Impertinent Questions: Autism, Freudianism & Materialism

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I understand I must be a member for five days before I can post a link to my book about my autistic son. So, in the meantime, I'll post some excerpts from it, hoping to capture your interest. I agree that Asperger's is superior to "normal".

Question 1

Is any segment of society immune from silly ideas?

"Neurotics may be so gullible as to never question a therapist’s diagnosis, but contrary to what psychiatrists seem to believe, the vast majority of the population is neither neurotic, mentally ill nor completely gullible. Once the general public became aware of some of psychiatry’s more bizarre concepts, common sense would eventually prevail, and today both Freud‘s obsession with sex and the notion that mother causes mental illness have generally been abandoned."

Forgive me if I fail to grasp the scope of your post... What is it you are asking? Please be aware that I am in no way attempting to be rude or "flame" you. I just don't understand.

I’m sorry. I fear my post was confusing. I have written a story about my experience with an autistic son. As I’ve read about Asperger’s, I realize I exhibit many of the same characteristics ascribed to people with that label. And while I might acknowledge being a little different, I certainly don’t consider myself in any way abnormal. I would like everyone to read my book, but I understand I’m not allowed to post a link until I have been a member for five days. So I decided to post excerpts from the book until I can post a link to the book itself. I ask a philosophical question about materialism, another of my interests, at the beginning of each chapter, and that was the question heading chapter one. After five days, I’ll post a link to the book itself, and I hope that some of you will become interested enough to read it.

Ok, I think I understand now, you feel while you have some traits for AS that is not enough to be diagnosed. It took me a while to find myself as an individual after my recent diagnosis. I consider myself now near the borderline, mostly due to suppressing my more obvious traits long ago. Remember there is a reason they call it a spectrum as there are an almost limitless degree to which each individual is affected and I'm not saying you are AS or NT or anything else.

Just like there are an endless variety of people, there are very very good mental health professionals and some that I'm sure bought their degree off E-Bay... if you and your son have had a bad experience with one, don't give up on all of them, keep trying until you get one you can trust.

Good luck!

(I know someone will call me out on the suppression comment above, but I'm exhausted and not as articulate as I normally am..I'll think of better wording the moment I log off lol)

I agree that mental health professionals are often quite effective. My story is merely an interesting experience that wouldn’t happen today. But maybe we should be vigilant that something similar doesn’t develop in the future. Learning to express myself on paper was a wonderful, liberating experience, as it must be for anyone with AS tendencies, and I’ve written A Few Impertinent Questions mostly for my own pleasure. (You can google it.) Following are some quotes from chapter 2.

Question 2. Are emotions and feelings real? Do they occupy space? Can they be measured? Predicted? Is there any reason to regard such non physical entities as "supernatural"? One doesn't have to believe in a personal god in order to sense meaning and purpose as an aspect of a creative universe. Our own personal intelligence is not regarded as supernatural. So if intelligent organization exists as an aspect of reality, why should we necessarily regard it as supernatural?

***
That day in April of 1961 was the most significant day in my life. For as long as I lived, I would date events as happening before or after 1961. So far, it hadn’t seemed all that different from other days, a little puzzling perhaps, as I pondered the strange doctor, but not a day that would turn me into a different person. And then sometime after dinner on that April evening, perhaps about nine o’clock, the obscure uneasiness lurking in the recesses of my mind suddenly exploded into consciousness.

The doctor said my child was not normal!

Regardless of how strangely the doctor had behaved, he was a paediatrician. We all wanted to believe doctors knew everything - could fix anything. Such an authority would surely never declare a child abnormal without being certain!

No

Yes


Define space. If emotions are nothing more than chemical states in my brain, those chemicals take up space.



Sure. There is yelling at you angry and hitting you with a baseball bat angry. One is of greater magnitude than the other. Measured with precision? That's a different question.



Sure. If I call you an arse and chase after you with a baseball bat you are going to experience fear and anger.



