WP tagline like saying Homosexuality is Not a Disease

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I'm all fine with spirituality in the loose sense as meaning that feeling of awe or wonder of existance. What I don't like is religious, supernatural BS. I know "spiritual atheist" sounds like an oxymoron, but that pretty much describes me.

Oh, and I think a lot of Jung is crap, same with Freud. I'm an adherent of the Cognitivist-Connectionist school of psychology that developed from Behaviorism

Awesome! ROFL! I love you!

Hate to say it, but be ready... some people will miss the SARCASM in your comments!

Oh my garsh. My head is hurting from reading all these posts....


Let's dance!

I wouldn't mind at all some body suggesting another example of a social construct to illustrate the process, or one that doesn't fit my theory for me to think about!!

Introversion hadn't been a helpful comparison precisely because it IS so close to Aspergers. It has barely any historical presence, and little signification in todays world for most people, often no more than astrology. It has in fact been partly debunked, partly replaced, ( by autism/Aspergers? )and partly forgotten, whereas homosexuality has been accepted as "real" by most people.
It ( homosexuality) was a parallel that helped me see the construct Aspergers clearer. And also makes me slightly uneasy about introversion/extraversion.

I do think that Introversion descibes many of the components included in the construct Aspergers.
I particularly like the explanations offered by its reference to the optimum-brain-activity stimulus-levels-setting in the brain, which is not fixed, but may be altered by prolonged stress etc, so can go from being "extravert" to "introvert", which seems more fluid than the construct of Aspergers. Less limiting/permanently defining.

But that may be just because it has been abandoned as an effective method/label for social "control". It didn't quite have what it takes. Wasn't quite medical enough at the time. Nobody knew about "brain activity levels at rest" etc.
Or it wasn't needed. When was it invented? When did it fall into disuse? When did it begin to be revived, only to be eaten up again by autism?
So my preference for introversion over aspergers is because "introversion" isn't being "used" at the moment , maybe?!

Last edited by ouinon on 01 Jan 2008, 3:42 pm, edited 2 times in total.

http://www.nonlinearthinking.com/what.htm

This is what none linear is, too many people go by linear thinking these day's, just like humans are the only animals that train themselfs not to listen to they instincts ( Gut Feeling ).

BEHAVIORISM - truth is obtained via observation and experimentation The formation of conditioned associations between external stimulus events and responses. Sounds like bad science to me but keep a open mind..

Since observation normally fails... as you have to do experiment & rely on what the patient says, then you just move onto the next treatment until that don't work, until u kill someone...

Sorry they is three types of Behaviorism which one you talking about?

Methodological behaviorism is a normative theory about the scientific conduct of psychology. It claims that psychology should concern itself with the behavior of organisms (human and nonhuman animals). Psychology should not concern itself with mental states or events or with constructing internal information processing accounts of behavior. According to methodological behaviorism, reference to mental states, such as an animal's beliefs or desires, adds nothing to what psychology can and should understand about the sources of behavior. Mental states are private entities which, given the necessary publicity of science, do not form proper objects of empirical study. Methodological behaviorism is a dominant theme in the writings of John Watson (1878-1958).

Psychological behaviorism is a research program within psychology. It purports to explain human and animal behavior in terms of external physical stimuli, responses, learning histories, and (for certain types of behavior) reinforcements. Psychological behaviorism is present in the work of Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936), Edward Thorndike (1874-1949), as well as Watson. Its fullest and most influential expression is B. F. Skinner's (1904-90) work on schedules of reinforcement.

To illustrate, consider a food-deprived rat in an experimental chamber. If a particular movement, such as pressing a lever when a light is on, is followed by the presentation of food, then the likelihood of the rat's pressing the lever when hungry, again, and the light is on, is increased. Such presentations are reinforcements, such lights are (discriminative) stimuli, such lever pressings are responses, and such trials or associations are learning histories.

