Psychology question

[Locke]

You psychology people (I'm fairly sure there's at least one of you in here), what sorts of disorders/behaviors would you attribute to someone under the delusion that they are the only person in the world, i.e. they reject reality and believe other people to be a product of their own psyche? It's not my field, but I often find myself interested in such things, and it would help here if I knew the terminology to apply. It's interesting from an author's point of view as well, I guess, but mostly I'm just curious.

[End Master]

Well if that person genuinely believes that they're really the only person in the world with everyone else just being a figment of their mind, I'd probably say its some sort of Schizophrenia. Those types can usually have strong delusions like that.

Could go either way as far as being prone to violence and paranoia. On one hand they might be relatively peaceful and not fear anyone since the other people "aren't real" and can't really do any real damage in their mind. So why be violent or paranoid? Its all in their head anyway. (Of course this could lead to them getting killed if they behave in a foolish manner)

On the other hand if they are more on the aggressive side, why not commit violence? It's not like they're actually hurting anyone since they believe everyone to be a figment in the first place.

A more interesting scenario is if the person believes that while all people are a figment of his mind, he also believes his own brain is infected with a cancer that will kill him if he doesn't "purge the evil figments" that his brain has created.

[Vesnic]

I agree with End, and also have another suggestion.

People with antisocial personality disorder often have delusions of grandeur and are self-centered to the extreme, tending not to recognize the full humanity in others, if at all. They are also much more prone to criminal behavior, if that's what you're going for, though I notice that you didn't actually mention anything about violence in your original post.

[End Master]

On a CYOA related note, this topic reminds me of an encounter in a game book I played a long time ago called "Space Assassin"

You're on this big ass space ship hunting down this intergalactic criminal and there's a bunch of weird shit on the way to him.

One encounter just before you get to him is the robotic pilot who has just recently achieved sentience and starts asking you a bunch of philosophical questions about it being possible that you and everything around him are just figments that he created with his mind.

If you indulge him, you start stumbling with half assed responses like "Sure I suppose it's possible. In fact, YOU could even be a figment of MY mind." the robot gets all excited about this new possibility that he never considered before and points you in the right direction.

If you just say you don't know anything about it, he just gets bored and says you aren't very interesting and you have to figure out what door to go through yourself. (Which really isn't difficult)

If you just open fire on him immediately, you blast a big hole in him and he says "What a strange person." and dies. Then you still have to figure out what door to go through yourself.

If you tell him to shut up and demand that he tell you what you want to know, he gets hostile and instantly kills you with some sort of freeze ray or something.

Now I'm imagining Locke being a robot.

[Locke]

...Beep...

[xnull]

I remember thinking this in Middle School - realizing I could never know if this was the truth or not. I did not know whether I was the only person and everyone else was part of a world I created for myself or if it happened recursively, where there were several layers deep of imagination and that the real world is several layers higher than this one and that I am the figment of a figment of a figment imagining those around me.

And then I realized that even if any of these things could be proven to be absolutely true (which I knew they could not) it wouldn't change anything - not even the way I interacted with best friends.

I would call this illogical-thinking disorder because they started concerning themselves very wholeheartedly with something that, as significant as it would be, could not and would not ever change anything.

[apotheosis]

The funny thing about psychological "disorders" is how subjective they really are. Essentially what happens is you get a waited average of what people think "normal" is (with the wealthy, powerful and famous getting a heavier weight than average people) and then people who are to many standard deviations away from that mean are considered to have a disorder.

And I agree with xnull, this seems less like a real disorder and more of an issue with rational thought because if you logically draw that belief out you realize that it is completely irrelevant because it doesn't actually change anything. I think the schizophrenics would be more likely to think that the world was being controlled by the government or something and that there was a specific action that they could take to prevent them from doing so (like tinfoil helmets or cutting an imaginary probe out from there brain).

[Vesnic]

And then I realized that even if any of these things could be proven to be absolutely true (which I knew they could not) it wouldn't change anything - not even the way I interacted with best friends.

I would call this illogical-thinking disorder because they started concerning themselves very wholeheartedly with something that, as significant as it would be, could not and would not ever change anything.

Perfectly said. This is why I dropped out of philosophy school.

[End Master]

But did you really drop out, or did you just imagine that you dropped out and you're actually just experiencing a new setting that your mind has created?

EDIT: Good Golly Oh Gosh! I've been at this site 4 years without getting banned or losing interest.

My mind must like this scenario.

