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Eugine_Nier comments on Three more ways identity can be a curse - Less Wrong Discussion
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The mistake I'm addressing, what I called "half-reductionist" in the parent, is the belief (or alief) that mental processes split into two types:
1) those that are reducible to physical/chemical processes and thus can only be analyzed or affected by chemicals,
2) those that aren't reducible and thus are analyzed or affected by psychology.
My point is that this distinction doesn't correspond to anything in reality.
How about 1) those that have been largely reduced to physical/chemical processes and thus can be analyzed or affected directly
2) those that have not yet been reduced and thus are handled differently.
First, why is this distinction relevant to the comment you made in the ancestor?
Second, the brain is a complicated system. Naively playing with the inner workings of a complicated system tends to result in all kinds of unintended consequences. In other words, just because we have some idea what chemical state corresponds to depression, doesn't mean using chemicals is the best way to treat it.
It does mean that you shouldn't conflate atypical serotonin levels with temporary loneliness after one's cat died by calling both of those 'depression'.
Do you have research that the temporary loneliness after one's cat died does not in fact involve atypical serotonin levels?
Also why is this relevant. Your statement implied that the similarity cluster that includes laziness, lack of motivation, and akrasia does not include depression. Even if laziness say turns out to involve a different hormone, or some other chemical and/or physical process, I fail to see why that's an argument against including depression in the same similarity cluster.
Oh, that argument is based entirely on the lack of similarity of those characteristics and their effects.
Which characteristics? I'm having trouble figuring out what the antecedents of your pronouns are supposed to be.
I phrased that poorly.
Depression, laziness, lack of motivation, and akrasia do not share many of their defining features. For the purpose of dealing with one or more of them, they are more different than they are similar.
To speak of them as similar, you need a context distant from them. If you are discussing personnel management in general , for example, they could be grouped together with disloyalty and family problems as potential characteristics of people that need to be taken into consideration. Once you get into the consideration that needs to be taken for a specific individual, treating depression the same as laziness provides bad outcomes.
They certainly have similar symptoms, i.e., difficulty getting oneself to do what one (or at least one's higher brain functions) want to do. If your claim is that they have different underlying causes, I'd like to see what evidence convinced you of this.
Taboo laziness and lack of motivation.