rangrz
Bluelighter
haha, yes, he treats the subject with such sharp humor and wit. I need to get a copy of both of those books for someone(a friend of mine a bit caught up in nonsense) now that you mention it...
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Why? Why use substances?
- Thread starter Hunter S.
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P A
Bluelighter
Has your friend been seduced by (the pretentious image of) Baudrillard, Derrida, et al.? Or is it more in the direction of Hegel, Heidegger, Husserl, and the like? If the former, good luck. I've found that the latter buffoons are much easier to rhetorically dispense with.
Quantum Perception
Bluelighter
First a analytical thought experimental (the twin earth) is not on its own going to topple real world research in the field.
Second, many things can be seen as hitting receptor cites, the stomach can be seen as one. So culture is still very much a factor in shaping what we know as substances.
For instance a drug is known as anything that changes normal bodily function. But what constitutes normal bodily function when everyone eats differently?
One of the top psychopharmacologist Robert K Siegel wrote a book called intoxication where he states that we have a fourth drive to alter consciousness and use substances.
So with that said, what we consider normal is a cultural thing, as drugs are defined by normal behaviors.
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Quantum Perception
Bluelighter
panic in paradise
Bluelighter
I am not familiar with the guy, but it sounds like he is leading to dimensional perception and interaction, where the 5th 6th 7th etc. dimension drive or awareness is gained and capability achieved, OBE experiences are be controlled, cosmic consciousness attained, and the ethereal interplayed with cognitively.
rangrz
Bluelighter
Analytic thought experiments do topple real world research. (Hell, some fields like physical cosmology consist nearly entirely of thought experiments. They are very common in physics and comp sci too) Never the less, I did not expect my posting on a web forum to change scientific consensus on anything, so it was a moot point.
Yes, the vast majority of biochemistry can be see as receptor/ligand interactions, does that make the respiratory drive cultural? I mean since it involves a substance (carbon dioxide) dissolved into cere/spine fluid making Carbonic Acid (another substance!) that lowers the PH, for which there are chemoreceptors in the brain-stem that react to that by causing a urge to breath. So, is that urge culturally defined? Is Carbon Dioxide/carbonic acid?
Hmm, well, as I was saying, hydrogen sulphide alters normal body function. Yet the damnest thing is that it alters body function in the same way in people regardless of culture.
I would argue that so do all other drugs, what they do physically, chemically, biologically, is not dependent on culture. (Gee, if it was, we'd run into problems with anesthetized and brain injured patients, and peds, because they lack the cognitive functions to have an idea of culture, yet the drugs still work the same.)
Maybe ones subjective experience of the drug (particularly psychedelics I'd imagine) may have a cultural element to it, but that does not change the molecular structure of the drug, nor it's pharmacology and physiologic actions.
That a researcher wrote that people have an urge to alter their consciousness does not at all support your claim that substances are culturally defined. Not any more then stretch reflex or the urge to urinate are anyways. It actually kind of points in the opposite direction, if it is an underlying, natural, and universal human trait, how the hell can it be cultural?
Nor is "normal" a cultural defined term. It can be mathematically/statistically defined. All those specimens which are within the standard uncertainty of a given measure are normal, those beyond that are not.
I'm not entirely sure she picked a camp per se, so much as a general rebellion against reason and the world of science. Quite sad, I was in undergrad with her and she was very good at bio and physio.
P A
Bluelighter
Ah. Well then she's just an antirationalist, no? IRL, when people say such things as, "He/she is rebelling against X," I'm usually tempted to ask, "How, exactly, are they doing this?" but am forced to hold my tongue. On intarwebz, I have no such reservations - so, I mean, how could one, in (post)modern rationalistic Western civilization possibly rebel against science? Is she, like, an anarcho-primitivist, or....? One has to presume that she's at least a closeted fan of modern medicine and indoor plumbing.
rangrz
Bluelighter
I suppose the 'rebellion' would be merely giving up her bio degree studies?
That's off topic anyway.
That's off topic anyway.
P A
Bluelighter
Eh. This thread hasn't been particularly spiritual, and certainly not very philosophical, for the bulk of its 89-post length. I doubt sincerely that any disruption of the topical continuity herein will make a significant difference in terms of quality.
Quantum Perception
Bluelighter
So thought experiments topple real world research? Your may be more of an idealist then me.
