a moral right to income cannot be reasonably held. — Benkei

Would you accept a change to, "a moral right to all income of any kind or amount cannot be reasonably held"? If I labor in my small garden I should like to suppose I have a defendable right to at least some of that produce - sharing of course with the local rabbits.

The problem with mental health care is a part of the deconstruction of the hospitals and other state institutions that has been done under the idea that such work could be redirected to community level support. This process has been under way for decades. The fallout is perhaps now forcing itself into a wider public awareness. To be clear, this does not resolve into any particular political agenda. It is an intellectual failure of our society as a whole. — Paine

Actually, guess who. Republicans, courtesy of Ronald - not the professional clown but the amateur one - Reagan.

..

:100: I like that!

An ultimatum forces a decision, not an external act. Here there is the very large difference between choice and coercion. — Leontiskos

Then you shall have to draw your line with care. And care to note I referred to practical choice. As to action, there is no ultimate. Excepting perhaps gravity, under the influence of which I'm obliged fall, I don't have to do anything, although perhaps being subject to persuasion.

The OP seems to be about the creation, usually by argument of some kind, of systems of dilemmas. Douglas Hofstadter in Godel, Esher, and Bach, coined the verb "joots," which he meant to be understood as "jump out of the system" - a might fine and useful verb. Not always easy to do, but fatal to ultimatums. Which leaves of course all matters of practical concern, in which decisions I think always lead to one or another choice of action.

What makes for an impactful moral dilemma? For me it is the "Ultimatum." — Benj96

Just think necessity. Necessity forecloses on (practical) choice, which is the species of choice I think you're referring to. And necessity imposes ultimatums every day for everyone all the time.

Do your best to have some idea beforehand what you're about and what you want. If you want to learn, talk to people who (also) want to learn, or teach. If you want to fight, talk to people who want to fight - don't confuse yourself about whom you're talking with. And if you want to talk about philosophy, talk to people who want to talk about philosophy. Fools, foolishness, and fanaticism can be kinds of addictions - addicts are usually impenetrable and usually require professional/corporate care. They will waste your time, energy, and resources and they can hurt you. If you're with one, get away asap and stay away.

Philosophy is about ideas, not ego. If you want to seem wise, listen (and learn), and be simple, modest, and honest in speaking. Now an instructive tale: In school, a girl who claimed to read, like, and understand Hegel wanted to talk to me about Hegel, whom then and now I neither read, like, nor understand. Like a fool I tried to keep pace with her - which got me forever nowhere. Far better to have pled ignorance, expressed admiration for her perspicacity, and asked for her help - would she like a glass of wine (which was available)?

Without claiming to be right (and never having finished ... Practical Reason), I understand his Critique of Pure Reason to be about knowledge itself, what we can and cannot know, and how. And for me most of the argument might be contained in a back-and-forth about a tree in your back yard. For example, if asked if there's a tree in your backyard, you might answer that there is. Being asked how you know, you might say that you can see it. Ask what exactly that means and you're off the races. And people who are quite sure that they see a tree are called "naive."

who decides and enforced what is true and what is false? Personally I can’t think of any people, alive or dead, fit for such a task. — NOS4A2

You must be right, nos4, truth is indeterminable. Hmm, that means there is no disinformation; it all must be information. Well, one thing your "argument" makes clear is that you're a weasel - its a weasel argument - and you know it, which is part of being a weasel. Or I'm wrong and you're right, in which case you're still a weasel because no one can show as true that you're not.

And of course, to be sure, the proposition that it is not possible to know truth from falsehood is just more disinformation - which is a weasel's business!

Why should we worry about misinformation? — NOS4A2

Because disinformation is not information. Information (presumably) comports with truth, disinformation everything and anything but (else it would be information).

That is, the one is beneficial and the other harmful. And this harm from this harmful unnecessary. If, then, there is a cost associated with the harm caused by disinformation, and there usually is, who should bear it? And if the harm is greater than some amount or degree, should there be also the possibility of penalties or prior restraint? And the general answer around the world and through history is that the liar - for disinformation is a lie - should pay and even be punished; and is in various ways in different places.

I would like to see all lies, all disinformation, subject to civil and criminal penalties: a fine for the lie, scaled to the importance of it; compensation for costs associated with the lie; punitive penalties added if appropriate, and prison if appropriate. A lot of this already exists, but imo it needs to be universal and comprehensive - because lies and their consequences are universal and comprehensive.

