As we can see, both terms involve a lack of evidence and reasoning to support them.
The definition I have used for delusion is:
Where the defining element of delusion involves a false belief and ignoring and denying the contradictory evidence.
People that think they are Napoleon for example. Or that the earth is 6,000 years old.
The consensus among almost everyone other than the schizophrenic is that the guy is delusion. Yet when someone claims God is speaking to them, it is considered faith.
And when god/s tell a woman to drown her children it is still delusion, yes?
Functionally, delusion only enters the process when a person becomes dangerous to themselves or to others, and there are many people with "harmless delusions."
There are also many beliefs that cannot be considered delusional because we don't know that they are false.
Enjoy.
Edited by RAZD, : fixed funky characters de·lu·sion -noun
I think lack of evidence is a much better term because your definition excludes allot of people who should be considered delusional.
In your personal opinion, unfortunately that has little effect on how the term is used in psychology, as you alluded in Message 1.
Nobody can say for sure that a schizophrenic person is not in fact hearing real voices from aliens in his head. There is no way to "know" if those voices are real or a delusion.
So you don't have any real evidence, you just believe they are delusional without evidence. Congratulations, you are now a card carrying member by your own definition.
But back to the main point of my post. How do you distinguish a false voice or beliefs from a faithful belief? For instance, if a schizophrenic person claimed to have talked with God, how would you distinguish this as accurate or inaccurate compared to say, if he claimed to talk with rocks or frogs?
If I were being open-minded yet skeptical I would first consider that it is possibly true (open-minded), but await further evidence of this before proceeding (skeptical). If I was curious about it, perhaps from having had a similar personal experience, or from knowing others who had a similar experience, I would look to see how many similar experiences were involved. If I were really interested I might want to study psychology at a university.
Is it a common experience in the culture?
Was it a persistent condition or rare? (Does one experience make a person a nutter or is there more to it, a pattern of behavior?)
Clinical psychosis is not something that can be determined by pop-culture formulas, internet quizzes and personal opinions, but is something that takes educated and trained observation to determine properly.
Delusional disorder is characterized by the presence of recurrent, persistent non-bizarre delusions.
Delusions are irrational beliefs, held with a high level of conviction, that are highly resistant to change even when the delusional person is exposed to forms of proof that contradict the belief. Non-bizarre delusions are considered to be plausible; that is, there is a possibility that what the person believes to be true could actually occur a small proportion of the time. Conversely, bizarre delusions focus on matters that would be impossible in reality. For example, a non-bizarre delusion might be the belief that one's activities are constantly under observation by federal law enforcement or intelligence agencies, which actually does occur for a small number of people. By contrast, a man who believes he is pregnant with German Shepherd puppies holds a belief that could never come to pass in reality. Also, for beliefs to be considered delusional, the content or themes of the beliefs must be uncommon in the person's culture or religion. Generally, in delusional disorder, these mistaken beliefs are organized into a consistent world-view that is logical other than being based on an improbable foundation.
In addition to giving evidence of a cluster of interrelated non-bizarre delusions, persons with delusional disorder experience hallucinations far less frequently than do individuals with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder.
...
Even though the main characteristic of delusional disorder is a noticeable system of delusional beliefs, delusions may occur in the course of a large number of other psychiatric disorders. Delusions are often observed in persons with other psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder. In addition to occurring in the psychotic disorders, delusions also may be evident as part of a response to physical, medical conditions (such as brain injury or brain tumors), or reactions to ingestion of a drug.
Delusions also occur in the dementias, which are syndromes wherein psychiatric symptoms and memory loss result from deterioration of brain tissue. Because delusions can be shown as part of many illnesses, the diagnosis of delusional disorder is partially conducted by process of elimination. If the delusions are not accompanied by persistent, recurring hallucinations, then schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder are not appropriate diagnoses. If the delusions are not accompanied by memory loss, then dementia is ruled out. If there is no physical illness or injury or other active biological cause (such as drug ingestion or drug withdrawal), then the delusions cannot be attributed to a general medical problem or drug-related causes. If delusions are the most obvious and pervasive symptom, without hallucinations, medical causation, drug influences or memory loss, then delusional disorder is the most appropriate categorization.
Color for emphasis.
Much more, quite interesting stuff, but proper diagnosis of psychological delusion is not done on internet forums by reading articles posted on the internet, but rather it takes an in depth study by a professional.
