TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Virtually Addicted

Re: Virtually Addicted

mc (look@www.ai.uga.edu.for.address)
Fri, 15 Dec 2006 09:46:12 -0500

Must all misconduct be classified as a medical disorder?

Any moralist up to, say, 1950 could have told you that practically all
wrongdoing is addictive. (If it weren't, people wouldn't do it.)
After B. F. Skinner and the notion that morality has no place in a
scientific view of the world, all faults of character are being
medicalized.

I am not denying that (1) there are real mental illnesses of
biological origin, some of the manifesting as lack of self-control, or
that (2) addiction is a real biological phenomenon (especially
addiction to drugs that alter brain chemistry).

But what's next? "Bank-robbing disorder"?

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