I *am* the rabid badger in the the mail...

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Okay, I've never been diagnosed as a native of the autistic continuum. I've always been into technical/scientific topics and while I'm not interested at all in more traditionally related things like trains, I have some overwhelmingly strong obsessions that have a seriously adverse effect on my currently largely non-existent social life. There are certain pat phrases and sayings that have infested popular culture, for instance; an example might be Einstein's 'We only use ten percent of our mental potentials'. This is a perfect example of a famously intelligent person talking out of his/her ass on a topic with which he/she isn't fully conversant and making a statement which has then achieved the status of Axiomatic Truth amongst people for whom critical thought is not a personal strength.

This saying, and many others, has become part of a kind of cultural Litany of Stupid - a treasure-house (and I use the word 'treasure' ironically) of sayings that people often accept as true because of the spurious strength offered by tradition (everybody says it, so it must be true) or by the eminence of the source (oh, hey, *Einstein*!).

One of the obsessions I have is that people *must* understand the process of critical thought and that if they don't, none of us can have nice things.

I have a neighbour who's a really sweet guy, but he believes the most astonishing crap without ever thinking about its provenance, its plausibility, or the motives behind its promulgation. I'm not convinced that he has any real grasp on the concept of proof. I won't go into specifics because I don't want to start any flame wars, but, when my neighbour talks about these things, it becomes a real effort for me to not immediately jump on him and throttle him until he loses interest in the conversation.

When something touches on my obsessions, I turn into a cat, with a mouse, on a bad day.

I try to limit the effect on my neighbour by telling him I need my me-time, which is true, but a partial truth only in that I need time for my annoyance to die down between each contact. Unfortunately, my me-time requirements can easily stretch to eternity because of this and there's an additional antagonistic factor in the fact that he likes spending time in my company. I have no idea why, because I react with genuine anger when he hits my triggers.

Can anyone relate to this?

I think the best thing is to view your neighbour as an amusing presence. Imagine your life is a sitcom with a kooky Krameresque neighbour. Try and chuckle internally when he gets up to his silly hijinx. This may help you not feel so angered by him.

Try taking some more healthy interest in how novel and dynamic people are, interest in them for their own sakes, instead of thinking of them as recipients for your critical thinking courses (no offense).

I can totally understand and relate to what you're saying here, because I so often long for the privilege of actually getting to occasionally chat with people I know or am acquaintances with about things like Aristotle's sea battle argument on determinism, whether thus and such of an event was really historical, etc. But then again I can just as readily apply my critical thinking skills and the educational material I've enjoyed to simply observing other people. Maybe when you are being bored by this incessant argumentum ad populum, hasty generalizations, and tu quoque fallacies that people sling around carelessly, you can try to think of why people do that from an anthropological perspective (shoot, you could even take your pick between physical and cultural anthropology any time), why they think that way from a sociological perspective, from the lens of analytical psychology, from the lens of neurology...

Or of course you could also open yourself up to the possibility of learning to emotionally satisfy yourself on the basis of the emotional stimulus alone being provided by the other.

I know it might seem to be a repugnant stimulus on it's own (at least it can naturally to me, don't know how much you share in common with those on the spectrum), and it can be a difficult task to empathize for people on the spectrum like myself. That does not mean that we can't do it, that we can't learn to appreciate it. We sure do like to say that we're intellectually open, so maybe we need to broaden our idea of what is and isn't "intellectual" and let ourselves get carried away with fancies, with unchecked intuition, with mere impressions, with bare feelings. You might find yourself liking this thought experiment more than you had expected. Interpersonal emotions for their own sake can be just as valid an avenue to expand your mind.

So in short: don't belabor yourself with the logical capacities of others. It's not only a lost cause, but it's just one of many causes to enjoy interaction with people outside of your closest sphere. You'll have your opportunities to discuss Plato, Kant, physics, history, neurology, silly and valid maxims, existentialism, etc. with folks out there like myself.

