Posted by alexandra_k on June 13, 2005, at 5:05:43
In reply to Re: Descartes and Delusions, posted by sleepygirl on May 29, 2005, at 23:30:54
Sorry this took me a while - I must have missd your post.
> So, I imagine you will be a student for a while? I like that idea.
Yup. I like that idea too. Mostly...
> I once had to write an artist's statement, and it ended up being about me trying to work out in my mind the objective and subjective and where they meet. I can't clarify my thoughts on the matter, but art is external, material, and physical. However, it also invites from both the viewer and artist a subjective, internal, mental experience. My interest was in putting subjective experience into objective form (most art seeks to do this in someway). So it was fundamentally about communicating to other people, about relationships. When you consider the art of the schizophrenic you are faced with some interesting questions about subjectivity and objectivity. It tends not to invite identification (because it so often appears bizarre) because it is SO subjective-'mind dependent'. It requires a certain amount of surrender of logical, objective reality.Thats interesting. I haven't really thought about art. But I guess it is a bit like that. You have to make something objective but the whole point is what the subjective viewer sees.
Communication can be a bit like that. We have to speak with a public language with objective standard meanings but the whole point is what the subjective viewer grasps from what we say.
And so to try and use the medium to express something subjective in a way that other people can grasp some of that.
:-)
Jaspers is Karl Jaspers. He is an early German p-doc / philosopher. He wrote an early text book that has been fairly influential.
Trying to explain the primary / secondary delusions distinction.
His thought was that secondary delusions (delusion-like ideas) are understandable in light of the subjects past experiences / beliefs / perceptions. Primary delusions, on the other hand (delusions proper) are ununderstandable to us in the sense that we cannot make sense of what they are saying by recourse to their experience. He thought only the latter were proper delusions.
Though... I think it might be an empirical matter as to whether there are any such things as 'delusions proper'.
That might be a bit of a mis-understanding of what he was trying to say... I have to try to figure this out more.
But I want to say that we might be able to explain all delusions by recourse to the subjects experience.
Then account for the subjects expereince with reference to cognitive mechanisms that aren't operating properly.
So...
I need to be able to explain what the mechanism functions to do. Thats why I have been reading about the evolution of thinking. Because it gives us functional mechanisms within the mind. And when people experinece cerebral trauma to the face processing area and then declare 'my wife has been replaced by an impostor' we might be able to make sense of this by appealing to a faulty familiarity mechanism which is producing a funny experience / strange judgement for them.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:501878
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20050513/msgs/511910.html