So yes, it is more than just believing something without evidence, and it involves ignoring contrary evidence. Consider non-clinical delusion, definition 1 or 2 from my post, which basically means being mislead or misinformed: if you are told something false, and you believe it because you trust the source, then you have been deluded by the source. This type of delusion is easily identified when the falsehood is exposed by contrary evidence and the belief is dropped, and this is why the clinical version includes denial of contrary evidence.
If you're doing science, you are using the scientific method, which is based on empiricism. It sounds as if some people here are applying empiricism to more philosophical realms and IMO the two do not always equate.
It's like trying to understand art by logic and empirical evidence alone - can't do it. This relates to the Consilience - the Unity of Knowledge thread and further reading in the book (I need to update the thread ...). Some people seem to think they can live their entire lives by the scientific method, an interesting delusion eh?
That is an emotive word with specific and negative connotations and I've noticed that many atheists use it liberally to describe all non-atheists. I don't believe this is correct and I find it condescending.
At best it implies that you have been conned, at worst it implies that you are a nutcase. There is no positive connotation, however the "you have been conned" version, like ignorance, can be cured by learning new (to you) information/s.
Ignorance likewise carries negative connotations, as does uneducated and illiterate. These too are curable conditions in the usual form, however willful ignorance (CTD on decay rates) is not.
Surely, having some faith that there is more to life than what the 5 senses can detect is not delusional?
To me (personal opinion here) it involves how committed a person is to such a belief: if it is tentative, a currently uncontradicted possibility, held until such time as the belief is contradicted and then abandoned or modified to fit the new evidence (in best scientific methodology), then no, it is not delusional. It may seem silly to some people, but that is their opinion, and opinion alone does not make it delusional.
As I said in my previous post, judging someone as "deluded" is a subjective act and one that should be carried out with due consideration. There's clearly a difference between believing that your family are really KGB agents secretly out to get you, and believing that the transcendent might exist. In the former case, it would be reasonable to conclude that the person is ill; in the latter, the person is thinking about spirituality.
My mother - a psychiatrist PhD who worked with autistic children btw - said that just because a person is paranoid does not mean they are not being followed. There is nothing to say that a "delusional" belief which has not been contradicted by any evidence cannot be true.
Yet here is an area where empiricism cannot apply; you cannot empirically define "good art." This is no doubt obvious, but there are also other areas in which empiricism cannot logically be applied. Belief is one, when no evidence exists to disprove the belief.
And one of the questions I have tried to pursue, is the one about how one can determine the relative validity of concepts, once you have run off the scientific methodology mapping and into areas where the method cannot be applied. Once we have run off the mapped area of verified evidences we are left with non-verified evidence and logic, and concepts extending into areas where there is no evidence and logic does not help - like art. There is a spectrum rather than a dichotomy, as there is also the realm of evidence that is questionable, and of course the fact that science itself is tentative. The one overarching principle that covers all these concepts is that it cannot be contradicted by evidence and still be valid, whether that concept is a scientific theory or an afternoon day dream.
Our individual knowledge\opinions of the world (world views) are a combination of things known\believed in common with other people and things not known\believed in common with other people.
As I said in my previous post, judging someone as "deluded" is a subjective act and one that should be carried out with due consideration.
Exactly.
Enjoy.
ps -- if Straggler should happen to say something about my opinion on any topic, see Message 133, Message 402 and Message 407, while if you are interested in my actual position in regards to that topic see Message 338 and Message 353. Note that this topic is not the place to discuss these posts, they are given here for reference.
Straggler, I wonder why you are drawing a line between perceived internal and perceived external experiences. It's all the same thing: perception. ... I think it is wrong to label people as delusional for believing such things. It's as wrong as labelling the time-traveller delusional because he's talking about things like bacteria that Middle-Age Europeans have never seen or heard of.
For the same reason that he would claim that it is logical to hypothesis life on other planets, based on our knowledge of life here, and that it would be possible for such life to have evolved to the level of being able to make space ships and visit earth, but that it is NOT logical to think that any experiences by people claiming to have seen such a thing is evidence of that possibility.
Try as we might, we can't fit life neatly into boxes. It's messy and it can be confusing. Empiricism can teach us much but it cannot be the correct approach 100% of the time.
Exactly, and it can only break outside the box of what we already know, when we think outside that box to develop concepts to test against reality. To expand knowledge you need to expand horizons and not narrow the focus.