And this gets tangled with free speech only by people who do not understand the word "free." Unfortunately there are a lot of them, who both do not and will not understand, and some of those even here posting on TPF.

What should be the payoff if you bet 1000 euros on Achilles. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Not much, I should think. I wonder what odds Zeno might give.

..

Is there anything that language can’t express? — kindred

Is here anything language can express? What does it mean to say that language "expresses"?

We still debate this today — Gregory

Limiting ourselves for the sake of convenience to just Achilles and the tortoise, what exactly is there to debate about?

No my claim is that something exists before it manifests as an actual thing in the world, in this case intelligence. — kindred

You realize - yes? - that you're talking nonsense here. E.g., if a thing exists that is not an actual thing, and then it "manifests as an actual thing," then it is either the same thing or a different thing, and in-as-much as it goes from being a not-actual thing to an actual thing, then it's hard for me to see how it is the same thing. And as to the claim of the existence of not-existing things, it's incumbent on you to make clear just how that can be.

Inanimate matter could have continued to remain inanimate yet it didn’t because we have life (intelligence) so something happened to it which we can’t explain, we call this process abiogenesis. — kindred

Perhaps you will read the Wikipedia article on abiogenesis. You will see that what life is, is not-so-easy to say, and that intelligence is a very long way down the evolutionary road. That is, that life and intelligence are not the same thing and should not be confused. Life seems to be a kind of ordinary process, which I think is inevitable given the right conditions. Maybe also intelligence, but maybe too with that some luck required.

Not something but intelligence particularly. — kindred

Alrighty. Intelligence exists before it exists. Um, no.

We know one thing for sure, that matter went from being inanimate to animate in this universe at least. — kindred

No again. We know exactly that it does not/cannot. You're being too informal in your language and then reifying the errors into a fantasy that you're representing as (a) reality. It's not even language on a holiday; it's language in a playpen. And the topic is not well-served by such.

So, is your claim that something exists before it exists? Or is it something else?

Would you then agree that non-life has the potential to give rise to life and intelligence? Would you also then agree that at the very least intelligence is a potential in the universe? — kindred

I'm not 180 but I'll bite. The first granted because it appears to have happened, and more than once. The second granted same reason. Is your point something like something exists before it exists?

My own bias is that given combinations of elements and circumstances, that life happens. Just how many different combinations of elements and circumstances no one knows. But more than one.

has no logical explanation — kindred

What is a "logical" explanation? You seem to be making a categorical distinction: how does an explanation differ from a logical explanation? - Assuming that by "explanation" we mean something that makes sense as opposed to something that does not or cannot make sense.

Consider a set of points. — MoK

Ok. The surface of a table-top. Discrete or continuous? A sandy beach? Or the surface of a liquid? Certainly by your definition the number line continuous, but made up of discrete points - how can that be? It would seem that "discrete" and "continuous" are abstract convenient fictions their utility depending on usage in context. Thus when misused you might bet on the tortoise, but I'll bet on Achilles every time.

Eighteen minutes off-world. With pictures.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RajAq0Yd-s4

Usually murdering someone is unthinkable, and thus Trump has got a pass from what is by now tens of thousands of people he has victimized - and really it is a wonder that no one in his long toxic career has taken him down even if only by making very reasonable blue-collar-type threats. Of course maybe some have and we just don't know of it. But now a couple of people have made the unthinkable thinkable in an everyday sort of way.

A short speech from near the start of The Tempest comes to mind.

"GONZALO I have great comfort from this fellow. Methinks
he hath no drowning mark upon him. His
complexion is perfect gallows. Stand fast, good
Fate, to his hanging. Make the rope of his destiny
our cable, for our own doth little advantage. If he be
not born to be hanged, our case is miserable."

And I would have it this way, that justice have its way and make such an example of him that his name itself become for a century a byword of justice imposed. Like Quisling or Petain or Benedict Arnold. But it may be that someone, one of many, will see the matter through on his own terms, and who will say then that justice was not served? But the evil of such things is that one unthinkable act grooms another - and that part of the toxic legacy of a toxic person. The remedy a stiff and inexorable dose of justice.

