What is The Mind, actually?, and what is a Disease, actually?.
The Mind is not real. A Disease is what Clinical Pathology says it is...
The Mind and the Diseases are good examples of the Differences between Fantasies and Realities.
I dedicate this Post to Heather Graham, whom I do not know personally.
— I have no problem accepting the most important things in my life, past or present, cannot be explained.
I do not authorize psychological nor psychiatric formulations, interpretations nor diagnosis, etc. I do not authorize any Religious use of my texts. Rights Reserved. I am not a lawyer, this is not legal nor medical advice, nor advice of any kind.
Peter Gerdes made this comment to me when I was expressing when there are multiple models fitting a set of data or are contradictory it shows none is causal.
To which he claimed "It's common to have multiple models fit the data and for only one to be causal."
The context was a Post about if Education Increases Intelligence and Whether it Matters, by Sasha Gusev.
My context to reply is larger than mere Genetics, IQ, g, correlations and Psychometrics.
My Comment:
Yeah, but not in Unfalsifiable fields of inquiry or expression. Not on spiritual things such as The Mind is. And not with mere correlations. And certainly not with Magical Thinking which does not even need correlations. And it is impervious to Reality being a Belief or a set of them.
It is a common dictum in Medicine, a rule of thumb, or at least used to be that when there are multiple causal explainers of a disease none is explanatory. And hence none is causal.
Hence my comment: it is an expression of Clinical Experts, or at least it used to be.
It is not merely an anecdotal expression, it is based on Knowledge of the Clinical Science of Pathology: the Study of Diseases. Paired with Clinical Experience, acquired among others by reading along years and decades a lot of causal explainers for Diseases...
I guess one can call it, simplifying, Clinical Bayesian Experience?.
No other field of inquiry can study diseases outside Clinical Pathology because Fantasies take control of the Study of Diseases. Which is what actually happened: non experts make claims, sometimes too wild and fantastic about Human Diseases.
Of course, no person, not even a group of them know it all, nor enough...
And to know Clinical Pathology one needs to know Histology. To know Histology one needs to know Cytology. To know both one needs to Know Anatomy. To know the three of them one needs to Know Physiology. To know the four one needs to know Physiopathology/Pathophysiology.
To know all of those One needs to know Biochemistry, Cellular Biology, Molecular Biology and Genetics, all Human. As one needs to know Embryology.
And to understand Diseases one needs Clinical Experience: just reading about it does not work... at least common sense goes out of the window...
See this example interpreting correlations between Female Pelvic Anatomy with easily measurable variables (it was intended as a humorous riposte to what appears to me Racist Provocative Rhetorics).
Most people who make claims about Diseases and their alleged causations, including Psychiatrists and Clinical Psychologists are not experts in those Fields.
Hence their claims lack the authority and knowledge to make them...
But, let´s get more on Topic, because IQ, Educational Achievement or g are not diseases, it is merely an example Diseases outside "Mental" ones are studied Objectively not Intersubjectively. And even there, where there is Objectiveness it is a mess.
Psychology and Psychometrics are Unfalsifiable, among other things.
Empiricism does not apply to them, they are not Sciences and therefore material causality is not something they can find.
Hence their "findings" cannot be materially correlated with Scientific Findings such as Genetics, only Hermeneutically and Rhetorically. And as such without any explanatory nor predictive power to be used in Reality beyond groundless motivations to Change the World, like for all Ideologies.
Fantasies to Change Reality, hyperbolically in summary.
In Intersubjectivity connections are made, are created Subjectively not Objectively, otherwise, obviously they would be called Objective connections, material connections, material or objective Relationships. Once Subjective connections/relationships are created, once they are assigned without Objectiveness they are agreed to become Intersubjective ones not Objectives ones.
Hence the folly of using mere Imaginations, Fantasies called Constructs, created Subjectively to then look for matches in the Real World, explaining why, in part Psychology and Psychiatry are Unfalsifiable and will always be such, and there will never be Theories for them, mere Imaginary Models without attachment to Reality.
Mere Fancy Flights of Imaginary Things. Fancy Flights of Ideas…
Trying to explain, or worse change the world with Psychology is inappropriate if one claims to be based in Reality to do so, as is trying to change it with Political Ideology or Religions without admitting those are Ideologies not Sciences.
That is: when one believes it is based in Science or in Objectiveness, required, sine qua non for mere Empiricism.
The Empirical World is the world of rulers, weighting scales, spectrophotometers, microscopes, etc., not of Intersubjective Agreements Rates let alone Scales, aka Inter-rater/Inter-Observer agreement rates used in Psychology and Psychiatry, passed as Objective Agreement Scales.
Psychometrics is no different, mere agreement does not provide them causality either: it is Intersubjective Agreement not Objective Agreement.
That is: Psychometrics has no causality beyond causing things with them, not by observing and establishing causality as in Sciences even if the knowledge of such Scientific Causality is achieved experimentally by causing things.
Therefore violating the “The Natural Independence Criterion of Descriptions of Reality”, a condition necessary to call something Scientific, otherwise it disappears from Reality if we stop thinking about it, so to say. Like all mere imaginary things do…
But if one accepts it is an Ideological way of explaining, predicting and changing the world at least it is an Honest way to do so: Freedom of Belief.
But Honesty is a must: those are Ideological, not Scientific or Empirical ways to understand, know, explain, predict or Change the World.
That´s why they are called Humanities, not Sciences and Psychometrics is part of Humanities not of Sciences.
Pseudosciences adopt language and practices of Sciences to camouflage and pass as Sciences to be accepted as such because they cannot be grounded, they cannot be based on Reality.
