Metacognitive Schism

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

I’m going to keep this short and sweet, or maybe not sweet but to the point. However, I can see now that it is becoming another very in-depth discussion. The point is, I could really use advice, so I wouldn’t mind hearing your 2 cents on the topic even if you ended up just skimming through what I had to say

I am experiencing cognitive dissonance about my own thoughts - or, what could be called a metacognitive schism. I do not know whether this indicates the onset of schizophrenia, or perhaps just a severe case of obsessive thought patterns. Whatever it may indicate, it is all most likely the result of my amphetamine usage (which I have been using on a regular basis for the past year and a half), obsessive thinking, or traumatic experiences during these past two years - but, to be fair, it is probably a combination of all speculated sources, as they would seem to be entertwined.

For those of you who have been through a similar situation (mainly, amphetamine addiction) and have recovered to a relative degree of normalcy, which one of these scenarios below do you feel to be the most accurate explanation of what is happening in my mind:

At one point in time, it felt that my perspective of reality, and my mental image of myself (or, my ego, if you prefer the term), was completely accurate and I deserved my claim to its possession.

A) During a period of metacognition, I made an assumption about my own cognition that was wrong - this began opening up a dichotomy (Logic like: Either “This” or “That”, not both - or, “Black and white” thinking) resulting in cognitive dissonance, confusion, and possibly psychosis. There may be many psychological chasms, or just a few, or they might be something of a purely neurological basis that could be resolved with time and by me not thinking about it.

B) I haven’t made a “wrong” assumption (as speculated in scenario A) but I have merely become more demanding of my own awareness of myself - so much so that I have exceeded my brain’s physical capacity for introspection.

B2) I haven’t exceeded my brain’s capacity, but instead the mere fact that I recognize the sensation of “Cognitive Dissonance” beckons me to identify the source and the nature of cognitive dissonance. Therefore, I re-create cognitive dissonance within in my own mind, paradoxically because I am trying to figure out what’s causing it.

C) The inherent nature of any introspection (in all people) requires external stimuli in order to sustain the introspection. Therefore, when I spend more time during the day introspecting instead of making external observations/decisions/actions, confusion results as I do not possess enough fresh information to work with in my short-term memory.

D) My egotistical image of myself as being mentally superior was the result of adolesence (more specifically, me having high testosterone levels). Now that adolesence is winding down (I’m 19), so are my testosterone levels and hence, my positive self-image. If this is the case, should I just accept it? Or could Testosterone administration (with the consultation of a legal practioner of medicine, of course) be beneficial?

Just as most people like to feel a sense of confidence/strength after overcoming a struggle in their life, I also feel the desire to establish a sense of “self-worth” for having endured such an intense level of suffering.

As Nietzsche said, “That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”

However, if I were to give myself such ego-credentials for having over-come this intense 2-year long period of cognitive dissonance, should I feel it to be immoral?

After all, this whole scenario could be seen as being “self-maintained misery”, but this prolonged masochism wasn’t intentional on my part (although unconsciously it could have been intentional).

Furthermore, shouldn’t it be embarassing for me (contrary to using it as an ego-credential) that I found myself so distressed just because I couldn’t fathom my own shadow (in the Jungian sense)?

Without knowing exactly how I am capable of doing it, I am able to willingly leave this state of cognitive dissonance, with curiosity being the only thing pulling me back in. As a result, I am beginning to recover. I have also dramatically halted my usage of amphetamine (by actually flushing it down the toilet).

Ultimately, and maybe delusionally, it was the faith in my own rationality (while accepting my inability to have complete confidence in the accuracy of my logic) along with using the music of the band Tool (fittingly, using it as my psychological tool to guide me through the infinite possibilities and chaos that the future beholds) to find that human willpower itself (with its property of self-awareness by its nature causing unpredictability) would break through the lines and boundaries created by the field of psychology - as well as philosophy, religion, and indeed all forms of epistemology that try to define the human mind.

The ego is not inherently “good” or “evil” - and our minds varying perspectives can not be completely objective, or else we would cease to be a “mind”. Nietzsche acknowledged that as “perspectivism”.

So whether “I” am really “me”, and whether “I” can view my past/present/future as “righteous” is yet to be determined, and will vary depending upon the subject who interprets it - and when it finally does comes time to determine it, my past “self” can only be but an echo of an influence upon the outcome.