You can't write in a scientific paper that you just had a feeling something was right -- but you can use that feeling to guide your ideas when formulating and testing hypotheses.
Nor can you base a confirmation of an hypothesis on subjective evidence, but you can use that evidence to form the hypothesis and tests for seeing if you can find validating evidence.
In the Is My Hypothesis Valid??? thread Straggler started out trying to limit the basis of valid hypothesis to objective evidence, but eventually conceded that he could not rule out the possibility that a subjective experience could be related to reality, and he was left with ...
evidence + logic = hypothesis
... as a valid starting point to test and look for validation.
Also on the Is My Hypothesis Valid??? thread Straggler was forced to concede that subjective evidence was acceptable evidence in a court of law as long as there could be some experience of the event by the witness providing it. To get to that point he had to posit a person that was completely unable to experience anything outside of their head, as any other experience could be legitimate.
Curiously, it seems that is such a condition as this, the mind ceases to operate, and it certainly would be conceivable that such an isolated brain would not function.
So when you ask "I wonder why you are drawing a line between perceived internal and perceived external experiences" it is just another example of trying to parse and divide and pre-judge evidence, rather than looking at it to see if any interesting concepts can be developed that could be tested.
Here is where fear and uncertainty can lie, because using evidence and logic to explain everything can be a comfort for some (perhaps like religion is a comfort to others, as it also pushes fear and uncertainty aside).
And that's likely part of it too, afraid to accept possibilities that may be contrary to your pet beliefs and world view concepts. Like CTD.
Who ever said that getting old was a bad thing?
My bones tell me every morning ...
Enjoy.
Edited by RAZD, : corrected link, thread reference
Hi kbertsche, interesting post, raising some interesting questions.
Militant atheists will try to reject any evidence for God put forth by theists, of course. They will try to claim that we theists are deluded. This doesn't mean that we have no evidence, rather that the evidence is not accepted by the skeptic.
A rather succinct observation. The whole issue revolves around the different levels of acceptance of various evidence/s and belief/s. Nobody considers what they believe to be delusional, the issue comes up when one comes into contact with people that seem to believe things contrary to your belief/s.
They will try to claim that we theists are deluded. This doesn't mean that we have no evidence, rather that the evidence is not accepted by the skeptic.
An example of just this kind of behavior has been presented on this thread Message 56 (and several others - it was easy to find):
quote:There is no such thing as a vacuum of evidence. There is a great deal of objective evidence that tells us as verified fact that humans have a strong disposition to invent gods.
Notice that this simple comment accomplishes several things for the poster, initially it pretends to be open to considering evidence, but then it deflects the discussion to it being evidence of insanity, hallucinations, delusions, etc, while building up the impression that it could not be evidence supportive of belief/s, and ending with implicit denial of any evidence being valid for belief/s. It's all made up in your head.
This strikes me as similar to the way in which young earth creationists (YECs) reject any evidence for an old universe, and try to claim that we scientists are deluded.
Indeed, and the basic reason is fairly simple to understand:
One of the first reactions to contrary evidence of anyone's beliefs is denial - the evidence isn't real, it isn't valid, it isn't convincing. A common second reaction is to claim that the one's pushing the concept are deluded or irrational. We see this reaction from the YEC's regarding the evidence of an old earth, and we see it in the attitude of atheists to the beliefs of theists. One could argue that the purpose, the agenda of this thread is to make just such an argument.
A discussion of specific evidence would probably become a heated exchange ...
I'd say that would be a given. It's an emotional issue, and people react emotionally to it. One of the reasons I have rejected going down that path.
evidence--that which tends to prove or disprove something; ground for belief; proof.
A "ground for belief" can be fairly broad, and can include subjective as well as objective data.
In science we require "evidence" to be objective and fact-based. But when we get out of the realm of science, the word evidence is often used of things which you would call "reasons" rather than "facts." This sort of evidence becomes more subjective, and is not accepted by everyone.
Yes, indeed, and we've had several threads discussing the relative merits of subjective evidence. In Message 83 I noted reference to one of them:
quote:In the Is My Hypothesis Valid??? thread Straggler started out trying to limit the basis of valid hypothesis to objective evidence, but eventually conceded that he could not rule out the possibility that a subjective experience could be related to reality, and he was left with ...
evidence + logic = hypothesis
... as a valid starting point to test and look for validation.
