- #141
Galteeth
- 69
- 1
In response to someone who said that love was a delusion: This is ontologically meaningless. In order for love to be a delusion, it would have to contain some kind of statement about observable reality that could be falsified. While love can lead to delusions, it makes no sense to say that it is in and of itself a delusion. It is a subjective emotional experience, and as such is as real as the person experiencing it believes it to be. The fact that it is the result of physical states of the brain should not come as a surprise, nor does it have anything to do with its reality. All experiences are emergent properties of the brain in some sense. The only things that can be delusions are statements that can reference something outside of one's own experience.
This reminds me of something I was trying to explain to a friend of mine who has some pretty bizarre beliefs. He long held a belief that he was the "smartest man man in the world" because he had realized that his goal, and everyone else's, was to be happy. He would hold that he was much smarter then people who has more knowledge, more technical skill, or a larger world view, because they wasted time with things (such as acquiring knowledge) that while they were doing them did not result in them being happy. He would challenge me saying something to the effect of "I don't think you agree with my idea that I am the smartest man in the world, and how could you not?"
I would respond by saying that I simply couldn't agree or disagree, because he hadn't defined "smartness" in a meaningful way. Under his definition, smartness related to the ability of one to experience happiness as much as possible. Since "happiness" as he was defining it was not quantifiable, it was not meaningful to contend that his assertion.
I would say that to the extent I disagreed, i was using a different definition of "smartness" and "happiness' then he was. He would argue that these were false definitions, and his was clearly the true definition (In other words, accepting any other definition of "happiness" lead to one not being happy as much as possible, and thus was an indicator of lack of "smartness.") I explained, with some difficulty, the concept of a tautology to him, and then came the true genius stroke of his philosophy. He reasoned that since his tautological reasoning lead to a "true" statement that he was the happiest human being, and thus the smartest, and my inability to accept tautological reasoning resulted in me not being the happiest human being, he was happier and therefore smarter.The point of that story is that it is useless to apply the categories of truth to ill-defined subjective emotional states.
This reminds me of something I was trying to explain to a friend of mine who has some pretty bizarre beliefs. He long held a belief that he was the "smartest man man in the world" because he had realized that his goal, and everyone else's, was to be happy. He would hold that he was much smarter then people who has more knowledge, more technical skill, or a larger world view, because they wasted time with things (such as acquiring knowledge) that while they were doing them did not result in them being happy. He would challenge me saying something to the effect of "I don't think you agree with my idea that I am the smartest man in the world, and how could you not?"
I would respond by saying that I simply couldn't agree or disagree, because he hadn't defined "smartness" in a meaningful way. Under his definition, smartness related to the ability of one to experience happiness as much as possible. Since "happiness" as he was defining it was not quantifiable, it was not meaningful to contend that his assertion.
I would say that to the extent I disagreed, i was using a different definition of "smartness" and "happiness' then he was. He would argue that these were false definitions, and his was clearly the true definition (In other words, accepting any other definition of "happiness" lead to one not being happy as much as possible, and thus was an indicator of lack of "smartness.") I explained, with some difficulty, the concept of a tautology to him, and then came the true genius stroke of his philosophy. He reasoned that since his tautological reasoning lead to a "true" statement that he was the happiest human being, and thus the smartest, and my inability to accept tautological reasoning resulted in me not being the happiest human being, he was happier and therefore smarter.The point of that story is that it is useless to apply the categories of truth to ill-defined subjective emotional states.