[Off-topic] Requests author discusses MentalHealthError exception

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Thu, 3 Mar 2016 02:57 pm, Rustom Mody wrote:


> William Blake starts Auguries of Innocence with:
> 
> To see a world in a grain of sand,
> And a heaven in a wild flower,
> Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
> And eternity in an hour.
> 
> Reading the whole at http://www.artofeurope.com/blake/bla3.htm
> would make this discussion less academic
> 
> Kenneth (at some point) felt he had the mass of the universe.
> 
> So you can choose (one/some of)
> 
> 1. Kenneth is like Blake
> 2. Blake is a lunatic
> 3. Standards of lunacy differ from 17th century to now

Blake did suffer from mental illness. He hallucinated, he had extreme mood
swings, he suffered manic and depressive episodes. Obviously we cannot give
him a reliable diagnosis long after his death, but he may have been
schizophrenic.

http://thesecondsight.blogspot.com.au/2006/02/william-blake-schizophrenic.html
http://www.litkicks.com/Blake/


I don't know if Kenneth is significantly like Blake in any way. Not all
mental illnesses are the same.


> Likewise...
> 
> On Thursday, March 3, 2016 at 8:05:27 AM UTC+5:30, Chris Angelico wrote:
>> On Thu, Mar 3, 2016 at 1:27 PM, Steven D'Aprano  wrote:
>> > We can be absolutely certain that Kenneth weighs less than the entire
>> > universe. We don't even need a set of scales.
>> 
>> Formal proof:
>> 
>> 1) No physical object can have negative mass.
>> 2) I am a part of the universe and have positive mass.
>> 3) I am not Kenneth.
>> 4) The sum of my mass and Kenneth's mass must exceed Kenneth's mass
>> alone.
> 
> What do physical objects have to do with Kenneth's experience?

The question "What is your weight?" refers to a physical property (weight)
of a physical object (Kenneth). What did you think it referred to?


> For you (Chris) you may (choose to) see Kenneth that way
> Kenneth (at least for a while) got out of that notion

Yes, he was having a psychotic episode where his brain was no fully longer
capable of processing. Like a CPU with a short between transistors, he was
(figuratively speaking) adding 1 + 1 and getting strawberry.

It really is disturbing when people suggest that mental dysfunction is
somehow "better" or more profound than mere reality. Or "more real than
reality", as if that actually means something. It is as if somebody tries
to explain how great it must be for those lucky people who are diabetic,
since they are no longer limited to the prosaic and limiting "normal"
functioning of the pancreas. Or how wonderful it would be to have asthma
and no longer be limited to the pedestrian lung functionality that the rest
of us are limited to.

The only difference is that with some kinds of mental illness, the sufferer
is *unable to tell how badly they are affected* because their brain is not
functioning well enough to realise that there is a problem. Dunning-Kruger,
turned up to exploding point.

In some ways, it's like being a drunk who is insists that he's never felt
sharper and more alert, moments before he collapses into an alcoholic
stupor. Or a drug user who is intoxicated but can no longer distinguish
between the actual input to her senses and the hallucinations generated by
her own literally poisoned brain. Or the symptoms of acute lack of oxygen
and hypothermia:

http://www.climbing-high.com/hypothermia.html


-- 
Steven