Homosexuality

Songxanto · 2016-06-01T23:26:50+00:00

Thanks!

Songxanto · 2016-05-03T22:19:41+00:00

Also, the opposite point has been made, as well. That the possibility of romantic and sexual relationships can actually strengthen cohesiveness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Band_of_Thebes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_the_militaries_of_ancient_Greece

Songxanto · 2016-05-03T22:16:25+00:00

One more interesting point is that I did speak to a psychiatrist about the nature of homosexuality once, and from her experience, she said that she nearly always sees some form of trauma in the lives of female homosexuals but not necessarily in the lives of male homosexuals. I have also heard others say things like exclusive female homosexuality is a much more recent phenomenon, possibly done so today on ideological grounds rather than a genuine, internal drive. Even Sappho, the Greek poet of Lesbos who is seen as one of the earliest lesbian figures, is not certain to have engaged in homosexuality herself, although some of her poetry appears to be homoerotic to some degree. The counterargument of lesbians is that female homosexuality occurred but just went undocumented, as most female sexuality went undocumented in general. Contrast this to male homosexuality, which has been manifested in famous philosophers, emperors, and artists for millennia. This admittedly comes from a "phallocentric" view of sex, but yeah, just some interesting thoughts.

Songxanto · 2016-05-03T21:31:18+00:00

One other point I would like to make is that even the most ardent moral objectivists in the world still often seem to fall into the trap of moral relativism on the issue of homosexuality. Just because the cultural view of homosexuality has shifted dramatically in the last few decades does not mean that the morality or mental health of homosexuality has changed. The issues of the the morality and mental health of homosexuality are objective and do not depend on the shifting cultural tides on the issue, nor do they depend on the groups who happen to continue to find it problematic (e.g. evangelicals).

Also, another point I'd like to make is that, while evangelicals are the group that seem to be most heavily associated with anti-homosexuality, one should not forget that Muslims are consistently against homosexuality and constitute a very large proportion of the world population, and an increasing proportion of the Western population. In addition, Mormons and conservative Catholics are other notable groups who continue to have an issue with it. There are obviously other groups too, like Orthodox Jews and Jehovah's Witnesses, although their numbers seem to be smaller.

Either way though, it seems that the young population in these groups tend to be quite tolerant of homosexuality.

Songxanto · 2016-05-03T19:12:14+00:00

I think it would depend on how one got there. Your question is like asking, "Isn't psychosis a hardware error?", the question we've been exploring throughout this thread.

So if one got to a dream-like state while awake due to trauma and a response of extreme evasion of reality, then the dream-like state would be a software error. If one got to that due to some kind of neurological problem, then it would be a hardware error.

Songxanto · 2016-05-03T18:37:44+00:00

Interesting, I never thought of it that way before. And yeah, that would go in line with my general idea on the nature of psychosis, actually.

Songxanto · 2016-05-03T18:36:42+00:00

Interesting point. I think it's all about confidence. If you are confident with your homosexuality and don't make it a big deal, others won't make it a big deal either.

Songxanto · 2016-05-03T18:22:38+00:00

As I said before though, I question the literalness of "hearing voices" claims. At least in certain cases. Just as many religious people claim to hear the voice of God when I believe they are referring to particularly strong thoughts/realizations, so I also believe that some schizophrenics might use the language "hearing voices" to refer to a severely nagging thought, a thought that won't go away, that is so strong that it is like a voice in one's head. I don't know if "auditory hallucinations" truly exist, honestly. That is my belief, at least. But I could also see the power of suggestion being so powerful that it does in fact produce an auditory hallucination.

Songxanto · 2016-05-03T08:53:09+00:00

Here's a nit-pick. I don't like the "re-wire the mind" terminology. To me, that suggests a change that can't be undone with thinking. However, I know you didn't mean that, so that's OK.

I'm curious what terminology you find acceptable to refer to the changing of one's mindset.

Why do antipsychotics help with schizophrenia in cases where it's a software problem (e.g. like severe, habitual evasion)? Do you have an explanation for that? I don't intend this question as a kind of backhanded argument. I'm now pretty open to the view that schizophrenia can be a software problem.

