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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 10 of 10. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by alexandra_k on January 17, 2005, at 16:59:13
We use mental states to predict and explain behaviour. Both in our own case and in the case of other people. If we see someone running and ask 'why is that person running' then an acceptable explanation is that
(1) She believed that she needed to run to catch the bus
(2) She wanted to catch the bus
(3) She was 'rational' enough to put these together. To realise that she should therefore run so as to catch the bus.It is a foundational part of folk psychology that a person will act in such a way as to satisfy their desires were their beliefs true. Of course we can have many many desires, but it is thought that the 'strongest' desire is the one that comes into play with respect to the causation of behaviour.
-Belief is a state designed to fit (represent) the world.
-Desire is a state that seeks to alter the world to fit with it.
-Fantasy does neither...A belief is a mental state that plays a certain functional role in the state of the organism (person). This is according to the best current philosophical theorising...
Beliefs are typically caused by certain things (the thing that the belief is about).
They typically interact with other beliefs in certain ways (so that a person will also come to believe what deductively follows when the deduction is pointed out to them).
They also interact with ones desires so as to produce the relevant action.This is a tripartite theory of the nature of belief.
There is an input clause (what the typical causes are)
an internal role clause (governing relations between that belief and other beliefs) and
an output clause (the behavious that results from the belief interacting with ones desires).According to this theory a belief is a belief in virtue of the mental states fulfilling that functional role in the organism.
It is thought that the above theory is simply a 'systematisation' of what the average person implicitly believes about the nature of belief. Does it seem barely worth the trouble of stating or does it seem wrong? It is hard to assess it. I am already enmeshed in it as a plausible account of mental states.
The thought is that 'desire' can be given its own functional specification. To give a functional specification of something we treat what is to be explained as a 'black box' and we specify the causal relations. We can do that with 'belief'. Then we can do that with 'desire'. While we mention one of those in the functional specification of the other it is the entire system of causal interrelations that defines the nature of the mental state. This prevents circularity (just in case any Skinnerians are worried).
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.Then there is the worry about content. Some people maintain that the meaning or content of the mental state can be specified by spelling out the way in which the state interacts with other states. If this is so then it would seem that based on the causal role that the state plays in delusional subjects we may be left having to conclude that delusions are not contentful utterances. That is the line Campbell takes...
Others say that belief should be given a functional specification but not the content of the belief. In this case you could have a fixed content that has come apart from its functional role. There could be a 'limited' breakdown in rationality at either the input, internal role, or output points. You may even be able to tell a story about how all three of these have broken down and yet the content is fixed by prior learning / the use of the words in other contexts...
Posted by smokeymadison on January 17, 2005, at 18:24:09
In reply to Folk Psychology and the Nature of Belief., posted by alexandra_k on January 17, 2005, at 16:59:13
> We use mental states to predict and explain behaviour. Both in our own case and in the case of other people. If we see someone running and ask 'why is that person running' then an acceptable explanation is that
> (1) She believed that she needed to run to catch the bus
> (2) She wanted to catch the bus
> (3) She was 'rational' enough to put these together. To realise that she should therefore run so as to catch the bus.
>
> It is a foundational part of folk psychology that a person will act in such a way as to satisfy their desires were their beliefs true. Of course we can have many many desires, but it is thought that the 'strongest' desire is the one that comes into play with respect to the causation of behaviour.
>
> -Belief is a state designed to fit (represent) the world.
> -Desire is a state that seeks to alter the world to fit with it.
> -Fantasy does neither...I would think that fantasy would be a state in which the person considers options, a step between belief and desire. the person believes something, has an idea about the world, and then considers alternative options (fantasy) about what the world could be, and then has the desire to change something about the world. Or the other way around--the person has the desire to change the world, then considers options, and then forms the belief either about what should be done, or if action is taken, what the result is.
SM
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.
Posted by alexandra_k on January 17, 2005, at 18:41:18
In reply to Re: Folk Psychology and the Nature of Belief., posted by smokeymadison on January 17, 2005, at 18:24:09
> I would think that fantasy would be a state in which the person considers options, a step between belief and desire. the person believes something, has an idea about the world, and then considers alternative options (fantasy) about what the world could be, and then has the desire to change something about the world. Or the other way around--the person has the desire to change the world, then considers options, and then forms the belief either about what should be done, or if action is taken, what the result is.
