What does psychosis tell us about the nature of reality?

Quoting Purple Pond

What do you think? Does the possibility of psychosis prove that there is an objective reality?

I think it might be better to say that the diagnosis presumes it, rather than proves it.

In their current conceptualization of psychosis, both the APA5 and the World Health Organization8 define psychosis narrowly by requiring the presence of hallucinations (without insight into their pathologic nature), delusions, or both hallucinations without insight and delusions.6 In both of these current diagnostic classification systems, impaired reality testing remains central conceptually to psychosis.

Hallucinations - A profound distortion in a person's perception of reality, typically accompanied by a powerful sense of reality. An hallucination may be a sensory experience in which a person can see, hear, smell, taste, or feel something that is not there.

So we have a way of determining something is not there or not like what they experience. One unified objective reality assumed.

Delusion - refers to a strongly held belief despite evidence that the belief is false

IOW we have a way of determining which beliefs (about the way things are) are correct. One unified objecive reality assumed.

]impaired reality testing - just the name should make this clear.

At some level, reality testing is impaired in all psychotic phenomena. Dysfunctional reality testing is evidenced by: auditory or visual hallucinations. fixed false beliefs or delusions.

My father told me when I was young about a news item regarding a delusional man who claimed he was Superman. This man insisted he could stop trains. His attempt ended up killing him.

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”
? Philip K. Dick, I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon

Even if there aren't any philosophers who would tell this individual that he might actually be able to stop trains, couldn't a philosopher object in as much as the news account or even their own first hand account isn't enough to confirm an objective reality?

In response to Locke’s line of thinking, Immanuel Kant used the expression “Ding an sich” (the “thing-in-itself”) to designate pure objectivity. The Ding an sich is the object as it is in itself, independent of the features of any subjective perception of it. While Locke was optimistic about scientific knowledge of the true objective (primary) characteristics of things, Kant, influenced by skeptical arguments from David Hume, asserted that we can know nothing regarding the true nature of the Ding an sich, other than that it exists. Scientific knowledge, according to Kant, is systematic knowledge of the nature of things as they appear to us subjects rather than as they are in themselves.

My sense in this passage is that the dispute doesn't stop the philosophers from avoiding moving trains.

Quoting JosephS

My sense in this passage is that the dispute doesn't stop the philosophers from avoiding....

Correct. Hopefully what they understand surpasses common sense rather than falling short.

Reply to Purple Pond
What some cultures call 'psychosis' , others have called 'in contact with a spirit world' (etc)..
This implies that 'reality' is a word which denotes that 'statistical consenus' we might expect from humanity possessing a common physiology, and common social and psychological needs which direct perception.

Reply to fresco The train still makes a mess.

Quoting Banno

The train still makes a mess.

Sure, but the other model leaves room for finding value in what the other person is experiencing, but putting it in a different context: metaphorical, related to interpersonal dynamics, related to the past, related to something other than a particular train. The binary approach is problematic. People, for example trauma survivors, often come up with best explanations for what they are experiencing. And these are false or partially false, if takne about the here and now, or the boyfriend they consider the devil, but if investigated turn out to be about past events. This is a banal example, in the sense that we need not have a new paradigm for reality to see that a nuanced approach to the 'hallucination' is better than merely dealing with it in a binary way and trying to, for example, medicate it away.

Personally I think even more things can be going on and reality is more complicated then many realize.

Quoting JosephS

My sense in this passage is that the dispute doesn't stop the philosophers from avoiding moving trains.

Well, they know they believe in the trains enough for them to be dangerous. (lol, but also seriously) We often talk about belief like it is binary and also often like it is under our control. I don't think it is either. The superman guy might have been denying his fears that trains might actually still be dangerous for him. We have all sorts of mundane examples - iow not paradigm threatening ones - where people ignore their fears and do things that hurt them. Oh, I can helicopter in and alpine snowboard after 4 lessons. I believe in my abilities. Well, you might also be suppressing your nervousness and also lack of confidence because you wanna be up there with Sammy. Truly believing something that goes against whatever main paradigms you grew up in takes incredible work/exploration/experience, and there are all sorts of intermediate stages, where you hold contradictory beliefs to different degrees.

What would it take for you to believe you could receive a frontal crash from a train. Well, it would likely take noticing anomolies with matter. Odd experiences. REality checks and looking for other explanations. Perhaps searches thorugh alternative science for some justification then being critical of that. Experimentation with vastly safer challenges to the current paradigm. We would be looking at years of exploration, with moments of thinking, shit, this might be true, while still doubting most of the time.

Beliefs like this go way down, deep into the unconscious.

