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[Vikarion]

Well, if you think that societies (and by extension humans) need repair (rather than healing)

I would invite you to develop a distinction between healing and repair.

if they don't function like desired (so they should conform to a desired function)

It's rather hard, I think, to argue with the idea that humans must conform to functional behavior, in order for societies to exist. If we were to do as we wanted, if we saw ourselves as freed from the constraints of practical action, what structure could continue to exist? None of us, presumably, would like to see our function as being the one who cleans toilets. But someone must.

and are merely mechanisms (rather than interacting living beings)... The technocratic expertise is just that, technical.

Organisms are mechanisms. They rely on relatively understood means of obtaining, storing, and expending energy. There is no observable or detectable supernatural or mystical element to biological functions, any more than there is to a diesel engine. And all of the predictions and observations work perfectly well without any such assumptions of other-worldliness to ourselves.

We are discovering the secrets of the human brain. We will be able to understand what causes us to see beauty in things, or ugliness, what makes us overeat, and why we get anorexia. In the end, the technical expertise will be the only one that matters. It is, in fact, the technical mind, the scientific mind that has got us this far.

I don't think that this is what is needed to form and propagate a healthy society.

As many problems as we have with modern societies, it is indisputably true that we live longer and healthier lives than ever before, that fewer of our children die than ever before, that we are better informed and educated than ever before.

In fact, I personally see a main reason for the flood of psychological disorders in our western society in our technocratic scientism. I think it misses some fundamental properties of reality that are important for the continued wellbeing of many (if not all) humans.

Would you care to list and explain these properties?

Right now, above our heads, human beings orbit this planet in an artificial body we created. Right now, somewhere, water is being purified for millions, so that they will not be subject to cholera, dysentery, and typhoid. Right now, antibiotics are coursing through someone's bloodstream, ignoring the suffering human body to attack and rupture the cell membranes of invading bacteria. Someone, somewhere, has just received a new lease on life via organ transplant. Right now, you are reading this on a computer screen. A computer screen, and probably a flat-paneled one at that. When, sixty years ago, a computer less powerful than a smartphone took up an entire room and printed its results. When, one hundred years ago, radio was considered an unreliable, new invention. When, one thousand years ago, we didn't know that rats and fleas brought plagues that killed millions. Ten thousand years ago, we were still trying to figure out how to grow food.

To put it another way, the technical mindset might not make one feel very wonderful, I suppose (it doesn't bother me), but it does tend to keep one fed, clothed, and alive enough to wonder how one is feeling. If this seems to have given us the leisure to conclude that many of us have psychological problems, that may well be due to the fact that we now have said leisure.

You spoke of the desolation of atheism. Well, perhaps. I am somewhat critical of the perception that because something might be unpleasant, it a reasonable choice not to perceive it. If there is an abyss, it must be stared into. I don't personally find that I need some sort of other-defined purpose or meaning, and I don't like the idea of the desire of others to assert such affecting those of us who are without such illusions.

[Wanoah]

In fact, I personally see a main reason for the flood of psychological disorders in our western society in our technocratic scientism. I think it misses some fundamental properties of reality that are important for the continued wellbeing of many (if not all) humans.

I tend to see the flood of psychological disorders as the result of us having the time for them. I'm betting the downtrodden masses of history had all sorts of mental health issues too, it's just that all the starvation and smallpox overshadowed it a bit.

[Nicoletta Mithra]

Well, it's quite easy to find a distinction between organisms and mechanisms. The first would be that an organism is not an artefact, while a diesel engine is. The diesel engine has it's function set extrinsically, an organism has intrinsic functions.

Also, I don't mean to make this into a debate about the veracity of differing worldviews. What this is about, though, is indeed that "I don't like the idea of the desire of others to assert such affecting those of us who are without such illusions" that is the illusions of those venerating technology as the new saviour and science as sole arbiter and exclusive means to determine truth.

I have no quarrel with scientific thought and technological skill. This is distinct though from elevating a purely naturalistic worldview to the only acceptable metaphysics. The new dogma that those that subscribe to a worldview that allows for more than the horizon of technology and science are all suffering from a mental derangement, that only science allows for a veracious perception of reality and people that don't subscribe to it all suffer from hunting illusions is what certainly makes some people sick - me, being a victim of that, made it sick for sure. Regardless of the veracity of world views, it's supressing people in experiencing themselves and the world in other ways than those deemed acceptable by naturalist dogma without regard to their psychological health. And that alone makes it unethical to me.

