(August 23, 2015 at 12:16 pm)Alex K Wrote: I would interject though that joining in a ubiquitous and socially accepted far-out belief is much less a sign of mental illness than being the only believer, because the genesis of the belief is usually very different. You can grow up in catholic dociety, learn to truly believe in the virgin mary and be a perfectly functioning member of that society. With that, the usual definition of a mental illness is afaik not met.
Isn't the fact that social norms are automatically excluded the point of contention? A mass delusion is regarded differently from a single case, even if the beliefs are the same.
We can alter the example to bring the point in greater focus. Suppose that we consider a fundamentalist Christian in a society in which no one else is a Christian, and everyone else is an atheist, with no one else being religious at all. What would one say of that case? Is believing that one has an invisible friend who one speaks with a sign of madness? Is obsessively following strange, pointless rituals a sign of madness?
I think that the most important part of your claim is the first one about the genesis of the belief, as that may be a reason to classify it differently from what is generally regarded as insane. "Sane" (or so-called "sane") people join up with crazy ideas after the crazies have come up with them. One can see this in the case of the belief that we are being visited by aliens and people are abducted and medical experiments are performed on them. The origins of such beliefs appear to come from people who are mentally ill (in a traditional sense), yet the belief has become more mainstream due to the persuasiveness of some of the crazies (and the poor critical thinking skills of "sane" people).
The upshot, though, is that one can have many crazy beliefs without being crazy, according to the current standards. And there is something quite odd about that. Even if one does not wish to change the classifications from the way they are at present, it is still good to remind people of this fact.
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
