Psychosis is a mental illness with a root cause in ideation, the primary symptom of which is a loss of touch with reality. The individual sufferer either has fixed false ideas - and needs to fictionalize reality on an ongoing basis in order to maintain those ideas intact, or is unable to accept the facts, and fictionalizes reality in order to avoid facts they cannot accept.
Social Psychosis, I’d suggest - refers to the underlying ideological architecture of society; that is, the conception of reality we inherit from religious, political and economic ideology - as opposed to a scientifically valid conception of reality. In this example, as with others I’ve noticed, Dr LaBier doesn’t seem to make a distinction between causes and symptoms:
‘The social psychosis that has taken root across our political, economic and social landscape contains delusions in four areas: personal values and conduct; political/economic ideology; public/social policy; and science and factual knowledge.’ Douglas LaBier, Ph.D. (psychologytoday.com)
His use of this concept amounts to mud-slinging across the ideologically defined ailse. For example:
It’s almost as if Dr LaBier doesn’t understand that the implications of his own statements go far beyond the partisan public policy debate level. Contemporary society is psychotic for we have fixed religious, political and economic ideas, false to a scientific understanding of reality - and to maintain them intact, we have to fictionalize and ignore realities they cannot encompass. But this fictionalizing and ignoring, which Dr LaBier blames on Republicans, is merely symptomatic. The Social Psychosis itself lies in adherence to ideological conceptions of reality, forged in eras ignorant of a scientific understanding of reality - and is very serious, being both progressive and terminal.
In order to correct this psychosis - humankind must accept a scientific understanding of reality in common, and act on that basis to secure the continued existence of the human species.
Nearly everyone has fixed false ideas. Everyone fictionalizes reality on an ongoing basis. Your definition of psychosis includes the world. It is not a good definition. Anybody can use it against anybody in the manner you have.
We have no idea why we are born and live in this reality, therefore we construct religion, economic and social norms and customs to give our yet-unexplainable existence a bit of sense.
Yeah, even scientists…but science in general is able to revise its ideas on an ongoing basis and therefore avoid the psychoses that ideologically based religious, political and economic institutions are prey to.
Again, you’re right. Everyone does fictionalize reality. We emphasize our victories and try not to dwell on our embarassments, that’s true. However, there’s a difference between social ideology and an individual, personal relation to reality.
Social ideology is a conception of the world given to us by the state, church, school, parents etc - held in common as true by the population of a ‘country’ thus described. The psychotic ideas of the state are not true - but the motives for this falsity are very different. They’re not fictionalizing reality in the same way an individual might.
Up yours!
Well, exactly my point. This is a problem effecting all of humankind - and which can only be addressed therefore, at the ideological level by governments accepting a scientific understanding of reality in common and acting on that basis to secure the continued survival of the human species.
There is, but it’s out of reach, at least for a couple of hundred years. Humans evolve through technology, technology opens our understanding of the world, therefore to understand the definition of purpose and life we would need some pretty advanced technology.
I’m likely to agree with WW here. Everybody has a fictional perspective of how they see themselves in the world. Everybody creates their own personal narrative or metanarrative of themselves.
Social Psychosis is a condition of contemporary societies built up in relation to ideological conceptions of reality - forged in eras ignorant of a scientific understanding of reality. What makes contemporary societies psychotic is not the meaningful content of their ideological archetecture as such, but that false ideas are upheld, while epistemically superior knowledge is denied, repressed and abused in furtherance of ideologically defined ends.
Imagine waking up Tuesday morning - thinking it’s Wednesday, heading out doing Wednesday things - and wondering why people aren’t there, shops are closed, trains are late, etc; then finding out that it is in fact Wednesday, but refusing to accept it - and continuing to act as if it were Tuesday. That’s psychotic - and that’s what we’re doing on a SOCIAL SCALE, continuing to act in the course of invalid ideas when we know better.
The Social Psychosis itself lies in adherence to ideological conceptions of reality, forged in eras ignorant of a scientific understanding of reality - and is very serious, being both progressive and terminal. In order to correct this psychosis - humankind must accept a scientific understanding of reality in common, and act on that basis to secure the continued existence of the human species.
