Let me attempt to get more directly at what I've sort of been hinting at. I'm not just trying to call people with ADHD lazy. But what exempts one from moral culpability and not the other? Does the lazy person have any more control over the mental wiring and pathways that ultimately result in "lazy" actions than the ADHD person has control over the mental wiring and pathways that characterize him as an "ADHD sufferer?" Functionally, why should we view a 10-year-old with laziness in a separate moral category as a 10-year-old with ADHD?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Holliday
So would you say in other words you were:
A) Unable to pay enough attention to the talk to remember the details?
B) Too lazy and lacking in willpower to pay enough attention to remember the details?
To use Holliday's post: take the assumption that both the ADHD sufferer and the lazy person ultimately want to know and remember the details of the talk. Ultimately, why should we view (a) and (b) differently?
We generally buy into the notion of "free will", which is fine in that it's a fairly convenient assumption to make society run. We all have different brains, but if we're ultimately morally responsible for all our actions then at least the system is consistent.
But the idea and process of cordoning off a very specific subset of maladaptive mental characteristics -- and exempting only those from moral culpability -- highlights the problems with this overall view. Namely, that people without "disorders" are just as much a product of their brain and environment as people with them. The treatment may be different, but what's the moral implication of differing treatments? And what if the treatments aren't so different? ADHD pills tend to work for laziness, too.