Also on the Is My Hypothesis Valid??? thread Straggler was forced to concede that subjective evidence was acceptable evidence in a court of law as long as there could be some experience of the event by the witness providing it. To get to that point he had to posit a person that was completely unable to experience anything outside of their head, as any other experience could be legitimate.
(btw, specific references are below my signature)
I suppose one could distinguish between objective (fact-based) evidence and subjective evidence, which you would probably call "reasons."
One needs to be careful going down this road. I have considered this question for some time now, and it seems to me that, at best, the evidence of subjective experiences of a religious nature point to a general spirituality, whether it is due to god/s per se or some emergent property of the developing human mind, is an open question. I certainly reach no "actionable" conclusions from this, rather that there is not enough information at this time. At best these experiences cannot just be dismissed, for there are so many of them, for anyone with an open mind.
One of the problems here is confirmation bias, where we seem to find evidence of what we want to find evidence of, and ignoring the skeptical voice/s that say otherwise.
Subjective experiences and evidence can inform and direct avenues of enquiry, however they cannot substitute for verified and validated evidence, else we go down the road of the YEC's and militant anti believers.
All I have said is that a singular subjective experience, experienced by a conscious and aware individual, may be indicative of reality. You acknowledge that such experiences are valid starting points for investigation
quote:Imagine a murder trial. Imagine an "eye" witness who was physically present at the time and place that the alleged crime took place. Now imagine that this witness is a blind, deaf, quadriplegic with no sense of touch from the neck down and who also has no sense smell or taste.
Note that issue of subjective evidence in a court of law started on a previous thread, and only reached this point later in the debate. The sole whole purpose of this strange, bizarre, improbable, incredible construction, was to develop a witness that could not experience objective reality in any way. The fact that it had to reach such an absolute extreme condition, demonstrates clearly that anything intermediate between that witness and a normal conscious and aware individual, could have the possibility of having experienced objective reality. This means that any subjective experience could have an element of objective reality and thus be valid evidence for such a reality.
The broad spectrum of evidence - and our degree of confidence in it
Hi again, kbertsche, sorry it's taken so long to get back, but I had business to attend to (and still need to, but I'll steal a few minutes here).
Agreed; perhaps a distinction between objective and subjective evidence is not the best.
I think you are falling into the trap of thinking of this as a dichotomy with two distinct groupings. It isn't: there is a multi-dimensional spectrum of evidence and of the degree of confidence we have in the evidence being actual evidence of reality.
All evidence starts out as a subjective experience, because that is the way our mind works. The next thing that happens is that many experiences are repeated and repeated and repeated until they reach a level of familiarity that we automatically think of these experiences as evidence of reality: the chairs and the tables at the coffee store. We can call these type experiences mundane experiences - they happen every day.
The next level is where these common are shared by people, and in conversation (anecdotal evidence of the other's mundane experiences) we find concordance\consilience in our impression that these experiences are evidence of reality. We cannot "read" the other people's minds to verify their experiences directly, and thus all we have is the anecdotal evidence of their experiences, based on how they relate\communicate them to us. We can call these experiences shared mundane experiences.
We generally have (whether it is justified or not) a very high degree of confidence that our mundane experiences are evidence of reality because of the repetition and the validation by anecdotal evidence of similar experience by others.
(I believe that there is objective as well as subjective evidence for the Christian faith, but I would not call any of this scientific evidence per se.)
The faith of various religions, to me, falls into the category of shared mundane experiences, culturally acceptable experiences, regardless of culture or religion. As noted above, we tend to have a high degree of confidence in such shared mundane experiences, whether it it justified or not, because of the repetition and the anecdotal validation.
Note that the virtually universal (especially within a specific culture) acceptance of these shared mundane experiences is done without rigid scientific testing, the next level of evidence. There is little doubt in anyone's mind, when entering the coffee shop that the chairs will support their weight and the table their coffee. We refer to these things as "objective" reality because they are objects rather than concepts.
Curiously, what humans live in would more appropriately be called "conceptual reality" - everyone has an individual concept of the world of reality and how they relate to it is part of that world concept, their "world view":
What we really see in the coffee shop is our personal conception of the tables and chairs, etc. It has been filtered by our senses and by our world view of reality.