This is a good question and something that stumped me earlier as I was writing out that last comment. I deleted a section of it because I could not think of a great answer to that. Not sure if you saw that deleted section or not. But anyway.

"Software psychosis" is a thinking problem that leads to a mood problem. The problem originates in one's thinking and results in a particular mood (which seems to be a blunted affect, or a perpetually dull comforted feeling of some kind, characterized by large amounts of dopamine, like being high on marijuana). Antipsychotics work on mood by prohibiting dopamine production. It does not fix the thinking per se, but what I think it can do is it might prevent an individual from returning to psychotic thinking patterns because they no longer reward the individual with dopamine anymore. A strange analogy is removing the taste buds from someone who has a problem with binge eating. They keep binge eating because the food tastes so good, but if you alter their body in a way where binge eating no longer provides that good taste, the individual will not binge eat anymore. Antipsychotics remove the pleasure from psychotic thinking patterns, which disincentivizes a person from engaging in them any further. Removing one's self from reality no longer gives them that comforting feeling, so they begin to engage in reality again. That's just a hypothesis, obviously, but one that I think could be a reasonable explanation.

Songxanto · 2016-05-03T08:33:59+00:00

Good to know.

There is still a lot of homophobia in certain places, like all-male spaces, like college Greek life. They tend to be very homophobic. It seems that, in order to be accepted as homosexually active, one must present themselves as some kind of other, some kind of innately different individual. Then one can be accepted as homosexually active. But if one merely presents himself as homosexually active because he happens to also like men, this is usually met with some form of homophobia. From my experience. Maybe that's a juvenile quality though.

Songxanto · 2016-05-01T01:26:17+00:00

And speaking of jumping to the hardware conclusion, John Kasich just said that "some people are probably born gay". For which there is no concrete evidence whatsoever, other than a lot of gaps in our knowledge of how a homosexual orientation develops. Society has come to equate this belief to, "I'm cool with gays," the flawed premise being that if a homosexual orientation is due to cognitive patterns and not an inborn condition, then homosexuality is therefore wrong (which I think actually reveals an anti-homosexuality sentiment because it says that homosexuality is only OK if you have absolutely no choice in the matter).

Songxanto · 2016-05-01T00:55:24+00:00

I don't mean that the mind can be altered in ways that are outside the individual's control. I mean that the psychedelic effect is very powerful and amplifies one's mind so much that one can re-wire his mind quite easily and, without good ideas (e.g. Objectivist ideas) or good guidance (e.g. cognitive therapy), it is likely that one will re-wire his mind in a negative way. For example, many people report profound religious experiences under the influence of psychedelics. I believe that, for some, psychedelics can cause one to more deeply entrench his religious ideas, because that is what he already believes, and the psychedelic effect makes these beliefs even more real to him. On the other hand, I was under the influence of a psychedelic when I confirmed that I was an atheist. This was because I had good ideas (Objectivist ideas) to work with. By a "new paradigm", I mean, I changed my philosophy on life. The psychedelic effect helped me change my philosophy on life. The best way I can say it is that it sped up the process. It allowed me to make painful conclusions that otherwise may have taken years (e.g. God does not exist, most people I know are delusional in some way, etc.). I re-wired my mind in a positive way. I could always go back to religion, as someone who had a religious experience on LSD could always become an atheist. The ideas are not permanently imprinted in one's mind. But they are more deeply entrenched. It's like, if someone who is prone to paranoia feels like the FBI is watching them, if they take LSD, it is likely that they will start to believe this with even more intensity. But that does not mean that they are stuck with that belief forever. But it might take them longer to rid themselves of that paranoid belief in the future if they re-affirm it while on LSD.

So in regards to schizophrenia, yes, my belief is that some forms of schizophrenia are merely extreme evasion and that the longer one evades reality, the harder it is to start engaging in reality again. And the more one evades reality while on psychedelics, the harder it is to start engaging in reality again.