Analytical or logical behaviorism is a theory within philosophy about the meaning or semantics of mental terms or concepts. It says that the very idea of a mental state or condition is the idea of a behavioral disposition or family of behavioral tendencies. When we attribute a belief, for example, to someone, we are not saying that he or she is in a particular internal state or condition. Instead, we are characterizing the person in terms of what he or she might do in particular situations or environmental interactions. Analytical behaviorism may be found in the work of Gilbert Ryle (1900-76) and the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-51). More recently, the philosopher-psychologist U. T. Place (1924-2000) advocated a brand of analytical behaviorism restricted to intentional or representational states of mind, such as beliefs, which Place took to constitute a type, although not the only type, of mentality (see Graham and Valentine 2004). Arguably, a version of analytical or logical behaviorism may also be found in the work of Daniel Dennett on the ascription of states of consciousness via a method he calls ‘heterophenomenology’ (Dennett 2005, pp. 25-56). (See also Melser 2004.)

Regardless of the extent to which nurture and nature play in homosexuality, it is clearly not a choice. Just as I can remember back to being a little boy and being attracted to girls, many gays and lesbians can do the same with same-sex attraction.

Even if sexual orientation is 100% nurture, which is extremely unlikely, the age at which it is determined, for any of us, is too young to say that the child or toddler made a choice.

In the end big circle of we allready know, just a small section that still holds onto the old bible type stuff.. God created Adam & Eve they fore that is what should be...

With it be experimentation,
Because of something that happened,
or your just naturally born that way...

Just people's reaction to the new, more that is, the more people question is it meant to be or is it a gentic defect problem / other reasons... I been reading up on gluten free diets & its under allergies for gluten... (CD) this is one problem i came across with it, inflammatory disease of the small bowel intestinal lining. It is triggered by a delayed allergic reaction to a protein called gluten in the normal diet.

Thank you, nominalist, for the nudge, because, oddly enough, in the context of this thread i now see, as Anbuend was pointing out two pages or more ago, that actually it can be a choice.

Firstly because 130 years ago lesbians, like homosexuals, didn't exist.
What were they before that? They were humans who sometimes, occasionally or always had sex with own sex. They were "just" humans. Now , because of the invention of terms homosexual and lesbian, and even bi, need to work out "what am i"? ! ! Rather than when fancy someone of own sex just thinking "ah i fancy so and so", without needing to re-identify yourself, since these terms were invented one has to "position oneself". Perhaps redefine oneself.
Some people in recent years are increasingly refusing to do that. But the general impression remains that if find oneself fancying someone of own sex have to somehow alter sense of ones own identity. So the terms in themselves are an illusion which produce the illusion of non-choice/discovery of an "essential" previously hidden.
Secondly because i think it is possible to strip oneself of conditioning, of restrictions and prejudices, deliberately for example as part of politicisation, and find oneself fancying ones own sex as a result.
And it is not a question of discovery of a deeper self as if was always there, it is a choice to make a different person of oneself.
Sorry, Anbuend, didn't see what you meant yesterday about that.

So not only do homosexuals and lesbians not really exist, but it is possible to "choose" homosexual feelings as part of self-determination.

If I strip myself of my resentment of schools, my mixture of fear and admiration and hostage trauma about schools, i can strip myself of my little professor style social skills impairment, copied so compulsively from teachers behaviour in the classroom. If I strip myself of that resentment of schools, of hours obliged to do stupid stuff, of noise and 30 children and absurd time consuming pointless rituals, if i can get over hating that all so much that i have taken it into my very deepest being, then i might stop approaching people like a teacher, stop nitpicking and pronouncing and controlling and monologuing and ignoring others signs of boredom, while all the time "feeling" unwelcome ( as a teacher knows themselves to be much of the time to most students).
I might turn out to be a different kind of person.

Can't do much about my poorly developed proprioceptive system, ( as a result of enforced immobility in infancy and too early reading) its related motor skill impairment, nor my sensitivity to everything ( it's prob genetic) except reduce fundamental sensory imput with careful diet etc, but i think it's important precisely for this reason, as Donna Williams points out, to keep clear in the mind the separateness of the various difficulties/ issues, that do not assume can do nothing about any of them, because some key elements i believe are changeable, like sexuality can be. Aspergers, like the word homosexual, suggests a whole person, and permanence.

