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You begin to think about the normal well-tempered mind, in effect, the well-organized mind, as an achievement, not as the base state As an aside, Almost no on

You begin to think about the normal well-tempered mind, in effect, the well-organized mind, as an achievement, not as the base state As an aside, Almost no one ever really analyzes sanity. Somehow, despite not understanding why exactly we exist, what our purpose is, and that at any given moment we could die and cease to exist, we don't go insane. Do you have any idea how crazy that is? Even "insane" people are just experiencing delusions ontop of reality - the constructs from their mind are mundane in a sense because while they aren't real, they are sane. Real insanity would be realizing how large the universe is, that philosophers cant even prove anything besides solipsism exists, or how meaningless life is. I've come to the conclusion that I must be insane, since sane people don't notice any of this - clearly all the completely sane people don't give it a second thought. And of course I'm sure plenty of you will say sure life has purpose, or solipsism is too narrow because it isn't useful to use as a worldview. Because you're all sane. ;)

cgore 13y ago
Somehow, despite not understanding why exactly we exist, what our purpose is, and that at any given moment we could die and cease to exist, we don't go insane. Do you have any idea how crazy that is? If you have ever run into a Christian who just assumed you were lying when you told them that you were an atheist, this is why they thought that. You don't seem insane, so they are left with the assumption that you must be a liar. When in truth, you just choose to think about something else instead: politics, your job, some video game, whatever.
- loup-vaillant 13y ago
  > If you have ever run into a Christian who just assumed you were lying when you told them that you were an atheist, this is why they thought that. By the way, Dennett talked about the reverse: how the Church itself lies: more specifically, priests won't try and correct the beliefs of their parishioners (like, such and such depiction of a miracle was actually just a symbol), lest they destroy their faith altogether.
  - saraid216 13y ago
    Brutal honesty is not less brutal because it is honest, though. Different people prefer different amounts of brutality and honesty. In my experience, I've found that the honesty stops mattering after a while: all that I see is brutality.
    - loup-vaillant 13y ago
      When someone wouldn't change one's mind, being brutal about the truth rarely helps. But one can be gentle about it. Sometimes however, contradicting one's belief is perceived as a brutal attack no matter what. When I perceive this, I tend to give up. The most brutal thing of all however is changing your mind. It tend to come with a terrible sense of loss, even though that grief is rarely warranted. Plus, many religious people strongly believe that religious belief is good, even when they're less sure about their accuracy. Tell them something convincing about God not existing, and they could panic. Most of the time, they will cling to their beliefs by sheer force of will. Personally, I avoid that problem by noticing that I'm not entitled to my opinion. I'm not free to believe whatever I want. I just hope I'm strong enough to let evidence change my mind whenever it should.
      - cgore 13y ago
        They have probably seen just as many proofs for God, but from people they trust more than you.
  - cgore 13y ago
    The traditional view is that the miracles weren't just symbolic, but actual historic events (that had intentional symbolic meaning), and most priests would subscribe to the traditional view; so they aren't lying, just being consistent with their views. What you are referencing is the "Liberal Christianity" of the 1800's, but it is generally an unpopular set of views. Wikipedia's page is a bit short but a useful overview of the differences: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Christianity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Christianity
    - 13y ago
- vidarh 13y ago
  > When in truth, you just choose to think about something else instead: politics, your job, some video game, whatever. But that is just not true for a lot of us: A lot of atheists spend a disproportionate amount of time considering these types of questions. Though for many the answers to the above is: Why should there be a purpose? I'd rather choose one for myself. Why does matter if we can die and cease to exist at any moment? If there is no after life, we'd never know. Do you fear going to bed at night, worrying you might not wake up in the morning? Why would we worry about that - if we don't wake up, so what? Incidentally I've never met a christian who assumed I was lying when I told them I was an atheist. A lot of them have wondered how I could be, and had questions about it, and I'm sure some thought I was crazy (the feeling is mutual), but none have ever implied I wasn't telling the truth.
  - cgore 13y ago
    To paraphrase Nietzsche, "A man can withstand any how, if he has a sufficient why." People have a hard-wired need for purpose in their life. And people want to think about and consider questions that are beyond the ability of science to answer. Thinking about those questions can be a lot of fun, and that is what a lot of metaphysics and theology is.
- chao- 13y ago
  I had the good fortune of once being the first atheist that one women had EVER spoken to (or at least who had admitted that to her face). The conversation started with a lot of back-and-forth that was very enlightening. By the end, things weren't so amicable, but the interim was fantastic. I don't wish/intend to open up a can of worms, but feel it is worth relating the major point of departure in the conversation: We differed on the importance of what I guess you might call "purity of intent". That your inner thoughts/motivations for an action matter as much or more than the tangible effects of that action, even if those effects are completely indistinguishable, into perpetuity.
  - X4 13y ago
    What did you tell her? What did she ask?
aheilbut 13y ago
We're evolved not to think about all that too much.
- gregsq 13y ago
  Yes, that line of thinking can lead to a distinct adaptive deficit, which will simply be selected against.
- guelo 13y ago
  I would say that this line of thinking is what necessitates the creation of religion in just about every society in human history.
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hsitz 13y ago