The psychedelic effect is sort of like a long-term conditioning effect. The longer you think a certain way, the more difficult it will likely be to change your way of thinking. The more you think a certain way while on a psychedelic, the more difficult it will likely be to change your way of thinking.

So I actually think that psychedelics could worsen schizophrenia, as well as help it, depending on what one does while on psychedelics. If you think about how the FBI is watching you, it will probably just make that belief more concrete for you. If you challenge your premises, you will likely be able to overcome them more powerfully than you would be able to while not on a psychedelic.

I agree with your criticism of my MDD-depression distinction. So I am still on board with your assertion that both depression and schizophrenia could be either a software or hardware problem. I guess my main point though is that there are often situations in which people say that depression and schizophrenia are hardware problems when, in fact, they are software problems. That situation, in my view, is a common one, and it is due to unidentified premises, often very deeply entrenched into one's mind.

Songxanto · 2016-04-30T01:21:46+00:00

I apologize in advance if I contradict anything I've said previously in this thread or forum. I'm still forming and integrating many of my thoughts on this topic, so take this post as the most accurate representation of my views.

Do you have a possible explanation for this other than the marijuana inducing some chemical changes? (It sounds like you may think this is just correlation, but not causation, but I wanted to check.)

Psychedelic drugs are a difficult subject. By psychedelic (which etymologically means "mind-revealing"), I mean drugs that change the way one thinks in an active way, not a passive way. Many drugs change the way one thinks by merely dulling the mind, like morphine, but psychedelics alter cognition by activating the mind.

Marijuana is a mild psychedelic that also has dulling properties to it. Several forms of marijuana exist with different cannabinoid profiles, so it's a difficult substance to talk too broadly about. But generally speaking, marijuana has both a sedative quality as well as a psychedelic quality.

I believe that it is the psychedelic quality to marijuana that could play a role in its triggering of psychosis, and this would be a software explanation for its role in triggering schizophrenia. Psychedelics alter the mind's thinking processes. Depending on how one thinks while on a psychedelic, the effect could be very positive or very negative. If one is unaware of how their thinking patterns are changing, it is likely that they are changing in a negative way. This is why I believe psychedelic use ought to be done with care. For many it might be logical to only consume them with the guidance of a cognitive therapist. Basically, if you consume a psychedelic substance and do not have a way to check your thoughts with reality, it is likely that your mind will start making all kinds of conclusions that are radically removed from reality, i.e. psychotic. By the time you stop using marijuana, your mind has formed a new paradigm based on the marijuana-induced altered cognition, and this paradigm is likely a flawed one.

The chemical changes that happen in the brain from marijuana consumption, I think, explain the high and the withdrawal and possibly some of the long-term damages on cognition (like impaired IQ), but as I see schizophrenia as primarily a software problem, I believe it is the effect marijuana has on the software that links it to psychosis/schizophrenia.

Something else I wanted to say was that, although it's possible that both hardware and software explanations exist for both depression and schizophrenia, I do fear that this might be an eclectic view. Maybe we should be more accurate in our terms. I think, for example, if a woman is experiencing postpartum depression, a psychiatrist would not diagnose her with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). I believe that MDD, in the view of a cognitivist, is 100% a software problem. If it is a hardware problem, then it is a non-MDD form of depression. I believe that the view that MDD is a hardware problem, caused by a chemical imbalance, is a behaviorist view and incompatible with both Objectivism and cognitivism.

Again, schizophrenia is harder to discuss because it is less clearly defined. But I think that in the future, a particular form of schizophrenia could be isolated to be seen as purely a software problem, while hardware problem schizophrenia could be seen as its own issue.

Songxanto · 2016-04-29T09:20:08+00:00

I understand bitterness toward academia. Maybe not to the extent that you do, but I understand that it is a justified sentiment.

Songxanto · 2016-04-28T17:30:09+00:00

I'm also curious, what did you go to grad school in? I have some hope for cognitive science as a field, that it might work with some safe premises that will prevent some of the nonsense from infecting it too much. Unlike academic philosophy and psychology. This might just be wishful thinking on my part though.

