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Thomas Nagel popularized the question "What is it like to be a bat?". The idea was to show that there is something more than physical involved in consciousness. My question is related but a little different. We cannot relate to bat consciousness as it is a completely different animal and have sensory system that we probably lack. What about a completely "insane human consciousness"? Is it possible from the objective and subjective data to construct a description so that we can all relate and imagine what it is like to be insane?

Ahmed Abdullah
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    A dangerous line it is between using gestalt stimulus to imagine insanity, and truly becoming mad. How accurately do you wish to capture the essence of being someone besides yourself, given that you wish to be not-mad after the encounter? Are you sure you can keep them confined within your imagination? Choose carefully =) – Cort Ammon Aug 25 '15 at 17:41
  • I'll remember your advice. – Ahmed Abdullah Aug 25 '15 at 17:47
  • In all seriousness, is there any particular reason to believe a "completely insane" individual is conscious at all? The assignment of consciousness to other individuals is more of an art than a science. How you choose to define "completely insane" in a way which permits "consciousness" will have a substantial effect on what answers you deem "valid." Also, I know of no philosophical school which believes you can know another mind completely, so there's going to have to be some room for artistic license if you wish to imagine something like that. – Cort Ammon Aug 25 '15 at 17:51
  • I also had that in my mind. May be it's nothing to be like an insane. It may also be fantastic to be like insane. Many many layers away from the actual world and concern. The insane mind may actually busy doing highly general cool meta stuff , unfortunately the outward behavior is not in control (perhaps in autopilot mode). – Ahmed Abdullah Aug 25 '15 at 17:58
  • This is not a real question unless you define insanity. –  Aug 25 '15 at 19:07
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    @Keelan It remains a real question, it just has infinitely many very detailed answers. –  Aug 25 '15 at 19:46
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    It's not entirely clear what "complete insanity" would mean or look like. – virmaior Aug 26 '15 at 01:33
  • @jobermark that does seem to suggest it isn't exactly a good fit for this site in its current state, doesn't it? –  Aug 26 '15 at 07:30
  • @Keelan I don't know much jargon of psychiatry so I expected someone to correct it with appropriate terminology. – Ahmed Abdullah Aug 26 '15 at 09:28
  • How can you ask a question without knowing what it means? You can't just write something without knowing what it means, and then expect someone else to change it into something meaningful. –  Aug 26 '15 at 13:03
  • @Keelan I agree it is probably not a good fit. Academic answers should probably come from first-person accounts of occasionally lucid or somewhat-recovered patients. There are plenty out there. And I think Nagel's point is more "How would one figure out what it is like to be a bat, and how might it make one think differently about minds in bodies?" –  Aug 26 '15 at 13:13
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    We can't just ask ex-bats, nor can we somehow reliably alter our own perception in the direction of a bat's. So half the question disappears. Still, we too seldom ask questions about how known differences between minds should affect our philosophy, especially our ethics. –  Aug 26 '15 at 13:22

2 Answers2

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It is probably a variety of extreme things, just not at the same time... There is not one way of being sane, much less a single way of being 'absolutely' insane. Like Anna Karenina's view of families, functional minds are all functional in the same way, at least compared to dysfunctional minds, which are much more singular in their dysfunctions.

I am going to go way off in left field here and suggest that this is one of the reasons why recreational drugs are a good thing, even alcohol, and especially LSD.

Even if you cannot actually occupy the mind of a severe depressive, or a mild psychotic, you can gain empathy for it by pushing your own chemical status toward theirs and extrapolating. (As @CortAmmon points out, there are reasons for not really joining them out there at the extreme, unless you are quite sure you are just visiting.)

Being very different from yourself, occasionally, should help you keep in mind those very different from yourself.

There is power in the DMT experience of earnestly addressing See Urchins and Machine Elves, and really feeling what it means to be absolutely sure of something and totally engrossed in it, with no sense of 'game'-ness while the 'real' you knows that you are just flat wrong. There is similar value in the nebulous love of everything and everyone to be had when 'candy flipping'. Or the creepy feeling of living death on mescaline.

There is understanding to be had even in alcohol. People don't understand why the depressed, especially the bipolar, do things that keep themselves that way, and why it is so much work to even identify those things. Well, alcohol is a mild depressant, why do people drink? The reasons are endless, and all those same reasons make sense of mild mood problems.

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Here is a possibility: that it is in fact no different than to be sane.

For in Kants theory of mind we can distinguish the Intellect from the Intuition; and it is the Intuition which presents the Intellect with sense-experience.

If the Intuition plays false and presents the Intellect with a false picture of reality, the Intellect has no choice but to construct a new theory of reality.

For example in conventional reality a wolf cannot suddenly jump through the wall into my room; but say that I saw that in fact it does hold; that in fact a wolf did just this once, then in this unconventional reality I can rationally hold that such things do happen.

Mozibur Ullah
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  • So it isn't "choose your delusion" since the delusion is already chosen for you, but we are all still crazy, though a critical mass are just crazy in a way everyone else can relate to. –  Aug 26 '15 at 14:35
  • @jobermark: pretty much :). – Mozibur Ullah Aug 26 '15 at 14:39
  • @jobermark: under LSD, I expect the Intellect itself remains rational despite how crazy the outward behaviour looks; what's 'de-ranged' is the sensory manifold presented to it. – Mozibur Ullah Aug 26 '15 at 15:09
  • It is more internal than that. Your limbic response is frozen at a point about half-an-hour after dosing. One usually manages to force this point to be a calm one. So this gives you an experience of infinite equanimity characteristic of schizophrenia. It can also give you the feeling of complete investment characteristic of autism. And if you are unlucky, it can give you 19 hours of continuous fear. –  Aug 26 '15 at 15:14
  • The latter part makes sense; but I don't understand how the limbic system can be frozen if emotions are still experienced: ie '19 hours of continuous fear'. – Mozibur Ullah Aug 26 '15 at 15:19
  • Frozen is an overstatement. But you are pulled back into that state, whatever it was. You can vary around that altered baseline, and you can push it around a bit, but your base variety of emotional state changes very slowly compared to ordinary experience. So the standard 'bad trip' is to feel suspended in anger or fear for an unnaturally long time. Behind that you are fully functional, much more so than on basically any other kind of drug. –  Aug 26 '15 at 15:33
  • The point is that sensory input is not the primary thing changed. Flattened input from the more capricious half of your brain is the real change. It is ambiguous how much that is part of 'the intellect'. –  Aug 26 '15 at 15:42
  • Let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/27429/discussion-between-mozibur-ullah-and-jobermark). – Mozibur Ullah Aug 26 '15 at 16:06