Somehow, despite not understanding why exactly we exist, what our purpose is, and that at any given moment we could die and cease to exist, we don't go insane. Do you have any idea how crazy that is? This is the human condition. I'm not sure "normal" or "crazy" are appropriate concepts to try to characterize it. It is what it is. Many people who aren't religious know what their purpose is. What they may also be aware of, however, is that their purpose is not something given to them, it's something they have the responsibility to choose for themselves, and this is part of what it means to be human. You can't just accept what someone else tells you your purpose is, you have to choose it for yourself. This is one of the core elements of existentialist philosophy. (And there are Christian existentialists, but that's for another time. . . .)
- bloodofheroes 13y ago
  I think he meant the purpose of humans, not the purpose of each individual human. Why would each human have a different purpose?
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > I think he meant the purpose of humans, not the purpose of each individual human. Why would each human have a different purpose? Because of evolution and natural selection. Natural selection works because of diversity, not uniformity. The more diversity, the more quickly a species evolves to meet the environment's changing demands. So, to answer your question in the most formal and scientific way, if people weren't different from each other, evolution wouldn't work.
  - hsitz 13y ago
    Why would you think everyone must have the same purpose? Even among the people who think every person's purpose is to serve God, every person has a different way of doing that. This specific way of serving God is their "purpose". Strikes me as slightly analogous to Aristotle's claim that every person has happiness as a goal. That tells you relatively little about what each person might actually do, since what makes people happy (i.e., mostly realizing their unique individual potential, for Aristotle, "become who you are") differs from person to person.
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angersock 13y ago
This question has been on my mind a bit this month. The basic issue with solipsism is that it doesn't do anything for you--you can't really use it to explain everyday occurrences or guide your actions in a meaningful way.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > The basic issue with solipsism is that it doesn't do anything for you ... That's in the nature of philosophical ideas -- they aren't meant to be practical or productive. Now if only all those students who sign up for philosophy courses and majors understood this, they might instead choose something useful and remunerative.
- dhruval 13y ago
  Well you can use it to get over fears and anxieties. Also to reduce stress. By seeing that is that the things causing these fears don't actually exist. It would be better if we used philosophies as a tools rather than cling to them as a absolute truths. As and aside, solipsism is dependent on qualia, so not True in an absolute sense. (Not my idea. Similar things have been argued by Rorty or Wittingstein. Also by some Buddhist philosophies - eg. Madhyamaka ).
lutusp 13y ago
> Almost no one ever really analyzes sanity. That's true, but it's easy to see why -- a "sane" person doesn't need either therapy or psychoactive drugs, so psychologists quickly lose interest in them, as either a client or a research subject. A sane person is boring. That's why, as the years go by, more and more everyday behaviors are turned into evidence of mental illness. Are you aware that, in the most recent mental illness diagnostic guide (the DSM), scratching your arm has become the basis for a mental illness diagnosis? I wish I were making this up. Read and weep: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dermatillomania http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dermatillomania It only gets worse from here. This is why the director of the NIMH has decided to abandon the DSM as a guide to scientific research -- and not a moment too soon: "Two NIMH Directors Debunk DSM & Deplore Psychiatry's Unscientific Modus Operandi" : http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/920/94/ http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/920/94/
- gjm11 13y ago
  > scratching your arm has become the basis for a mental illness diagnosis? In the same way as sleeping is the basis for a diagnosis of illness (narcolepsy), washing your hands is the basis for a diagnosis of mental illness (OCD), etc. No one is going to diagnose you as mentally ill because you scratch your arm, but if you repeatedly scratch your arm enough to cause tissue damage and seek psychiatric help with stopping, there's a label they can put on it. Just as sleeping is normal but falling asleep uncontrollably in the middle of the day might be narcolepsy, hand-washing is normal but washing your hands 100 times in a row might be OCD, being tired is normal but being tired all the time might be CFS, having your cells grow and multiply is normal but if they do it out of control it might be cancer, etc., etc., etc. Lots of things are normal in small quantities and pathological in large quantities.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > No one is going to diagnose you as mentally ill because you scratch your arm, but if you repeatedly scratch your arm enough to cause tissue damage and seek psychiatric help with stopping [enphasis added] ... Yes, but you see, the point of the DSM is to allow psychiatrists and psychologists to proactively label behaviors as abnormal, rather than patiently wait for people to seek out their services. If a "diagnosis" appears in the DSM, then it's official -- schoolchildren can be assigned the diagnosis without the cooperation of the child or his parents, which allows the school to demand additional funds from governments, allows parents an get Social Security payments based on the diagnosis -- basically, the floodgates open up. The child is taken out of the equation, because it's an official diagnosis -- it's in the DSM, the "Bible" of psychiatry and psychology. If the reasoning was that it allowed people to volunteer for treatment, there would be no need for a DSM, because people who volunteer for treatment don't need a diagnosis -- their willingness to undergo treatment is more than enough justification. The DSM's purpose is to legitimize diagnoses, make them part of the canon of recognized mental illnesses, require insurance companies to pay for treatments, require the Social Security system to pay up. Unfortunately, because of these pressures, the DSM now includes absurd things like grieving at the passing of a loved one, sibling