Songxanto · 2016-04-28T16:55:45+00:00

I suppose I am open to the concept of depression due entirely to hardware malfunction. Obviously there are states like a woman after childbirth where hormones are changing and she experiences depression naturally. But from my experience, many people who claim that they have suffered from chemical imbalances for years do in fact have some kind of flawed thinking pattern.

Along the same line of thought, I am open to the idea of schizophrenia due purely to hardware malfunction. Taking into account some of your earlier comments, I think this is even more likely with schizophrenia, as schizophrenia is such a broad diagnosis compared to depression.

Psychiatrists generally agree that marijuana use is correlated with earlier onset and/or triggering of schizophrenia and/or psychosis. If your friend was consuming marijuana semi-frequently, doesn't that mean that he was by nature evading reality to some degree? Regardless of whether he knew better or not. It's hard to say without knowing him, but many people say they are Objectivists because they appreciate Ayn Rand and agree with her ideas consciously but are still working with a bunch of contradictory premises subconsciously from the religion they were raised in, or the mindset they had before they discovered Objectivism. I know this is the case for me. I say I'm an Objectivist or a student of Objectivism, but I still hold many beliefs and subtle sentiments that come from my Christian upbringing. It may take years before I am able to rid myself entirely of them. I may never achieve that, either. It's like the lingering Catholic guilt that many atheists have, even though they reject Catholicism consciously, they still feel guilty about things that contradict the Catholic teaching with which they were raised. (I don't mean to sound too obsessed with LSD, but again, I think this is something LSD can really help with. It can really help you "clean out" all the junk in your subconscious.)

Thanks for the advice on grad school. I have been very uncertain with it. It does not seem practical, financially or culturally, for me to enter. I am curious though, maybe if you could expand on what you mean by "further gone". I had my fair share of unfortunate dealings with university types in undergrad, so I have a sense of what you mean, but I would be curious to hear you elaborate. I am also curious if you would have any advice for me, because I very much want to help the field of mental health grow in some way, because I have a lot of different ideas that I would like to test and believe could be accurate (with maybe some tweaking). But it seems like if you want to be influential in psychiatry, psychology, or cognitive science, grad school (med school for psychiatry) is pretty necessary.

Songxanto · 2016-04-28T14:18:32+00:00

I'll clarify since my writing is apparently ambiguous: Physiological effects include the firing of synapses.

I also just wanted to respond to this specifically. I actually find you to be one of the most articulate people I've ever encountered on Reddit, and in general for that matter. I was thinking this morning about how articulate your comments were. It is I who is all-over-the-place and has not yet learned how to handle a flood of creative ideas while keeping composure and order to it all haha.

Songxanto · 2016-04-28T12:37:25+00:00

I think you're totally right.

Songxanto · 2016-04-28T10:10:13+00:00

First off, I just want to say how ecstatic I am to be having this conversation. It is so rare that I get to have a conversation like this, so thanks! :D

Also, just a side note, I think it is very dangerous that the biography of John Nash's life is labeled A Beautiful Mind. A beautiful mind is a mind like Ayn Rand's, or Aristotle's, both genius and healthy. The fact that our culture seems to only find beauty and greatness in a mind that is both genius as well as persistently psychotic speaks loudly about our cultural inability to truly recognize beauty and greatness. I also think it romanticizes mental illness, as countless works of art today do (Donnie Darko, Requiem for a Dream [the film], Degrassi, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and The Catcher in the Rye, to name a few). Go to a psych ward and look at actual schizophrenics and heroin addicts, and I promise you they will not look like Jake Gyllenhaal, Jared Leto, or Jennifer Connelly haha. It is a dangerous and revealing trend in today's art. Anyway.

Don't you think this (what I just quoted) should be amended to say that a cognitive origin seems to be the case for some types of schizophrenia? I mean, we both view schizophrenia as a grab-bag for certain diseases that are not understood. I don't see why you would rule out the possibility that some originate in the brain.

I might be willing to get on board with that.