Our worldview is constructed from the many many mundane experiences we have known and shared with people, and from our education and personal testing of knowledge against our personal experiences, and our beliefs about how the universe works. This is where we filter new evidence and make initial judgments about their validity: how well do they fit in to our perceptions and understanding of how the universe works, how well do they conform to our world view, versus how much do they contradict or seem contrary to those views and beliefs.
Maybe scientific versus non-scientific evidence is more pertinent.
Interestingly, where we need scientific evaluation of concepts is not when they involve mundane concepts of reality, but when they seem to challenge our previous understanding of the universe. We don't need to test the table in the coffee shop to see if it is real, we do need to test theories that change our way of thinking about reality: evolution, astronomy, geology, physics, etc., as this method provides a way to validate evidence and concepts in spite of contrary beliefs and opinions of people.
The most important moments in science are marked with two exclamations:
(1) "... that's curious ..." and (2) "eureka!"
The first is where something unexpected or unusual occurs, something contrary to our understanding of the way the universe works, and the second is when a new explanation of seemingly contrary or ambiguous information and evidence suddenly fall into a logical pattern that explains the evidence.
This is getting long, and I need to get back to work (I need to be finished for Monday am), so I'll just close by observing that there are several kinds of experience\concepts,
mundane personal experience\concepts
anecdotal shared mundane experiences\concepts
tested and evaluated experiences\concepts
hypothesized experiences\concepts that are untested as yet
hypothesized experiences\concepts that we don't know if we can test
Not all of these are either\or subjective or objective, nor are they either\or scientific or non-scientific, as each of these attempts to "dichotomize" the evidence is frustrated by overlapping categories. It is my personal opinion that any and all attempts to pre-define categories of evidence will fail to explain all the different categories of experiences\concepts.
The important thing, whether the experiences\concepts involve personal experiences, or testable experiences\concepts or whatever other ways you want to attempt to categorize, define, parse, and segregate evidence, is that it is the unusual, the unexpected, the unexplained, the contrary to one's world view experiences\concepts that are (or should be) of interest.
If we are only interested in concepts that match our world view, then we are guilty of confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance.
The approach I take is what I call open-minded skepticism, basically saying
quote:Is it wise to consider a group or a club, whose membership status is defined by making non-evidence based determinations, delusional? Why or why not?
I've been a member of a science-fiction writing club - does that qualify?
One of the problems with your question is what you mean by "non-evidence" -- I think what you are really asking is whether the determinations are delusional if they are reasonable (to you) or unreasonable (to you). Framed this way, I think you'll find the question answers itself.
Then you changed the subject ... by omitting the qualifiers "non-interfering, non-interacting", which caused me to respond differently ...
Still up to his old tricks eh?
And what bearing does any of this have on the subject of the thread? How do these hypotheticals help us to distinguish between faith and delusion?
Another standby to avoid issues of the topic: invent all kinds of self referential hypotheticals that are irrelevant and don't resolve anything, and then badger and act upset when the hypotheticals are not addressed.
LindaLou's comments in Re: Experiences (Message 140) were earlier and more in line with the thread topic, yet you refuse to engage them. Instead, you reply with counter-questions which are further from the topic. And your postings are becoming less reasoned and more ad hominem. Are you here to learn and to understand, or simply to argue?
Case in point?
And that's just one of the reason's I no longer read his posts at all.
Maybe the reason why RAZD and I tell you that we've already answered your questions is that we have.
In Straggler-world you are being evasive if you don't answer all of his questions no matter how off-topic and irrelevant they are. He also thinks he can dictate what YOU want to talk about.
They are just not the direct answers you want because there are assumptions underlying those questions, whether you realise it or not. Please do me the courtesy of reading what I wrote, if you want a productive conversation, and you're welcome to tell me what you think.
Shockingly, this is the same problem I've had with him - he ignores your points and then badgers you to answer his. Arrogant double standard, if not delusional?
The funniest comment he made was when he said that my posts about the topic were irrelevant to the issue he claimed I was really talking about (some hidden agenda of his fantasy invention) and then that I was evading the issue of what he claimed I was talking about by making these irrelevant posts about the topic instead of his hypothetical delusions about my "greater argument".
His biggest delusion is that he knows what I was arguing about, especially as the latest claims I've seen quoted are of the "all A is B, B therefore A" type, logical fallacies and misrepresentations.