rivalry, the inability to add a column of figures, and so forth -- obvious abuses of the imagined authority of the field of psychology. > Lots of things are normal in small quantities and pathological in large quantities. True about some things, but that's not how medical diseases are defined. One either has measles, or does not have measles. One either has cancer, or does not have canter. One is either pregnant, or is not pregnant. And more importantly, in each of these cases, a doctor can go beyond observing symptoms, and measure a cause. Not so for mental illnesses -- their diagnosis relies only on symptoms, the causes are unknown (that's the business of neuroscience, not psychology). This is obviously a basis for abuse and exploitation. The DSM covers a spectrum from very serious conditions like schizophrenia and bipolar syndrome, both of which are actually biological conditions with mental symptoms, to any number of make-believe diseases, some of which appear and disappear from the canon over time, based on public gullibility and taste, for example Asperger's and homosexuality, both of which have entered, and then left, the DSM based on public pressure and politics, not anything resembling science. The DSM only lists symptoms, not causes, not science, and that's why it's so often abused. > ... there's a label they can put on it. Yes, and that was a perfect way to put it. Psychology depends on labels, medicine depends on objective causes. Because psychiatry and psychology rely on the assignment of labels based on observation of symptoms, it's not science and it's not effective. This is why the director of the NIMH has recently decided to drop support for the DSM, a decision that is not less than earthshaking in the mental health field. The director's reason? The DSM is based only on the observation of symptoms, and it lacks validity. For science, society is now moving in a completely different direction -- away from mind research, toward brain research. More here: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia... And here (a video that makes the same points): http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/updates/2013/mental-disorders-as-brain-disorders-thomas-insel-at-tedxcaltech.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/updates/2013/mental-disorders-...
ssivark 13y ago
You might enjoy this :-) http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Total_Perspective_Vortex http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Total_Perspective_Vortex Don't pay too much attetion to the "science" but the philosophical implications are interesting to ponder.
- kazagistar 13y ago
  Not sure why the "philosophical implications" of things that are not so in reality would be interesting to ponder.
Skalman 13y ago
Somehow, despite not understanding why exactly we exist, what our purpose is, and that at any given moment we could die and cease to exist, we don't go insane. Do you have any idea how crazy that is? I don't get why people need a reason to exist. To me it's clear that there isn't a reason and we don't have any predefined purpose, yet most people create their reason. Maybe they live for their loved ones, maybe they enjoy life. And regarding death: it's scary and doesn't happen very often, so it makes sense not to think about it too much.
- Vivtek 13y ago
  I've always had the same problem. I don't need a purpose - I am alive. Here I am! Why does life need a meaning beyond just being life? It's to the point that I wonder whether I'm normal, really. Everybody else seems so caught up in their own meaning.
  - JackFr 13y ago
    Well it's tough (though not impossible) to build a any sort of value system on top of "I exist."
    - kazagistar 13y ago
      Not sure why you need to build one. Last time I checked, people tend to have one, irrelevant of the effort they put into building it. Is that one not enough? Why not? If you are missing one, why do you need to get one?
    - Vivtek 13y ago
      This is ludicrous. I have a value system. It consists of me feeling like a better person when I'm a better person. I feel no need to prove my value system as though it were a theorem - what an odd fetish. I've never understood this need.
- robmclarty 13y ago
  Death is definitely what others here are referring to as an "out of bounds error". It is simply the ultimate definition of incomprehensible. It's like a physical computer not only losing power, not only being gone, not only nothing, but never having existed at all. In my mind (haha) death is the end of both space and time. Oblivion. And that's pretty crazy to shove into a finite brain.
enraged_camel 13y ago
>>Real insanity would be realizing how large the universe is I remember going camping when I was 15. After everyone else fell asleep, I laid on my back under the clear open night sky and let my mind wander. I first thought about planets in our solar system, then the interstellar medium, then other star systems with their own stars, planets and asteroid belts. I then "zoomed out" and thought about the Milky Way, then about other galaxies, spiral ones and starburst ones and irregular galaxies, and the void between them. I thought about nebulae and black holes. As time passed, I started to view Earth as just a planet, and our sun not as the Sun but as a star. Just one out of countless. I started to put myself in the shoes of an alien who lives on another planet - or maybe within interstellar clouds! - and tried to... Then I stopped. The reason I stopped was because I had the distinct feeling that my mind was about to break. As if I was about to run a buggy function, and if I pressed Enter to run it, it would throw an index out of bounds error and crash permanently. So I did the sane thing by pulling my sleeping bag over my head and falling asleep.
- hoffcoder 13y ago
  Reminded me of the movie 'Pi' by Darren Aronofsky.
- BasDirks 13y ago
  "As if I was about to run a buggy function, and if I pressed Enter to run it, it would throw an index out of bounds error and crash permanently." This is such a great description. The Abyss is an out of bounds error.
- vidarh 13y ago
  Have you read Olaf Stapledons "Star Maker"? It starts with the protagonist looking at the stars in a similar way, and somehow finding himself leaving his body and flying out amongst the stars. From there on the scale keeps increasing, both time and space, covering billions of years, and pretty much the scale of the universe. He wrote an earlier book - Last and First Men - that covered 2 billion years of future developments of humanity -, and Star Maker makes Last and First Men seem limited in scope. Freeman Dyson apparently says he got the inspiration for a Dyson Sphere from Star Maker.