If you are happy with your scientism, so be it. Don't force it onto others. If you don't, you have no reason to feel aggrevated by my words.

[Vikarion]

Well, it's quite easy to find a distinction between organisms and mechanisms. The first would be that an organism is not an artefact, while a diesel engine is. The diesel engine has it's function set extrinsically, an organism has intrinsic functions.

I do not think that this is a view which works well with the evidence available. Natural selection is an external force, and natural selection is the reason organisms exist as they do. The diesel engine is designed with forethought, the human body by eons of strife and struggle. No less the human mind.

Also, I don't mean to make this into a debate about the veracity of differing worldviews. What this is about, though, is indeed that "I don't like the idea of the desire of others to assert such affecting those of us who are without such illusions" that is the illusions of those venerating technology as the new saviour and science as sole arbiter and exclusive means to determine truth.

If science is the examination and evaluation of evidence, I would invite you to attempt to convince someone of the truth of a proposition without resort to it. How, precisely, do you intend to convince someone without resorting to evaluation, testing, and evidence-based reasoning? How do you go about establishing "veracity" without resorting to consider the predictions and assumptions of the worldview you are considering?

I have no quarrel with scientific thought and technological skill. This is distinct though from elevating a purely naturalistic worldview to the only acceptable metaphysics. The new dogma that those that subscribe to a worldview that allows for more than the horizon of technology and science are all suffering from a mental derangement, that only science allows for a veracious perception of reality and people that don't subscribe to it all suffer from hunting illusions is what certainly makes people sick. regardless of the veracity of world views, it's supressing people in experiencing themselves and the world in other ways than those deemed acceptable by naturalist dogma without regard to their psychological health. And that alone makes it unethical to me.

If you are happy with your scientism, so be it. Don't force it onto others. If you don't, you have no reason to feel aggrevated by my words.

If some people are unable to accept the universe as it is, or unwilling, it is not the responsibility of the universe to become more comfortable.

The scientific view is that of a naturalistic world. It's not that science isn't open to the idea of unexplained things, it's that science isn't open to the idea of inexplicable things. Radio waves were first unknown, then known, then understood, and finally utilized. If there were, for example, some mysterious force that caused items to levitate, scientists would proceed forward under the assumption that it has a cause, that it is an effect, that one can test it, and so forth.

If one wants to believe that there are other entities at play, beyond the ken of examination and understanding, then you really do have to throw the conclusions of science out the window. If one believes in strange forces at work, then maybe stars really do collapse into black holes, or maybe they are just consumed by strange and eldritch monsters. Maybe you really are depressed, or, perhaps (as my former church would have suggested) you just aren't pursuing a deep enough relationship with God. Maybe your oil well blew up because it was constructed shoddily, and maybe it was sabotaged by a dark and evil malevolence. And why search for new information when you are never going to be sure if it is trustworthy, or some unknowable being or force fucking with you?

Science really does require a naturalistic view of the universe to be trustworthy, and, moreover, the naturalist view has become so pervasive because it has become increasingly hard to argue with the results and evidence science has produced. The universe might still be designed, but it sure does not look like it, on the whole. There might really be a soul, but brain chemistry and scanning seems pretty convincingly at odds with that theory. There may be an afterlife, but there are few reasons to consider it likely.

Please do not misunderstand me. When I say that I do not want unjustifiable beliefs to affect society, I really do mean that. I mean that I don't want unjustifiable beliefs to affect how you raise your children, how you act day to day, or what you buy, you read, or you work at. I don't mean that you can have your beliefs over there, and I'll have mine over here. I mean that unjustifiable beliefs, anywhere, are a threat to reason everywhere. Sooner or later, one side of this argument is going to really win, and it is going to be the scientific one, if we extrapolate from the last ten thousand years.

[Nicoletta Mithra]

Vikarion, I'm not here to debate these issues with you. But really, as you don't want unjustifiable beliefs to affect society, why don't you go against the principle of induction - which has logically been shown to be unjustifiable - and on which all science rests? Also, scientism is no science, nor is metaphysical naturalism. I recommend to you to read up on the philosophy of science.

