[FRIAM] The root of personality disorders

Thu Jan 19 12:26:58 EST 2017

Post hoc ergo propter hoc?

   -- Owen

On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 8:34 AM, Robert J. Cordingley <robert at cirrillian.com
> wrote:

> Aren't you now talking about different reasoning models/tasks:
> Classification
> Diagnosis
> Hypothetical Reasoning
> Bayesian
> Fuzzy logic
> etc.
>
> On the other hand I've always felt the medical community named too many
> diseases and conditions after their symptoms usually in a hi-falutin format
> rather than an actual cause, e.g. abdominal aortic aneurysm or after the
> person identifying it, e.g. Alois Alzheimer. Which get's back to Glen's
> circularity.
>
> Robert C
>
>
> On 1/19/17 7:14 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
>
> Point taken, Eric.  That is more realistic.  I was making the point that
> even for non-psychiatric problems the symptoms (partly) define the
> disease.  There are tests like biopsies and cultures of organisms that
> confirm the diagnoses of those diagnoses.  Some psychiatric disorders can
> be confirmed by biopsy (e.g. Alzheimer's) but they are often done
> posthumously.
>
> In my mother-in-law's case they said they thought she had pneumonia.  I
> don't remember the details but I know that they tried to drain her chest
> but couldn't even insert a tube.  Four weeks after the first symptom she
> died.  Of course they had changed the diagnosis early on.  Northwestern
> Memorial Hospital, 1984.
>
> Nick will, I hope, explain the paper at Friam.
>
> Frank
>
> Frank Wimberly
> Phone (505) 670-9918
>
> On Jan 19, 2017 6:48 AM, "Eric Charles" <eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> But Frank.... doesn't it normally go a bit more like this:
>>
>> Why is my husband unable to breathe and coughs all the time?
>>
>> I hypothesize that he has pneumonia - a chest x-ray is a cheap and fairly
>> reliable test of that hypothesis.
>>
>> Then let's do a chest x-ray!
>>
>> Well ma'am, the x-ray shows white lumps, supporting the hypothesis.
>> Pneumonia is often caused by a bacterial infection, and because you say he
>> didn't have a cold previously, I think that is the case here. We can test
>> that hypothesis with the administration of certain antibiotics.
>>
>> Then let's get those antibiotics!
>>
>> Well ma'am, I see that after taking the antibiotics, the white lumps,
>> difficulty breathing, and coughs resolved. Based on that, I feel confident
>> that my hypothesis was correct, and that your husband's pneumonia is now
>> cured.
>>
>> Wait a minute. How do you know he had pneumonia?
>>
>> I don't really. But the antibiotics seem to have helped, and that leads
>> me both to have confidence in my original hypothesis and, ironically, to
>> not really care that much about the hypothesis.  All that really matters is
>> that your husband is better, and that I am likely to give antibiotics again
>> if I meet someone that presents in the same manner.
>>
>> Oh.
>>
>> P.S. See also Nick's paper, for quite different issues. Nick is
>> interested fundamental issues regarding what gets to count as an
>> explanation. But note that the discussion above any causality is quite
>> different than in the prior anecdotes. In this case,
>> taking-an-xray explains why we are looking at images of white lumps, and
>> taking-antibiotics explains why the symptoms resolved. It matters not a bit
>> if the entity referred to as pneumonia is "real", if it is mere
>> "symptomology" or a viable "causal" agent responsible for the original
>> difficulties, etc. Not that those are not interesting questions, just that
>> they are (potentially) irrelevant to this particular interaction.
>>
>>
>>
>> -----------
>> Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
>> Supervisory Survey Statistician
>> U.S. Marine Corps
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 8:17 PM, Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Why is my husband unable to breathe and coughs all the time?  And what
>>> is this large white area on his chest x-ray?
>>>
>>> He has lung cancer.
>>>
>>> How do you know?
>>>
>>> Because he has difficulty breathing, he coughs constantly, and he has a
>>> positive chest x-ray.
>>>
>>> Frank C. Wimberly
>>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz
>>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>>>
>>> wimberly3 at gmail.com     wimberly at cal.berkeley.edu
>>> Phone:  (505) 995-8715      Cell:  (505) 670-9918
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen ?
>>> Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2017 5:32 PM
>>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
>>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The root of personality disorders
>>>
>>>
>>> I found this opinion refreshing:
>>>
>>> Narcissistic Personality Disorder and the President-Elect
>>>
>>> http://behaviorismandmentalhealth.com/2017/01/16/narcissisti
>>> c-personality-disorder-and-the-president-elect/
>>>
>>> I particularly liked the (strawman) circularity caricatured by
>>> conflating phenomenology with ontology:
>>>
>>> > Wife: Why is my husband so self-important; why does he have such a
>>> sense of entitlement?
>>> > Psychiatrist: Because he has an illness called narcissistic
>>> personality disorder.
>>> > Wife: How do you know he has this illness?
>>> > Psychiatrist: Because he is so self-important and has such a sense of
>>> entitlement.
>>>
>>> But, personally, seeing [gag] Trump as the epitome of everything that's
>>> wrong with our culture, I can sympathize with the idea of using whatever
>>> tool we might have available to _demonstrate_ to others how thoroughly
>>> unable the man is to fill the role of President.  But we should be careful
>>> not to abandon our own principles in the process.
>>>
>>> --
>>> ☣ glen
>>>
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>>
>>
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>
>
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> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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>
> --
> Cirrillian
> Web Design & Development
> Santa Fe, NMhttp://cirrillian.com281-989-6272 <(281)%20989-6272> (cell)
> Member Design Corps of Santa Fe
>
>
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