Game Theory, self interest, and praxeology

[MMMark]

Sun. 12/08/12 14:07 EDT
.post #233
[url=Game Theory, self interest, and praxeology - #25 by zefreak]

@zefreak

[/url]I’ll do the forum a favor of ignoring your snarky comments …

…and also, apparently, the two questions I asked you.

@zefreak

The original comment that I replied to posited that behavior was a product of bad upbringing, poor parenting or other environmental factors not including genetics or brain development.

Well, my interpretation of what Clayton wrote differs from yours.

First, Clayton neither wrote nor posited that behavior is a “product” of anything, nor, as the quote I provided makes clear, does Szasz. Here is another Szasz quote, from p. 30 of The Ethics of Psychoanalysis:

If the psychiatrist is a medical specialist, which structure or function of the human organism is his domain, his area of special competence? The answer must be: the mind and behavior. But is the “mind” an organ, like the brain or the heart? And is human behavior a “function,” like glucose metabolism or hematopoiesis? If we answer these questions affirmatively, we commit ourselves, morally and philosophically, to regarding human beings as machines and therefore to treating persons as things.

To speak of behavior as the “product” of mind or brain, the way (for example) bile is the product of the liver, is incorrect. Behavior is not a “product”; behavior is human choice and action. This is not to say that behavior is not influenced by many things (including the brain).

As for Clayton, he wrote (my emphasis):

The entire concept of behavioral diseases is a contradiction of terms. “He’s not acting right. He must have a disease.” No, you have parenting problem and you are either too lazy or ignorant or both to apply elementary principles of parenting and instruct and correct your child’s misbehavior.

Clayton’s point (the way I read it, anyway) is that calling a child’s misbehavior a “disease” (or a “disorder”) creates the illusion that the problem “resides,” disease-like, in the child. This is identical to what goes on in the classroom: If the student finds the teacher and subject boring and irrelevant, the student must have a “disorder.” Heaven forbid that perhaps the teacher and subject are boring and irrelevant! And heaven forbid that perhaps some parents are lazy and ignorant. No, it’s much easier to slap the “mentally disordered” label on the kid, and psychiatrists are only too eager to oblige.

@zefreak

He was doing the equivelant of blaming the victim and seemingly ignoring decades of neuroscience and psychology to do so.

I’m not sure whom you think “the victim” is that Clayton is “blaming.”

Some parents have problems with their kids’ behavior, and some kids have problems with their parents’ behavior. But, since the parents, teachers, school boards and psychiatrists are more powerful than the kid, it is they who get to slap the “mentally disordered” label on the kid, then force drugs into him.

Neuroscience is irrelevant to child/parent relationships, but psychiatrists and psychologists invoke it to justify recasting as a medical problem what is in fact a relationship problem, then pushing drugs onto and into the kid.

No, I think Clayton nailed it pretty well.

@Thomas Szasz

I took up the profession of psychiatry in part to combat the contention that abnormal behaviors are the products of abnormal brains.

@zefreak

Does this mean that Szasz

a) doesn’t believe that abnormal behaviors exist, but believes that abnormal brains exist

No, it doesn’t mean this.

@zefreak

b) believes that abnormal behaviors exist, but doesn’t think they are caused by abnormal brains

No, it doesn’t mean this either.

@zefreak

If his contention is A, it is a poor way of wording it/was interpreted incorrectly by the person who posted it in response to my comment.

If B, I think he is wrong and that shouldn’t be controversial.

Szasz’s contention is neither.

What Szasz asserts is:

Behavior is not disease.
Behavior is not a “product” of the brain, nor is the brain’s “function” to “produce” behavior.
Behavior is not “caused” or “produced.” Behavior is influenced and chosen.