[Vikarion]

Vikarion, I'm not here to debate these issues with you. But really, as you don't want unjustifiable beliefs to affect society, why don't you go against the principle of induction - which has logically been shown to be unjustifiable - and on which all science rests? Also, scientism is no science, nor is metaphysical naturalism. I recommend to you to read up on the philosophy of science.

I'm using "unjustifiable" in the colloquial sense, here, not the formal logic sense. Obviously, there are axioms which must be held. However, when you were writing about spirituality, you were writing about it as in opposition to the "desolation" of atheism. When you write about "scientism", you wrote it in the context of arguing against the "tendency of people to place unjustified belief into the power of science to prognosticate and technically control.", with the correlation of "I think it misses some fundamental properties of reality that are important for the continued wellbeing of many (if not all) humans".

Now, there are, as I see it, two possible paths here. One is to argue that the current level of scientific knowledge is simply not sufficiently advanced to enable us to deal with some problems. This is certainly true. Yet, that doesn't seem to be what you assert. Rather, the second path here seems to be the one taken, that is, the belief that there are certain facets of human life and the universe which are fundamentally inaccessible to science.

Now, one might be forgiven for raising an eyebrow at the idea that a method of thinking which has proven so successful at producing results for the human race should be so utterly incompetent at eventually providing us results in some of the most important areas. Or, to put it more vividly, it seems a bit off to claim that science can produce the international space station, interplanetary probes, and my cell phone, but doesn't have anything truly useful or definitive to say about ethics, the human mind, or our religious beliefs.

Now, I did not assert metaphysical naturalism as necessarily true in and of itself. What I asserted was that if one believes that there are non-scientific forces at work in the world, then one is relegated to a much more untenable position regarding the reliability of science, including one's own observations. For such difficulties, I prefer Occam's Razor: it is better to conclude, absent contradictory evidence, that science is a valid and reliable guide to the universe than it is to conclude that there are any particular number of unverifiable, non-observable entities also involved in the universe.

Methodological naturalism does not necessarily, of course, rule out these entities. It is essentially just the assumption that one isn't dealing with supernatural entities at any particular point. But it is telling that we have not yet come across a situation where the presumption of naturalism has proven false. Again, Occam's Razor implores us to take the hint. Why should we multiply difficulties to ourselves?

I used to be a Christian. Our church had an interesting stance on depression, among other mental health issues: specifically, that they were essentially related to a spiritual world. Humans were sinners, they needed to be in fellowship with God, and if they resisted God or did not pursue a relationship (or a close enough relationship) with Him through His Son, they would suffer spiritually. These spiritual effects could manifest in physical ways, as well, from God punishing you with cancer, to you suffering from mental illness or depression.

This is an extraordinary theory, in that it, in my opinion, manages to be wrong twice. First, it creates enormously complicated causes for problems which may, in reality, be essentially simple. And it declares solutions to the problem that are probably too simple, and ineffective to boot. What my church ended up with, as a result,  are some people who are nearly hysterical at times in their attempts to solve their problems with God. This is funny and stupid, I think, but probably not best for everyone.

Now, it's possible that they are right. Perhaps there is a God who you really do need a relationship with to live well. It could be. It could even be that this God is also not observable, testable, or verifiable. But Occam's Razor suggests that the simpler and cleaner scientific explanation is better: that the brain relies on certain chemicals to function well, and that when those chemicals get out of balance, problems can result, such as depression.

But if you ask my church, they'll tell you it's scientism to think that way, and that using drugs or psychology to treat mental issues is a sin.

[Repentence Tyrathlion]

In my view, you're both right.

Vikarion is right in that an organism is a mechanism, and at a foundational level, there is little difference between a diesel engine and a human being.  Both are complex machines that are constructed from smaller, interdependent parts to produce something that is greater than the sum of said parts.

But Nico is also right that science is woefully lacking as a sole arbitrator of truth.  These points are not mutually exclusive.