I suppose it can be useful to consider that if spacetime is continuous then this, and if discrete then that. But I haven't seen where it is made clear just what discrete and continuous mean. My bad if I missed it; please point me to it. Or can either of you in a sentence or two make those concepts clear?

In your other thread I asked this, which you saw fit not to answer, "I suppose this means you are in favor of cash payouts of some kind to some people. To whom, how much, what for, and to what end?"

Will you/can you answer now?

I make a very sharp distinction between psychiatry and therapy. The business of one to cure patients - and to date (subject to correction) they cannot. The other about facilitating for clients what you call change, or (re)habilitation. From the psychiatrist I expect first he or she will act in accordance with the principle of primum non nocere , then act to safeguard/improve quality of life including confinement if needed and the option of drugs. I believe that the basic training of psychiatrists as MDs would tend to disqualify most of them - nearly all - as therapists, at least without a lot of additional training/retraining.

And therapy for those who may be able to benefit from it, being about trying to understand circumstances thereby to develop strengths to deal with them, usually not always through talking about them. And a good therapist can accomplish in a mercifully few hours what otherwise might take years to get through. Having made this distinction, I'll suppose we're both in the same choir and on the same page. That will save me the strain of writing what already a matter of assent maybe does not need to be writ.

In no special order.

Stopping light - one of several:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8Nj2uTZc10

Faster than light, Cerenkov radiation - one of several:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yjx0BSXa0Ks&t=169s

And quantum entanglement, which appears to be not only faster the light, but instantaneous. I think what you meant is that the speed of light in a vacuum is the speed limit for things, and information cannot be transmitted more quickly, although with entanglement that might require some qualification.

On intelligence, your comment was that

Only one species developed our level of intelligence on earth, — Relativist

.
I noted there were at least eight kinds of humans. And you replied:

Hardly. None of them had a human level of intelligence. — Relativist

. The most charitable thing to say here is that it appears you're confusing knowledge, certain kinds of knowledge, with intelligence, and that's just plain a mistake.

"Maybe life developed in multiple environments and then interacted. "
Speculation. — Relativist

Yup. Astute of you, or did the "maybe" give it away. The biases I find is that you appear to think of life as that which comports with your ideas of life, rather than restraining yourself so that your ideas of life might comport both with what life is and may be; and, that in mentioning survival advantages there seems more than a hint of teleology. Individuals may want to survive; to say that life wants to survive requires some elaboration to make sense - and teleology is just a sometines useful convenient fiction.

I understand a "logical possibility" as one not ruled out by, say, the law of non-contradiction. If you want to consider all of those, go for it. I think there are better uses for time and thinking. As to simple possibility and probability, consider: in our limited experience approximately at least one planet in ten evolves myriad advanced life forms, with at least one we consider pretty intelligent. If there are at least one trillion galaxies, each with about 150 billion stars, and the number of planets at least twice the number of stars and probably many more, then you do the math on the number of advanced life forms, and the number of those we would count as pretty intelligent or even very intelligent.

As you choose to mention my PM to you, it would have been nice also to include my point to you, that your arguments through lack of care and some rigor, become borderline nonsensical.

But somewhere above you observe that distances are such it's unlikely we're going to encounter any aliens any time soon - and that I agree with.

Hardly. None of them had a human level of intelligence. — Relativist

Sweet Jesus! They were all human - just not like you! Unique common ancestor? Life began "under exactly one environment"? I think you need to be a little more precise in what you write. I'll buy the proposition that so far, existing life appears to share a common ancestor, although deep sea thermal vent life may disprove that. But that is silent on life that may have existed before and disappeared. And it leaves open the question of what "exactly one environment" is. Maybe life developed in multiple environments and then interacted. The problem is that you have guesses and an apparent bias, all of which you think is knowledge. And it isn't. Maybe they're good and educated guesses, but not knowledge.

And you seem to be limiting life to earth-like life - and that's absurd on its face.

Only one species developed our level of intelligence on earth, — Relativist

Copied from our friend the 'net:

"Apart from our species, the gallery features eight other kinds of human: Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, Homo erectus, Homo antecessor, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo floresiensis (nicknamed 'the hobbit'), Homo neanderthalensis (the Neanderthals) and the recently discovered Homo naledi."

That's an error by a factor of at least eight, right here, in the last few hundred thousands of years. As to "goldilocks" conditions, I commend to you a little research on life forms on earth before the "oxygen catastrophe." And current life forms by thermal vents in the deep ocean. To my way of thinking, more interesting than the brute fact of life is what about being alive that makes life keep on - or might that be an evolutionary accident as well?