The ability to revise does not entail that one escapes psychosis. At any given time a psychotic idea can be consensus, even in science. For a long time it would damage your scientific career if you wrote about the emotions, motivations, cognition of animals. While people on the street - animal trainers, pet owners, etc - went along ‘anthropomorphizing’ without a hitch. Later, science, did in fact revise this and now it is ok to write about these things in professional contexts. However for a rather long time science was engaging in a negative delusion.
Who know what delusions are present in current science, especially when research data are converted into ontology, and even more especially when such ontology is considered exclusive and final.
There isn’t ‘a’ scientific understanding of reality. Further it is changing over time. Biologists often fail to keep up with physics and their assumptions about how bodies MUST function are limited. Not that this is the only kind of variety within science. Also there can be many beliefs outside science that do not contradict science and or have some degree of scientific support. There is no rational reason to throw these out.
Science does not have a view of reality so much as an agreement on methodology - a looser one than we might think, see Feyarabend - and an agreement on what constitutes knowledge. Form over content.
I disagree on your definition of psychotic. It’s not psychotic to be wrong - and science has been wrong, but psychotic to hold fixed, false ideas to the exclusion of valid knowledge of reality. So a psychotic idea cannot, by definition, ‘be consensus… in science’ Science doesn’t know better but be wrong anyway. It’s methodologically capable of revision.
I think we can answer that question up to the point of sceptical doubt - for mutual confirmation between disciplines infers that the ouvre is valid. Validity of predictions, experimental results, facts explained and set in valid relation to other facts could not be a delusion of truth - unless reality is itself a delusion. So, if you like, science and I are guilty of assuming reality exists - but beyond that there’s a body of knowledge about reality that appears to be true.
Now you and I can run around in philosophical circles trying to define truth - and you can pick my definitions apart without touching the entirety of the concept, but it remains that humankind is headed for extinction as a consequence of acting on the basis of religious, political and economic ideological concepts that are not consistant with a valid understanding of reality - holding fixed false ideas while knowing better. That’s psychotic.
That’s was not what I said. It was psychotic to not recognize the obvious. It was a kind of reverse hallucination.
Which were held for the lifetimes of scientists. So they were psychotic. Of course science cannot be psychotic, it is not a mind.
Of course it can.
In the ideal it has that capability, but scientists, even at the leve of consensus can be deluded and wildly so.
Sorry but we do not have mutual confirmation of everything, many things are not known and a glance at the history of science shows that severe confusions can be present. Again: we cannot know what delusions are present in science.
Further, there are assumptions in science - such as the idea of immutable laws - that are just that, assumptions. These may be delusions and there are indications, as I have pointed out elsewhere that this is the case.
That is incorrect. One can get data that indicates something is the case, but later it is realized this is incorrect. Further there are all sorts of ways to incorrectly and deludedly create models that are false. This has happened many times.
Note: I am not saying that all scientists are deluded or most or even many scientific models are false. I am saying that 1) your idea of a monolithic science is not correct 2) there are likely to be consensus falsehoods right now especially in models and interpretations of data.
That particular assumption reinforces itself since all data will be taken as having to do with ‘reality’. I believe in reality too, though what that actually means is still up in the air.
I see human kind destroying itself ALSO via scientific ideas of what we are and what reality is. Huge risks are being taken ‘rationally’ with GM foods, products and organisms, nanotechnology, and wireless technologies. Psychiatry is a very confused field philosophically and this has led to vast repetitions of idiotic and shallow problem solving patterns that benefit a few and damage society as a whole. Reductionism is creating all sorts of problems and a huge part of the source of this are scientific models being taken as complete.
You cannot live just with beliefs based on scientific consensus. We HAVE TO every day, all the time, make decisions and work with beliefs that go beyond what science has seemed to demonstrate. To just work with scientific beliefs is irrational.
Dominator religions have definitely caused problems. Others have not.
The assertions that ‘we should just work with ideas consistnat with scientific notions of reality’ HAS NOT BEEN TESTED SCIENTIFICALLY. So right here you are asserting a religious notion based on your intuition.