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> There's no such thing as an addiction to a normal stimuli. Addiction is a medical word that should be reserved for people dealing with the problems associated

> There's no such thing as an addiction to a normal stimuli. Addiction is a medical word that should be reserved for people dealing with the problems associated with taking chemicals that directly alter wanting/desire in the brain. You're mixing and matching metaphysical claims with prescriptions about how language should be used. When you say "there's no such thing" or "exists" with respect to types of addiction, what exactly are you saying?

superkuh 5y ago
I'm saying that the neurological substrates of addiction are not being manipulated by normal stimuli so it's not addiction. It is not a dissociated wanting divorced for liking caused by direct activation of the substrates that encode wanting. It's just enjoyment of a normal stimuli and people prioritizing what they enjoy. Medicalizing that, pretending there's no personal agency like with dopaminergic drugs, will cause more damage than letting people do what they enjoy. Calling things addictions inevitably justifies and leads to legislation that brings in the use of force and coercion to control people's behavior.
- vehemenz 5y ago
  Thank you for the clarification. I am not a neuroscientist, but might normal stimuli produce similar responses in the brain to chemical ingestion? If that were the case, we would still have a pathology that needs treatment. Despite what we call things, I am confident the addiction model for treatment would still work in many cases. If the addiction model works to treat certain phenomena called "addictions" under that paradigm, then I am not optimistic that the meaning will ever change. You have your interests, and medicine has theirs. Natural language is littered with layman's terms that are inconsistent with reality. Some, like "gender" and "race," have meanings that are so incoherent that any real discussion requires 1,000 words of linguistic stage setting. I think with "addiction" the toothpaste is already out of the tube.

superkuh 5y ago

I'm saying that the neurological substrates of addiction are not being manipulated by normal stimuli so it's not addiction. It is not a dissociated wanting divorced for liking caused by direct activation of the substrates that encode wanting. It's just enjoyment of a normal stimuli and people prioritizing what they enjoy. Medicalizing that, pretending there's no personal agency like with dopaminergic drugs, will cause more damage than letting people do what they enjoy. Calling things addictions inevitably justifies and leads to legislation that brings in the use of force and coercion to control people's behavior.

vehemenz 5y ago
Thank you for the clarification. I am not a neuroscientist, but might normal stimuli produce similar responses in the brain to chemical ingestion? If that were the case, we would still have a pathology that needs treatment. Despite what we call things, I am confident the addiction model for treatment would still work in many cases. If the addiction model works to treat certain phenomena called "addictions" under that paradigm, then I am not optimistic that the meaning will ever change. You have your interests, and medicine has theirs. Natural language is littered with layman's terms that are inconsistent with reality. Some, like "gender" and "race," have meanings that are so incoherent that any real discussion requires 1,000 words of linguistic stage setting. I think with "addiction" the toothpaste is already out of the tube.