If you have any question regarding what he says about my arguments, ask him to substantiate it with actual quotes and see if he behaves like a creationist on the run from reality.
... - maybe even take some powerful hallucinogens or other psychoactive drugs, ...
One experience was enough for me, back in the late 60's, in Haight-Ashbury, back when the Doors were just getting started. Not unpleasant, but still somewhat disturbing.
I have a feeling that some people think that delusions are 'obviously delusional'. They aren't to the people who are deluded.
Agreed. This is similar to the issue already discussed of a subjective experience of a single aware and conscious observer when they experience something unusual but have not confirmation of it: to the person that had the experience, it is real, whether it involves sasquatch or alien visitors, or whatever.
However, one of the differences - alluded to previously in the definition (Message 14) - is that delusions are often repeated for the individuals involved (as you noted), while the singular experience is a unique occurrence (or not repeated by the same person), and this effectively removes such experiences from the issue here.
Whatever you do, become familiar with what a delusion is and then try and explain what makes it different from religious faith.
The only thing I can think of is that religious faith is commonly less powerful than delusions. People can 'turn it down' or even 'off' a lot more readily than delusions can be.
To me delusion is any belief that is resistant to contradictory evidence, and that leads the person to reject the evidence and the source of that evidence as being irrational (another subjective evaluation). Certainly we see this behavior in some faithful people, but does this mean that it is necessarily due to faith?
(am I hallucinating, or did you have a comment about some bad things that some people of faith have done? You've edited since I first read your post.)
There are people in the population with delusions, and there are people in the population with faith, and this means there are people with (+delusions+faith), (+delusions-faith), (+faith-delusions), and (-faith-delusions).
It is easy (confirmation bias anyone?) to assign the delusion of those people of the (+delusions+faith) category to being due to the faith and not to the existence of delusions irrespective of faith.
It is easy to let one's preconceptions color one's views.
Delusions protect themselves with rationalisations, halucinations, confirmation bias, filtering out contradictory information etc etc.
And one of the ways they protect themselves is to wrap up the delusions with other strongly held beliefs of the people involved.
... and then try and explain what makes it different from religious faith.
Cyclic episodes with non-episodal periods, resistant to reason, not common to the culture as a whole, affects only one person with a specific delusion.
The only thing I can think of is that religious faith is commonly less powerful than delusions. People can 'turn it down' or even 'off' a lot more readily than delusions can be.
Perhaps because religious faiths are not delusions, but worldviews, based on concepts that are different from those of people outside the faith/s. Beliefs can be wrong without being delusional, as they can be based on ignorance or lack of information. Beliefs can also be different from those of other people without being delusional - they can be logical opinions not contradicted by any known (to the people) facts.
Re: Delusions and Faith: Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc?
Hi kbertsche, another busy day ...
Perhaps we could say that a "religious faith experience" is more cohesive and has more context than a "delusional experience."
I think that is an assumption on your part, that I am not willing to make. One has to question which is providing the context for what.
It is also consistent with objective data such as the history and sacred texts of the religion, and with subjective data such as the shared experiences of other adherents.
I'm afraid that's the cognitive bias I warned you about.
The religious experience is consistent with the worldview of the religion.
Or it is interpreted to be consistent with the worldview. One can compare many religious experiences from all kinds of faiths, and you will see two things:
the experiences are similar, even occur under similar circumstances, and
they are all interpreted as being consistent with the persons worldview.
quote:The most important moments in science are marked with two exclamations: (1) "... that's curious ..." and (2) "eureka!" ... The important thing, whether the experiences\concepts involve personal experiences, or testable experiences\concepts or whatever other ways you want to attempt to categorize, define, parse, and segregate evidence, is that it is the unusual, the unexpected, the unexplained, the contrary to one's world view experiences\concepts that are (or should be) of interest.
(underline for emphasis)
In this way we know we are avoiding confirmation bias and may even be embracing cognitive dissonance as a signal of possible changes to thinking -- the open minded skeptic approach again -- allowing new ideas to come in to play.
Re: Delusions and Faith: Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc?
Hi Modulus,
My edit was to add in the last paragraph to mike, you might have conflated my message with my reply to its reply where I said "Some people are driven to murder or suicide by faith based beliefs, not just the more classic delusional beliefs such as paranoia."
Yes, that would be it - I thought I looked through the other messages too, oh well.
