Great work! It has been too long since I've beheld another's thoughts that mirror my own. Your insight into the parallels of body dysmorphia and gender dysmorphia is precise. Your understanding of this collective psychosis and its idiosyncrasies is limpid and distinguished. And yet your prose is pleasantly mordant too. I have also been thinking and writing on this subject (for years). I'm new (but not young) to this world online and I just made my first 'posts' on Substack. Here is a link to my site:
This is the first part of a very long essay. I posted the second part last night and will be strategically posting subsequent sections for the next 6 weeks or so.
I hope we might establish some correspondence (maybe feedback?) on this topic. I'd be happy to parse yours, if you'd like to parse mine. I look forward to reading more of your work.
Pardon the delay; I have good excuses but no need to enumerate them. I have since read your articles on the capgras and cotard delusions (interesting stuff) and the one on BID. My concern centers on the one-factor model of delusion as a whole, not in relation to specific syndromes like C & C, but in a broader, more general sense. The model you mentioned proceeds from an epistemic presupposition that could be summarized as 'perceptions proceed conceptions', From the temporal framework of learning and experiencing reality as a child to an adult, this progression is fairly straightforward. You might say it's the 'cobblestone patchwork' (I believe this was how you put it) of many perceptions over a period of time that form beliefs, false ones included. But I wonder when this relationship starts to become inverted? After years of studying and learning, it seems to me that an adult perceives the world a certain way. This 'way' refers to the beliefs and convictions they have about the world and the way they learn subsequent information . In other words, at some point, it seems that our perceptions are colored (for better or worse) by our beliefs and therefore the one-model theory is not exhaustive.
Sure, as children, empiricism is preeminent, but then I think this paradigm begins to break down. Delusions in normal (I agree that one can be both more or less rational and deluded, and that delusions are not malfunctions) adults also emerge from more fundamental criteria; namely, ideas. So in contrast to the temporal framework, I think it's the ontological framework that should (but doesn't for most people) replace it for the purpose of graduating the mind. It is the essence of thinking a certain way (again, for better or worse) that slowly begins to the eclipse the empirical paradigm. This seems to be a better explanation for why adults cannot shake certain idiotic (and idiosyncratic) world views, to say little of 'bizarre intellectual fetishes' :) My latest post (part 3 of the aforementioned essay) address some these fetishes, if you'd like to read further.
As to your final bit on schizophrenia, I had a dear friend from college who became as schizophrenic as they come. His case would be a fascinating study...But we'll table that.
Dear Angela,
Great work! It has been too long since I've beheld another's thoughts that mirror my own. Your insight into the parallels of body dysmorphia and gender dysmorphia is precise. Your understanding of this collective psychosis and its idiosyncrasies is limpid and distinguished. And yet your prose is pleasantly mordant too. I have also been thinking and writing on this subject (for years). I'm new (but not young) to this world online and I just made my first 'posts' on Substack. Here is a link to my site:
https://tyndall.substack.com/p/reclaiming-common-sense?r=11etpp
This is the first part of a very long essay. I posted the second part last night and will be strategically posting subsequent sections for the next 6 weeks or so.
I hope we might establish some correspondence (maybe feedback?) on this topic. I'd be happy to parse yours, if you'd like to parse mine. I look forward to reading more of your work.
Warmly,
Ty Kun
Hi Angela,
Pardon the delay; I have good excuses but no need to enumerate them. I have since read your articles on the capgras and cotard delusions (interesting stuff) and the one on BID. My concern centers on the one-factor model of delusion as a whole, not in relation to specific syndromes like C & C, but in a broader, more general sense. The model you mentioned proceeds from an epistemic presupposition that could be summarized as 'perceptions proceed conceptions', From the temporal framework of learning and experiencing reality as a child to an adult, this progression is fairly straightforward. You might say it's the 'cobblestone patchwork' (I believe this was how you put it) of many perceptions over a period of time that form beliefs, false ones included. But I wonder when this relationship starts to become inverted? After years of studying and learning, it seems to me that an adult perceives the world a certain way. This 'way' refers to the beliefs and convictions they have about the world and the way they learn subsequent information . In other words, at some point, it seems that our perceptions are colored (for better or worse) by our beliefs and therefore the one-model theory is not exhaustive.
Sure, as children, empiricism is preeminent, but then I think this paradigm begins to break down. Delusions in normal (I agree that one can be both more or less rational and deluded, and that delusions are not malfunctions) adults also emerge from more fundamental criteria; namely, ideas. So in contrast to the temporal framework, I think it's the ontological framework that should (but doesn't for most people) replace it for the purpose of graduating the mind. It is the essence of thinking a certain way (again, for better or worse) that slowly begins to the eclipse the empirical paradigm. This seems to be a better explanation for why adults cannot shake certain idiotic (and idiosyncratic) world views, to say little of 'bizarre intellectual fetishes' :) My latest post (part 3 of the aforementioned essay) address some these fetishes, if you'd like to read further.
As to your final bit on schizophrenia, I had a dear friend from college who became as schizophrenic as they come. His case would be a fascinating study...But we'll table that.
I look forward to future correspondence,
Ty