- 13y ago
saraid216 13y ago
> Almost no one ever really analyzes sanity. Isn't this the purpose of positive psychology? I have a rather high quality tome, http://www.amazon.com/Character-Strengths-Virtues-Handbook-Classification/dp/0195167015/ http://www.amazon.com/Character-Strengths-Virtues-Handbook-C... that does its best to discuss the positive aspects of a person, trying to be a kind of mirrored version of the DSM.
meriksson 13y ago
It is true that almost no one analyzes sanity. Your comment reminds me a lot of a particular book on the topic, The Human Evasion by Celia Green. If you are not familiar with it already, you might be interested in checking it out: http://deoxy.org/evasion/1.htm http://deoxy.org/evasion/1.htm
Bockit 13y ago
When you say things like "realizing how large the universe is", "how meaningless life is", do you really mean that your mental state is impacted by the answers to these questions/implications of these realisations? How does it affect you? I ask because while the ideas are interesting to me, they have always seemed fairly irrelevant. Sure, the universe is huge, but I don't think knowing that is going to change me. The way I see it, it has no impact on the way I live my life and I can't see anything I do having an impact on that. I mean the questions genuinely, I realise that not everyone sees things the same way.
JonnieCache 13y ago
>Almost no one ever really analyzes sanity. Assuming you mean the general public, then yes, I suppose so. But the measures taken by the mind to protect itself from reality have been a central area of study for psychologists for over a hundred years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_mechanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_mechanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_schema https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_schema
JackFr 13y ago
Consider mental illness -- apart from physical deformities of the brain (the organ) and bacterial and viral infection -- the rest is pure cultural bias as to what constitutes normal behavior. That is to say, the only reason you believe your mental constructs are more real than a schizophrenic's, is that there's a cultural consensus that disembodied voices aren't "real".
- JonnieCache 13y ago
  >Consider mental illness -- apart from physical deformities of the brain (the organ) and bacterial and viral infection -- the rest is pure cultural bias as to what constitutes normal behavior. This is simply not true. A mental health diagnosis cannot be made without considering the wellbeing of the patient. In short, you can act as weirdly as you like but if you still claim to be happy and are not a danger to yourself or others, you are not insane. At least, this is how it works in europe. If US doctors can forcibly treat someone who is happy and non-dangerous just because they fit a checklist, then yeah maybe it's time to take action.
eli_gottlieb 13y ago
Who says some of us aren't just mostly effective insane maniacs?
gnaritas 13y ago
Somehow, despite not understanding why exactly we exist There is no why, there's just how. what our purpose is Nature doesn't have purpose, you're anthropomorphizing nature. and that at any given moment we could die and cease to exist Yup. we don't go insane. Do you have any idea how crazy that is? I see nothing crazy about it at all. Why would we go insane for not knowing the answers to invalid questions? Asking why we exist or what our purpose is, is equivalent to asking how tall green is; while a syntactically valid sentence, it's still a non-sense question based on unfounded presumptions about the nature of the universe. Just because a question can be asked doesn't mean the question is valid or deserves an answer.
- writtles 13y ago
  Scientific materialism is merely an objectivity bias within the subject-object problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject%E2%80%93object_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject%E2%80%93object_problem) Because, you see, if we can only objectively measure things scientifically with instruments then there can be no subjectivity because we can't see it on any instrument! Therefore anybody who continues to insist that it does exist falls into the category of "woo woo," "magical thinking", or "superstitious". And those anti-scientific stances can only lead down the slippery slope into any of those pitfalls--or worse yet--fundamentalism (because there is just as much evidence for a mythical god as there is subjectivity... or unicorns for that matter... or spaghetti monsters...etc)! So its easy to lump all that is non-objective into the same category as unicorns since we cannot measure any of it. /caricature This is a fallacy of absolutistic thinking and it is rampant.
  - gnaritas 13y ago
    That was about as clear as mud.
    - writtles 13y ago
      This one always stumps people. Your subjective experience is unique to yourself. Your Self (your personal subjective experience -- which is denied by the scientific materialists) exists as such. And we can logically conclude that through the following mental exercise: In the future is a cloning device. You step in and your body and brain are cloned down to the last electron. All of your memories, scars and epigenetics are cloned here as well. Now this is key here: In all Objective sense, your clone is you. There are no distinction between you and your clone and nobody can tell who is who. You both know yourself to be you and no one would be the wiser if you went and lived in a foreign country under a different name and your clone stays back and lives your life for you. Well nobody except YOU would know. You see, to you that clone is another person that you can talk to and shake hands with. Even though a brain scan will reveal the same thought patterns between you two, you will never literally see through the clone's eyes. If the clone dies, you go on just fine, but if you die... It's over even though your perfect clone goes on. So therein lies the one distinct difference between you and your clone and that is YOUR subjective experience makes you YOU. So the problem is is that this subjective experience has no real evidence of its existence, so it doesn't exist right? Just like fairies don't exist, right? And THAT is the absolutistic mindset of the scientific materialist.
GrinningFool 13y ago
> 've come to the conclusion that I must be insane, since sane people don't notice any of this - clearly all the completely sane people don't give it a second thought. We notice it. We just move on, since we can't do much about it. Alternatively, our acceptance of it indicates that on some level, you also are sane.

