I think cognitive delusions often maintain themselves by being non-falsifiable, and an explicit knowledge of epistemology might help people better use logic to compensate.
I managed to get a schizophrenic acquaintance who had anxiety-causing delusional ideas which originated in mind-body dualism to reject mind-body dualism, after carefully explaining why parsimony is a good way to distinguish between the various non-falsifiable hypotheses and how one can roughly approximate what is and is not parsimonious and why the mind instinctively gravitates to mind-body dualism even though it’s not necessarily true. After I finished explaining she kind of laughed and admitted there really was no good reason for her to believe those things. I might be imagining it, but she seemed relieved as well as amused.
We unfortunately lost contact, so I’m not sure if it stuck. This is the most extreme example, but I’ve seen other, less extreme cases where talking people away from odd beliefs was helpful to them. It’s important to be convincing in these talks, and appealing to epistemically sound reasoning (as opposed to just dismissing it as most people do) is a good way to be convincing. Healthy people can instinctively tell that a delusion is silly, but for those whose instincts aren’t working properly and take delusions seriously it’s important to be able to explicitly explain why it’s silly.
For some reason, your first sentence gave me the urge to hug you. I suspect it was a reaction to the fact that someone understood that. I’ve never been able to explain to anyone why “but it isn’t your fault” doesn’t let my brain believe it’s not my fault.
Interesting. I suspect it did, except in particularly strong attacks (if her schizophrenia was periodic rather than constant).
I think cognitive delusions often maintain themselves by being non-falsifiable, and an explicit knowledge of epistemology might help people better use logic to compensate.
I managed to get a schizophrenic acquaintance who had anxiety-causing delusional ideas which originated in mind-body dualism to reject mind-body dualism, after carefully explaining why parsimony is a good way to distinguish between the various non-falsifiable hypotheses and how one can roughly approximate what is and is not parsimonious and why the mind instinctively gravitates to mind-body dualism even though it’s not necessarily true. After I finished explaining she kind of laughed and admitted there really was no good reason for her to believe those things. I might be imagining it, but she seemed relieved as well as amused.
We unfortunately lost contact, so I’m not sure if it stuck. This is the most extreme example, but I’ve seen other, less extreme cases where talking people away from odd beliefs was helpful to them. It’s important to be convincing in these talks, and appealing to epistemically sound reasoning (as opposed to just dismissing it as most people do) is a good way to be convincing. Healthy people can instinctively tell that a delusion is silly, but for those whose instincts aren’t working properly and take delusions seriously it’s important to be able to explicitly explain why it’s silly.
For some reason, your first sentence gave me the urge to hug you. I suspect it was a reaction to the fact that someone understood that. I’ve never been able to explain to anyone why “but it isn’t your fault” doesn’t let my brain believe it’s not my fault.
Interesting. I suspect it did, except in particularly strong attacks (if her schizophrenia was periodic rather than constant).