The point is that when you bring up situations where you have a deluded person acting on their delusions, it is not necessarily due to their faith - that can just be part of the adaptation of the delusions to fit into the person's world view, the person's understanding of reality.
For some people, faith is built upon a single experience. And a single experience is not really classifiable as a delusion, its either reflective of reality or a hallucination, mistake or false memory or the ilk. But some people believe themselves to be in continual communication with a specific entity that guides them or instructs them. Sometimes this is nearly harmless and they get on with their lives more or less normally - some might say even more happily than most others.
Again, what you have here is a spectrum of people with beliefs, some of which may have delusions and some which may not, ie some have (+faith+delusion) and some have (+faith-delusion).
The question is - is it possible to differentiate between someone who is suffering delusions and someone who has deep faith and has recurring experiences affirming this position?
Is it possible to distinguish between someone with delusions and someone with delusions who also has faith and someone who has faith and no delusions?
This definition is all well and good - but why? It seems you are deliberately discounting the possibility of communal delusions but I think we should seriously consider such a possibility when we examine a group like Heaven's Gate.
And Charles Manson ("Squeaky" Fromme was just released from prison), for a rather more morbid example of delusional behavior, but one that did not involve faith.
I'm not making a concrete claim here - just pointing out that your definition might result in overlooking something.
Always a possibility, however it also points out many cases where there is a difference between faith and delusions.
I agree. Most people I meet who say they have faith are in this category - but not all. When some encounter a collision between their 'worldview' and conclusions derived from science they become resistant to the contradictory position - sometimes angrily and in a manner that would seem disproportionate. Is accusing friends or family of lying and being part of a conspiracy (unwittingly or otherwise), and ranting about some great scientific hoax just because someone mentioned that birds evolved from dinosaurs, really not something we might consider the act of someone suffering under a delusion?
Which comes back to the question of distinguishing those with +faith+delusion from those with +faith-delusion, rather than lumping all +faith into the +delusion category.
Straggler's silly "Challenge" problems ... and then the topic ...
Nice post Catholic Scientist.
Anyway thankyou CS. Thankyou for having the decency to answer directly. Why will RAZD and others not just say so? Why the evasion?
Because its besides the point. And in the same way that our confirmation bias might cause us to accept too many things, you're denial bias will cause you to oppose too many, and we'll never come to an agreement on what we can and cannot accept. We don't really even have to go down that road for the purpose of the discussion.
Indeed. Straggler has made it abundantly clear that he is unwilling to consider anything that violates his worldview.
His whole attempt to parse and divide evidence into two categories are clearly attempts to put them in two different piles: (a) those he thinks are valid (conform to his worldview) and (b) those he thinks are invalid (violate his worldview) -- without considering the possibility that the evidence could reflect reality.
If he was really interested in understanding my position he would not spend as much time misrepresenting it and denying\resisting understanding it.
I don't think so, and I think you're using the term "guessing" a little to loosely, but again, all I see is you trying to rationalize your position.
Look let me make this clear. I DO NOT THINK YOU ARE RANDOMLY GUESSING. However you are indisputably treating subjective reasons for belief that are no more reliable than simply guessing as evidence.
Again you're being a little equivocal with that word "guessing".
Shocking. Straggler equivocating again?
Obviously subjective evidence IS better than random guessing when it does produce results. That it does not produce results every time means that it is not superior to the scientific method when it can deal with objectivised evidence.
In addition subjective evidence can lead one to consider new ideas that would not otherwise arise, and it can very well develop that these ideas are valid even though there is a lack of validation for the intermediate subjective evidence.
The issue, however IS off topic on this thread. The fact that Straggler keeps bringing it up, and keeps talking (falsely) about my position (if he doesn't understand it then how can he discuss it with any kind of honesty and validity), just shows that he is obsessed with proving something - something perhaps delusional on his part.
A conclusion I reached long ago. Strange that many people have this problem with Straggler, and nobody else, nor does anyone have such problems with those who have problems with Straggler. Do you wonder what conclusions would be reached from the objective evidence and empirical evaluation of that evidence of this problem.
Fine, that's fine. And you stop acting like you can rationalize strong atheism with the IPU argument. Oh, wait. Spoke too soon.
If someone says they had an experience of seeing an IPU in the woods, then I would be happy to consider further investigation, but if they say that because I saw something unusual in the woods that then I must also consider further investigation of the IPU as a reality, then I will consider them ignorant, illogical and possibly delusional.
