basis that certain behaviours are bad or disorders because they are illnesses “found” in the brain.
Okay, fair enough, but are you maintaining that it is not a true statement that certain maladies which take away from the pleasure of one’s life don’t have certain genetic expressions that can make one more likely to experience these maladies? Isn’t that “finding” the source of illness? I mean if we want to be really precise about it I would say that potential sources of illness can be found, not illness itself. But either way the real question is how we define what it is that consitutes an illness, right, and not just whether an illness can be said to be “found”. To what extent is a so-called “mental illness” just a set of behaviors that is socially unacceptable. To what extent is an “illness” sufficiently de minimis that risky drugs should not prescribed, nor any drugs at all?
Yes, but as the researcher from Heath Hospital admitted - there are no physical markers for mental illness - physical structures must be judged to be illnesses, they are not evidence for illness. I can’t use the term “malady” as a physical description and then look to that physical description to justify my judgement that there is a malady.
It isn’t a mtter of bets - we only have to look at the way we diagnose illness. We say that a behaviour is a sign of illness. But how can we, logically, make a physical association to that behaviour AND then use that physical element to confirm an illness? That would be circular thinking.
That is why I said that illness is not found, physically.
Pathogens are found, physically. Syphilitic infection leads in many cases to extreme neurological disorders. The disorders were well known long before the spirochete was found. What about CJD?
An initial diagnosis is based on behaviour, but physical reasons can often be found offering an explanation for the behaviour consistent with the diagnosis. If syphilis isn’t found, how can penicillin physically prevent its progress?
All of it? Nonsense.
Not to say that medication isn’t thrown at problems that couldn’t be better tackled in other ways, nor that the pharmaceutical industry don’t try to medicalise all sorts of things to their own advantage, but having someone close with psychotic episodes should disabuse you of the notion that the problem is just a big scam.
Sure it is, at least some of the time. Appendicitis, liver or kidney disorders, and intestinal illness (as a few examples) exhibit some very apparent physical indicators. The ‘illness’ may not be found insofar as an illness is a designation used to describe some biological or psychological deviation (that is usually harmful). The issues themselves can be discovered through physical evidence though. Ulcers in the intestinal tract is evidence of Ulcerative Colitis, for example.
I think what you are getting at here is much bigger than just illness too. Your contention doesn’t seem that illness cannot be diagnosed based on physical evidence, but rather that there are no absolute indicators. To take that even further, I think we can just say there are no absolutes as such, in any context.
I agree. I think people have been using theatrics and false diagnoses for monetary gain since the invention of “medicine”, but that is a consequence of fear (people will prey on it). It’s the same concept as people scamming the families of 9/11 survivors for money – the scams don’t invalidate the real charity, they just make people skeptical about what is actually a charity. In the same sense, people have become far more skeptical about what constitutes an illness, or how necessary medicines are.
It is a big scam. But people like you have bought into it in a big way. Let me ask you this. Have you ever thought about or researched other solutions for people who start having psychotic episodes?
You have not said or asked anything rational here. So why did you even make a post? I asked you whether you have anything to offer other than drugs as a way of dealing with the problem of psychotic episodes, which is something YOU supported. Have you ever given this any thought or done any research, or do you just go along with the drugs approach willynilly?
Alright, fine.
There’s no illness.
Now we can stop treating anyone for anything that they come seeking treatment for due to pain and tell them there’s no such thing as illness and that they are just conjecturing a mental frame that psychologically allows for their cancer to exist as they perceive it to.
I suppose that’s one way to solve the medical health funding problem.
That’s because I’m reflecting the view you were agreeing with up there ^ Irrational, I’d agree.
If mental illness and medication is all a big scam, what is the problem? If psychotic episodes are a problem, why are drugs that work a scam? Do you have any close friends or family that have had to deal with psychosis?
I didn’t say that drugs are the only approach, at any point. I didn’t even intimate it. But they are an important option for sufferers of some mental illnesses to manage a very frightening and damaging experiences.
I’m not saying that objects can’t be absolutely identified. I’m saying that objects that are delineated from a judgement of illness are delineated by that judgement. For example, appendicitis is already judged as an illness prior to any assessment of the appendix.
As soon as the person becomes a patient an illness has been proclaimed (diagnosed). Then by scrabbling around the diagnoser can begin to practice a reparitive physical reductionism.