Free will and obesity

Yesterday, Novo Nordisk, the company that produces Wegovy, surpassed Tesla in value, becoming a significant topic in local news. This development piqued my interest in how obesity, a seemingly mundane issue, could generate substantial revenue. So, I researched online and discovered that obesity is now classified as a disease, challenging the notion that it can be controlled solely through 'free will' or 'willpower'. This revelation was quite surprising to me. It was noted that when individuals stopped taking Wegovy, they succumbed to their cravings once again and regained the weight they had lost. This suggests that they might need to stay on the medication indefinitely. What are your thoughts? Does obesity challenge the concept of free will? Intuitively I would expect the mind to be stronger than those bodily cravings.

I've known about obesity being a disease for a long time, I thought more people knew about it. I feel like at this point if there's one thing we know it's that the mind may be strong, but the body can be stronger. But the question is really are we utterly unnattached from the physical world or intertwined with it? I certainly think I'm a part of it, I know full well how drugs, alcohol and cravings can make me think entirely different thoughts than if I had them otherwise. We may be free, but as anyone who knows anything about the brain and chemistry has probably seen or heard about, we're not as free as we may think we are. I may be free to make choices in my own life across the full spanse of it, but in this very moment I'm eating that bloody bag of chips whether I want to or not.

The problem with "evidence" is that it can be interpreted in a way that supports different hypothesis. To overcome this problem Karl Popper proposed proper science to incorporate the "falsification" methodology. Popper’s falsificationist methodology holds that scientific theories are characterized by entailing predictions that future observations might reveal to be false. The idea is that no number of experiments can ever prove a theory, but a reproducible experiment or observation can refute one.

Well, I put it to you, are you really claiming that the fact that some people may give way to the desire to eat when in fact they don't need the food, proves that there is no such thing as free will?

Nobody denies that our senses can send us wrong information, or that we may act on that wrong information.

I imagine that such people feel as though they might collapse without more carbohydrates, and that this overwhelms their theoretical belief that they have plenty of energy and will put on weight if they don't eat some more carbohydrates.

I think it is important to realise that if free will is impossible, then no science is reliable.

I am sure I have pointed this out before, but if you plot a graph of something - say current as a function of voltage across a resistor - then without free will it is entirely possible that the 'experimenter' chose the voltage points in some particular way that concealed the fact that the true relationship was seriously nonlinear. Indeed if no experimenters have free will, it is hard to see how any science would be possible - particularly the earlier science on which modern science depends, and which was done before the days of computers.

David

I've known about obesity being a disease for a long time, I thought more people knew about it.

I did, but I thought that was verging on certain forbidden political topics!

David

Well, I put it to you, are you really claiming that the fact that some people may give way to the desire to eat when in fact they don't need the food, proves that there is no such thing as free will?

It’s not the usual discussion regarding ‘determinism/indeterminism” I’m alluding to. This is about “does the mind control unnessecary bodily needs” or is it the other way around (body controls the mind). I’m simply surprised to learn that obesity (BMI > 30) is now characterized as a disease. I think it could lead to other “things” being reclassified as diseases in the future instead of being wilful acts of an individual mind.

I’m sorry if this question is being perceived as being political. To me it’s very much about what’s defining being a human.

It’s not the usual discussion regarding ‘determinism/indeterminism” I’m alluding to. This is about “does the mind control unnessecary bodily needs” or is it the other way around (body controls the mind). I’m simply surprised to learn that obesity (BMI > 30) is now characterized as a disease. I think it could lead to other “things” being reclassified as diseases in the future instead of being wilful acts of an individual mind.

I’m sorry if this question is being perceived as being political. To me it’s very much about what’s defining being a human.

There is definitely also a political aspect to this issue, since politics and social mores inherently enter into the societal changes good or bad that may result from for example a court decision that certain criminal acts are diseases not evil wilful acts. For instance this could lead to murderers, instead of being held morally responsible for their acts and incarcerated for life and thereby prevented from repeating their crimes, instead (based on the disease model) being treated by mental health professionals and given psychoactive drugs, to be eventually released back into society as cured. Unfortunately the considerable downside to this is the actual outcome where sometimes the prisoners were mostly faking it or the mental health professionals were incompetent (or both), and the released offenders went back to their old habits and committed more unspeakable acts. These kinds of societal consequences can lead in turn to great political turmoil and changes to the structure of the criminal justice system, in debates over the basis of law, and what really are "right and wrong".

There is definitely also a political aspect to this issue, since politics and social mores inherently enter into the societal changes good or bad that may result from for example a court decision that certain criminal acts are diseases not evil wilful acts. For instance this could lead to murderers, instead of being held morally responsible for their acts and incarcerated for life and thereby prevented from repeating their crimes, instead (based on the disease model) being treated by mental health professionals and given psychoactive drugs, to be eventually released back into society as cured. Unfortunately the considerable downside to this is the actual outcome where sometimes the prisoners were mostly faking it or the mental health professionals were incompetent (or both), and the released offenders went back to their old habits and committed more unspeakable acts. These kinds of societal consequences can lead in turn to great political turmoil and changes to the structure of the criminal justice system, in debates over the basis of law, and what really are "right and wrong".

Yeah I think ethical level is the right area of questioning, for this forum at least. I don't think we need to draw examples that are directly related to current headlines.

In that vein I do think the Scientism/Reductionist approach, where everyone is just a machine, is irreconcilable with the usual idea of justice and moral responsibility.

Of course "disease" is a label that could be applied the other way, and someone committing a petty theft to feed their children may be locked up as a defective individual while other crimes like pirating a movie are seen as perfectly okay...