Supernatural is a terrible concept. If something is outside the natural universe then we cannot access it. If we can access it, it in some way interacts with the natural universe is therefore part of it. Supernatural as a term should be abandoned and replaced with something else.



We shouldn't.

I turn to material possessions for happiness, because they can't hurt me the way that people can.

I can't say I agree with that, thought there are plenty of users here who do. Different yes, but I shy away from deeming it as superior. In many ways, it makes life far more difficult than without it, so I would definitely not say it's "superior."



Nope. I don't think so. Silly ideas are just part of the human existence. Silly ideas, I think, are "normal," but as we all learn we adapt our beliefs and what we generally accept as "truth."



That I can agree with. I really don't like, as most here do not, the labels of "normal" and "abnormal. "Different" is the only acceptable term for me. BUT, there is a reality usually associated with being on the spectrum, and that reality usually means that we have trouble relating to others, who are either on the spectrum or not. How that "trouble" presents itself is unique to each person on the spectrum.

Whether "we" are the normal ones or not, is not as important as whether the difference between us as individuals and those we have to deal with causes serious problems in our daily lives.

For some of us, it's not that big of a problem. For others though, me included, the problems caused by my being different from most people I deal with are very serious, and even debilitating.

I think that when most people speak of "abnormal," they are really talking about a difference that causes our lives to be so different from most around us that it causes serious problems. If that is the meaning of the use of "abnormal," I do not have a problem with that, because in my own case, it's very true.

In the way of materialism, I do not have any desire to get more things. I do not desire popular things, and I do not desire competing to see who has the most. I just do not like materialism, but it's fun to research, isn't it?

Thanks for the responses, everyone. I don’t believe there are definitive answers to any of my questions. I feel strongly about some of them, but I still find myself changing my mind sometimes. I agree, Mr Xxx, that I shouldn’t claim AS to be superior. Personality traits are not in themselves superior or inferior; it‘s what one does with them that matter. However AS people do seem genuinely tolerant. Someone always becomes abusive when I try to discuss these ideas on other discussion boards. Surely tolerance is a superior trait.

Question 3. Are non material processes such as love, imagination and subjective, free choice (free will) subject to laws of nature?

There are two main views: (1) Theism, which claims a deity dictated the laws of nature and bends them when it suits His purpose - and (2) Atheism which sees the laws of nature as popping into existence, for no particular reason, to create a perpetual motion machine, a deterministic, mechanical reality that only changes by accident. There is supposed to be a third view, agnosticism, which insists such knowledge is unknowable. However the human mind seems unable to resist speculating about such things, and my agnostic speculation is that the entire universe is alive and conscious, with some small degree of free will everywhere. The laws of nature are entrenched habits, and the laws of the inanimate universe are so entrenched that they appear fixed. Life, on the other hand, is not only still evolving, the very laws governing life seem to be still evolving. I didn't think up the concept; it is similar to what Rupert Sheldrake writes. Science will probably never be able to prove or disprove any such hypothesis about ultimate reality, but for the moment that is the explanation I find the most satisfying.

This presupposes that it has been decided that such things are not material.

I believe you also are using "Laws of Nature" to mean Laws of Nature as currently defined by science. So even if you posit that these processes are not subject to The Laws, you can only conclude they are not subject to any currently known Laws. This is where the idea of supernatural fails for me. It is used to create this existential space that cannot be probed and defined, and yet it interacts with us. But if it interacts with us it does so within our Laws and is therefore part of those Laws and hence no longer supernatural, or it acts independent of our Laws which means our Laws and not really Laws but simply localized regulations subject to change by higher powers.

It seems a reasonable conjecture that some form of laws govern love, freedom, and other such abstractions. But determining those laws may be impossible since the best tool we have for investigating reality is science and that would require that such laws are amenable to discovery through scientific process and there is nothing to suggest that this imusr be the case.

Silly ideas: I doubt that there's any group free of that. Humans are not primarily rational, they just like to think they are.

