Even though Friedman does not even raise these questions, he sets forth an extended analogy involving our human ancestors who were hunter-gatherers. In his analogy, the typical characteristics of A.D.H.D. children would have been typical characteristics of our hunter-gatherer ancestors.
Now, hunter-gatherers existed in preliterate times in what Ong terms primary oral cultures. According to Ong, people in primary oral cultures had what he describes as a world-as-event sense of life.
By contrast, according to Ong, well educated people in the print cultures in the West that emerged historically after the emergence of the Gutenberg printing press in the 1450s have developed what Ong describes as a world-as-view sense of life.
Ong's book RAMUS, METHOD, AND THE DECAY OF DIALOGUE: FROM THE ART OF DISCOURSE TO THE ART OF REASON (Harvard University Press, 1958) is his major study of print culture. In it Ong works with the visual-aural contrast that he borrowed from the French philosopher Louis Lavelle (see page 338, note 54). Subsequently, Ong transformed the visual-aural contrast into the contrast of the world-as-view sense of life and the world-as-event sense of life.
Incidentally, Friedman and all the neuroscientists he mentions have been thoroughly culturally conditioned in the world-as-view sense of life, because formal education is the primary way in which we are culturally conditioned in the world-as-view sense of life.
Next, I want to return to the adults who are referring certain children as possible candidates for the A.D.H.D. diagnosis -- and medication to treat it.
On the one hand, for the sake of discussion, let's say that the adults who are involved in referring selected children for the A.D.H.D. diagnosis have been culturally conditioned in what Ong terms the world-as-view sense of life.
On the other hand, for the sake of discussion, let's say that the children being referred do indeed manifest the world-as-event sense of life, as Friedman in effect suggests. Perhaps A.D.H.D children have been influenced by their cultural conditioning in what Ong terms our contemporary secondary oral culture.
But can Ong's phenomenological claims and characterizations be studied by neuroscientists?
For example, based on the phenomenology of thought and expression, Ong claims that the world-as-event sense of life grows out of cognitive processing dominated by oral-aural sensory information.
He then claims that the world-as-view sense of life grows out of cognitive processing dominated by sight.
If these basic claims that Ong works with can be studied by neuroscientists, then presumably they could study the cognitive processing of A.D.H.D. children and of the adults referring them for the A.D.H.D. diagnosis.
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