cgore 13y ago

Somehow, despite not understanding why exactly we exist, what our purpose is, and that at any given moment we could die and cease to exist, we don't go insane. Do you have any idea how crazy that is? If you have ever run into a Christian who just assumed you were lying when you told them that you were an atheist, this is why they thought that. You don't seem insane, so they are left with the assumption that you must be a liar. When in truth, you just choose to think about something else instead: politics, your job, some video game, whatever.

loup-vaillant 13y ago
> If you have ever run into a Christian who just assumed you were lying when you told them that you were an atheist, this is why they thought that. By the way, Dennett talked about the reverse: how the Church itself lies: more specifically, priests won't try and correct the beliefs of their parishioners (like, such and such depiction of a miracle was actually just a symbol), lest they destroy their faith altogether.
- saraid216 13y ago
  Brutal honesty is not less brutal because it is honest, though. Different people prefer different amounts of brutality and honesty. In my experience, I've found that the honesty stops mattering after a while: all that I see is brutality.
  - loup-vaillant 13y ago
    When someone wouldn't change one's mind, being brutal about the truth rarely helps. But one can be gentle about it. Sometimes however, contradicting one's belief is perceived as a brutal attack no matter what. When I perceive this, I tend to give up. The most brutal thing of all however is changing your mind. It tend to come with a terrible sense of loss, even though that grief is rarely warranted. Plus, many religious people strongly believe that religious belief is good, even when they're less sure about their accuracy. Tell them something convincing about God not existing, and they could panic. Most of the time, they will cling to their beliefs by sheer force of will. Personally, I avoid that problem by noticing that I'm not entitled to my opinion. I'm not free to believe whatever I want. I just hope I'm strong enough to let evidence change my mind whenever it should.
    - cgore 13y ago
      They have probably seen just as many proofs for God, but from people they trust more than you.
- cgore 13y ago
  The traditional view is that the miracles weren't just symbolic, but actual historic events (that had intentional symbolic meaning), and most priests would subscribe to the traditional view; so they aren't lying, just being consistent with their views. What you are referencing is the "Liberal Christianity" of the 1800's, but it is generally an unpopular set of views. Wikipedia's page is a bit short but a useful overview of the differences: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Christianity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Christianity
  - 13y ago
vidarh 13y ago
> When in truth, you just choose to think about something else instead: politics, your job, some video game, whatever. But that is just not true for a lot of us: A lot of atheists spend a disproportionate amount of time considering these types of questions. Though for many the answers to the above is: Why should there be a purpose? I'd rather choose one for myself. Why does matter if we can die and cease to exist at any moment? If there is no after life, we'd never know. Do you fear going to bed at night, worrying you might not wake up in the morning? Why would we worry about that - if we don't wake up, so what? Incidentally I've never met a christian who assumed I was lying when I told them I was an atheist. A lot of them have wondered how I could be, and had questions about it, and I'm sure some thought I was crazy (the feeling is mutual), but none have ever implied I wasn't telling the truth.
- cgore 13y ago
  To paraphrase Nietzsche, "A man can withstand any how, if he has a sufficient why." People have a hard-wired need for purpose in their life. And people want to think about and consider questions that are beyond the ability of science to answer. Thinking about those questions can be a lot of fun, and that is what a lot of metaphysics and theology is.
chao- 13y ago
I had the good fortune of once being the first atheist that one women had EVER spoken to (or at least who had admitted that to her face). The conversation started with a lot of back-and-forth that was very enlightening. By the end, things weren't so amicable, but the interim was fantastic. I don't wish/intend to open up a can of worms, but feel it is worth relating the major point of departure in the conversation: We differed on the importance of what I guess you might call "purity of intent". That your inner thoughts/motivations for an action matter as much or more than the tangible effects of that action, even if those effects are completely indistinguishable, into perpetuity.
- X4 13y ago
  What did you tell her? What did she ask?

aheilbut 13y ago

We're evolved not to think about all that too much.

gregsq 13y ago
Yes, that line of thinking can lead to a distinct adaptive deficit, which will simply be selected against.
guelo 13y ago
I would say that this line of thinking is what necessitates the creation of religion in just about every society in human history.

deleted 13y ago

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hsitz 13y ago

Somehow, despite not understanding why exactly we exist, what our purpose is, and that at any given moment we could die and cease to exist, we don't go insane. Do you have any idea how crazy that is? This is the human condition. I'm not sure "normal" or "crazy" are appropriate concepts to try to characterize it. It is what it is. Many people who aren't religious know what their purpose is. What they may also be aware of, however, is that their purpose is not something given to them, it's something they have the responsibility to choose for themselves, and this is part of what it means to be human. You can't just accept what someone else tells you your purpose is, you have to choose it for yourself. This is one of the core elements of existentialist philosophy. (And there are Christian existentialists, but that's for another time. . . .)