The missing element here is very simple: when it comes to human beings, and especially the mind, science doesn't have a clue what it's talking about - and any neuroscientist worth their salt will admit that it's mostly educated guesswork.  The danger comes when we treat science as if it has all the answers, when it very clearly doesn't.  Modern psychotherapy tends towards the view that if you do not conform to a certain set of parameters, you're sick - so let's dose you with pills in the vague hope that it'll fuck with your brain chemistry enough to fix it.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm deeply cynical about the profession, but I have come to acknowledge that it has its place, when correctly applied.  It's just that that last point is underused.

Let me put it another way - a few centuries ago, the approved method of treating a variety of illnesses was trepanning.  Bore a hole in the skull so that the bad spirits would leave.  Similarly, cover someone in leeches to suck out the bad blood.  We can look back at this and go 'oh dear, how primitive and stupid' - but at the time, it made perfect sense.

We don't know how the brain works beyond the bare bones.  We can make connections between some areas and certain hormones and neural receptors, we can say that x area deals with speech and y area affects happiness... but these do not add up to a whole that means consciousness.  Until we know how we actually think and what we actually are, a purely mechanistic approach will always be insufficient.

Growing up, I knew I was introverted and cautious...I don't like making a fool of myself and I don't like to let go; I need to be in control of myself at all times. Don't know why, just feel that I do. I had maybe three or four friends growing up and would spend more time with myself than with friends.  The other thing that I had to contend with growing up was the gross misconception parents and other people had about depression: growing up, I was always told never to feel sorry for myself and not to look for pity or complain as these were all considered signs of attention-seeking. This made it very hard for me to finally seek out help for depression later on in life and likely one of the contributing factors to my first intimate relationship breaking apart.

Being told that depression is selfish and that one just needs to suck it up and carry on had a profound impact on me developmentally. I find it incredibly difficult even now to talk about myself or admit to someone that I have a problem and need help. I know I need help, but I feel that I'm imposing on the person or maybe my problem really isn't that bad and that I should just ride it out.  I look back and wonder what might have been different if things had been a little different and that the depression had been diagnosed sooner and treated while I was younger?  However, I have also found that way of thinking to be a dangerous trap as well.

On one hand I would like to say that the time I spent alone growing up with just me and my thoughts and then my writings, gave me a better understanding of myself and that coupled with faith and spirituality made me a stronger person through all that I did go through. On the other hand, I sometimes want to say why couldn't I get the help I needed then instead of after the fact?

I use the terms introverted and shy when describing myself, which for the most part is accurate, but I also know that I am not introverted and shy. I like being alone, yet I need to get out and be around people. We like to try to simplify things to single word terms (moreso it seems these days than in the past) and simple can be good, but it can also, as stated, be limiting and in essence create a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. We are not simple, single term beings. I don't follow it nearly as closely as I sometimes would like, but the field of psychology is still developing (in my opinion); there have been many keen insights, but we're still finding that we know next to very little about the human brain (of course, I could be wrong about this, but a quick look at the news and other observations leaves me thinking we still have so much to learn). The fact that only thirty years ago people didn't really give depression the serious attention that it needs shows we're still feeling about in the dark trying to figure things out.

I could go on and on and I think this post probably wanders all over the place...but at the end of the day, it is good to know that you are not alone...and that is, in my opinion, the most dangerous thing about depression..the fact that you feel very much alone. It is hard, but talk to someone (I talked to my teddy bear...say what you will, but it helped me) even just for the sake of talking. Don't worry about having a down day; don't suck it up and carry on by yourself. If you can't talk to someone, and I'm not saying this could work for everyone, but it did work for me, write yourself a letter. Could be about what you did during the day or could even be about nothing in particular. But, I guess, what I am really trying to say is, say something to someone.

Anyway, will wrap this little stream of consciousness up now...

This sounds creepily like my life experience.

[Lyn Farel]

Though our governments are far from fitting to that model. Rather the cult of popularity (democracy) over expertise (technocracy)...

I'm living in Germany, that might play a role.

I may not like Merkel very much, but if I could get a more technocratic government I wouldnt complain... 

Well, if you think that societies (and by extension humans) need repair (rather than healing) if they don't function like desired (so they should conform to a desired function) and are merely mechanisms (rather than interacting living beings)... The technocratic expertise is just that, technical. I don't think that this is what is needed to form and propagate a healthy society.

In fact, I personally see a main reason for the flood of psychological disorders in our western society in our technocratic scientism. I think it misses some fundamental properties of reality that are important for the continued wellbeing of many (if not all) humans.

