Chili wrote:Togo1 wrote:In each case I'm proposing that we go with the model that best fits the experimental facts, and has the greatest predictive power in experiments. That's how science works.
I believe when you describe "science" what you really mean is "common sense".
Yeah, but you say that about everyone who disagrees with you, including scientists. The idea that everyone who disagrees with you has made the same simple mistake that would be obvious if only they were to reconsider, is immensely comforting.
Chili wrote:DSM to the extent that it offers treatments is agnostic to whether there is actual consciousness occurring in the subjects,
Well of course it is. What it definitely does not do, however, even a little bit, if give credence to this fond idea you have that the medical treatment of mental disorders works on a purely physical model. This isn't a disagreement about philosophy, or definitions. It's just a claim about the real world that you made, that happens to be false.
I understand where you are coming from, I really do. I understand that you want medical treatment to be purely physical, you want psychological sciences to be purely physical. I'd quite like Neo-Freudian psychotherapy to be ineffective, because the underlying theory really annoys me. Unfortunately we both live in the real world, where the actual results don't aways match up in the way we want them to. You would very much like to live in a world where mental theories ineffective, where physical surgery is the best solution, and where the hard sciences gradually expand to take over the areas covered by the softer sciences, in a sort of inevitable march of reductionist progress, that will gradually fulfil all your a priori ideas about how the universe works. It would be immensely fulfilling and reassuring for you. Unfortunately for you, that's not the word we live in.