bloodofheroes 13y ago
I think he meant the purpose of humans, not the purpose of each individual human. Why would each human have a different purpose?
- lutusp 13y ago
  > I think he meant the purpose of humans, not the purpose of each individual human. Why would each human have a different purpose? Because of evolution and natural selection. Natural selection works because of diversity, not uniformity. The more diversity, the more quickly a species evolves to meet the environment's changing demands. So, to answer your question in the most formal and scientific way, if people weren't different from each other, evolution wouldn't work.
- hsitz 13y ago
  Why would you think everyone must have the same purpose? Even among the people who think every person's purpose is to serve God, every person has a different way of doing that. This specific way of serving God is their "purpose". Strikes me as slightly analogous to Aristotle's claim that every person has happiness as a goal. That tells you relatively little about what each person might actually do, since what makes people happy (i.e., mostly realizing their unique individual potential, for Aristotle, "become who you are") differs from person to person.

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angersock 13y ago

This question has been on my mind a bit this month. The basic issue with solipsism is that it doesn't do anything for you--you can't really use it to explain everyday occurrences or guide your actions in a meaningful way.

lutusp 13y ago
> The basic issue with solipsism is that it doesn't do anything for you ... That's in the nature of philosophical ideas -- they aren't meant to be practical or productive. Now if only all those students who sign up for philosophy courses and majors understood this, they might instead choose something useful and remunerative.
dhruval 13y ago
Well you can use it to get over fears and anxieties. Also to reduce stress. By seeing that is that the things causing these fears don't actually exist. It would be better if we used philosophies as a tools rather than cling to them as a absolute truths. As and aside, solipsism is dependent on qualia, so not True in an absolute sense. (Not my idea. Similar things have been argued by Rorty or Wittingstein. Also by some Buddhist philosophies - eg. Madhyamaka ).

lutusp 13y ago

> Almost no one ever really analyzes sanity. That's true, but it's easy to see why -- a "sane" person doesn't need either therapy or psychoactive drugs, so psychologists quickly lose interest in them, as either a client or a research subject. A sane person is boring. That's why, as the years go by, more and more everyday behaviors are turned into evidence of mental illness. Are you aware that, in the most recent mental illness diagnostic guide (the DSM), scratching your arm has become the basis for a mental illness diagnosis? I wish I were making this up. Read and weep: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dermatillomania http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dermatillomania It only gets worse from here. This is why the director of the NIMH has decided to abandon the DSM as a guide to scientific research -- and not a moment too soon: "Two NIMH Directors Debunk DSM & Deplore Psychiatry's Unscientific Modus Operandi" : http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/920/94/ http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/920/94/

gjm11 13y ago
> scratching your arm has become the basis for a mental illness diagnosis? In the same way as sleeping is the basis for a diagnosis of illness (narcolepsy), washing your hands is the basis for a diagnosis of mental illness (OCD), etc. No one is going to diagnose you as mentally ill because you scratch your arm, but if you repeatedly scratch your arm enough to cause tissue damage and seek psychiatric help with stopping, there's a label they can put on it. Just as sleeping is normal but falling asleep uncontrollably in the middle of the day might be narcolepsy, hand-washing is normal but washing your hands 100 times in a row might be OCD, being tired is normal but being tired all the time might be CFS, having your cells grow and multiply is normal but if they do it out of control it might be cancer, etc., etc., etc. Lots of things are normal in small quantities and pathological in large quantities.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > No one is going to diagnose you as mentally ill because you scratch your arm, but if you repeatedly scratch your arm enough to cause tissue damage and seek psychiatric help with stopping [enphasis added] ... Yes, but you see, the point of the DSM is to allow psychiatrists and psychologists to proactively label behaviors as abnormal, rather than patiently wait for people to seek out their services. If a "diagnosis" appears in the DSM, then it's official -- schoolchildren can be assigned the diagnosis without the cooperation of the child or his parents, which allows the school to demand additional funds from governments, allows parents an get Social Security payments based on the diagnosis -- basically, the floodgates open up. The child is taken out of the equation, because it's an official diagnosis -- it's in the DSM, the "Bible" of psychiatry and psychology. If the reasoning was that it allowed people to volunteer for treatment, there would be no need for a DSM, because people who volunteer for treatment don't need a diagnosis -- their willingness to undergo treatment is more than enough justification. The DSM's purpose is to legitimize diagnoses, make them part of the canon of recognized mental illnesses, require insurance companies to pay for treatments, require the Social Security system to pay up. Unfortunately, because of these pressures, the DSM now includes absurd things like grieving at the passing of a loved one, sibling rivalry, the inability to add a column of figures, and so forth -- obvious abuses of the imagined authority of the field of psychology. > Lots of things are normal in small quantities and pathological in large quantities. True about some things, but that's not how medical diseases are defined. One either has measles, or does not have measles. One either has cancer, or does not have canter. One is either pregnant, or is not pregnant. And more importantly, in each of these cases, a doctor can go beyond observing symptoms, and measure a cause. Not so for mental illnesses -- their diagnosis relies only on symptoms, the causes are unknown (that's the business of neuroscience, not psychology). This is obviously a basis for abuse and exploitation. The DSM covers a spectrum from very serious conditions like schizophrenia and bipolar syndrome, both of which are actually biological conditions with mental symptoms, to any number of make-believe diseases, some of which appear and disappear from the canon over time, based on public gullibility and taste, for example Asperger's and homosexuality, both of which have entered, and then left, the DSM based on public pressure and politics, not anything resembling science. The DSM only lists symptoms, not causes, not science, and that's why it's so often abused. > ... there's a label they can put on it. Yes, and that was a perfect way to put it. Psychology depends on labels, medicine depends on objective causes. Because psychiatry and psychology rely on the assignment of labels based on observation of symptoms, it's not science and it's not effective. This is why the director of the NIMH has recently decided to drop support for the DSM, a decision that is not less than earthshaking in the mental health field. The director's reason? The DSM is based only on the observation of symptoms, and it lacks validity. For science, society is now moving in a completely different direction -- away from mind research, toward brain research. More here: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia... And here (a video that makes the same points): http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/updates/2013/mental-disorders-as-brain-disorders-thomas-insel-at-tedxcaltech.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/updates/2013/mental-disorders-...