And you'll always have that inner dialogue to entertain yourself, books and articles to read. One helpful approach I've learned when it comes to empathizing with others, which isn't always natural, is for me to conceptualize their mental process intellectually, to take it upon myself to learn more about facial expressions (for example), in order to use what I am good at to help supplement the activities that I don't find intuitive. Over time I've found while doing this, that focusing my tendency towards academic obsession towards understanding others has produced truly novel emotional "volleys" between myself and others. When before I wondered if I'd ever respond with strong emotions to social cues from others, at least on a regular and consistent basis, now I find that something that used to be utterly foreign to me and still requires some effort on my part, can in spite of that be quite fulfilling.

truly novel emotional "volleys" between myself and others

I've actually never done any critical thinking courses and, barring the second-hand knowledge I've picked up when debating Creationists online, I can't classify the various types of logical fallacy by name. My introduction to the nature of proofs came via maths, physics and computer science and my understanding of what constitutes a logical fallacy has always seemed to be an intuitive thing for me, which suggests that I was relatively lucky in my particular mix of the hilarious grab-bag of heuristics that human beings are pleased to call 'intelligence'. It's probably a failing - it would certainly be easier to discuss the subject if I had a tip-of-the-tongue command of the concepts and a consistent set of labels with which to tag them (as you clearly do), rather than merely being able to identify them in practise.

The anger comes from my horror at the ease with which people seem to be convinced of the most ludicrous ideas, because this in turn endangers that frail creature that goes by the name of civilisation. Speaking as the kind of awkward, abrasive outcast who might have been identified as a witch in earlier centuries and at least abused if not actually hanged or burned, I rather enjoy the fruits of the enlightenment.

I suspect that logical fallacies are, in general, useful and intuitive shortcuts that work in enough cases that they have survival value. My main assumption here is that, while intelligence is a quality that lends itself to cultural programming, the mind is an epiphenomenon of the meat, and the meat is a tool carved by long evolution. Take the appeal to common sense as an example: in simple scenarios, common sense has considerable utility. You leave to go on a long spirit-walker trip or whatever it is that bored cavemen do to entertain themselves, leaving your friend Idle Bob at the cave with your wife and the winter stores. When you get home, the stores are gone, Bob is grossly overweight and your wife, Oomla, has that beautiful glow you associate with incipient new life. Bob claims that Argra, the Wolf-God, entered the cave, ate the stores and made free with your significant other. What do you believe?

Arguments from popularity are easy to justify in that it's a relatively safe bet to believe what the rest of the pack believes - if it's a persistent belief, it probably has some survival value. Religion clearly has a part to play in fostering bonds between the participants. Unfortunately, in the modern context it also leads to statements like '150 million Creationists can't be wrong...'.

This is an elusive thing for me - I *have* experienced it with my closest friends, but it's a fragile experience and I don't, in general, get enough from another person's company that the mere fact of that company is an end in itself. If I'm around someone with whom I don't mesh perfectly (which is true for the huge majority of people I meet) it can be very draining and deeply dispiriting. Without meaning to drag the conversation down, I find that marijuana helps a lot, because it seems to considerably increase my feelings of connection while reducing my tendency to analyse everything to death.

I won't go into details, because the details are quite personal, but there was a brief time where I found it much, much easier to connect with and *read* other people. For a while, I felt that there was an additional, emotional, component to my perceptions of others - I was reading and comprehending nuances in expression of which I'd previously been completely unaware. This was coincident with obvious and objective changes in the way I responded to certain physical/social stimuli. From later reading, I would suspect that I was experiencing an oxytocin high. It was an overwhelming experience which changed my personality - prior to this I'd been very much a tomboy.

However, it didn't last. I plan to discuss this with a psychologist because it potentially offers a route into a more complete understanding of the people around me than the sadly fragmented one I currently possess.

I think the root of my anger is fear. Irrationality frightens me and threatens the integrity of my understanding of the world, as well as offering the prospect of a return to the Dark Ages and thus undoing a couple of thousand years of steady progress towards a picture of the universe based on empiricism and an appreciation of the power of functional, predictive models of reality resting on such empirical foundations. And, oh, hey, *ethics*.

