JusticeMachine

Might....what discomfort is imposed upon you by this belief that would cause you to put effort into changing you internal model?

For if you belief that your beliefs are subjective, then what ever belief you held would have to make living your life difficult enough to incite change.

Mr. Sammi

How do I call myself sane?

Why would I call myself insane?

Do I need to have someone else label me sane OR insane?

Sanity OR Insanity?
Is this what is necessary for me to function without emotional disbelief, without physical torture, and without monumental mental fatigue?

Do I physically work well? Do I think well? Do I act well?

OK what is well, well, well?


Sammi Na Boodie ()

Keith Russell

Thieving Magpie:

I believe most human beings (perhaps even a very large percentage) have the capacity for rational thought.

But, I believe just as strongly that most (perhaps even a very large percentage) of human beings choose usually to avoid using that capacity.

I don't believe that the 'average person' has to be an idiot.

But, I do believe that--far more often than not--the average person is an idiot.

Keith.

Hugo Holbling

Looks like i'm an average person, alas...

Thieving Magpie

I agree with you entirely, on all points. However, I believe there is a rather large difference between 'thinking rationally' and 'acting rationally.' 'Thinking rationally' requires conscious meditation, whereas 'acting rationally' does not.

For example, someone who is just 'thinking rationally' will easily believe that they ought to do something in order to achieve a specific goal which they have made for themselves. Let us say that I want to save a child who is drowning in a pool. I want to do this because, for whatever reason, I believe that I ought to do this - maybe I am responding to social pressure, or maybe I feel empathy for the child because I would not want to be stuck in a similar situation - my reasons could be many, and varied. But there is one problem, as I also happen to be afraid of water.

I have the physical ability to jump in the pool and save the child without harming myself physically, but I pause. Why would I do this? Someone may say to me, "Don't you want to save the child?" and I would dutifully reply, "Of course! I do not know why I am not."

Am I insane because of this? Does my hydrophobia damn me as an invalid? I 'obviously' can not think rationally, so I must be disturbed.

But I do not believe this to be true.

Maybe, many years ago I too, had almost drowned in a pool. Maybe, I had always been pushed to achieve things physically, like learning how to swim, from an overbearing, and imposing father. Maybe through very simple mental association, I now equated water, and specifically swimming, with pain, stress, and mortality. Am I still insane?

We have the ability, as people, to associate two seemingly unconnected things with a common idea. It often operates as a sort of fail-safe because though, as children, we may not realize that we can get hit and killed by moving cars on the street, we are taught by our parents and teachers to be aware of roads, cross walks, moving cars, road signs, and car horns. Ideed, as adults we often associate car horns with bad things - we turn to look when they are honked in certain ways, or become annoyed or angry when others use them on us - this is really because we have been trained to do so, and not because the horn itself will do any direct damage to us. This is conditioning.

In this scenario, I have been trained, however unintentionally, to fear water. For all my that my subconscious mind thinks, if I jump into the water, I may very well drown along with the child, and that is not something my basic survival instinct wants.

It is, of course, possible to overcome these fears, and for some people it can take years, but I would not describe them as 'irrational' by any means. These fears are there for a rational purpose (though we may not recognize them as such), in this case, they are there to help me survive. I would be 'acting rationally' but not 'thinking rationally,' in that my subconscious and conscious would be in conflict. The conscious is often the lesser of the two, though, so I would decline to help the child.

As I said earlier: "...we believe someone is insane if we can not, or do not believe to understand why they act as they do. " Someone may call themselves insane, just as someone else might, if they want to save the child consciously, but cannot bring themselves to do so for some subconscious (and therefore not necessarily apparent) reason.

I believe other 'mental illnesses' work in a similar way, be they genetic or created. Someone who has a brain which is physically abnormal will still have specific goals that they, as a person would pursue (such as survival) though their method may be faulty through no fault of their own. They are both acting, and thinking rationally, but in a retarded, and often ultimately inept fashion.

***

Furthermore, the average person can not help but be average, and therefore must, by definition, be more idiotic than some other people, though less idiotic than others. The average person is just as much an idiot, as a genius - it depends on who is calling them such.

Much the same, Mr. Sammi you are only insane if 1) you believe you are insane, or 2) you are, for whatever reason, forced to accept this designation.

"Possible things are what the powerful do, and the weak succumb to." - Melian Dialogue.

jofo

What is your reasoning behind this? What's the difference between "objective" and "subjective" beliefs? Somehow it seems that you're identifying "subjective" with "selfish" or something similar.

If my will to make a friend happy motivates me to bake a cake for her birthday, because I like to make her happy, is this a "subjective" or "objective" purpose? Is that egotistical of me? In that case, everything anyone ever does can be defined as egotistical, and the word becomes meaningless. Is it better to act selfishly if you're basing your actions on an objective belief? Some people believe that egotism is the only objective purpose.

As I see it, there is really no need for objective purposes. I don't think I've ever seen one; I don't even know how to detect one. They may exist, but I'm unwilling to just assume that they do. However, I'm perfectly happy with my so-called subjective purposes! If they're not motivating me to do exactly everything "right" in the cosmic sense (whatever that means), then so be it. I'd rather acknowledge their subjectivity and then be able to modify them if they turn out not to work well, than be bound by a belief in them as "objective truths".

I think generally the belief in "objective truth" is probably causing more problems than it solves.