Look just because something is culturally defined, does not give it any less validity biologically. As I said before a strict biological definition of a drug and addiction is much broader then what is commonly or culturally understood. Therefore substances for the most part are culturally defined because what is considered a mundane habit with a every day item in one culture can be considered an addiction with a substance in another culture.
Its a play of biology and culture.
BTW Sokal's paper only proves that the journal he published in should be peer reviewed. One can be anti-scienctism but not anti-science. Just like the instrumental position in the philosphy of science for example.
Look just because something is culturally defined, does not give it any less validity biologically. As I said before a strict biological definition of a drug and addiction is much broader then what is commonly or culturally understood. Therefore substances for the most part are culturally defined because what is considered a mundane habit with a every day item in one culture can be considered an addiction with a substance in another culture.
Its a play of biology and culture.
BTW Sokal's paper only proves that the journal he published in should be peer reviewed. One can be anti-scienctism but not anti-science. Just like the instrumental position in the philosphy of science for example.
P A
Bluelighter
And let's not forget the varying extent to which our semi-arbitrary operational definitions are dredged from or outright lifted out of our well-ingrained prejudices, sociocultural biases, and ethical intent in performing particular kinds of research. Humanity and its various cultures gave birth to science, not the other way about. If there were no sociocultural elements of addiction, it would never be studied in the first place.
However, this truism certainly doesn't lend a shred credibility to the notion that our contemporary understanding of addiction can ever be divorced from biology, chemistry, physiology, etc. without losing most or all of its internal coherence.
Quantum Perception
Bluelighter
^Never said it was divorced. But Like i said its a two way street. The field of epigenetics is pretty hot right now for this nature-nurture debate.
But I would say culture is the greater weight considering that addiction would be something negative because it is not culturally institutionalized in the society.
Quote from rangz: "Nor is "normal" a cultural defined term. It can be mathematically/statistically defined. All those specimens which are within the standard uncertainty of a given measure are normal, those beyond that are not."
Average dose not always equal normal. There can be a period of turmoil where the average subject is in distress.
Homeostasis is only one way of checking on someone.
But I would say culture is the greater weight considering that addiction would be something negative because it is not culturally institutionalized in the society.
Quote from rangz: "Nor is "normal" a cultural defined term. It can be mathematically/statistically defined. All those specimens which are within the standard uncertainty of a given measure are normal, those beyond that are not."
Average dose not always equal normal. There can be a period of turmoil where the average subject is in distress.
Homeostasis is only one way of checking on someone.
P A
Bluelighter
Nor is normalization as fundamentally detached from the social sphere as many scientists would like to believe. Most normative systems of value exhibit strict relevance and relation to empirically derived mean values only in name.
rangrz
Bluelighter
Would you care to remind exactly how Max Planck, James Clerk Maxwell, or Einstein where experimental physicists and not mathematical (i.e. thought experiments, complex ones with paper and graphs, but never the less) physicists How exactly did Einstein determine that time is observer frame dependent at high speeds? Did he take his not yet invented atomic clock, stick it on a rocket (course airplanes where not invented yet), have it orbit the Earth for a while and compare it against an Earth frame one? Really? Or was he shuffling abstract symbols around, using his brain and some chalk?
I agreed to that to some extent already, and generally agree, but to say it is culturally defined without mentioning the biological is misleading.
No, an average and a normal value different, within the range of normal values itself, one can calculate an average, yet all of them are still normal. (That is to say, both a woman who is 5 foot 1 and a woman who is 5 foot 7 are normal, but neither 6 foot 8 nor 3 foot 5 are. A normal is a range, an average is a single value. 3.8 is the average value for a dice roll, however 1-2-3-4-5-6 are all normal values. Indeed the average would be VERY un-normal and I'd call shenanigans.)
All values in the green are normal, yet not all of them are the average in the usual sense of x+y+z/3=(average of x y z)
P A
Bluelighter
Well, yes, but height is a prototypical, highly simplistic analogy here, and is pretty misleading by comparison. Take social attitudes, for instance. Attitudes that are construed as 'normal' by a particular social group may or may not be reflective of the actual distribution of perspectives and opinions within that group. You may argue that the social group in question could simply be wrong when it comes to the question of what constitutes a 'normal attitude' within their ranks - but then we'd have to take a big step back and reevaluate our anthropological stance and method, since the concept of normality is an easy one to misuse and misplace in the discourse when the onus shifts to you, the scientist, as opposed to them, the people whom you're studying in the first place, to derive meaning and structure from their ideas; if one isn't painstakingly careful, they could easily get lost chasing artifacts of their own invention. Same goes for such complex, socially wed phenomena as drug abuse/addiction.