The universe, for all its beauty, is a dark and frightening place and intelligence and knowledge are the only tools we have with which to face the night.

Historically, there are at least two distinct dream-related doubts. The one doubt undermines the judgment that I am presently awake — call this the ‘Now Dreaming Doubt’. The other doubt undermines the judgment that I am ever awake (i.e., in the way normally supposed) — call this the ‘Always Dreaming Doubt’. A textual case can be made on behalf of both formulations being raised in the Meditations.

Both doubts appeal to some version of the thesis that the experiences we take as dreams are (at their best) qualitatively similar to those we take as waking — call this the ‘Similarity Thesis’. The Similarity Thesis may be formulated in a variety of strengths. A strong Similarity Thesis might contend that some dreams are experientially indistinguishable from waking, even subsequent to waking-up; a weaker thesis might contend merely that dreams seem similar to waking while having them, but not upon waking. Debates about precisely how similar waking and dreaming can be, have raged for more than two millennia. The tone of the debates suggests that the degree of qualitative similarity may vary across individuals (or, at least, across their recollections of dreams). Granting such variation, dreaming doubts that depend on weaker versions of the Similarity Thesis are (other things equal) apt to be more persuasive. I want to consider a textually defensible formulation that is relatively weak. (Note, however, that some texts suggest a strong thesis: “As if I did not remember other occasions when I have been tricked by exactly similar thoughts while asleep” (Med. 1, AT 7:19, my italics).)

The relatively weak thesis I have in mind is this: that the similarity between waking and dreaming is sufficient to render it thinkable that a dream experience would seem realistic, even when reflecting on the experience, while having it. As Descartes writes: “every sensory experience I have ever thought I was having while awake I can also think of myself as sometimes having while asleep” (Med. 6, AT 7:77). This version of the Similarity Thesis is endorsable by those who never recollect dreams that seem, on hindsight, experientially indistinguishable from waking; indeed, it's endorsable even by those who simply do not remember their dreams to any significant degree.

This weak Similarity Thesis is sufficient to generate straightaway the Now Dreaming Doubt. Since it is thinkable that a dream would convincingly seem as realistic (while having it) as my present experience seems, then, for all I Know, I am now dreaming.

Recall that Descartes' method requires only a justification-defeating doubt, not a belief-defeating doubt. The method requires me to appreciate that my present belief (that I'm awake) is not sufficiently justified. It does not require that I give up that belief. (I might continue to hold it on some merely psychological grounds.) Nor does the belief need to be false — I might, in fact, be awake. The Now Dreaming Doubt does its epistemic damage so long as it undermines my reasons for believing I'm awake — i.e., so long as I find it thinkable that a dream would seem this good. The First Meditation makes a case that this is indeed thinkable. As Descartes writes: “there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep” (Med. 1, AT 7:19).

The conclusion — that I don't Know that I'm now awake — has widespread sceptical consequences. For if I don't Know this, then neither do I Know that I'm now “holding this piece of paper in my hands,” to cite an example the meditator had supposed to be “quite impossible” to doubt. Reflection on the Now Dreaming Doubt changes his mind. He comes around to the view that, for all he Knows, the sensible objects of his present experience are mere figments of a vivid dream.

Much ado has been made about whether dreaming arguments are self-refuting. According to an influential objection, Similarity Theses presuppose that we can reliably distinguish dreams and waking, yet the conclusion of dreaming arguments presupposes that we cannot. Therefore, if the conclusion of such an argument is true, then the premise stating the Similarity Thesis cannot be. Some formulations of the thesis do make this mistake. Of present interest is whether all do — specifically, whether Descartes makes the mistake. He does not. Interestingly, his formulation presupposes simply the truism that we do in fact distinguish dreaming and waking (never mind whether reliably). He states his version of the thesis in terms of what we think of as dreams, versus what we think of as waking: “every sensory experience I have ever thought I was having while awake I can also think of myself as sometimes having while asleep” (Med. 6, AT 7:77). This formulation avoids the charge of self-refutation, for it is compatible with the conclusion that we cannot reliably distinguish dreams and waking.