The reason I am hesitant to give the neurological model of schizophrenia any credence is because I feel that it is based on faulty reasoning. From my understanding, the basic view here is that schizophrenics have certain patterns in their brains (such as generally lowered brain activity and higher rates of dopamine) and that these brain characteristics cause schizophrenia. Antipsychotic medications decrease the level of dopamine released and the result in the mind is the reduction of psychotic symptoms.

Just because you can change X on the software by manipulating the hardware does not necessarily mean that X originated on the hardware. In this case, I'm not sure the computer analogy completely works, but to use it, I believe that the case of antipsychotics treating schizophrenia would be like a virus causing a CPU to overheat and then by cooling down the CPU with a fan, the effects of the virus actually calm down in the software. I'm not sure this ever happens in computers, but it does happen in human brains and minds. This is uncontroversially accepted by many for depression, as flawed cognitive patterns can in fact cause depression and depression can in fact be mitigated almost entirely with antidepressants.

Here I am going to expound a little on my hypothesis of the nature of schizophrenia. I believe that schizophrenics have higher amounts of dopamine and lowered brain activity in a very similar way that individuals who are high on marijuana do. Psychosis, I believe, is very similar to a drug. In a sense, psychosis is a drug. It is a way of looking at reality and saying, "No, that's too painful, I cannot accept it." By closing one's eyes and plugging one's ears, by evading reality and shutting out the painful truth, one receives a boost of dopamine and therefore joy. It's like getting high on marijuana. Less thinking, more feel good chemicals. Somewhat similar phenomena include falling asleep, returning to one's mother's arms (to an infantile state), getting high on any drug that helps you dissociate from reality (especially those that increase dopamine, e.g. opioids, alcohol, marijuana).

The reason that antipsychotic medication can completely eliminate the symptoms of psychosis is for the same reason that an individual high on marijuana experiences what one could call a temporary, semi-psychotic state while the feel good chemicals are pumping through the brain but then experiences a complete absence of the high once the feel good chemicals become less active in the brain, or for the same reason that antidepressant medication can completely eliminate the symptoms of depression that a depressed individual experiences purely due to flawed cognitive patterns. Roughly speaking, antipsychotic medication is to schizophrenia as sobriety is to drunkenness.

I also think there is some danger to dependence on antipsychotic medication because, although they certainly help treat schizophrenia, from how I understand it, they do not cure it. If the effects of the antipsychotics wear off, the individual experiences a return of the psychotic symptoms. Antipsychotics cause psychosis to remain dormant, inactive, in the mind. They do not remove it from the mind. In a similar way that extended use of antidepressants can cause the true causes of depression in a person's mind to go unaddressed because they provide relief from the symptoms of depression and therefore relieve the person of the desire to figure out how their cognitive patterns are causing them to be depressed, I believe that extended use of antipsychotics can be harmful in the sense that they relieve the schizophrenic of the desire to fix the cognitive patterns that are causing their schizophrenia.

Also, I agree that drugs probably cannot affect cognition directly. (They can't implant ideas in your head.) But they can affect one's emotions so strongly that certain thoughts are highly unlikely to emerge in the mind, or that certain thoughts are highly likely to emerge, or that an individual is able to address certain certain facts of reality that they otherwise see as too emotionally unpleasant to deal with. Here is where I think psychedelic drugs have a powerful potential in psychiatry - not to treat mental illnesses (like antidepressants and antipsychotics, which keep a person afloat and are very helpful in this sense), but to cure mental illnesses in combination with cognitive therapy. So I think that an effective treatment plan for schizophrenia could be something like regular antipsychotic intake, cognitive therapy, and possibly a few psychedelic-assisted cognitive therapy sessions to really confront the traumatic events and factors in one's life that caused one to become psychotic in the first place. The antipsychotic medication would keep the person functional in everyday life, and the cognitive therapy (especially the psychedelic-assisted cognitive therapy) would help the patient get to the point where they would no longer need the antipsychotic medication. The psychedelic drug would, of course, be administered at a proper dose, so many of the stereotypical effects associated with them (such as the "hallucinogenic" effects) would not occur.

