[lbo-talk] Philip Mirowski - Social Physicist

[Chris Doss]

Dudes and Dudettes, "an organism is healthy" is the judgment that "an organism is working as it is supposed to work." Unless you admit the existence of final causality in biology, nothing in the natural world is supposed to do anything. Therefore, the criterion of "working" must be pulled from outside of the organism itself, in this case what is usually the case for the type of thing in question. Most human beings can walk; therefore, something that makes you not able to walk is a disease (or something with the same effect), whereas our inability to fly is not a disease. All human beings age, and mostly at about the same rate; therefore, aging is not a disease. However, premature or accelerated aging are, because they violate the norm. Even though it gets you to the same place.

----- Original Message ----
From: Matthias Wasser <matthias.wasser at gmail.com>
To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
Sent: Fri, March 5, 2010 8:44:15 PM
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Philip Mirowski - Social Physicist

On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 12:10 PM, Vincent Clarke
<pclarkepvincent at gmail.com>wrote:


> On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 5:00 PM, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> > "Disease" does not mean "thing that makes you feel bad." If everybody had
> > MS, it would not be a disease, anymore than aging is a disease.
> >
> >
>
> Good point... oh, wait, no its not...
>
> This kind of crap is exactly what leads to the "identifying with the
> disease" nonsense. "No, its only a disease because the rest of society says
> it is - its really just you, because you're different...".
>
> Fucking bullshit. I believe Doug Henwood had Barbara Ehrenreich discussing
> this on his radio show a few weeks back. Its the same old bullshit. I'd
> advise people who buy into this sort of thing quite simply: if you care so
> much about people with diseases, if you really want to think about it
> concretely - and this goes for psychiatric disorders as well - don't
> relativise them; don't take the stance of the "beautiful soul" and
> attribute
> all bad things to "society" - recognise their reality, study medicine of
> psychology and make a contribution. Otherwise, to be frank... shut up!
>
> I'm sorry to be so blunt about this, but having to listen to this stuff in
> the humanities departments all the time just vexes me. No wonder those in
> sciences like medicine laugh at those in the humanities - they really come
> across as fools when they start spouting their "theories" about these
> things...

Is aging a disease? If humans naturally stayed immortally in their 20s, and
someone started aging like we do, don't you think they'd want to help cure
her of her strange malady?
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