Last edited by ouinon on 01 Jan 2008, 5:17 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Empirically, it cannot, in most cases, be a choice - unless one attributes advanced cognitive abilities to toddlers.



As a nominalist, I distinguish between the tropes (or observable attributes of an entity) and the narratives by which those tropes can be linguistically constructed. The behavior which we today call homosexuality is ancient, but it was constructed differently. Likewise, when I was a child, the autism spectrum was constructed as childhood schizophrenia. In the early 20th century, alcoholism, or drunkenness, was constructed mostly as sin (prior to the incorporation of the medical model).



Well, it is extraordinarily difficult, as a practical or empirical matter, to differentiate nature from nurture in many cases.



Homosexuals and lesbians exist, but homosexuality and lesbianism are social constructions. Since I limit existence to beings, my view is that social constructions of reality do not exist.

Spiffing brilliant points, ouinon and mark!

Excellent dialogue and really helpful in teasing apart the underlying reality (if there is such a thing!) from the veneers and prevailing overlays.

I feel you've encapsulated my position very well. I am not a labelled construct.

I am [lupin]; I do [take your pick: e.g. driving a car, AS behaviours, homosexuality, writing, going to the loo, sing, fly Space Shuttle missions...].

I will not be defined by what I do or appear to do.

Even though I may do more of one thing than another (errmm...I do more AS behaviours than singing; I go to the loo frequently, I hardly ever do the Space Shuttle stuff. And then only in my dreams! )

Mark,

Re: age of "choice" , obviously some people, in the majority boys i think, "know" that they are attracted to a certain sex from early on. but for many the "realisation" only surfaces at puberty, and even then can take a few years or more to become fixed.

Homosexuals and lesbians would not exist if it were not for the names lesbian and homosexual. They would not be fixed in sexual orientations in same way, if doctors had not made up the whole idea. So the word aspergers is separating people off systematically in a way that didn't happen before.

Last edited by ouinon on 01 Jan 2008, 7:37 pm, edited 2 times in total.

The realization, yes. However, there are other signs which developmental psychologists look at. My point is that, for those people who can remember back to their earliest crushes, they were usually consistent with their present sexual orientations as adults.

Thank you.

Gay History = Human History
Brief gay history survey and guide to highlights

History is written by the victors. They choose what will be remembered, and what covered up. So it has been with male eros. Looking at any history textbook, one would think that never has a society praised love between men, never has a painter, a poet or a pope shared his bed and his heart with another male. Evidence of same-sex love has been either quietly suppressed, as with the Greeks and Romans, or quickly destroyed, as is still done with newly unearthed Inca and Mayan art. The result of this deception has been a needless polarization of society and untold suffering for those people who happen to fall in love with others of their own sex.

Uncensored, the historical record reveals an opposite reality: the male love instinct is a universal constant. Only society's attitude towards it has varied. All cultures have regulated male love, weaving varied tapestries of ritual around it. And a few have tried - to no avail - to regulate it out of existence.

http://www.androphile.org/

This is what I love about none linear thinking...

@Logitechdog - this highlights well and succinctly many of the points we've been discussing here. It's true that those who write the history are in charge of the history

(Hmmm...wonder how many Aspies there were/are amongst historians...now there;s a whole new field ripe for digging! )


BTW - would you mind explaining how you see non-linear thinking/investigation etc? (Sorry, don't want to hijack the thread - perhaps you could start a new one on the topic if you're interested in exposition?)

http://www.nonlinearthinking.com/what.htm

This explains what it is... Have to read most of it before you get to the know what it is.

Don't know if it is naturally something I do or other people have it too... or they use the linear way.. As it been a right brained thing I can't see how if that is true or not but I do get a balanced brain in a brain test...