Posted by alexandra_k on January 18, 2005, at 3:16:44
In reply to Re: Folk Psychology and the Nature of Belief., posted by smokeymadison on January 17, 2005, at 20:53:25
Lets say we have a mental state. Whether the state is a belief or a desire or a fantasy or whatever depends totally on the functional role that that state plays in the organism.
All of the above are known as 'intentional states' or 'propositional attitudes' because they relate a person to a propositional content in a certain way depending on the nature of the state (whether it is a belief or a desire or whatever).
'The sun is hot' is an example of a proposition. We could take different attitudes towards that same proposition. We could believe it is the case, desire it to be the case, wish it were the case etc.One problem is looking at functional roles to figure out what kind of mental state something (eg delusion) might be.
Another problem is the 'problem of mental content'. We need to be able to specify just what it is that the person is believing or desiring or whatever. We need to figure out what the content of delusions is.
We have to think about how abstractly we want to characterise the content. 'My wife has been replaced by an impostor', 'my daughter has been replaced by an alien', 'my stepfather has been replaced by a robot'. Should these count as different beliefs with different contents or should we abstract away from the surface differences and retain what is common as when we maintain that they are different examples of the same kind of delusion? It makes a difference with regards to what it is that we are trying to explain. We might be able to explain the delusion in generality for example, while not being able to say much about why the impostor is regarded as an alien in one case and a clone in another etc etc.
If the person with the Cotard delusion is expressing their experience then the propositional content of their delusion might be more properly 'translated' as 'I am emotionally dead'. Ok so they don't tend to say the 'emotional' bit, but maybe that is what they mean by what they are saying.
If that is so then delusions are expressions of anomalous experience. What they are saying is true. Their heart beating has nothing to do with their state of emotional death.
If the person with the Cotard delusion is making a claim about the way the world is, however, then we 'translate' their claim as 'I am biologically dead'.
The idea is that either they mean it in the first sense or they mean it in the second.
The only problem with it taken in the first sense is when subjects act on their delusions. I reckon that construal can handle all cases except those. When people do act on their delusions then we might have to interpret in the second way.
If they mean it in the second way then their belief is false. Then they should take it as evidence against their belief that their heart is beating.
So I agree - they mean what they say. But a very real question is what do they mean by what they say? That is where we have to translate to render the content explicit. Both of these translations seem to be lisenced by the standard meaning of the word 'death'. We often speak of 'emotional' as well as 'biological' death.
Do you get why the first interpretation works well for cases where people do not act on their belief? Expressing an experience is a lot like saying 'I feel hot'. If you really do feel frightfully hot then you will probably whinge about this a fair bit (at least I tend to). This may be like the person who has to comment on their state of emotional death or numbness.
When they do act on their belief then things get trickier. Saying you feel hot implies something for action insofar as action can reduce the feeling for you. In the case of emotional death what would that imply for action? Not a lot. Maybe that you won't connect very well with people you were previously close to. Not a lot else. With respect to biological death, on the other hand one had better arrange a coffin and so forth. So the second construal works well for explaining action.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:443284
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20041210/msgs/443606.html