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Monday 16 January 2012

Depressing day?

Today is supposed to be the most depressing day of the year.  I have to say is "a bit parky" this morning and the frost is still deep in the ground, despite glorious sunshine, a cloudless sky and the air being sharp, clean and fresh after some rather dank days.

It is also that time of year when more and more parents are joining the forum, after discovering the breadth and depth of their child's eating disorder over the Christmas holidays.

My task for the day?  To try and educate myself about the law, the Mental Health Act, capacity and sectioning.  My first sticking point has come with the question of Monoism and Dualism, not something that I had really considered before.  Having read David Wood's brilliant opening chapter (short relevant excerpt here)  of Bryan Lask's Eating Disorders and the Brain, I am inclined, for the purposes of advocacy, to be a monoist.

Yes, yes, I get that means giving up my free will and the religious, ethical and moral considerations that this statement implies is scary.

Any thoughts?

1 comment:

  1. I am in the monism camp, and have been since I was about eighteen. It scared the crap out of me for a good few years, but that's no reason to ignore logic and science. I think consciousness will turn out to be a phenomenon of emergence. Emergence is seriously cool :)

    Free will just doesn't make sense to me, not in the philosophical/literal meaning. I believe that thoughts and emotions arise from biochemical and electrical processes in the brain, so EVERYTHING is biological. Whenever someone says "yeah, but EDs aren't 100% biological" I usually say this, because I am a pedant, but I do also say that I know not everyone thinks the same way that I do! Some people just don't have the stomach for it, and some people believe in God or another type of spirituality. I just can't. I don't have that sort of wiring.

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