Yeah, I think I hear what you are saying. One can have a fantasy about the world being a certain way - but not desire to change the world in order to bring it about. At the point where one does take steps to bring it about then it is no longer fantasy, it is desire. One can have a fantasy that the world is a certain way without believing that the world is in fact that way. If one thinks that the world is in fact that way then it is no longer fantasy it is belief.
So the functional roles are different...
Posted by alexandra_k on January 17, 2005, at 18:52:30
In reply to Re: Folk Psychology and the Nature of Belief., posted by smokeymadison on January 17, 2005, at 18:39:15
> What are delusions, if not beliefs?
Here are some other options that have been considered:
(1) Empty speech acts (meaningless ravings).
(2) 'Imaginings misidentified as beliefs' (Gregory Currie).
(3) Expressions of experience (it is controversial whether this would count as a belief. Depends on how one wants to interpret / whether one wants to agree with some Wittgenstinean stuff about beliefs having to be capable of being false. Because expressions of experience are not capable of being false (if genuine) they might not count as beliefs).The second one is the one that I am thinking of... What is an 'imagining'? Sounds like a 'fantasy' to me...
Someone or other wrote that delusional subjects have become enmeshed in their own solipsistic world. They are using words with different meanings from the standard ones. They have become enmeshed in their own world. But it is still left what this 'solipsistic enmeshment' amounts to. Maybe this means that we cannot attribute a content (so delusional utterances are empty or meaningless speech acts).
But I am interested in the 'imaginings misidentified as beliefs' line. I had thought I heard a knock down criticism of it in Australia, but I am not so sure....
For it to be true that you believe that p then p needs to play a certain functional role. With respect to how p was caused, how p interacts with other mental states and the effect p has on your behaviour. Whether p is a belief or an imagining would seem to be determined by the functional role that p is playing.
Currie reckons that
delusional subjects believe that p is false.
He reckons it is true to say
delusional subjects believe that they believe that p (but really they are just imagining it).Now the problem is how we specify the functional role of believing that you believe something as opposed to just believing something. He thinks that the difference is that they do not believe that p because it does not play the right functional role. They believe that they believe it, though and that plays the appropriate functional role - that is why they say they believe it!
Posted by smokeymadison on January 17, 2005, at 19:11:51
In reply to Re: Folk Psychology and the Nature of Belief. » smokeymadison, posted by alexandra_k on January 17, 2005, at 18:52:30
> > What are delusions, if not beliefs?
>
> Here are some other options that have been considered:
>
> (1) Empty speech acts (meaningless ravings).
> (2) 'Imaginings misidentified as beliefs' (Gregory Currie).
> (3) Expressions of experience (it is controversial whether this would count as a belief. Depends on how one wants to interpret / whether one wants to agree with some Wittgenstinean stuff about beliefs having to be capable of being false. Because expressions of experience are not capable of being false (if genuine) they might not count as beliefs).
>
I like #2 too. I take everything a person says seriously, even if it doesn't make sense, so i don't like #1. Number 3 doesn't make any sense to me.> The second one is the one that I am thinking of... What is an 'imagining'? Sounds like a 'fantasy' to me...
>
> Someone or other wrote that delusional subjects have become enmeshed in their own solipsistic world. They are using words with different meanings from the standard ones. They have become enmeshed in their own world. But it is still left what this 'solipsistic enmeshment' amounts to. Maybe this means that we cannot attribute a content (so delusional utterances are empty or meaningless speech acts).
>i think that delusional subjects 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. 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.
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.
Posted by smokeymadison on January 17, 2005, at 20:53:25
In reply to Re: Folk Psychology and the Nature of Belief. » smokeymadison, posted by alexandra_k on January 17, 2005, at 19:57:15
> >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.I don't see the difference between just expressing oneself through words and acting out a belief. what behind the expression and the action is the same thing. my roommate, when she said that she was dead, was expressing a belief. but in this case the belief didn't require any action. had the belief required an action, she may or may not have done the action. the guy who cut off his stepdad's head really isn't that different from my roommate. they both were enmaeshed within their own worlds. they got stuck in the fantasy step of creating an accurate belief, if that makes any sense. "Enmeshed w/in their own world" may mean that the subjects form beliefs based on their inner experience. Perhaps the guy who cut off his stepdad's head to look for batteries was experiencing detachment from the world, a certain sort of numbness, of not being able to feel, and he projected that onto his stepfather, therefore creating a stepfather who wasn't "real"
i am speaking from past experience. there have been times when people seem to be "automated" and "unreal" when i have been very numb from depression or when i have been having a panic attack. if i had been enmeshed w/in my own world at the time, i might have formed the belief that the people were not real, were run by batteries. fortunately, i was not. :)
SM
Posted by alexandra_k on January 18, 2005, at 3:16:44
In reply to Re: Folk Psychology and the Nature of Belief., posted by smokeymadison on January 17, 2005, at 20:53:25
Lets say we have a mental state. Whether the state is a belief or a desire or a fantasy or whatever depends totally on the functional role that that state plays in the organism.