Feelings: The emotional pain of being rejected lights up the same parts of the brain as physical pain does, more or less. Feelings are real changes in the brain and body, though maybe, like Aspergers Syndrome, people oversimplify them and misunderstand them a lot. It's commonly supposed that aggression is something to be opposed, but I've read that without it we wouldn't be able to solve any problems at all, though who would notice that feeling aggressive had helped them to work out how to repair something?

Are non material processes such as love, imagination and subjective, free choice (free will) subject to laws of nature?
I don't quite know what you mean by laws of nature, but I suppose you're just trying to distinguish between the supernatural and the natural. Certainly I think that those processes you listed arise purely from the natural world - mental phenomena derived from the complexity of the human brain, and inseparable from it. I don't see anything supernatural about those processes, though they seem just as interesting and magical to me for all that.

Love is probably too complicated to analyse, it seems to mean a number of different things...the broadest "definition" is probably the affinity which an animal can have for another aninal, object or activity....the brain chemistry has changed in such a way that it's geared up to approaching the object of its desires. Imagination is a process by which the brain creates an internal image of something, humans use it a great deal to solve problems without going to the expense of a long trial-and-error approach with the real thing. Free will may or may not exist...it feels like we can easily demonstrate it, by deliberately taking one choice instead of another, but it could always be argued that the person making the choice would not have done so if it hadn't been for the stuff they'd been through that has given them the necessary attitudes and motives to make that particular selection.

We might not disagree, Wavefreak58. Certainly anything that exists is not “supernatural”. However, in the future science might be based upon less materialistic assumptions. I recently read an article on biocentrism, hinting at a participatory, creative universe. I can’t give you the link yet. (5 days) But the article pointed out scientific discoveries such as quantum non locality and sugged consciousness might be an intrinsic aspect of all reality. As for rejection, I suppose I was lucky to never experience it until I was way past maturity. Tomorrow I can give a link to by book. In the meantime an excerpt from it.
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Question 4 -A valid concept should welcome healthy debate, right?:
***
He stood looming over me. I wondered how he'd react if I told him about getting into a poker game, down in the engine room with the crew of the SS North Sea. When the ship reached Sitka, I didn't have enough money to come home if I had wanted.

"Architecture is what I studied in college," I said, sensing this was what he was trying to find out.

The doctor moved back toward his desk and was silent for a moment. "Got pretty good grades, didn't you." It wasn't a question. He sounded less contentious, almost sympathetic.

"My grades were all right." They weren't quite as good as the doctor was making them sound.

"What is your religion. I mean - ah - do you have any religious affiliations?" A moment ago he had arrogantly badgered me to tell him details of my private life. Now suddenly, he seemed embarrassed to ask my religion.

"Agnostic."

"Agnostic or atheist?"

"Agnostic I guess, but I send the children to Sunday school."

Most parents feel obligated to indoctrinate their children with their own theology. Resolving questions of one's personal philosophy and finding meaning in twentieth century existence seemed to me the most difficult, significant accomplishment of anyone's life. Neither Ike nor I had any desire to impose our beliefs upon anyone else, including our children.

This question is ambiguous. Are you asking if 1) a valid concept will inspire healthy debate, 2) if people should seek to debate valid concepts because they are amenable (welcoming) to healthy debate or 3) if the validity if a concept is measured by the nature of the debate that surrounds it?

1) If true, a valid concept would be noticed by people, they would then debate it. An invalid concept would be ignored, wither and die. This strikes me as false. A concept's validity cannot be known without debate and a healthy debate may show what was thought to be a valid concept to be invalid

2) People should seek to debate concepts that have a material impact on the problems at hand. The validity is determined by the debate itself.

3) False. A valid concept could never be debated. An invalid concept could be vigorously debated. The quality of the debate is independent of the validity of the concept.

Shouldn't this thread be over in Philosophy, Politics and Religion? Seems to be focused on something other than the autism spectrum.