Posted by alexandra_k on January 17, 2005, at 19:57:15
In reply to Re: Folk Psychology and the Nature of Belief., posted by smokeymadison on January 17, 2005, at 19:11:51
> I like #2 too. I take everything a person says seriously, even if it doesn't make sense, so i don't like #1.
Yeah me too. I think #1 should be saved as a last resort strategy. It signals that one has given up on attempting to make sense of the phenomenon.
>Number 3 doesn't make any sense to me.
That is the idea that they may be expressing an experience rather than making a claim about the world. If I say 'I am hot' or 'that looks red' then nobody can turn around and say 'bollocks you are just wrong'. In each of those cases I am expressing or reporting on the way things seem to me. If things seem that way to me then it is true that they do in fact seem that way to me. In this way when we report on / express our experiences then we cannot be wrong.
We can be wrong about the frequency of light (ie whether in actual fact it is red) we can worry about the molecular vibrations (whether it really is hot) but there is a difference between making objective claims (that may be false) and subjective reports on experinece (which cannot be false if genuine).
> i think that delusional subjects have become enmeshed in their own world.
Ok so we need to figure out just what it means to have 'become enmeshed in their own world'...
>My roommate, the one who expressed the Cotard delusion, certainly seemed to be all inside her own head, if that makes any sense. The outside world, for her, might as well not have even existed.
So instead of the world being her focus or concern she had shifted to a world of her EXPERIENCES? Stuck in the seems or appearances and never mind the reality?
If this is so then delusions may be #3 - expressions or reports of experience. I think this is the case when people DO NOT act on their delusions. I need another line when they do act on them though. When they do act on them then they can be beliefs though because the functional role is there.
>But i think that they mean what they say. i don't think that the meanings of the words have changed. instead, they are speaking about what they are experiencing in thier own minds, not what is happening in the world outside of them.
Yeah, thats what I think too.
But that might be hard in the case where the guy decapitated his stepfather to look for batteries. He wasn't just 'expressing' himself. He really seemed to believe that.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:443284
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20041210/msgs/443401.html