And that's just for life. — Relativist

Keeping in mind the different kinds of life that have occurred on this planet, it appears that many "notions" of life should be qualified as life-like-us. Once free of that parish-pump idea, the possibilities for life increase by a lot. And where there's life there's the possibility of evolution. Life is thought of variously as divine, magical, mysterious. More likely it is simply a very possible mix of the right chemicals and some energy, and not even a lot of energy. Thus given enough chances, inevitable; and given a universe's number of chances, frequent.

In terms of the local universe, imo any thought of constraint on the possibilities of life must be reckoned provincial and a provincialism reinforced by the blunt fact of distance.

And how to calculate the cost of previous generation is the biggest problem, — Sir2u

Maybe this is the problem. It is called a sunk cost.

This from online:
"What Is a Sunk Cost?
"A sunk cost is an expense that cannot be recovered by additional spending or investment. Businesses should be careful to exclude sunk costs from future decisions because they will remain the same regardless of the outcome of those decisions.

"When a business or investor spends more money trying to reverse past losses, they risk succumbing to the sunk cost fallacy. The expression "Don't send good money chasing after bad money" is a caution against this type of mistake."

If by "Cadet" you mean you're a student of some kind, and if by your OP you have meant to charm us into providing for you thoughts and material for a paper of yours, then you have done a marvelous job. And lucky you, you shall receive some of mine.

There ain't no such thing as truth. "Truth" is a reified adjective masquerading both as an ordinary noun (person, place, or thing) and an abstract noun (a something not a person, place, or thing). There are statements that are true (the adjective), but always w.r.t. some context; the being true of a true statement a quality of that statement. Abstracting that quality and generalizing it yields truth, a useful concept, but nothing at all in itself. So don't look for it and don't worry about it. Worry instead if you must about what is true, and how and why.

As to objectivism and relativism - A1 job of defining - the same trick; that is, referral to context. And a key concept for me here is that the objective is not (ever) found "out there," but in here, bootstrapped, so to speak (some of us hate the term). E.g., 2+2=4 is by most folks held to be objectively true, and it would seem to be. But if there is no one to state it?

You can think of Descartes resolving skepticism with his cogito; Kant relativism with his categorical imperative; and Heidegger nihilism with his sorge (due to Michael Gelvin. A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time). Seeming themselves objectively true....

Mr. Clark, above, refers to "metaphysical truths," being the Ur-like beliefs of people that R.G. Collingwood calls absolute presuppositions, and others following Wittgenstein call hinge propositions. These come closest, imo, to objective truths, but the insight is that dug down to the ground of the foundation, they're just beliefs. .

The same observations you’re making concerning psychiatry could be made with respect to philosophy. — Joshs

Some no doubt, but in terms of my argument, nonsense and non sequitur. Knowledge is a something. To claim to have it is a claim to have something. If it turns out you don't have and never did have it, then whence the claim? There's a piece of difficult forensic accounting to be done, the usual results of which not-so-honorable.

Where the rubber meets the road, psychiatry and psychiatrists have claimed knowledge that turned out not to be, and often enough to be, as Mr. Storm points out, as a profession demonized. Trust, once lost, is hard to regain. My impression is that many psychiatrists have retreated from false claims to providing services that will foster trust: prescribing, managing certain kinds of care, and so forth.

My own bias would have the title "psychiatrist" done away with, replaced perhaps with a degree in mental health practices or something like. The word itself means doctor of the psyche - psyche itself, defined too many different ways to itself retain any unqualified sense.

Ah, Mr. Powell, a vague memory of vague reference now unfortunately reanimated. Let's "x-ray" it in order to determine what if any substance is in it. The American president, Abraham Lincoln, started a speech with, "Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history." And this the lesson to be found in Powell's talk, although not explicitly made, and only slight evidence he was aware of it.

Sometimes we control history; that the luxury of many of the middle class and above of a large piece of the western world. And sometimes the imperatives of history have it run over its banks like a river at full flood devouring all in its path. This the fate and testimony of all caught by any of history's four horsemen.

At a local level, it is a foolish resistance to, denial of, change. And this lesson may be expressed as, if you play carelessly in the traffic of history, you will be run down.