All of the above are known as 'intentional states' or 'propositional attitudes' because they relate a person to a propositional content in a certain way depending on the nature of the state (whether it is a belief or a desire or whatever).
'The sun is hot' is an example of a proposition. We could take different attitudes towards that same proposition. We could believe it is the case, desire it to be the case, wish it were the case etc.One problem is looking at functional roles to figure out what kind of mental state something (eg delusion) might be.
Another problem is the 'problem of mental content'. We need to be able to specify just what it is that the person is believing or desiring or whatever. We need to figure out what the content of delusions is.
We have to think about how abstractly we want to characterise the content. 'My wife has been replaced by an impostor', 'my daughter has been replaced by an alien', 'my stepfather has been replaced by a robot'. Should these count as different beliefs with different contents or should we abstract away from the surface differences and retain what is common as when we maintain that they are different examples of the same kind of delusion? It makes a difference with regards to what it is that we are trying to explain. We might be able to explain the delusion in generality for example, while not being able to say much about why the impostor is regarded as an alien in one case and a clone in another etc etc.
If the person with the Cotard delusion is expressing their experience then the propositional content of their delusion might be more properly 'translated' as 'I am emotionally dead'. Ok so they don't tend to say the 'emotional' bit, but maybe that is what they mean by what they are saying.
If that is so then delusions are expressions of anomalous experience. What they are saying is true. Their heart beating has nothing to do with their state of emotional death.
If the person with the Cotard delusion is making a claim about the way the world is, however, then we 'translate' their claim as 'I am biologically dead'.
The idea is that either they mean it in the first sense or they mean it in the second.
The only problem with it taken in the first sense is when subjects act on their delusions. I reckon that construal can handle all cases except those. When people do act on their delusions then we might have to interpret in the second way.
If they mean it in the second way then their belief is false. Then they should take it as evidence against their belief that their heart is beating.
So I agree - they mean what they say. But a very real question is what do they mean by what they say? That is where we have to translate to render the content explicit. Both of these translations seem to be lisenced by the standard meaning of the word 'death'. We often speak of 'emotional' as well as 'biological' death.
Do you get why the first interpretation works well for cases where people do not act on their belief? Expressing an experience is a lot like saying 'I feel hot'. If you really do feel frightfully hot then you will probably whinge about this a fair bit (at least I tend to). This may be like the person who has to comment on their state of emotional death or numbness.
When they do act on their belief then things get trickier. Saying you feel hot implies something for action insofar as action can reduce the feeling for you. In the case of emotional death what would that imply for action? Not a lot. Maybe that you won't connect very well with people you were previously close to. Not a lot else. With respect to biological death, on the other hand one had better arrange a coffin and so forth. So the second construal works well for explaining action.
Posted by alexandra_k on January 18, 2005, at 3:36:34
In reply to Re: Folk Psychology and the Nature of Belief., posted by alexandra_k on January 18, 2005, at 3:16:44
The DSM says delusions are 'false beliefs about external reality' so according to the DSM the first construal (expressing ones state of emotional death) would not be a delusion proper. But clinicians diagnose on the basis of what the subject SAYS. Many many people could say
'I am dead'.
I would say MOST of them mean it as an expression of their experince. It is then up to us whether we want to say they don't have delusions proper or whether we want to say that they clearly are delusional and those examples show us the inadequacy of the DSM defintion.Nothing hangs on that.
It is just that the DSM begs the question regarding whether ANY delusional utterances are actually 'false claims about external reality'.Maybe we have to go that way on the cases where people act on their delusions. But the class of delusions is considerably reduced... And it is not the utterances that distinguish between these two groups of people it is their behaviour.
In the second case we have all the problems of how come they come to accept such a 'crazy' hypothesis in the face of non-delusional alternatives. I am still mulling that one...
This is the end of the thread.
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