Now, I need your opinions so I know how to best-manage the remainder of my journey out of this psychological ultimatum.

2

I take amphetamine for medical reasons, and I can identify with the obsessive thought patterns (looping sequences as I call them) and cognitive dissonance. Though, my touches with psychosis have been primarily due to sleep deprivation (unrelated to the amphetamine use), rather than amphetamine overload (and the subsequent alteration in brain chemistry). Also, a majority of my dissonance arises from my usage of medication as a crutch as I sorely wish to live naturally. The kind of dissonance that arises from the stimulant driven psychosis in itself is extremely unpredictable and often results in something of a dissociative state – making your psychological state that much more difficult to measure against reality as you’ve fondly known it.

So… I think the degree of your dissonance and subsequent mental exhaustion you experience are highly relative to the variables. More specifically – any preexisting psychological conditions, the severity of your use/abuse of the drug, and the ideas that are causing this cognitive dissonance (or which play the largest role). I have come to find that in a hyper-focused/chaotic, ‘looping’ psychological state one experiences dissonances he may already be quite familiar with, though the frequency and intensity can be amplified to an almost maddening degree. Dwelling and obsessing become habitual without realizing it. Also, your mode of “usage” (are we talking daily, therapeutic use; or more like recreational abuse?) as well as your chemical of choice (Dex? Mixed salts? White? …Worse?) can affect your thinking relatively. Your levels of dissonance, which often give way to new sources of dissonance, and dissociation essentially pull you from your natural state – that is, your natural ‘self’. In fact, I might say that all of your noted suspicions may be true to some degree. Your mind is over-worked and essentially multitasking at a radical level – some go even so far as to cause a psychological break. Introspection is an especially tricky subject with your variables in consideration because your possible dissociative state can be fueled by self discovery, and the recognition of how little you may know even about yourself (giving way to multiple identities, though perhaps not discernible to you). ‘Meta Cognition’, or operating on multiple cognitive states, is rarely a harmonious endeavor. These states are working on top of one another, and often in a sequence (one begins where another stops) as driven by your flux of emotion. Rarely, if ever, do these states seem to work together in my experience.

Care to give any more information? The cause of your dissonance also seems, to me, to be your primary source. Your noted curiosity almost seems like a mode of self-doubt in absence of this moderate psychosis you may have come to literally find comfort in. The ego is inherently disorganized - which you seem to agree with - so these added cognitive states seem contrary to a harmonious discipline that you likely realize is most important to the human psyche.

3

Your constant use of thought may be all there is for you. After all, we all live in a thought world: a place of ideas that guides us and gives us purpose, artificial as it may be. The meta cognitive activity you undergo, your thinking about your own thinking are products of a self starting, self maintained mechanism that, once established will do everything it can to protect itself.

The fact is, you do not want to lose what you have and what you know. You know a lot and you constantly want to know more and more, to feed it most likely because you feel a kind of power that comes with knowing more.

And this pain, where is it? It does not exist at one or another mental level — it is here, it is part of the body. Therefore the body has to take the consequences and generally you can not solve the problems. The body has to work them out, and the body can do that in a very intelligent and successful way if you just give it a chance. Your desire to solve your problems at some other level will not be honored. It just remains a hope and nothing else. You can’t let go of that — as far as that is concerned you are really doomed. After all, there is nothing that you can do. But you can’t accept that, because the instrument that you use for that is the thinking, and the thinking can’t accept that because it has always gotten results for you.

You are what you are because of all the things that thinking has produced for you, and that have cost you much time and effort. Therefore, you also assume that every result achieved by means of thinking necessarily requires time. And it is this principle that shifts the whole business away from you and says: ‘this situation is hopeless, we need time’, because time has helped to reach results in all the previous situations.

So, the only thing that you can do is understand things at the level of thinking. There is no other level of understanding, and in spite of the fact that all your attempts to understand this have generally not helped, you still keep on hoping that this instrument will be of some use in understanding things, maybe tomorrow, next time, Tuesday, Wednesday, next year.