To the point: the dead are dead, and unless you can make the dead laugh, reparations to them is nonsense-talk. To the living, assistance to overcome the costs of the effects of prejudice. Not a payment to assuage guilt, but a recognition that assistance, well-tailored to need, is in the long-term interests of the community itself.

the universe is not a fair place. — Sir2u

If not for the generous and more than generous gifts of the universe, where do you suppose you would be?

a psychiatrist is a medical doctor with further specialist knowledge - so has all the knowledge of a GP and additionally has expert knowledge of mental illness.... Anyway, I'm going to leave this one here since there is no end to a debate like this and it's not really my role to defend psychiatry,... The profession is generally demonized and poorly understood. Which was my original observation. — Tom Storm

Not so easy! The discussion - I don't consider it a debate; what would we be debating? - is about knowledge. Your representation that psychiatrists have knowledge. Mine that to be sure they have some but with respect to their subject matter, not much knowledge. Again not itself a criticism. And I think that the disrepute psychiatry has had - I'm not sure of its status today - is not so much because of the practices of some bad apples, but because of the general claims and practices of psychiatry itself, still among them, though perhaps muted, claims to knowledge that isn't.

The failure of any claim to knowledge is not just an "Oops" moment. Rather instead it is an indictment of the work that led to the claim and the system that supports the work. If nothing else, the evidence that psychiatry still needs work would be its still claiming knowledge it does not have, to the degree it still does so. My guess is that most professionals in their personal practices have taken the historical lesson and try not to make such claims.

Then you seem to be arguing that psychiatry is not knowledge. — Tom Storm

Back to the question then, in different form: what exactly does psychiatry know, and what does it know about it? My own best guess for an answer is that they know about behaviors - they have observed them. And have made observations that are essentially statistical in nature - no doubt it's not quite that simple - thus being able to make "educated" guesses by looking at the data. Not to be confused with knowledge. And not a criticism but a critique; that is, a fact, or so I think.

Ask an orthopedist how he knows the leg is broken and he will reply something like this, "Lookee here at this x-ray! It's broken!" And that in such tones and terms and with such evidence as command assent. Ask a psychiatrist c. 1970 about a hebephrenic or a homosexual, and he will say they're sick. Except that in 2024 hebephrenia is not a thing and homosexuality not a sickness. And while that's a half-century ago, I don't think psychiatry has refined its understandings to qualify as knowledge.

Maybe more simply, medical knowledge is categorical; the leg is broken or the leg is not broken. For psychiatry, the ability to make knowledge-based categorical statements a luxury they usually do not enjoy.

the same way we had been trying for decades now. — L'éléphant

Small point: how many decades? SIx? Sixty years? Assuming the search has been efficient and effective for that long, that's a search radius of about 60 light-years. The radius of the Milky way is 50,000+ light years. Further, contact by signal to be acknowledged will take at least an equal time back. Thus given the distances, it's like looking for a needle in a very, very large haystack, and even if it turns out there a many needles, still, we have barely even begun.

And in terms of signals of any kind sent, one hundred year's worth? If they're even detectable? And our nearest galactic neighbor about 2.5M light-years? We're likely going to alone for at least a very long time.

To attempt to restore the victim to some status quo ante would in my opinion be even more complicated. — Sir2u

That's why clarity, in concrete terms, about everything matters. Briefly: a community can be injured as a whole - as a city subject to an artillery barrage - but the people of the city, if they're to be cured/rehabilitated at all, must be treated individually as individuals. And so with the effects of racism, slavery a species.

The general form of the remedy as it occurs to me is to provide for each individual an opportunity to recover what was taken. And again in general terms, what was taken was opportunity itself. As to just how that opportunity might be presented, I recall pictures from 1957 in Little Rock, Arkansas, of soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division of the US Army escorting nine students into their high school. Offered, presented, enforced, but the students still had to themselves follow through. Which they did.

For those for whom opportunity is no longer a useful option, something more tailored and substantive, But at the same time the society itself to be cured so that new generations of victims aren't created - and that a problem worthy of its own thread.

We agree thus far at least, so I might be able to convince you to consider that the medical model may be somewhat at fault.... One of the difficulties of the medical model — unenlightened

My understanding of the medical model is inherited from those who don't like it. And it amounts to this: if you go to the doctor you are by definition and understanding a patient and thereby something must be wrong, and it is the doctor's business to find something wrong - that he or she can treat.

