Posted by smokeymadison on January 17, 2005, at 18:39:15
In reply to Folk Psychology and the Nature of Belief., posted by alexandra_k on January 17, 2005, at 16:59:13
> In the case of delusions we seem to have a 'belief' that is divorced from its typical functional role.
>
> - The belief does not arise understandably from experince. (What is the experience that would lead you to come to the belief that 'my wife has been replaced by an impostor?')
> -It does not seem to interact with the subjects other beliefs in expected ways. (Why don't they search for the original. Why aren't they worried about them? Why don't they worry what happened to them?)
> -It does not seem to interact with desires in such a way as to produce the relevant action. (In SOME cases - people don't act on their belief).
>
> If we have a mental state that does not fulfill the functional specification of belief than either:
> Functional specification is inadequate to capture the nature of belief (so best current theory is wrong or badly inadequate).
> OR
> Delusions, while being mental states, are not beliefs.What are delusions, if not beliefs? They have to be. I think that, in the case of a delusion, the person has come to a false belief about the world becuase they want their experience of the world to be different. Thinking through the examples of various delusions, it would seem that the person deisres the world to be different (so somewhere has the correct belief) but gets lost in fantasy instead of getting through the fantasy step and to the desire to change what they want to be different. Why did you list fantasy but then go on to only talk about belief and desire? i would think that fantasy has a big part in the creation of a delusion.
poster:smokeymadison
thread:443284
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20041210/msgs/443331.html