Discussing Mental Illness

>>Okay, how did you arrive at that conclusion? What is your basis?<<

Well, I think the description was very well put. I've come to a similar one myself, based on exploring a wide range of philosophers, religions, political systems, and historical examples.

There are various sources of input: thoughts and facts are of the mind, desires and feelings are of the heart, and faith and virtues are of the soul. For best function, use all of them. Ignoring any can cause problems. Ignore rationality and the facts can kill you or others. Ignore emotional reality and you can quite logically arrange a life that leaves you miserable. Ignore spirituality and you will be without higher support in dark challenges.

I worry about people who eschew the use of logic and facts when making decisions, and make theirs exclusively or primarily based on emotion and/or faith, because I have observed that those decision-making methods tend to generate choices with very unpleasant consequences. Compare the Dark Ages (a faith-dominant cultural wave) to the Classical and Renaissance periods (both favoring rational lines, with some extra emotional upwelling in the Renaissance). This does not necessarily mean that all faith-based or emotion-based decisions are wrong -- merely that it is very easy to be blindsided by facts if you ignore them in your decision-making.

>> Rand, for example, would say that society should be based on an ethic of "rational self-interest" (whose derivation I won't bore you with - I'm only picking on her because I'm familiar with her work, not because I prefer her position). How do you refute her position?<<

There's a very useful test to see how effective a philosophical premise is: What would happen if everyone followed it? Rational self-interest is another way of saying "every man for himself" -- Rand's philosophy maximizes personal freedom by minimizing responsibility to take care of, or refrain from harming, others. It's a splendid system if you have the power to take and hold what you want. It's a horror if you lack such power ... and nobody keeps that kind of power forever, for time and your body will betray you in the end. If practiced by everyone, rational self-interest would produce not a society but anarchy. That is ineffective and therefore undesirable on a large scale, although it is extremely attractive to people who believe they have the power to take advantage of such a system.

One of the drawbacks of rationality is that logic can justify all manner of things that are wicked. Hence the need for counterbalances in emotion and spirituality to remind us that too much selfishness is wrong and destructive.

>>Have you ever actually studied philosophy? It's really not as convoluted as you imply (Kant beside the point...)<<

For my part, yes, including a couple of actual classes. I was only somewhat impressed by it. Some of it is straightforward, some is intricate, some is sublime, and some is just dumb.

>>I sense that we're rather hijacking Ysabet's thread, which was a discussion of mental illness, not philosophy. <<

If folks are interested in philosophy, I have no objection to it. Do you want to keep discussing it here, or would you like me to start a separate thread for it?