It's just because the emphasis on technocracy is put in the wrong places.

[Nicoletta Mithra]

Well, I'm very sorry that you had this experience with this church, Vikarion. I'm not them, though, and not all worldviews are the same as theirs if they're non-naturalistic ones. Just as not all scientists are evangelical atheists that subscribe to an exclusivist metaphysical naturalism.

I'm not part of your weird Christian community there, so whatever interesting stances they had, please don't project them on me. If you have beef with them, take it out on them, not me or all non-naturalists in general. In my opinion people that are ignorant of science are as bad as people that are ignorant of things beyond science, if they prescribe their worldviews to others, and vice versa.

Also, it is no wonder that naturalism hasn't been proven false by science: It is a methodological presumption of science and therefore it follows that science can't prove it false. But this is exactly why science isn't well suited to examine certain aspects of reality, because if you do science you already accepted a methodology that is (well) suited to examine a certain aspect of reality, while it leaves other possible aspects aside. Thus it is telling about the limits of science, not anything else, as science is by necessity agnostic in regard to non-naturalistic phenomena. It's simply not what it aims to deal with.

To claim otherwise is basically like the claim that there are only nails, no screws, because you use a hammer to drive the screws in, for lack of having a screwdriver, on a slightly more sophisticated level - while all you can really say that whatever it is, you get it hammered in.

In my view, you're both right.

Vikarion is right in that an organism is a mechanism, and at a foundational level, there is little difference between a diesel engine and a human being.  Both are complex machines that are constructed from smaller, interdependent parts to produce something that is greater than the sum of said parts.

I disagree that an organism is a mechanism. An organism can be largely explained as machines, but that's not the whole story to them. It's an reductionistic approach to describe an organism as a machine, which is methodically sound, but which leads too often to the idea that an organism is nothing but a machine. It's the mistake of taking a partial explanation for the reality. There are a lot of excellent papers on that topic that make clear that there is an ontological difference between a living being and a machine in the philosophy of biology.

It's just because the emphasis on technocracy is put in the wrong places.

Your faith in science and technology is apparently quite strong. Or put in another way: Why is describing the political process as we have it now as popularity contest any less placing the emphasis in the wrong places?

[Lyn Farel]

What would the machine lack compared to the organism according to you ? You say that equating both is reductionnist. What does the latter has more ? Consciousness ? And if so, if we create a conscious machine someday, what is the difference eventually ? Or something else ?

Your faith in science and technology is apparently quite strong. Or put in another way: Why is describing the political process as we have it now as popularity contest any less placing the emphasis in the wrong places?

I'm not sure what you mean ?

Just saying that I don't like democracies as they are now. I would prefer them to include a lot more technocratic elements, even if at the cost of democratic processes. I don't believe people are expert enough to designate experts   that are supposed to run our governments.

I also don't believe that a government thinking as cold as a machine would work either, that's what I mean by putting the technocratic emphasis on the wrong place.

I don't believe technocracy and spiritual well being are mutually exclusive. Much like ecology and science are not. After all we also have human sciences (history, theology, etc) that are part of the science monster, and they do not exactly work like cold math. And if they do, that's again putting the cold-science emphasis in the wrong place.

[Repentence Tyrathlion]

In my view, you're both right.

Vikarion is right in that an organism is a mechanism, and at a foundational level, there is little difference between a diesel engine and a human being.  Both are complex machines that are constructed from smaller, interdependent parts to produce something that is greater than the sum of said parts.

I disagree that an organism is a mechanism. An organism can be largely explained as machines, but that's not the whole story to them. It's an reductionistic approach to describe an organism as a machine, which is methodically sound, but which leads too often to the idea that an organism is nothing but a machine. It's the mistake of taking a partial explanation for the reality. There are a lot of excellent papers on that topic that make clear that there is an ontological difference between a living being and a machine in the philosophy of biology.

You evidently missed the point I went on to make, which is that from a certain standpoint, it is a machine, but one that we don't understand all the parts for, let alone the whole.  Or perhaps I was just being unclear.  Regardless, we're not disagreeing.  In fact, you're reinforcing the point: we simply don't understand biology, let alone consciousness, and are just running on educated guesswork (at best, in the latter case).