Can you choose what you believe?

[fkusumot]

Final-Fan said:

fkusumot said:

 

Where has it been shown that it is possible to "intentionally choose to be delusional"?

Well, you'd agree that there are cases of scam artists and such being eventually taken in by their own lies, correct? If so, it's not such a stretch to think that if some people intentionally tried to duplicate that phenomenon, some of them would be successful. So you could say that they would have chosen to become delusional, even though the choice and the delusion would not be (and, it seems to me, cannot be) simultaneous.

On the other hand, "become" is not the same as "be", and as I said, I don't think that the choice and the delusion can logically be simultaneously ongoing.

[edit: Bump for new page.]

That's an interesting thought experiment there Final-Fan. It could be a good plot for a move.

Perhaps we would really have to grind down and define what an "intention" is, and what doing something intentionally entails. It's not something that happens by accident or sloppiness. The intention to do some something almost necessarily requires a plan and hence some forethought.

Of course, we aren't disagreeing here, but I think because of where the discussion is going defining the terms is important.