Running out on the tracks is impulsive and does not indicate to me that the guy actually believed deep down in some binary way. He could have been avoiding incredibly amounts of emotional pain and that gave his strong motivation not to notice what he actually believed at the very least also.

Quoting Purple Pond

What do you think? Does the possibility of psychosis prove that there is an objective reality?

Prove that there is an objective reality? No. Empirical claims are not provable.

But yes, obviously reality is a certain way regardless of how one perceives it.

The vast majority of philosophers aren't idealists by the way. There's something weird about this board that leads to there being a lot of idealists here, though.

Quoting Purple Pond

What do you think? Does the possibility of psychosis prove that there is an objective reality?

As a direct realist or indirect realist?

I don't think antirealism meshes here in any way.

2Reply to Banno

One man’s mess is another man’s Voluntary Diaspora Toward Infinite Becoming.

I don’t think reality is relevant to psychosis. The question may be can the psychotic person function in his day to day life, is he healthy and at peace within himself? Is he able to focus on a certain task, does he have healthy relationships and is he able to provide for himself.

If someone wants to go around believing they are superman and insists it’s his own making of reality, then fine. But if he can’t survive as a result, then he has a problem.

On the basis that one definition of 'psychosis' is 'an inabilty to function in normal social life', then the only implication with respect to 'reality' would be on the basis that 'reality is a social construction'. This ties in with my anthropological point above, that in some cultures an individual that we might label 'psychotic', in their own culture might occupy a position of social standing (like 'witch doctor'). We might also note that totalitarian regimes like the former Soviet Union tended to label dissenters from their imposed social reality as 'psychotic'.

Reply to Terrapin Station

I agree. I think this board is representative of the larger populous though. There is a cultural shift towards this sort of relativistic reality where if opinions do not outright define reality, they influence somehow. Its like people don’t see the difference between their ability to interact with reality or influence reality (moving a cup, typing words that show up in the computer screen etc) with actually changing reality itself with what you believe.
Its worrisome, because its a loose way of thinking about things that opens the door for all kinds of magical thinking. Obviously, religion is a big factor here but I also think self help gurus, cultural tropes like “your opinion can’t be wrong” or “you can do anything if you just believe in yourself” encourage this sort of unmoored view of the world. Our culture is permeated by nonsense like psychics, astrology, palm reading, conspiracy theories etc and I think its worn down peoples sensibility about reality. Even people who reject one are usually more accepting as another. I have a friend that thinks religion is bullshit fantasy but thinks numerology and your zodiac sign are important.

Quoting Coben

I think it might be better to say that the diagnosis presumes it, rather than proves it.

It probably is better and more accurate.

Are psychiatrists implicitly direct realists? They diagnose only certain people with psychosis because they hear or see things that aren't there. If we never perceive the world but only our own sensations, we never see anything that's really there, making us all psychotic.

Quoting Purple Pond

Are psychiatrists implicitly direct realists? They diagnose only certain people with psychosis because they hear or see things that aren't there. If we never perceive the world but only our own sensations, we never see anything that's really there, making us all psychotic

You have to suffer, not clean yourself, not work well, mess up relationships to get the heavier diagnoses, in general. You do your work, function in a marriage, eat,shower and shave, you can think you are Napoleon.

Reply to Purple Pond I guess one could make a distinction, that between true reality and normal reality. The former is inaccessible as some posters have mentioned but the latter is what most people perceive and have a consensus on. What if psychotics are those who can, at certain times, perceive true reality? The rest of us would find that "abnormal" and put all sorts of labels on it.

Quoting TheMadFool

I guess one could make a distinction, that between true reality and normal reality. The former is inaccessible as some posters have mentioned but the latter is what most people perceive and have a consensus on. What if psychotics are those who can, at certain times, perceive true reality? The rest of us would find that "abnormal" and put all sorts of labels on it.

Another similar take is what if what they are experiencing is real, but when they try to translate it to everyday reality it gets taken the wrong way. They experience their spouse as a demon, but the spouse has not horns, does not breathe fire and his eyes are not red and glowing. However in a subtle way he take great pleasure in undermining the self-exteem of his wife. So when the 'hallucination' gets applied to a description the wife seems delusional.

Now that's an example taking our usual ontology as generally correct.

There could be all sorts of other situations where the so-called psychotic person is seeing things that are true that, as you say, is of the true reality and seems crazy. But here, generally, that person makes practical mistakes when trying to apply or relate that knowledge. They probably should not tell most people, certainly not psychiatrists. They would need to work with that knowledge, perhaps find peers - might be shamans, or alternative scientistists, or even physicists, or certain types of political people or....in any case, people who have an understanding of the realm the person encountered and how that realm/entity/hidden process interactions with what is taken as real by most people.

They need to be nuanced when dealing with people who have different experiences and beliefs than their own.