Does Descartes also put forward a second dreaming argument, the Always Dreaming Doubt? I believe there is strong textual evidence to support this, though it is by no means the standard interpretation. (I make a case for this interpretation in my 1994.) The conclusion of the Always Dreaming Doubt is generated from the very same Similarity Thesis, together with a further sceptical assumption, namely: that for all I Know, the processes producing what I take as waking are no more veridical than those producing what I take as dreams. As Descartes writes:

[E]very sensory experience I have ever thought I was having while awake I can also think of myself as sometimes having while asleep; and since I do not believe that what I seem to perceive in sleep comes from things located outside me, I did not see why I should be any more inclined to believe this of what I think I perceive while awake. (Med. 6, AT 7:77)

The aim of the Always Dreaming Doubt is to undermine not whether I'm now awake, but whether “sensation” is produced by external objects even on the assumption I'm now awake. For in the cases of both waking and dreaming, my cognitive access extends only to the productive result, but not the productive process. On what basis, then, do I conclude that the productive processes are different — that external objects play more of a role in waking than in dreaming? For all I Know, both sorts of experience are produced by some subconscious faculty of my mind. As Descartes has his meditator say:

[T]here may be some other faculty [of my mind] not yet fully known to me, which produces these ideas without any assistance from external things; this is, after all, just how I have always thought ideas are produced in me when I am dreaming. (Med. 3, AT 7:39)

The sceptical consequences of the Always Dreaming Doubt are even more devastating than those of the Now Dreaming Doubt. If I do not Know that “normal waking” experience is produced by external objects, then, for all I Know, all of my experiences might be dreams of a sort. For all I Know, there might not be an external world. My best evidence of an external world derives from my preconceived opinion that external world objects produce my waking experiences. Yet the Always Dreaming Doubt calls this into question:

All these considerations are enough to establish that it is not reliable judgement but merely some blind impulse that has made me believe up till now that there exist things distinct from myself which transmit to me ideas or images of themselves through the sense organs or in some other way. (Med. 3, AT 7:39–40)

The two dreaming doubts are parasitic on the same Similarity Thesis, though their sceptical consequences differ. The Now Dreaming Doubt raises the universal possibility of delusion: for any one of my sensory experiences, it is possible (for all I Know) that the experience is delusive. The Always Dreaming Doubt raises the possibility of universal delusion: it is possible (for all I Know) that all my sensory experiences are delusions (say, from a God's-eye perspective).

Though dreaming doubts do significant demolition work, they are light-duty bulldozers relative to Descartes' most power sceptical doubt. What further judgments are left to be undermined? Following the discussion of dreaming, the meditator tentatively concludes that the results of empirical disciplines “are doubtful” — e.g., “physics, astronomy, medicine,” and the like. Whereas:

[A]rithmetic, geometry and other subjects of this kind, which deal only with the simplest and most general things, regardless of whether they really exist in nature or not, contain something certain and indubitable. For whether I am awake or asleep, two and three added together are five, and a square has no more than four sides. It seems impossible that such transparent truths should incur any suspicion of being false. (Med. 1, AT 7:20)

In the final analysis, Descartes holds that such transparent truths — along with demonstrable truths, and many judgments of internal sense — are indeed Knowable. To become actually Known, however, they must stand unshakable in the face the most powerful of doubts. The stage is thus set for the introduction of another sceptical hypothesis.

The most famous rendering of Descartes' most hyperbolic doubt takes the form of the Evil Genius Doubt. Suppose I am the creation of a powerful but malicious being. This “evil genius” (or deceiving “God, or whatever I may call him,” AT 7:24) has given me flawed cognitive faculties, such that I am in error even about epistemically impressive matters — even the simple matters that seem supremely evident. The suggestion is unbelievable, but not unthinkable. It is intended as a justification-defeating doubt that undermines our judgments about even the most simple and evident matters.