That is the first thing that has to penetrate you, that thinking is not the instrument. Without even worrying about another instrument. ‘This is not the instrument’, that is enough. And if this is really the situation in which you find yourself, is there anything else to understand? No, there is nothing else to understand. Then you’re a finished man. :slight_smile:

4

This has a Nietzschean ring to it - music as the will itself, unlike the rational mind, which only forms images of the will…
The idea that the human will causes the unpredictability should be liberating if you do, even if only at moments of great strength, value uncertainty over certainty.

About certainty versus uncertainty Nietzsche often says interesting things, I happened to stumble on this passage just now:
“The question of values is more fundamental than the question of certainty: the latter becomes serious only by presupposing that the value question has already been answered.” [Nachlass, 1883-1886]

I don’t know if the former question has occurred to you - anyway you have time…

5

Your responses were meaningful and useful - I promise to give an in-depth reply to each of them when I have more time.
I don’t have internet right now, so my reply might take a while.

6

Here is a short list of my other theories and associated topics regarding my cognitive dissonance:

  • Experience is required to justify the ego, and introspection alone can not suffice (contrary to a firm belief I had that “If you think about any problem deeply enough, you should be able to find a solution”)

  • The act of formulating words to represent my beliefs is what has been causing the deterrioration of my beliefs

  • Solipsism - the possibility that I am the only thing in existence, and the reason I can not “find what I am looking for” is because I haven’t imagined/invented it yet. Therefore, the limitations of a self-imposed reality are causing the death of my spirit.

7

If I’m able to get better without having to reply to this thread in-depth (since thinking about seems to just bring it all back up), then I probably won’t. But don’t even think that this means I don’t value your replies. They might have been the final thing I needed to help me figure all of this out - if that is the case, then thanks isn’t enough, even though this is just over the internet, my gratitude is extending far beyond that if its possible.

However, just in case I haven’t resolved all of this yet and it all comes spilling back out again in the future, this thread will be the first place I go.

8

Separating things, dividing things into material life, and spiritual life. There is only one life. This is a material life, and that other has no relevance. Wanting to change your material life into a spirit pattern is destroying the possibility of your living in harmony and accepting the reality of this material world exactly the way it is. That is responsible for your predicament.

It is a constant struggle on your part to be like that and to chase something that does not exist. And that has no meaning at all. That gives you the feeling that doing is all that is important for you. Not the actual achievement of that. You are moving farther and farther away. The more effort you put into it, the more you feel good. Like the problems you have. Trying to solve the problems is all that is important to you, but the solutions are more interesting to you than the problems. You are more interested in solutions than looking at the problem. What is the problem, I say. You have no problems, only solutions.

You are saying there are solutions. Which one should I use to solve my problem? What exactly is the problem? The material problems are understandable. If you don’t have health, you have to do something about your health. If you don’t have money, you have to do something about money. These are understandable. If you have some psychological problems, then the real problem begins. All these psychologists and the people that talk of spirit with their therapies and their solutions are trying to help people, but they don’t lead them anywhere, do they? The individuals remain as shallow and as empty as before. What do they want to prove to themselves?

I’m not exactly saying to you that I believe that problems solve themselves by going along with your own life. I’m simply asking the question sincerely. What is the problem? You never look at the problem. It is not possible for you to look at the problem as long as you are interested in the solutions. If all your solutions were inadequate or not known, would there really be a problem? If we all say we’re forever interested in solutions all the time, then there’s only the interest in solutions, not in solving the problem. …. so the question arises, ‘isn’t that the same thing then?’

In that process, you find out that those solutions are really worthless. Those solutions don’t solve your problem, whatever is the problem. Those solutions keep the problems going. They don’t solve them. If there is something wrong with your tape recorder, or television, that can be remedied. There is a technician who can help you. But this is an endless process going on and on and on and on, all your life. More and more of something and less and less of the other.

So, you never question the solutions. If you really question the solutions, you will have to question the knowledge you have of and the method how you acquired the solution. But sentimentality stands in the way of your rejecting not only the solutions, but the investment that your serious thoughts and feelings have in the solutions. Questioning that requires a tremendous courage on your part. The courage to be on your own, to stand on your two solid feet and come to terms with your life as it is, is something which cannot be given by somebody. It’s not something that you can develop over time. If you are freed from the burden of the entire past experiences that you resort to for help then what is left there is the courage. What is left is you.