ssivark 13y ago

You might enjoy this :-) http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Total_Perspective_Vortex http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Total_Perspective_Vortex Don't pay too much attetion to the "science" but the philosophical implications are interesting to ponder.

kazagistar 13y ago
Not sure why the "philosophical implications" of things that are not so in reality would be interesting to ponder.

Skalman 13y ago

Somehow, despite not understanding why exactly we exist, what our purpose is, and that at any given moment we could die and cease to exist, we don't go insane. Do you have any idea how crazy that is? I don't get why people need a reason to exist. To me it's clear that there isn't a reason and we don't have any predefined purpose, yet most people create their reason. Maybe they live for their loved ones, maybe they enjoy life. And regarding death: it's scary and doesn't happen very often, so it makes sense not to think about it too much.

Vivtek 13y ago
I've always had the same problem. I don't need a purpose - I am alive. Here I am! Why does life need a meaning beyond just being life? It's to the point that I wonder whether I'm normal, really. Everybody else seems so caught up in their own meaning.
- JackFr 13y ago
  Well it's tough (though not impossible) to build a any sort of value system on top of "I exist."
  - kazagistar 13y ago
    Not sure why you need to build one. Last time I checked, people tend to have one, irrelevant of the effort they put into building it. Is that one not enough? Why not? If you are missing one, why do you need to get one?
  - Vivtek 13y ago
    This is ludicrous. I have a value system. It consists of me feeling like a better person when I'm a better person. I feel no need to prove my value system as though it were a theorem - what an odd fetish. I've never understood this need.
robmclarty 13y ago
Death is definitely what others here are referring to as an "out of bounds error". It is simply the ultimate definition of incomprehensible. It's like a physical computer not only losing power, not only being gone, not only nothing, but never having existed at all. In my mind (haha) death is the end of both space and time. Oblivion. And that's pretty crazy to shove into a finite brain.

enraged_camel 13y ago

>>Real insanity would be realizing how large the universe is I remember going camping when I was 15. After everyone else fell asleep, I laid on my back under the clear open night sky and let my mind wander. I first thought about planets in our solar system, then the interstellar medium, then other star systems with their own stars, planets and asteroid belts. I then "zoomed out" and thought about the Milky Way, then about other galaxies, spiral ones and starburst ones and irregular galaxies, and the void between them. I thought about nebulae and black holes. As time passed, I started to view Earth as just a planet, and our sun not as the Sun but as a star. Just one out of countless. I started to put myself in the shoes of an alien who lives on another planet - or maybe within interstellar clouds! - and tried to... Then I stopped. The reason I stopped was because I had the distinct feeling that my mind was about to break. As if I was about to run a buggy function, and if I pressed Enter to run it, it would throw an index out of bounds error and crash permanently. So I did the sane thing by pulling my sleeping bag over my head and falling asleep.

hoffcoder 13y ago
Reminded me of the movie 'Pi' by Darren Aronofsky.
BasDirks 13y ago
"As if I was about to run a buggy function, and if I pressed Enter to run it, it would throw an index out of bounds error and crash permanently." This is such a great description. The Abyss is an out of bounds error.
vidarh 13y ago
Have you read Olaf Stapledons "Star Maker"? It starts with the protagonist looking at the stars in a similar way, and somehow finding himself leaving his body and flying out amongst the stars. From there on the scale keeps increasing, both time and space, covering billions of years, and pretty much the scale of the universe. He wrote an earlier book - Last and First Men - that covered 2 billion years of future developments of humanity -, and Star Maker makes Last and First Men seem limited in scope. Freeman Dyson apparently says he got the inspiration for a Dyson Sphere from Star Maker.
13y ago

saraid216 13y ago

> Almost no one ever really analyzes sanity. Isn't this the purpose of positive psychology? I have a rather high quality tome, http://www.amazon.com/Character-Strengths-Virtues-Handbook-Classification/dp/0195167015/ http://www.amazon.com/Character-Strengths-Virtues-Handbook-C... that does its best to discuss the positive aspects of a person, trying to be a kind of mirrored version of the DSM.