[apotheosis]

Consciousness itself is an illusion. It's just very complicated chemical and electrical reactions and feedback between our neurons. Nothing more. The behaviorists technically had it right, they just had absolutely no idea of how insanely complex things are. People mistake the insane complexity of humans as rendering them fundamentally different, but in reality they are not. Humans are really just incredibly complex protozoa.

Isn't my life philosophy uplifting?

EDIT: Another way of describing us I used to use is that human beings are just rotting bags of flesh waiting to expire. That one is even more optimistic.

[Locke]

What's your definition of consciousness, then, that it's an illusion to you?

[apotheosis]

I guess I'm just saying ultimately I buy biological determinism, I just think it is much much more complex than most biological determinists believe.

[xnull]

Definition of consciousness (from wikipedia):

Consciousness is regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment. It is a subject of much research in philosophy of mind, psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science.

I believe that biological determinism can give rise to consciousness, that neurons which allow for the feedback of action to observation of action can give rise to self-awareness. Think about creatures which are built similarly to the human body, but which we don't regard as being conscious and sentient in the way we do a human. The only way I see arguing that humans have something "extra special" which gives rise to sentience outside of biology are arguments which adopt "chosen species" premises - these are usually something centered very much in a religious ideals.

Tell me that with a complex enough system, you cannot have a machine which becomes subjective, self-aware, sentient and which can perceive a relationship between itself and its environment.

We have proven formally that "Emergence" exists in deterministic systems: that some finite system which updates on a simple set of rules can give rise to properties which cannot be derived mathematically from the simple set of rules. This is one argument against finding the "Universal Law" which makes the observable Universe work the way it does. Since the proof was demonstrated on a relatively small matrix and relatively simple update rules - I can imagine very easily that the massive network of neurons in our brains with very, very complex update rules could give rise to the "Emergence" of consciousness.

[apotheosis]

Thanks for expressing my thoughts more articulately. I remember during Junior Year the precise moment I came to accept biological determinism. It was, believe it or not, when studying the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal. I figured, that beyond being an atheist, I don't really buy into the idea of anything "super natural" existing. I then thought of the "black box" experiment, but instead of a cat, you have 2 atoms. We could most likely predict what is going to happen if just two atoms are alone in a vacuum together. So, if we can do that, then we can do it with 3 atoms as well, it would just be more complicated. Multiply that by 10^81, roughly, and you have our universe. It is way to complex to ever be able to predict the future, but, if it is predictable, then it is predetermined, and if it is predetermined, then true free will does not exist. If we discover more natural laws, quantum phenomena, or something like that that complicates our perceptions of time and space, it would just complicate predicting the future. So, we can't predict the future, but, with a big enough computer outside the universe, and infinite time and perfect data, I am making a conjecture that you could. If this is true, then free will CANNOT exist.

Oh, and the other possibility is that true randomness exists, in which case, the conclusion is the same, there is no free will, but it is not predictable either, it is just all happenstance.

So, if there is no free will, then we aren't really making "conscious" decisions and we aren't really conscious at all.

[ChubbyTeletubby]

The old saying is more true than ever:

All you know is that you know nothing.

There are still SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO many missing variables. Music, sexual pleasure, dreams, basic construction of atoms. Because it just gets smaller and in the extreme bigger.

We are like children. There is NO rational or objective OUTLOOK.

There is only humanity. And that is all. Deal with it. It all goes back to being human.

There is no religion. There is no philosphy. It is all so fucking utterly HUMAN and fragile and pitiful.

We are all just these pitiful little wriggling specimens on this fucking speck of dust who really will never amount to anything.

The religious are so childish they should almost be classified as apes. The college-educated are so fucking worthless they should be used as test-apes.

And the rest of us should just lay back and relax and take whatever as it comes.

Yee haw.

Fucking biological determinism. DUH. It's ALL the same. EVERYTHING. Why label it with stupid inaqequate human langauge.

Just as science can't explain a God damn thing about the ACTUAL everythingness of everything, it can't actual explain ANYTHING about the human psyche. It's like observing a match being lit or a sunrise.

I don't even remember what we were talking about of course, as everyone should already know.

It's just that Apoth and Xnull piss me off just as much as Locke and MRH sometimes.

Let's just all be rational athiests and leave it at that, dudes! NOTHING can be explained you fucking morons.

NOTHING. Let's just keep seeking answers. Fucking assholes.

Sorry. I forgot again. Dammit.