OK, guess I'm digressing a bit here, but thanks anyway. This was my first post

Mr. Sammi

Our relationship with the universe helps to point to terms oif sanity. The natural impulse of hunger if ignored leads to a quick death. Nature points to elements of universal sanity. Our natural unconscious processes allows us a partial guage to the measure of our insanity.

Does a hunger strike show sanity or insanity, OR both sanity and insanity?

Standing there in a fire barefooted seems to yield a certain degree of universal insanity. Would't you agree ThievingMagpie?


Of course we cannot always use nature (the existential infrastructure of the universe) to guage our sanity...


Sammi Na Boodie (biting my lip to feed my ego)

JusticeMachine

My point is that subjectivity, meaning subject to myself and mywill, breeds selfishness.

Objectivity, if acceptedn conforms myself and mywill into something greater. (or sometimes something worse)

One could say that people who believed in something so strongly (Objectively) that they refused to conform, lead to great evil. (Which sometimes it did), but it has also created great good.

Ghandi could not have accomplished what he did if he believe that his beliefs were subjective.

Subjectivity, if taken to heart (your core being) breeds selfiness, because subjectivity is only about one self, and self-fullfillment, self gratitude, if subjectivity the "self" is at the core.

Now, I do agree that the belief in objective beliefs can be taken too far. However, it is a/the primary motivator for change in a person/society.

Thieving Magpie

I would agree, Mr. Sammi, as that is essentially the difference I made between 'thinking' and 'acting' rationally. Starving oneself to draw attention to a cause is a sort of 'universal insanity' because though it is 'thinking rationally' it is not 'acting rationally.' Standing barefoot in a fire is also fairly insane because it is not an example of someone 'acting rationally.'

However, I do not believe the words 'sane' and 'insane' are used (or even ought to be used) in exactly the same manner in relation to humans as well as in relation to other living beings. People generally have a higher capacity for 'thinking rationally' than other animals do, so, by extension it is far easier for them to 'act irrationally.' For example, self sacrifice is not usually a result of 'acting rationally' but it is a result of 'thinking rationally' if the person who is sacrificing themselves believes that it is 'good' to offer their life so that someone else may live. I believe self sacrifice can, in some instances, come from 'acting rationally' if someone's children, family, or, in extreme cases, country or way of life are at stake, but if someone gives their life for their enemy or something - that is usually through 'thinking rationally' but 'acting irrationally.' Is the self-sacrificer insane? Possibly, depending on the scenario, but even if they were, they would only be so when not considered under the auspices of something greater, such as religious zeal. Someone might call them 'insane' but they would only do so because they did not understand why they acted as they did.

In another, somewhat unconnected example: people smoke cigarettes. We know that tobacco is bad for us, yet we do it anyway. It is not as noticeably, or immediately dangerous as standing in a fire, but it is potentially much, much worse in the long term. To the smoker, cigarettes (after awhile) provide the nicotene they crave. They 'act rationally' in the way that their body believes they need the cigarettes, though they do not realize the long-term side effects. They, themselves, are not 'thinking rationally' because they know that the cigarettes they smoke may one day kill them. Are they sane or insane? I am more inclined to think that they are more weak or stupid rather than insane because they are not 'thinking rationally.'

My 'acting irrationally' is much the same as your 'universal insanity,' I should think, Mr. Sammi.

Gurdur

eh, sorry to drop in so late ---- I've been slumming it far too much in Political D., and never noticed this before. A great discussion !

Not at all necessarily, not at all.
Pardon me, but you appear to confuse subjectivity with egoism --- the two are not the same whatsoever.

Futhermore, you ignore intersubjectivity.

I'll give an example of how personally I'ld view all this at bottom.

You appear to me (I could always be wildly wrong) to be confusing objectivity with idealism --- again, two very different things.

Whyever not ?

As far as I can tell, Gandhi was more or less aware that his deepest ideals were subjective --- he could tell that many British would share his ideals at least in part (therefore the massacre Amritsar would not be repeated), but that Hitler would laugh at his ideals. Consequently, IIRC, he laid off beating up the British Empire so much for the duration of WW2.

Let's look at a moral --- an ethic --- which is also an ideal.

I think that all people deserve a certain minimum of respect simply because they are humans, simply because they are people.

This has led me to donate to Amnesty International often, and also to go in for political demonstrations, strikes etc. (and some no small cost to myself).

So I have an ideal, a vision, which moves me.
However, I'm very aware that not everyone shares my view;
Milosevic hates Bosnians, Croats despise Bosnians, Russians hate and despise Chechenians, the Broederbund of South Africa like the Klu Klux Klan are not nice people to be anywhere around, etc. etc. etc.

So, I'm aware that most people (not all) have the potential to share my view --- a potential built into them by evolution (if all humans were complete egotistical twits, humans would have died our shortly after evolving as a seperate species).

Therefore I appeal, using factual and rhetorical (strongly limited, since I really don't like rhetoric) arguments to convince members of Group A that members of Group B are humans too and should be treated at least half-way decently.

My vision, my ethic, is then a subjective one, built upon a potential developed from evolution, and when I convince someone else, or even better when they already believe in it, then our shared ethic is an intersubjective one.

You appear to feel the emotional need for legitimization of a particular ethic, and therefore you appeal to a final objectivity of it --- but IMHO you're grasping at thin air.

Just my 2 ¢.