The IPU argument only works for those people who are convince that it works. I've yet to see\hear\read\whatever any evidence of it convincing someone who wasn't pre-convinced that it was a valid argument. Spent a whole thread on it, mostly wasted by Straggler's obsessions, but certainly an opportunity for someone to have presented evidence that it convinced someone.
Thus calling such things "evidence" is an abuse of the term.
You can define words however you want if it makes you feel more rational.
Curious, isn't it, that people are always getting down on YEC types for trying to redefine words to fit their worldviews, and here we have Straggler doing the same thing. I've noted many similarities between YEC arguments and his in previous threads. It is one of the bits and pieces of evidence of an irrational argument: you don't change the words to make your argument seem rational, you use the words as they are understood and used in the context of the argument, or your argument is logically invalid (improper construction).
Although, since the results can't be empirically verified, if you only accept empirical verification as the method to measure the value of the explanation, then you're never going to see the results as anything better than a guess.
Well if you can show me another way we can detect reality external to ourselves I am open to hearing it. Specifically one that allows us to somehow detect immaterial gods.
Try.
Good luck. Some people try, some people are trying.
My psychologist mom frequently joked that just because you are paranoid, that doesn't mean that you are not being followed.
To bring this back into the realm of the topic (something Straggler avoids frequently, as anyone can see by the responses to him trending further and further from the topic), let us consider the evidence of the effect/s of religious experiences versus the evidence of the effect/s of delusional experiences. This is objective evidence that is independent of the value of the subjective experiences involved, and it can be measured against the behavior of people without such experiences.
Delusional experiences can lead to anti-social behaviors. Paranoid, schizophrenic, psycho etc. I am unaware (perhaps ignorant) of any beneficial results of delusional experiences -- at best a delusional person is judged to have a "harmless" delusion.
Religious experiences can challenge people to lead better lives, be more forgiving of others, and lead to pro-social behaviors (volunteering, caring for others, charities, etc).
Then we have cases like the woman that drowns her children to prevent the devil from getting them, because she heard voices from god\angel/s\whatever telling her to do it.
When we look at the apparently religious justification for these actions, and then look at the religion to see if that indeed is a promoted behavior, we see that it is not, certainly not for any standard religion. From this we see that it is a delusional effect behavior rather than a religious effect behavior.
There are people of faith There are people with delusions
Hi Modulus, I saw your closing comments, good post.
I also see that Moose has asked for closing summary positions to be done (Message 230), so I'll take this opportunity to do so.
How do you know they are a deluded person acting on their delusions and not a faithful person acting on their faith? That's the point I was making.
Understood, and I think it can be done, because the experiences affect behavior of the person, and we can see how those behaviors mesh with the religious concepts or delusional behavior. As noted in my response to Catholic Scientist, one of the effects of many delusional experiences is anti-social behavior/s versus the effects of religious experiences leading to pro-social behavior/s. It's not a strict one-for-one comparison but it provides another bit of evidence of each being a spectrum of experiences and behaviors that sometimes cross and sometimes do not cross. If one could measure quantitatively the amount of faith and the amount of delusion, and plot them in relation to their median values, it would appear from these bits and pieces of evidence that what we would have would be something like this:
With faith on one axis and delusion on the other, and no clear relationship one to the other. One could overlay my previous table over this graphic:
With faith on the vertical axis and delusions on the horizontal axis.
Of course one of the problems is defining delusion and faith, as LindaLou has pointed out, as they are social definitions - delusion is measured against the society, and faith is measured against the culture (thus distinguishing between faiths and cults, for example) and they are essentially subjective interpretations and value judgements, rather than empirically measured items.
I don't see your point. I'm not arguing that all delusions include religious themes.
Simply that if you can have delusional experiences without religious experiences, and you can have religious experiences without delusional experiences then the two do not correlate.
Maybe it does, if we assume ahead of time that faith is an entirely separate phenomena from delusion. I don't think that "By assuming them to be different" is a very satisfying answer to "How does one distinguish faith from delusion?"
Nor does a priori assuming that all religious experiences are delusional lead to a satisfying answer to the question. Starting from the assumption that all religious people are insane, and then only look for confirmation bias to your a priori assumptions is begging the question. To avoid that path you need to consider -- the open minded skeptic path -- that indeed there could be a difference. I note that you have taken that approach in your summary post.
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