People like philosophers, mathematicians and logicians study logic. Do you believe, think or have found that a strength in logic or the study of it favours schizophrenia? For example, how far logic can help reasoning when we are delusional? If we were logically strong could we use lower antipsychotic dosages because we were able to circumvent delusional situations and illogical behaviour and fallacies? In cognition people use this saying “use it or lose it”, does that make sense about logic? What are the brain structures responsible by logic?
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logic is a _pre_scriptive science, mostly, rather than _de_scriptive. That is to say that rather than documenting how (healthy) people actually reason, it investigates a specific ideal of reasoning - ideal with respect to a certain goal, primarily skeptical truth-preservation.
It has been well-established for quite some time that ordinary healthy subjects reason all but according to the norms of logic in most situations. What counts as a common sensically valid inference that most healthy subjects are inclined to make, may not be valid according to the norms of scientific logic. Therefore, when discussing the science of logic, it is worth distinguishing its norms from ‘everyday layman’s logic’ - the latter may be very useful, fast and effective in the situations of everyday life, but it does contain fallacies according to scientific logic.
The question then, when talking about delusions, is whether we ought to be reasoning more like healthy subjects, or more like logicians, as the two differ sometimes greatly. There have been studies that reported schizophrenics reasoning no less, and for some tasks even more logically than healthy controls… But evidence either way seems inconclusive, despite the widespread belief that delusions must be results from faulty inferences. It cuts straight to the heart of the literature on how delusions arise and are maintained, and even on what delusions actually are.
To answer your question, I think there are ‘minor’ delusions where the knowledge of formal logic can help dispose of those ideas. The real trouble starts when a delusion is a valid conclusion (as oppposed to sound). Then the problem lies with the premises, rather than with the inference.
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The problem with our logic is that though our chains of thought seem tenable to us, they don’t take into account past experiences which server as counter-examples to them.
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Interesting concept. I think the answer hinges on whether a person can sense, or anticipate, delusional thinking. If not, then reasoning wouldn’t be possible. If a person can anticipate a delusion, then reasoning, particularly deductive reasoning, would, in theory, either prevent or ameliorate a delusion.
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I agree we may base our behaviour in false premises. Example given, “my brother poisoned me shaking my hand”:
I could and maybe should ask myself:
Have someone poisoned before in a normal family environment?
Does not your brother like you as before?
Whenever does your brother was a traitor?
Why does he would want to poison you?
What makes you believe that he hates you?
What kind of special interest does he have?
Would not be better for everyone if you were healthy?
Is it easy to poison someone through the skin?
Which drugs do you know would do this?
Are these drugs common or available to your brother?
Is in fact your brother an enemy or adversary?
Do you feel this just about your brother?
Don`t you feel sometimes people have superpowers?
Is your brother a regular citizen or a criminal?
(…)
The assumption that my brother was a criminal traitor that poisoned me should never be “automatic”.
This is an example of an delusion where with extensive questioning about an “historical of facts” is being solved by logic, not scientific logic ok, but logic. “I am” finding, like arguments to decipher truth and identify a false premise through questioning. This is really extenuating, so my question would be if scientific knowledge can make this process clear, faster and more reliable. We need to deal with a lot memories and if we are creating false beliefs and other false memories about them everything can be complicated… so it would be possible if we get an extra agility using a method based on scientific and a big brain perhaps…?
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I read this, although I do not find much conclusive.
“Our patients often endorsed a mechanistic, and
in some way ‘mathematizable’ conceptualization of
sociality (‘I’ve studied a system to intervene at the right
moment in conversations’) (stanghellini and Ballerini
2011b, p. 188)”.
An increasing amount of data coming from
the cognitive perspective seems to reach the same
conclusion of phenomenological psychiatry; that the
problem of schizophrenics is not that they are irrational.
As we have seen, in some cases schizophrenics are
more logical than healthy people, they are able to judge
the validity of a syllogism without being distracted
by its content, they falsify conditional rules without
being diverted by heuristic traps, and they are usually
less sensitive to a number of reasoning biases.
still,
in everyday life, being more logical does not always
pay. In fact, the excess of logic makes the life of
schizophrenics much more complicated.”
http://www.clinicalneuropsychiatry.org/pdf/ahead-pub/CardellaEpub.pdf
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I agree, the irrationality of their conclusions doesn’t mean that they are irrational.
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I think that self-awareness is any person’s best defense.
However, I am also partial to neuroscience and I think that helps me to understand my condition, what I must do and to believe that I will lose my cognitive gifts if I do not put them to use. I can also increase my cognitive abilities if I keep those neurons firing. The frontal lobe, I think, is where a lot of logic happens.
I suck at math but used to be a philosophy major – I think anything that’s concrete, that doesn’t change with a delusion, is something to hold on to. I am that way with English in a sense. I suffer from alogia at times but while I cannot talk, I can write for hours… The English language rarely changes; I hold onto it for normalcy, if that makes any sense.
I was always innately logical, though. I loved the logic tests in school and always did well on them.
I am able to talk myself out of delusions very quickly. I couldn’t when I was first sick but now I can and this is the reason I don’t take APs. There’s no point in squelching the input if it isn’t causing me anything but a temporary and minor discomfort. I stop myself, look around and ask myself questions. Would a man in a black suit be standing on this dried up golf course? It doesn’t take long before I realize something is amiss. If I can’t figure it out, I ask someone else. Strange things happen but I don’t worry about it too much.
But to actually answer your question, yes, I absolutely do think that increasing one’s logical abilities should help their schizophrenia. In fact, increasing any abilities has the potential to improve schizophrenia because new neural pathways are good medicine; they help the brain to be healthier and a healthier brain is likely to have reduced symptoms, in my recollection. Stronger pathways are more helpful, so whatever it is, it should be something you like. Logic in particular though seems like it would be very helpful for one’s response to the disease.
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To circumvent a delusion no, but it helps alot within the delusion actually.
Because even in there if you make the wrong move bad things can go down, the more logical person will simply not do that.
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Thanks, very interesting.