And though I'm not entirely certain that I would disagree with you on this one, I have to ask: Do you advocate a more technocratic/systematic spin on language, a la Wittgenstein's Tractatus? That is, if you found yourself in a position of supreme linguistic authority, would you mandate that such words as 'normality' and 'theory' are to be semantically confined solely to their formal/scientific usage? Again, though I'm not willing to dismiss the idea outright, I have serious misgivings. I think that this scientistic view of language severely distorts or simply ignores most of the core features that characterize human languages, including (most importantly by my lights) the manners by which and the reasons why languages arise and develop in the first place, all of which are deeply social and deeply cultural in ways that cannot and should not be forced to give way to a more rigorous logical foundation.
Biovail
Bluelighter
Because we've reached a point in society where we have everything we (historically) could ever have wanted. We don't ever have to worry about the necessities of life anymore, so we look elsewhere and need something to occupy our time with. At the same time, we see how shallow the material world is and can't accept that that's all there is. We know there is something more. We just don't know what it is and maybe drugs can show us.
Of course that's just one way to look at it. Some people just want to have some fun. It's the same as watching television really. Others use drugs as a coping device. Still others have simply become addicted and use out of compulsion.
Of course that's just one way to look at it. Some people just want to have some fun. It's the same as watching television really. Others use drugs as a coping device. Still others have simply become addicted and use out of compulsion.
Quantum Perception
Bluelighter
Those examples are from the realm of theoretical physics; the concepts they work with aren't very tangible. We're talking about the sociobiological observations in behavior, much more tangible and better represented with real word examples rather then abstract models. Not to say abstract models cant contribute to understand, it just doesn't trump real world research.
rangrz
Bluelighter
What you are talking about is just as abstract as anything from the realm of physics or cosmology. The non-abstract, tangible aspects of what defines a substance or addiction are not culturally based. Someone seizing out from benzo withdrawal is a tangible, non-abstract aspect of addiction. It is also not a cultural one. The social and ethical baggage attached to being an addict is cultural, but it's not something which is tangible, and it is very abstract.
I'd argue that most concepts in physics are less abstract then those in psychology and sociology. (e.g. I gave you an example of a physical experiment to measure and test time dilation, which shows it is more physically tangible then the sociological idea of addiction, for which no empirical, physical experiment exists to measure.)
As such, I hold thought experiments and abstractions are as valid for this subject as they are for physics, chemistry or computer science.
I'd argue that most concepts in physics are less abstract then those in psychology and sociology. (e.g. I gave you an example of a physical experiment to measure and test time dilation, which shows it is more physically tangible then the sociological idea of addiction, for which no empirical, physical experiment exists to measure.)
As such, I hold thought experiments and abstractions are as valid for this subject as they are for physics, chemistry or computer science.
Biovail
Bluelighter
This is real truth. The reality drugs show you is always there. If you learn to experience that reality without the drugs, then you've really learned something. This realization really hit me after my first (and only) time doing shrooms.
rangrz
Bluelighter
PiP said:
What extra dimensions do you mean? I can create a manifold with as many complex extra dimensions as I damn well want/need to. It's no biggie...I mean look at Bosonic String theory, it works in 24 dimensions.(Regular old quantum field theory works in a function space with dimension infinity!) Plus we use all sorts of extra dimensional measures (above those of the 3 spatial and 1 temporal) every day.In that for e.g. if I say "It pays $15.00" The quantity $15.00 is not a dimensionless quantity. It is a measure in the dimension "money" That is, I can not be $15.00 tall, or have $15.00 density. Additional "proof" of it being dimensional is it readily able to be worked with via dimensional analysis.
If I have $15.00 AND I've worked for 1 hour, I am getting $15.00/hr. Remembering time is also a dimension, we conclude that dimensional analysis does in fact apply to IRL, and that IRL we make use of extra dimensions on regular basis.
tl;dr we don't need drugs to be aware of so called extra dimensions.