As to any social change theory of mental illness, I suppose it can offer a cause as a reason for a behavioral change, but connecting that to behavioral change as a result of illness not-so-easy. That is, that which makes it an illness would to me seem to inhere in the patient - the persistence of the symptom, the "cause" being removed, being evidence that the illness is in the patient. Shell-shock. or PTSD, and multiple-personality disorder (now dissociative identity disorder) being just two examples.

Thus like a tool in a tool-box. Ultimately useful only when and as appropriate, otherwise not; and when not, a dead weight that may not be worth the having.

This is a pretty conventional view these days and was a thesis articulated rather well by a famous psychiatrist called E Fuller Tory in his 1980's best seller Witchdoctors and Psychiatrists: — Tom Storm

Do you remember enough about what you read to offer a brief precis of his defense of his use of "witchdoctor"? My use to contrast in-a-word those operating mainly with knowledge with those obliged to rely to some significant degree on less than knowledge. My criticism being of those who represent the "witchcraft" as knowledge. And maybe that's the answer to what psychiatrists do - I wonder if you'll agree - they use information bases and their training to determine and apply best standards for treatment of mental illness. Thus as corollary no characteristic "hands on" action to identify/distinguish psychiatry. Yes? No?

:up: Well said.

What I have in mind is that I simply divide the interval by 2^infinity in one step — MoK

It seems to me - subject to correction - that you cannot even reasonably think about that without at least giving a somewhat rigorous definition of what you think a - your - number line is, in the sense of what comprises it, or what it's composed of or made of. If points, then you have to decide how many, and at the least you run into a labeling problem if you have too many.

Imagine I define a number line as comprising only the numbers - integers - 0, 1, 2,.... You want to divide the interval between, say, 0 and 1, using 1/2, or 2/3 as examples of what you have in mind. Two possible results: 1) you have demonstrated that my number line is impoverished by showing fractions, or 2) I simply say, not on my number line.

Now the number line made up of reals, with uncountably many points between 0 and 1. You would like to divide that up so that there is no point between two points sufficiently close together.so that there is no point between them, thus zero "real" distance between them. It's easy enough to specify an example of one point of that pair, call it .75. What's the (name of the) next point so close no other point is between the two?

In the case of my number line of integers only, I might say not on my number line, and you might argue that rational numbers are clearly members of my line, as a consequence of being representations of simple ratios of the numbers themselves. Thus my claim defective on its face.

With the real number line, it seems to me it is the line itself that says you cannot. And if you say you can, then it is up to you to show how.

I guess you're right, Benkei. Only a fool would trouble to research the documents themselves and ask about them when instead they can just read your posts here on TPF.

You don't seem willing to entertain a social analysis, and at the same time seem reluctant to actually say what you mean. — unenlightened

Well, maybe it's a definition problem. Mental illness as reaction may possibly be treated by changing whatever the cause of the reaction is. But I think of mental illness as a condition, and as such in itself, not addressable through any social analysis. Not to dismiss it entirely; social analysis as consideration of the community, writ in whatever way is relevant, may influence for example treatment options. But if a fellow's brain chemistry is messed up, I do not see how a visit to the town zoning commission might help him.

My take on psychiatry, in sum, is that while most doctors are akin to mechanics in the sense of dealing with the more-or-less, and mostly more, known, psychiatrists by comparison are more in the way of witch doctors. That is, in having theories and models to deal with the mainly unknown. As noted above, this may be the best that can be done at the moment. And while most other doctoring has a hands-on component that distinguishes it in its specialty, psychiatry apparently does not - which is reasonable for witch doctory.

As to what psychiatrists do, that appears to be a many rather than a one, and no one of which itself characteristic. Which leads to a kind of joke: while most medical specialties can be identified through specific actions of the specialist, to identify a psychiatrist calls for a DSM style listing of possible behaviors that, enough of them presenting, might lead to a diagnosis of psychiatrist.

I get it that as a group psychiatrists have to take themselves seriously - how could they function otherwise - and that as a group they take on difficult even intractable problems and do the best possible. But imho they sometimes forget and mistake their theories for knowledge. And there is a dark side as well: dealing with mental illness can be extremely stressful; easier to deal with theories and models and labels to avoid the nightmare of dealing with the thing itself.