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HOW TO USE DOXASTIC RESPONSIBILITY TO HELP YOURSELF: A THREAD. I want to share how a concept from a philosophy paper by @peterboghossian and @ConceptualJames was very helpful to me. Pic for citation. Two friends w/painful beliefs about themselves based on a past experience 1/10
(troubled, but not rising to the level of PTSD) used this method to great effect as well. (My therapist helped me; they helped each other after I shared this.) What is doxastic responsibility? Being the owner of your own mind. Taking responsibility for trying to be sure your 2/x
beliefs are always getting less wrong, which entails a willingness to challenge them and change them when they fail. If you believe something about yourself that causes you pain and interferes with your ability to function, really investigating that belief is your responsi- 3/x
bility. If it's false, you can then change it! If it's true, you can work on finding a way to reduce the pain and cope with the truth better. Either way, the more responsibility you take, the more you have control and agency. The key outlined in the paper is defeasability: 4/x
a defeater. What would it take--what evidence--for your belief to be false (defeated)? If you have a belief about yourself that is absolutely not revisable, it's crucial for you to know that so you can find the best ways to live with those consequences. In my case, I believed 5/x
that some abuse I experienced as a little kid was my fault. It seems silly now, but bc I was bright and the adult was both stupid and illiterate, I had convinced myself that I deserved it. That belief went so deep that beliefs that naturally followed from it (that I was bad 6/x
and what happened was a deserved punishment) had become part of my doxastic structure. With the help of a therapist who worked w/me on the Socratic method as explained in the paper, we defeated it. It was complicated--yrs of pain and confusion were entwined with the belief-- 7/x
but we got there! Some of the defeaters were too personal for twitter, but here are a few: if an intelligent, educated adult had walked in, who would they have been angry at? If a police officer had walked in, who would have been arrested? If a nurse had switched babies when 8/x
I was born, would it have happened anyway? To believe not implied that I thought my parents had special insight--the opposite of why I originally felt responsible! With these and other (more personal/specific) defeaters, and w/help dealing w/emotional consequences of changing 9/x
my sense of myself, doxastic responsibility gave me FAR more freedom to be ok w/myself than I ever had before. It's a wonderful concept (for therapy if deeply distressed or w/friends & loved ones for improving lesser issues). Email hollymathnerd at gmail for PDF. /end
Lots of email of people asking for the paper. I’ll reply to everyone in the morning. Glad this was helpful!
20+ requests for the PDF, wow! It's such a joy to get to share something important and worthwhile. Happy to keep sending the PDF if this thread ends up having a long tail. Email hollymathnerd at gmail.
