I find our class discussion of placebo effect very interesting and would like to zero in on a core issue and connect it with other problems that are on the surface unrelated to placebo effect.
Placebo effect is controversial because it is an effect that comes from the patient's belief or his/her state of mind as opposed to the content of the medication. Since we assume patient's belief or state of mind is subjective and has to do with each individual person's free choice or free will it falls outside the realm of science.
However the very idea of free will means that a person as an agent of action is independent of causes and effects. Yet this is paradoxical and has no scientific support. Once we get rid of the idea that patient's mind is subjective and hence beyond scientific investigation we should no longer dismiss placebo effect but investigate it as much as we do with everything else that provides healing.
To the extent that we praise and/or blame a person or a group we also assume that this person or group has free will (Otherwise the analysis of cause and effect goes on indefinitely hence no individual person or group can be totally responsible for a problem). In our political discourse, the intellectual left often blame our social and economic problems on the super wealthy and powerful. And the intellectual right often blame the poor and criminals themselves for poverty and crime. However this kind of debates and arguments are always going to face fundamental problems because they all presuppose free will. As free will is a paradoxical idea that is not supported by science all the blames can only misdirect us and lead us away from the real analysis of cause and effect.
It is this fundamental assumption of subjective individual free will that connects placebo effect to our discussions of politics.
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