From what I understood of this lecture—and I cannot pretend that was much, in the grand scheme of things—there is perplexity to the way in which Descartes mentioned and then quickly abandoned the conception of madness as a challenge to proving the existence of an entity. Dr. Gorman led this discussion by first exploring the ways in which philosophy and mental illness have been known to interact through the case of Phineas Gage. Gage, the man we have to learn about in every psychology course to have ever existed, sustained a traumatic brain injury (specifically injuring the frontal lobe) and supposedly had a large change in personality and behavior. This obviously really impacted the ways in which we view humanity (mind, body, soul ‘n’ whatnot), but that is not exactly where this talk went with it. According to Dr. Shelley Tremain, this purported change in personality came about in response to differential treatment and ableism post-trauma; this ableism, baked into the sciences, raises a lot of questions for philosophers interested in discovering ethical approaches to disability. With that in mind, there was a circle back to Descartes’ argument. I still have no real idea where I stand on that; I imagine there is validity to the idea that he ditched it in order to avoid being stigmatized. What got me interested in the lecture, though, was the whole explanation of the principle of charity (not assuming the worst argument possible is intentional) and the principle of humanity (actions as close to your imagined own) as correlated and potentially undermining of neurodivergence. It reminded me of Dr. Alisha Gaines’ talk about a year ago on the ways in which many white ‘allies’ have responded to racism; the gist of that being that so much ‘allyship’ has historically centered the privileged self and based itself on the contention that if an experience is ‘unempathizable’ (for lack of a better word) to the masses then it is not worth considering and/or dignifying. In the same way that a dreaming state has often been likened with madness, perhaps as a ‘more accessible’ form of mental illness, white ‘allies’ have a deep history of parading around in blackface in order to witness (witness, not experience) racial discrimination ‘first hand.’ It all ties together in my head with assumed experiences over lived experiences; Gage’s condition medically being assumed over his condition socially, etc. (I am truly hoping at least 2% of this response made sense).
WC: 410
I pledge: Rebekah Stone