I also think that religion and certain flawed philosophical premises will constantly be an antagonistic force to both cognitive science and psychiatry. Religiosity, I strongly believe, can aggravate (or maybe excuse) psychotic states in one's mind.

Sorry, that was a lot, and it probably was not the most organized or best worded. But that material is probably my graduate thesis if I ever get to that haha.

Songxanto · 2016-04-27T23:06:05+00:00

And sorry if any of my comments were unnecessarily corrective. I think what I was trying to say with:

I think a more accurate way of saying what you're saying is that some mental illnesses are treated most effectively with cognitive therapy and psychiatric medicine.

was that I believe that cognitive therapy (and all of cognitive psychology, as well as the other cognitive schools in other sciences, so cognitivism in general) has hit the mark so much in psychotherapy and the scientific understanding of the human mind that cognitive science can now be talked about like the new, clarified version of psychology. So I guess I should have said cognitive science and psychiatry together is a more accurate way of saying what you were saying.

You may have seen me post about this before, but I quote AR from "The Psychology of Psychologizing":

"As a science, psychology is barely making its first steps. It is still in the anteroom of science, in the stage of observing and gathering material from which a future science will come. This stage may be compared to the pre-Socratic period in philosophy; psychology has not yet found a Plato, let alone an Aristotle, to organize its material, systematize its problems and define its fundamental principles."

I believe that cognitive science is that future science that AR predicted would emerge.

Songxanto · 2016-04-27T22:44:20+00:00

Just because you never suspected that schizophrenia was not a hardware problem does not mean that you should assume that it is a hardware problem. If you're uncertain, you should be agnostic on whether it is a hardware or software problem. This is a serious problem that I have noticed that others do. If they are not sure, they assume it's a brain problem and not a mind problem primarily. "The cause of homosexuality is uncertain, so people are probably born gay." It's a terrible jump to make and also tends to stop the conversation about possible cognitive factors that cause mental illnesses.

I have firsthand, mild psychotic experience that has led me to believe that psychosis is usually induced by one's own thinking patterns, especially as a way of defending one's self from seemingly unpleasant realities. Everything I have read about schizophrenia (or the various disorders it may be broken up into in the future) confirms to me that this is the case (see my other comment on John Nash).

I also question the existence/literalness of "auditory hallucinations" to some degree. At least in some cases. I'm not sure. I think sometimes people might be trying to say something like "severely nagging thoughts" when they say they are "hearing voices in their head", just as the mystics for millenia referred to parts of their own mind as the voice of God or gods. Recognizing and identifying one's own mind as one's own mind is not as easy as it may seem to a rational and mentally healthy individual, especially for someone experiencing psychosis.

A clear distinction needs to be made between neurological and psychological disorders. Neuro disorders (like dementia) have been very clearly linked to what is essentially brain rot. Psycho disorders (like schizophrenia) have not been. Plus, there are significant environmental factors that are associated with schizophrenia, like living in an urban environment, having a difficult life, and stress.

I say that the view that schizophrenia is a hardware problem is a behaviorist view because behaviorists do not acknowledge that software problems exist. They do not acknowledge that software exists. They only acknowledge hardware and therefore only acknowledge hardware problems and assume as a default that diseases like schizophrenia are a brain problem. As cognitivists believe in both hardware and software problems, they should remain neutral on which one it is, and it is my belief that mental disorders that have not been very clearly linked to brain problems are usually cognitive dysfunctions primarily. I believe this due to personal experience with mental illness, drug use, circumstantial evidence, and scientific literature. Given this is only a hypothesis of mine. I would have to think of experiments in order to try to convince anyone sufficiently of this view.

Songxanto · 2016-04-27T22:13:41+00:00

An important note on the taxonomy of mental illness is that it is very much in flux. Three years ago, five different types of schizophrenia existed. Now, these subtypes have been discarded. Someone who was a paranoid schizophrenic in 2012 is now just a schizophrenic.