Many readers of Descartes assume that the Evil Genius Doubt draws its sceptical force from the “utmost power” attributed to the deceiver. This is to misunderstand Descartes. He contends that an equally powerful doubt may be generated on the opposite supposition — namely, the supposition that I am not the creature of an all-powerful being:

Perhaps there may be some who would prefer to deny the existence of so powerful a God rather than believe that everything else is uncertain. … yet since deception and error seem to be imperfections, the less powerful they make my original cause, the more likely it is that I am so imperfect as to be deceived all the time. (Med. 1, AT 7:21).

Descartes makes essentially the same point in a parallel passage of the Principles:

[W]e have been told that there is an omnipotent God who created us. Now we do not know whether he may have wished to make us beings of the sort who are always deceived even in those matters which seem to us supremely evident … We may of course suppose that our existence derives not from a supremely powerful God but either from ourselves or from some other source; but in that case, the less powerful we make the author of our coming into being, the more likely it will be that we are so imperfect as to be deceived all the time. (Prin. 1:5, AT 8a:6)

Descartes' official position is that the Evil Genius Doubt is merely one among multiple hypotheses that can motivate the more general hyperbolic doubt. Fundamentally, the doubt is about my cognitive nature — about the possibility that my mind is flawed. Descartes consistently emphasizes this theme throughout the Meditations (italics added):

God could have given me a nature such that I was deceived even in matters which seemed most evident. (Med. 3, AT 7:36)

I can convince myself that I have a natural disposition to go wrong from time to time in matters which I think I perceive as evidently as can be. (Med. 5, AT 7:70)

I saw nothing to rule out the possibility that my natural constitution made me prone to error even in matters which seemed to me most true. (Med. 6, AT 7:77)

What is essential to the doubt is not a specific story about how I got my cognitive wiring; it's instead the realization — regardless the story — that I can worry that my cognitive wiring is flawed. Elsewhere, I have suggested that we name the underlying doubt ‘Meta-Cognitive Doubt’, to make clear that it is fundamentally about the implications of having a flawed cognitive nature, rather than of being made by an omnipotent creator. (Carriero makes a similar point with the name ‘imperfect-nature doubt’ (2009, 27).) Even so, I regularly speak in terms of the evil genius (following Descartes' lead), as a kind of mnemonic for the more general doubt about our cognitive nature.

Having introduced the Evil Genius Doubt, the First Meditation program of demolition is not only hyperbolic but universal. As the meditator remarks, I “am finally compelled to admit that there is not one of my former beliefs about which a doubt may not properly be raised” (Med. 1, AT 7:21). As will emerge, the early paragraphs of the Third Meditation clarify a further nuance of the Evil Genius Doubt — a nuance consistently observed thereafter. Descartes clarifies there that the Evil Genius Doubt operates in an indirect manner, a topic to which we return (in Section 5.1).

Further reading: On Descartes' sceptical arguments, see Bouwsma (1949), Curley (1978), Newman (1994), Newman and Nelson (1999), Williams (1986 and 1995). For a contrary reading of the Evil Genius Doubt, see Gewirth (1941) and Wilson (1978). For a more general philosophical treatment of dreaming arguments, see Dunlap (1977).

If we're discussing the same thing, I think I've always done this, perhaps as a compensation for my failure to intuit people's feelings. I can occasionally freak people out with the accuracy of my analyses of their thinking processes, but I've also been hilariously wrong. It's true that intuition is no guarantor of accuracy, but for more neurotypical people, evolution has arguably ensured that they are, in the main, singing from the same hymn sheet, speaking the same language and employing the same protocols. I feel as though I'm standing at the edge of the congregation and humming the tune because I don't know the words. Having done that particular set of analogies to a protected and painful death I'm going to fly away and hide, now because I'm tired and all the frenzied interaction has left me totally drained.

I'd be interested to learn more about your
at some future point, however.

Thank you for your thoughtful response and please accept my apologies for any glaring grammatical errors or sins of punctuation - I'm pretty tired.