4 ms·

> People’s symptoms frequently evolve according to the labels they’ve been given. This could be true. But the anecdotes and claims in the article are weak evid

> People’s symptoms frequently evolve according to the labels they’ve been given. This could be true. But the anecdotes and claims in the article are weak evidence. > Following Layle’s visit to the psychiatrist, her mother observed, “You’ve been acting more and more autistic since we got the diagnosis.” Reduced masking after diagnosis is common. Or her mother could have noticed and related behaviors she didn't before. > In 2006, a student at a Mexican boarding school developed devastating leg pain and had trouble walking; soon hundreds of classmates were afflicted. A fifteenth-century German nun started biting her companions; eventually, the strange hysteria infected convents from Holland to Italy. This is argument from analogy. Mass hysteria spreads without labels. And it is rare. > Ian Hacking, the philosopher, argued that such a dynamic fuelled the epidemic of multiple personality disorder in the late twentieth century, and something similar seems to be playing out now with the growing portrayal of dissociative identity disorder, the current name for M.P.D., on social media. This is begging the question. People more qualified than a philosopher have argued many perspectives about DID diagnosis. > One of Kriss’s patients, a student who went by Haku, developed a multiplicity of selves after being introduced to the concept of dissociative identity disorder. “It’s not that I thought he was faking it,” Kriss recalls. “It seemed more that Haku wanted to have multiple personalities, even if that meant he had to force himself and others to believe in it.” But does it occur frequently?

pxc 2y ago
> People more qualified than a philosopher have argued many perspectives about DID diagnosis. Idk why you'd think a medical practitioner would be more qualified than a philosopher of science about when it comes to methodological issues, but you're wrong.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  Perhaps because without having their theories reality-checked on a regular basis, a philosopher of science effectively turns into a protein-based LLM: saying convincing things, but unable to realize when some of it is wrong and invalidates everything said from that point on. Medical practitioners live and breathe methodology; they experience both the process and its output. They are the reality test.
  - AndrewKemendo 2y ago
    I also have an extreme bias towards practitioners in terms of any practice being the exegesis of whatever the embedded epistemology is. However, I believe you’re over indexing on this in that across pretty much every industry that I’ve ever dealt with, practitioners are notoriously terrible at implementing anything close to theoretical optimization Why? simply because the organization does not incentivize that, so if we were then to use this as our standard, then we would be betraying what is effectively the idealized implementation of some epistemological process instead you’re simply lowering the bar on what is a more correct way to do things I think this is one of the few places where from a philosophical perspective The categorical imperative is actually very helpful - that is to say a medical professionals epistemology should be the highest standard and all other standards of rationality or let’s say decision-making should strive for In short, much like practitioners need to keep the philosophers grounded , philosophers need to keep practitioners from lowering the bar on the epistemological robustness
    - snapcaster 2y ago
      I think the scoreboard indicates differently. I've never once come across a meaningful problem outside of philosophy addressed or solved by a philosopher
      - cd4plus 2y ago
        You haven't looked very hard then
        TeMPOraL 2y ago
        Okay, name three examples then. Bonus points if they happen to be pure philosophers, not philosopher-practitioners.
        cd4plus 2y ago
        Are you not a practitioner if you contribute to the field...? Seems impossible to meet your criteria. What's a pure philosopher? Are Frege and Decartes not philosophers because they also did math? Does Alan Turing count? What about Popper and Kuhn? Are they philosophy enough for the philosopher club? Where, when, how and by whom do you think the concept of 'empirical science' was derived? To be clear, everyone, including scientists, do philosophy every single day. You don't think Darwin did some philosophy in on the origin of species?
Mathnerd314 2y ago
The article cites Hacking but doesn't give a source. I think they are mainly using this old article: https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/HackingMakingUpPeople1983.pdf https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/HackingMakingUpPeople198..., maybe they also gave his work on MPD a brief skim. It's kind of weird to say that a news article discussing different perspectives should not mention a well-sourced article that has gathered 3888 citations, on the basis of "qualifications". For the pop-sci "new study finds X" pieces the bar is basically "published in a journal", which of course Hacking's paper satisfies. I did a brief search and there aren't any obvious modifications to his work. Sure, there are papers like https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.645556/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.... and https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09687599.2020.1822782 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09687599.2020.1..., but nothing with thousands of citations, and these more recent papers build on Hacking's theory rather than attacking it. Uncritically accepting Hacking's theory is not "begging the question", it is more like "if the shoe fits, wear it". And in this case there are not any obviously better shoes.

pxc 2y ago

> People more qualified than a philosopher have argued many perspectives about DID diagnosis. Idk why you'd think a medical practitioner would be more qualified than a philosopher of science about when it comes to methodological issues, but you're wrong.

TeMPOraL 2y ago
Perhaps because without having their theories reality-checked on a regular basis, a philosopher of science effectively turns into a protein-based LLM: saying convincing things, but unable to realize when some of it is wrong and invalidates everything said from that point on. Medical practitioners live and breathe methodology; they experience both the process and its output. They are the reality test.
- AndrewKemendo 2y ago
  I also have an extreme bias towards practitioners in terms of any practice being the exegesis of whatever the embedded epistemology is. However, I believe you’re over indexing on this in that across pretty much every industry that I’ve ever dealt with, practitioners are notoriously terrible at implementing anything close to theoretical optimization Why? simply because the organization does not incentivize that, so if we were then to use this as our standard, then we would be betraying what is effectively the idealized implementation of some epistemological process instead you’re simply lowering the bar on what is a more correct way to do things I think this is one of the few places where from a philosophical perspective The categorical imperative is actually very helpful - that is to say a medical professionals epistemology should be the highest standard and all other standards of rationality or let’s say decision-making should strive for In short, much like practitioners need to keep the philosophers grounded , philosophers need to keep practitioners from lowering the bar on the epistemological robustness
  - snapcaster 2y ago
    I think the scoreboard indicates differently. I've never once come across a meaningful problem outside of philosophy addressed or solved by a philosopher
    - cd4plus 2y ago
      You haven't looked very hard then
      - TeMPOraL 2y ago
        Okay, name three examples then. Bonus points if they happen to be pure philosophers, not philosopher-practitioners.
        cd4plus 2y ago
        Are you not a practitioner if you contribute to the field...? Seems impossible to meet your criteria. What's a pure philosopher? Are Frege and Decartes not philosophers because they also did math? Does Alan Turing count? What about Popper and Kuhn? Are they philosophy enough for the philosopher club? Where, when, how and by whom do you think the concept of 'empirical science' was derived? To be clear, everyone, including scientists, do philosophy every single day. You don't think Darwin did some philosophy in on the origin of species?

Mathnerd314 2y ago

The article cites Hacking but doesn't give a source. I think they are mainly using this old article: https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/HackingMakingUpPeople1983.pdf https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/HackingMakingUpPeople198..., maybe they also gave his work on MPD a brief skim. It's kind of weird to say that a news article discussing different perspectives should not mention a well-sourced article that has gathered 3888 citations, on the basis of "qualifications". For the pop-sci "new study finds X" pieces the bar is basically "published in a journal", which of course Hacking's paper satisfies. I did a brief search and there aren't any obvious modifications to his work. Sure, there are papers like https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.645556/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.... and https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09687599.2020.1822782 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09687599.2020.1..., but nothing with thousands of citations, and these more recent papers build on Hacking's theory rather than attacking it. Uncritically accepting Hacking's theory is not "begging the question", it is more like "if the shoe fits, wear it". And in this case there are not any obviously better shoes.