Posted by alexandra_k on May 23, 2005, at 18:28:51
The distinction between making claims about our experiences and making claims about the things that cause our experience is something that most people don’t really think about. In most cases what seems to be the case is the same as what is the case and so we don’t need the appearance / reality distinction. But in some cases the two come apart. This can lead to problems when the nature of each is confused.
Reality comes in two kinds:
Appearances have reality / existence of sorts. They really do seem a certain way TO US.
The mind independent world has material or physical existence.Appearances have the characteristic of indubitability. If something appears a certain way to you, then it is indubitably true that it does indeed appear that way to you. If something seems to be a certain way, then it is indubitably true that it does indeed seem that way. If something feels a certain way, then it is indubitably true that it does indeed feel that way to you.
Mind independent reality, on the other hand is something that we can never be certain of. We can be mistaken in making claims about the world. While most people don’t think too much about it most people can remember a time where their experience has diverged from reality: visual illusions, hallucinatory experiences, dream experiences, mis-identification - in all these cases experience misleads us as to what is going on in the world.
So sometimes the two can come apart. This shows them to be two different things.
If one is expressing (or reporting on) ones experience then one cannot be mistaken.
If one is reporting on the state of the world then it is always possible that that is false.
Any inferences of the formReality -> Experience can’t be known for certain. And likewise with
Experience -> RealityI feel despicable (experience – indubitable)
I feel despicable -> People despise me (inference from experience to reality – dubitable) (mechanism of projection)
It is because People despise me that -> I feel despicable (inference from reality to experience – dubitable)Some subjects may think that people despise them so much that they must be after them attempting to harm them.
Subjects who act on their delusions seem to have confused their experience with a hypothesized reality that is the cause of their experience.
It is always possible that the experience was internally generated in some way. It could be a response to the past, for example.But it is not possible to doubt that the subject has their experience.
They seem unable to grasp the distinction.
But likewise, clinician’s may be seen to have lost sight of the distinction when they assume that the subject is making a claim about reality and not their experience. If the subject thinks the clinician is attempting to doubt their experiencesAnd the clinician thinks the client is attempting to make false claims about the world
Then it is not that likely that progress will be made…
Validate the subjects experience
Teach the appearance / reality distinction in a way that clearly emphasizes and validates the indubitability of the subjects experience.
Maybe that’s what Semrad did:‘The great psychoanalysist Elvin Semrad could make any psychotic patient sane. By radical empathy, in making every effort to think, feel, and be like the subject he was able to enter into their delusional world and bring them back out'.
It is just left to provide an account of how to do this so that the rest of us can understand…
Delusional subjects (by definition) are supposed to be making claims about external reality.
But is that really what the delusional subject is doing?‘Poor reality testing’
Not the problem so much as mind-independent reality having fallen out of the picture completely.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:501878
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20050513/msgs/501878.html