“A delusion is a belief held with strong conviction despite superior evidence to the contrary.”
“The psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers was the first to define the three main criteria for a belief to be considered delusional in his 1913 book General Psychopathology. These criteria are:
Certainty (held with absolute conviction)
Incorrigibility (not changeable by compelling counterargument or proof to the contrary)
Impossibility or falsity of content (implausible, bizarre or patently untrue)
Furthermore, when a false belief involves a value judgment, it is only considered a delusion if it is so extreme that it cannot be, or never can be proven true.”
— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusion
Not to be a moral relativist or worse, a solipsist , but sometimes I struggle with the concept of truth – or at least Absolute Truth. I’m not even sure if this anecdote is relevant here, but what the hell…
Yesterday, (against my better judgement) I engaged in a Facebook debate (always a dubious proposition) about institutional racism. Without getting into the fiercely emotional, tangled lines of logic that spewed forth from all parties concerned, at a certain point it occurred to me that the parties concerned were not even debating the same proposition. Some (white) folks were arguing that it does, in fact, exist. And some (white) folks were arguing that they weren’t personally racist. I only realized the divergence in perspective when I noticed how extreme and reflexive the need to deny any allegations of personal racism were on the part of those who couldn’t buy into the concept of institutional racism. While I personally unequivocally believe that it demonstrably exists, a comment that was made in the course of the debate really struck me vis a vis the notion of “truth”. The comment was hurled as an invective ending with “…and why don’t you just go and make the world a better place?” To which the response was, “I do work to make the world a better place every day.”
That’s when it dawned on me that most everyone is pursuing a course of action that they believe “makes the world a better place”, when usually, in reality, they’re often just making the world a safer place for their own ideologies, and those that already align with their own….
Also, the first sentiment and last expressed in this post almost seem to contradict each other, no?
“A delusion is a belief held with strong conviction despite superior evidence to the contrary.”
“…when a false belief involves a value judgment, it is only considered a delusion if it is so extreme that it cannot be, or never can be proven true.”
First, who’s to say which evidence is superior? Maybe when it’s an empirical matter, but a lot of beliefs can never be proven true or false, it seems to me – except maybe in extreme cases.