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ryan g's picture

As a no-teakettle person, I

As a no-teakettle person, I want to respond to the point that if there is no tea kettle reality, there is no point in talking to each other because we have no common ground.  

To be sure that I was understanding you correctly, it seems like you were saying that we all have our inherent sets of beliefs and meanings that you acknowledge is not tea-kettle reality.  However, all of our individual tea kettles are pointing towards some ultimate reality that represents the true meaning of things and our goal should be to endlessly strive to make our set of beliefs and judgements more congruent with that ultimate reality.  

Here's where I agree and disagree with you.  I do think that there is that ultimate reality that we are all trying to explain.  However, I don't think that that ultimate reality has an inherent set of meaning to it.  I would say, it just exists and all meaning that is assigned to it is done by us.  

Therefore, for us to discuss mental health, all that is necessary to exist is the set of behaviors and symptoms we observe.  From there, we can and do argue over what things mean.  However, in my mind, we just need to acknowledge the fact that any conclusions we come to are not a product of the inherent meaning of that behavior but instead they represent our own interpretations of it, and as such they carry with them the flaws associated with our judgements.  

Going off on a bit of a tangent... I fully acknowledge that this is not a very useful set of thoughts for addressing issues such as healthcare policy and mental health parity.  Also, as a future physician, I don't think it would be very good for business to go around telling my patients I don't actually believe there is any such thing as health.  

Because of this, I will definitely engage in learning and applying sets of meanings.  Indeed, I plan on spending the next several years learning the version the AAMC wants me to learn.  I'm not saying they are worthless.  The important thing, in my opinion, is to keep it always in mind that this is and always will be only one interpretation.  

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