meriksson 13y ago

It is true that almost no one analyzes sanity. Your comment reminds me a lot of a particular book on the topic, The Human Evasion by Celia Green. If you are not familiar with it already, you might be interested in checking it out: http://deoxy.org/evasion/1.htm http://deoxy.org/evasion/1.htm

Bockit 13y ago

When you say things like "realizing how large the universe is", "how meaningless life is", do you really mean that your mental state is impacted by the answers to these questions/implications of these realisations? How does it affect you? I ask because while the ideas are interesting to me, they have always seemed fairly irrelevant. Sure, the universe is huge, but I don't think knowing that is going to change me. The way I see it, it has no impact on the way I live my life and I can't see anything I do having an impact on that. I mean the questions genuinely, I realise that not everyone sees things the same way.

JonnieCache 13y ago

>Almost no one ever really analyzes sanity. Assuming you mean the general public, then yes, I suppose so. But the measures taken by the mind to protect itself from reality have been a central area of study for psychologists for over a hundred years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_mechanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_mechanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_schema https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_schema

JackFr 13y ago

Consider mental illness -- apart from physical deformities of the brain (the organ) and bacterial and viral infection -- the rest is pure cultural bias as to what constitutes normal behavior. That is to say, the only reason you believe your mental constructs are more real than a schizophrenic's, is that there's a cultural consensus that disembodied voices aren't "real".

JonnieCache 13y ago
>Consider mental illness -- apart from physical deformities of the brain (the organ) and bacterial and viral infection -- the rest is pure cultural bias as to what constitutes normal behavior. This is simply not true. A mental health diagnosis cannot be made without considering the wellbeing of the patient. In short, you can act as weirdly as you like but if you still claim to be happy and are not a danger to yourself or others, you are not insane. At least, this is how it works in europe. If US doctors can forcibly treat someone who is happy and non-dangerous just because they fit a checklist, then yeah maybe it's time to take action.

eli_gottlieb 13y ago

Who says some of us aren't just mostly effective insane maniacs?

gnaritas 13y ago

Somehow, despite not understanding why exactly we exist There is no why, there's just how. what our purpose is Nature doesn't have purpose, you're anthropomorphizing nature. and that at any given moment we could die and cease to exist Yup. we don't go insane. Do you have any idea how crazy that is? I see nothing crazy about it at all. Why would we go insane for not knowing the answers to invalid questions? Asking why we exist or what our purpose is, is equivalent to asking how tall green is; while a syntactically valid sentence, it's still a non-sense question based on unfounded presumptions about the nature of the universe. Just because a question can be asked doesn't mean the question is valid or deserves an answer.

writtles 13y ago
Scientific materialism is merely an objectivity bias within the subject-object problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject%E2%80%93object_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject%E2%80%93object_problem) Because, you see, if we can only objectively measure things scientifically with instruments then there can be no subjectivity because we can't see it on any instrument! Therefore anybody who continues to insist that it does exist falls into the category of "woo woo," "magical thinking", or "superstitious". And those anti-scientific stances can only lead down the slippery slope into any of those pitfalls--or worse yet--fundamentalism (because there is just as much evidence for a mythical god as there is subjectivity... or unicorns for that matter... or spaghetti monsters...etc)! So its easy to lump all that is non-objective into the same category as unicorns since we cannot measure any of it. /caricature This is a fallacy of absolutistic thinking and it is rampant.
- gnaritas 13y ago
  That was about as clear as mud.
  - writtles 13y ago
    This one always stumps people. Your subjective experience is unique to yourself. Your Self (your personal subjective experience -- which is denied by the scientific materialists) exists as such. And we can logically conclude that through the following mental exercise: In the future is a cloning device. You step in and your body and brain are cloned down to the last electron. All of your memories, scars and epigenetics are cloned here as well. Now this is key here: In all Objective sense, your clone is you. There are no distinction between you and your clone and nobody can tell who is who. You both know yourself to be you and no one would be the wiser if you went and lived in a foreign country under a different name and your clone stays back and lives your life for you. Well nobody except YOU would know. You see, to you that clone is another person that you can talk to and shake hands with. Even though a brain scan will reveal the same thought patterns between you two, you will never literally see through the clone's eyes. If the clone dies, you go on just fine, but if you die... It's over even though your perfect clone goes on. So therein lies the one distinct difference between you and your clone and that is YOUR subjective experience makes you YOU. So the problem is is that this subjective experience has no real evidence of its existence, so it doesn't exist right? Just like fairies don't exist, right? And THAT is the absolutistic mindset of the scientific materialist.

GrinningFool 13y ago

> 've come to the conclusion that I must be insane, since sane people don't notice any of this - clearly all the completely sane people don't give it a second thought. We notice it. We just move on, since we can't do much about it. Alternatively, our acceptance of it indicates that on some level, you also are sane.