Sunday, August 17, 2008

Crazy is as Crazy Does?

I've had this thought process occur a few times and each time it becomes somewhat disconcerting until I decide to just not dwell on it any longer. There is no satisfactory conclusion to draw, thus one must simply give up in order to be satisfied.

Can a crazy person know that they are crazy? Really, think about it for a while. It would seem that if a crazy person could they would logically sit down and sort through their thoughts and realize that certain inconsistencies exist that provide evidence of their insanity. I have not done extensive research on the matter, and if the movie "A Beautiful Mind" holds any validity on this point (I'll ignore the fact they they totally botched the concept of a Nash Equilibrium) we can believe that certain people with certain disorders can discover these flaws in their psychosis and rationally conclude that certain parts of their "reality" are not, in fact, "real."

What about the many other individuals who, rather than manage to discover their mind's fallacies, instead spend their lives in a dream world? These types of individuals seem to weave incredible scenarios within their heads about who they are and what they do. Suppose for a minute that you are one of these people.

As I've wandered upon this thought process it doesn't lead anywhere reassuring. For example, when I was in Chicago in the middle of July I hypothesized to the people I was with this very notion. I suggested that perhaps my mind was weaving this intricate idea of us being there for a Computer Science conference. In "reality" I was being brought to Chicago to see a specialist about some mental disorder. My mind doesn't like this idea and so instead I attend meetings at this conference all day when in "reality" I'm actually in sessions with medical doctors (rather than CS doctorate holders). I don't have any way that I can think of to prove that this wasn't the case. My mind, being the interestingly powerful mediator between my thoughts and the world, could just as easily rewrite my other experiences to fit the world that it wants me to be in.

The only way out that I have been able to come up with is the same argument you have to make when dealing with certain philosophical stances. In fact the situation boils down to the same thing, so conveniently the same way out of the pit works. At some point you have to give up on trying to define "reality" based on your senses, since (as I've just gone through) you can argue all day about your senses lying to you. Instead you have to simply accept as reality whatever your senses report to you, there's not much else you can do. You may be trapped in the Matrix, but you still have to work within it, so you must accept the Matrix as your reality.

So I may be crazy for all I know, but there's nothing I can do about it from within my mind, since my sensory data doesn't lend any evidence to solidify any insanity that might be kicking about. So instead I simply go about my business with the data my mind provides and apologize to everyone if I actually am crazy and you all just put up with me. I have no way of telling.

1 comment:

Rachel Helps said...

From personal anecdotes I've heard, most people with schizophrenia learn when they are hallucinating (maybe they have recurring characters?), perhaps by watching others? Also, it's quite rare to have both visual and auditory hallucinations, but I see your point about not being able to trust your senses, and how impossible it is to get around.