Hence they fly upon the thrust of Human Imagination and sometimes they never come back…
And hence, if people knew Psychology as it stands know, being called Psychological Sciences is a Pseudoscience, People would be more than justified to be uninterested in still studying Fantasies as if it was useful Knowledge with practical applications to the Real World, not to the Fantasy World.
And more than justified in rejecting Psychology to do "research", empirical or scientific, and reject using it in their lives.
It does not mean one cannot change the World without Scientific Knowledge, The Law is the quintessential example it can be done, and sometimes it is the best way to do it.
Social Norms, Morality and Religion were superseded with Law as a Normative System, and I can´t see it was not an improvement.
Then again Honesty, Good Will and No Pseudosciences is an obligatory requirement to do so.
Otherwise, as has happened, they will corrupt Law as an improvement over the previous three dominant Normative Systems by creating a Fifth One, a Psychological and Psychiatric Normative System, as it has actually happened.
Reiterating: to not only corrupt properly and correctly understood Scientific Research, but corrupting Law itself with mere Fantasies with no grounding in Reality since Objectiveness will never apply to them.
And worse!: Believing one is attempting to Change the World with Empiricism and/or Science!.
That is: Attempting to Change the World for the Better in an at least Dishonest and Misleading way.
And sometimes causality in Genetics is not something to be found through Genetic´s Methods.
This is an example, it is probably wrong enough but it is, I think, a start, finally I too do not know enough:
Assume 100% of a population has all the Genes necessary and sufficient to cause a disease. But only 18% of them, of the population, are diagnosed with it AND die of it.
Genetic Screenings probably won´t find the Genes Causing such disease since 100% of them have it, but of it´s expression*, at best.
Hence the need to have a causal model first to then design, carry out and reach conclusions from Scientific Experiments.
I see there is a difference between causing a disease and causing a disease to be expressed... even if I cannot say what is exactly the difference…
It then goes to what is a Disease, actually?.
Surely such a disease has not been found, right?.
Wrong: Cancer.
Cancer is said to be many diseases, I agree.
And the quintessential example, I think, is not Breast Cancer nor Lung Cancer but Prostate Cancer: it cannot be diagnosed by cytological methods, but by histological ones observing invasive behavior, which is how actually Cancer was identified in the first place: by metastases.
So what is Prostate Cancer?, if the gold standard is invasive behavior and we all males had genes causing prostate cancer metastases, then what?: we all have prostate cancer according to Genetics?.
Claiming it is ridiculous does not make such claim a Falsifiable one.
And it goes down to: What is a Disease, actually?. Originating the question how are diseases studied, actually?.
The answer is with the Clinical Science of Pathology: an objective inquiring one, not an intersubjective expressive one.
And my point is one can see metastases even in an X radiograph, sometimes, sometimes with the naked eye on the skin, and confidently so enough, but one cannot see souls attached to a brain called The Mind.
And the mind of someone else nonetheless, but understandable because like Mythical Vampires The Mind does not reflect on mirrors...
The mind is immaterial and is not an order emerging from brain activity, because such claim is Unfalsifiable and lacking Objectiveness because the Mind is invisible: there are no Mind microscopes, spectrometers, weighting scales, rulers nor oder-o-meters.
Its pieces, its parts, the pieces or parts of the Mind cannot be put on a 1 to 1 correspondence with the natural numbers to order them!. Bizarre when a Mathematician, if that were the case, does not seem to understand that...
The mind is "studied" with Intersubjective methods, not with Objective ones, hence Psychology and Psychiatry, and therefore Psychometrics too, keep changing their claims and findings as is typical and signaling of Unfalsifiable fields of Expressive Inquiry, not of Objective fields of Inquiry.
Until if at all mere Intersubjective agreement, not Objective agreement is reached.
There is a circularity in there: it starts as a Subjective expression turning into an Intersubjective agreement to then upon so called comparison with Reality it becomes a Subjective Expression: “Ah!, I agree!, I can see now, it so obvious”.
At the end it is just an utterance, from beginning to ending…
And hence being Falsifiability the most important criterion to be called a Science neither Psychology nor Psychiatry can claim they are Sciences and its methods apply to them.
Not even Empiricism can be used on them because their mere words/concepts are inconsistent: they lead to contradictions.
And Emotions are the quintessential example of contradictions in Mind Stuff: Love and Hate are contradictory emotions present at the same time in the same person, and pretending to reason with those sort of things, contradictory/inconsistent things leads to non-sense.
Hence they are interpreted, they use Hermeneutics typical of Humanities not of Sciences, because their meaning is context dependent, and hence Logic cannot be used to create Scientific Theories out them.
They lack Generalization, which is What Sciences seeks for: non-trivial matters nor trivial statements, understood as mere specific statements which by the necessity of non-contradiction in Logic cannot be used to create a large enough consistent, i.e. non-contradictory set of statements which can be made to understand, explain and predict the Real World.
And Scientific Theories having beyond doubt Facts are needed to do Scientific Empiricism: Hypothesis are conclusions of Scientific Arguments, not gut feelings, hunches, speculations and guesses.
Like artistic expressions they keep changing...
The Mind does not have all the material things Cancer has and Cancer is a mess starting from the mere: what is a Disease, actually?.
Precisely because The Mind is not Real.
It is a Fantasy they call deceptively a Construct. For which they look for matches in a place no significant match will be found: in the Real World…
And no one is going to accept nor claim such is the case soon enough.
I have no problem accepting many things, even most important things in my Human Life will never make sense. The problems, errors, deceptions, ill-wills, harms and catastrophes for me come from believing and claiming, even to the Four Winds!, if we keep studying them they will; when they never could in the first place.
We know better since at least 100 years ago…
*Dying might be a good example.
Thanks.
Federico Soto del Alba.