001. ND Morse, at vashonbeachcomber.com, writes in "Commentary: Getting to the Bottom of a Body’s Disease" (2016-10-19) [2016 archived]:
"naturopathic physicians offer a slightly different point of view when it
comes to dis-ease. We believe the body is intelligent. It produces
symptoms for a reason. These symptoms are an expression of the body
communicating a message. The challenge is to interpret the message [...] the bottom line is that we want to support the body in its intelligent efforts [...] the root cause of the illness is not addressed in conventional medicine [...]";
claimed special insight! So what's going on here? Well, inherently, classically, naturopathy believes that an intelligent life spirit controls physiology, inhabiting the body. We're just getting a little masking-opacity in this account. Now, one of the problems with this ND's explanation of illness is that it is FELT, as in "dis-ease", that illness is a feeling as in experienced as something wrong as 'not at ease' SOLELY, because that's all she explains. And I think that's important, as a half-truth. Of course, subjective information from patients is very important in the assistance it offers to a clinician in terms of a history, particularly a history of the present illness. But here something is left out that is crucial. The ND does not speak of signs. Signs are not feelings, they are objective measurements. They exist apart in that sense from the patient's subjective data set. Both object and subject data are very important. But naturopathy is very bad at science, which is how we rigorously and systematically figure out the world around us including human physiology, objectively. Now, in modern biology, you body is not inhabited by a vital spirit that has intelligence. Your brain has intelligence, but your body is mechanistic in the sense that earlier events explain current conditions generally speaking for the body's systems. That is the causal arrow of time. To attribute a purposeful intelligence as in future-directedness to physiology in general seems to me to fetishize physiology. It speaks toward naturopaths wanting to communicate with at inhabiting entity figmentation. And such fetishization seems to ignore objective measures, like pathophysiology. After all, there is no scientific need for a vital spirit directing physiology toward some end. The body, including the brain, is due to, not seeking toward. Such reversal of the arrow of time does not seem to be from the last couple of centuries, in terms of thought. It's more archaic, and superstitious. In that sense, naturopathy's root cause figmentation is pathetic as an explanation. Conventional medicine would be violating standard of care it if ignored the best knowledge available in order to understand what's going on, for diagnosis and treatment and prevention, which is of course modern science not the vitalism-teleology of our archaic, prescientific past. Modern science has actually a deeper understanding than what this ND presents, it has an obligation to reality. The ND offers a false accusation against modern medicine, and a shallow subjectivity-only half-transparent explanation of what naturopathy essentially believes which then guides naturopathy's activities.
002. cutting through the opacity bullshit, at the ND's practice, there's the page "Treatment Philosophy" [2016 archived], which states:
"each and every one of us has an inherent energy, termed the vital force, inside of us that stimulates healing. I am not the one who is going to heal your body; your vital force will do it [...] there are many things that can suppress the vital force, the main one being medications but also thoughts and emotions. We will strive to identify and remove that suppression and stimulate your vital force so that your body can heal. Naturopathic Medicine is based on 6 main principles: [#1] healing power of nature: your body has an amazing ability to heal itself once the obstacles to healing have been removed and the body is nourished. The vital force is responsible for this healing [...]";
and there are faeries under your garden. You have a lot of nerve, Ms. ND, scaring people away from modern medicine via superstitious figmentation and interpretation science has discarded.
