describing the true picture of your pain to an opm disability retirement case worker

Federal Disability Retirement Attorney: Qualia & First Person Attribution of Mental States

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Private, subjective mental states are unique by self-definition; they become public knowledge only when shared with deliberate intent, revealing the inner thoughts, private conceptual pondering, and narrative voices of the subjective “I”. Pain is similar in form, in that one can mask and keep private the experiential factor of pain, just as one can remain hidden in the private thoughts one engages. Qualia, in philosophy, has to do with the subjective experience of one’s encounter with the greater world; […] Read More …

Federal and Postal Disability Retirement: A Reminder of Sorts

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Pain is a reminder of sorts; but then, so are alarm clocks, speed bumps and the presence of law enforcement personnel. All around us, through signs, advertisements, smart phone apps, and sticky notes which we write to ourselves, we are surrounded by reminders. […] Read More …

CSRS & FERS Medical Disability Retirement: Pain Ownership

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Wittgenstein was a master of linguistic analysis, and questioned the traditional correspondence theory between the language which we speak and describe about the world, and the objective reality which we encounter on a daily basis. He was the penultimate […] Read More …

Federal Gov. and USPS Disability Retirement: Pain as a Reminder

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Pain is a reminder that the physiological state of one’s body is in need of rest or repair; it is tantamount to an error message on the computer, with the analogy of our brain being the software component. Chronic pain thus constitutes a system shutdown; continued […] Read More …

Disability Retirement for Federal Government Employees: Logical Fallacies

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The problem with logical fallacies is that the people who make them rarely recognize such errancy (otherwise they wouldn’t repeatedly make them), and further, are often the same people who refuse to recognize them even if it is kindly pointed out. […] Read More …

Disability Retirement for Federal Workers: Pain and the Fallacy of Objectivity

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Pain by definition is “subjective”, if by it one means that the experiential verification of the condition is uniquely possessed by the “I”, or the subject of the experience. By contrast, that which is deemed “objective” is presumably validated by more than the […] Read More …

The Applicant’s Statement of Disability Examples: Writing about Medical Conditions

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It is easy to give advice about pain when a person is feeling no pain; it is unwise to act upon it when one is in an extreme state of it. For, the former will often be disbelieving of the extent and […] Read More …