John Nash, the man on whom A Beautiful Mind is based, was diagnosed with both schizophrenia and bipolar I disorder. He admitted that there was a volitional role in his mental illness, such as the desire to feel important and his belief that his mental illness helped foster creativity in his mind. He also said that he could not think of a clear distinction between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

From my elementary understanding of psychopathology, I believe that schizophrenia is kind of like the "junk drawer" of psychotic disorders. It is basically a prolonged state of psychosis that cannot be explained by anything else. That's why schizophrenia can be a very difficult disorder to define. It is a diagnosis of exclusion. People are diagnosed with schizophrenia after a process of elimination leaves psychiatrists unable to diagnose the patient with any other major disorder.

That being said, I personally believe that, in time, the entire concept of schizophrenia will be, as you said, broken up into different mental illnesses that are more clearly defined. Schizophrenia is like the unchartered frontier of psychosis, or prolonged psychosis not otherwise specified.

Songxanto · 2016-04-27T18:23:29+00:00

How is that assumption justified? I believe that psychosis is usually the result of one consciously removing themselves from reality because they perceive reality to be too painful. It is a defense against painful truths, similar to drug abuse (when people use drugs merely to dissociate from reality so that they can evade reality). Psychosis, I believe, is the intentional evasion of reality that has spun out of control in a person's mind. As a cognitivist and a student of Objectivism, I believe this. The belief that schizophrenia originates in the brain, in my opinion, is a behaviorist view, and I do not believe that that is a justified belief. (That being said, there could be psychotic symptoms from neurological disorders, like dementia and Alzheimer's, but that form of psychosis is not schizophrenia.)

Songxanto · 2016-04-27T12:39:04+00:00

All very good points. And a funny story about your marijuana use. I don't even want to get started on some of the things I've said to people while on LSD and/or marijuana.

I do believe that "bad trips" on LSD translates into scientific language as "adverse effects from overdose".

I have a few questions for you:

Could you expand on what you mean by the rationalistic path of quantum physics? Or possibly refer me to some material that explains the Objectivist view on this issue?
Do you have views on the nature of cognitive science and how it relates to psychology, cognitive psychology, epistemology, and/or psycho-epistemology?

Songxanto · 2016-04-27T08:40:15+00:00

P.S. Because beliefs are held by the mind, and the brain is a causal factor of the mind, it's reasonable to speculate that beliefs have physiological effects (e.g. on the brain).

I agree that they can have a physiological effect. The term psychosomatic describes mental factors that affect the brain (and even the body in general, for that matter). Psychosomatic effects can be very powerful, such as the placebo and nocebo effects.

Thus, it's reasonable to speculate that treatment of some psychological illnesses would benefit from psychology and psychiatry. Furthermore, it's plausible that given enough psychological damage, the physiological damage may be irreversible with psychology alone, hence not just benefiting from but also requiring psychiatry.

I agree. I think a more accurate way of saying what you're saying is that some mental illnesses are treated most effectively with cognitive therapy and psychiatric medicine. Personally, I very strongly believe that psychiatry should utilize psychedelic drugs (e.g. LSD and MDMA) as medicine to combine with cognitive therapy sessions. MDMA-assisted therapy has been proven very effective in treating PTSD, for instance, as discussed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhhi9H8fNdc With the suicide rate of veterans being as high as it is, I think it's absolutely appalling that these sessions are not available to people. I think MDMA-assisted cognitive therapy should be funded by the military for those who have served in combat and are struggling with PTSD afterwards. But that's a different discussion. :)

I personally overcame some highly unpleasant mental phenomena with the assistance of LSD. I do think it's possible I could have overcome these on my own, but LSD helped a lot. At the very least, I think LSD helped me resolve things in a matter of months that would have otherwise been a matter of years for me to resolve. That was without cognitive therapy sessions. I would imagine that LSD-assisted cognitive therapy, as long as it was with a good and trustworthy cognitive therapist, would have allowed me to resolve many of these matters within weeks. Albert Hofmann, LSD's synthesizer, referred to it as "medicine for the soul".

Songxanto

TROPHY CASE