Am I Insane?

How does somebody know if they are sane?

Technically, sane is a legal term, used to describe whether someone should be held responsible for their own actions. So a more accurate term might be crazy, or delusional. By that, I mean whether or not someone can know if that which they perceive and comprehend to be reality, is accurate, correct, and aligned with reality itself.

Perhaps, you could argue that everyone has a different perspective of reality, and since everyone’s perspective is different, then every person would perceive reality to be at least slightly askew from what is reality. To have a perfect perception of reality, might be, to be aware of every single aspect of reality, and to be aware of every bit of information and bit of knowledge within the universe and reality. Since it seems likely that any individual human is far from that awareness, that means every person does not have an accurate perspective of reality.
But, as imperfect as our awareness is, so is our vocabulary and communication. So, in an attempt to keep things simple, graspable, and “sane”, we’ll use the term “delusional” to refer to a state of mind, where someone perceives the state of reality to be incorrect enough, to the point that it causes significant conflict, and impedes the functioning of their attempted accomplishments within general life. This is yet still an incomplete (and indefinite:) definition, but so it seems is everything in this world (unless I’m delusional about that...), so imperfect should be accepted as sufficient.

As a hypothetical scenario, if somebody is indeed delusional, and perceives (to a certain degree) the world around them to be different than reality, they do not believe they are delusional. This is true by definition of being delusional, because if they were aware that they were delusional, then they would be aware that they are incorrect about what they perceive as being reality. If they were aware of that, then they would actually be aware of reality, and therefore not delusional.

This begs the question that, if a delusional person does not believe they are delusional, then how can anyone know that they are not delusional, if they believe the same thing that a delusional person would believe? Maybe you would have to consider what differences there are between the 2 scenarios. If someone is delusional, they would have those conflicts between their perspective, and reality. The conflicts would be a result of them believing certain things function 1 way, which is incorrect, and when they act on that belief (of method of function), it does not result as per their beliefs. This sounds like it describes basically any mistake which the average person could make any day, yet I wouldn't consider that to mean they are delusional. The difference between being mistaken about something, and being delusional about it, is perhaps the continuation of belief (of the incorrect function), after becoming aware of evidence proving otherwise.

So, 1 notable difference to look for, in order to determine if an individual is delusional or not, would be whether or not they accept evidence which suggests they are incorrect about a belief.
So basically, being open-minded to reasonability is a good sign that someone is not delusional. But that openness, includes being open to the possibility that they are delusional, so perhaps another good sign that someone is not delusional, is if they ask the question; “Am I insane?”
But, there is a fair chance that all my reasoning here is incorrect, if I’m delusional...