Posted by alexandra_k on August 18, 2005, at 0:11:43
In reply to Re: The Biological Model of Delusion, posted by alexandra_k on August 17, 2005, at 23:07:26
While the Biological model doesn’t seem to straightforwardly entail that the delusional subject is endorsing contradictory beliefs there has been another model that has been suggested in which the delusional subject is supposed to be endorsing a more explicit contradiction, or perhaps more properly, a self-defeating belief. One delusional subject is reported to have said ‘I am not and am condemned to going on being nothing forever’. Descartes showed us that so long as one appreciates that doubting is a form of thinking it is impossible to doubt one’s existence as a thinking thing. If the delusional subject is attempting to express the belief that they do not exist as a thinking thing then it would seem that not only is the subject professing to believe something that they cannot believe, but we cannot make sense of what the delusional subject is saying or believing as the content of the belief is self-defeating.
What we seem to be running into in these two interpretations are the rationality constraints that govern intentional state attributions. In the biological interpretation we seem to want to attribute beliefs that contradict other beliefs (though perhaps not straightforwardly so). In the Cartesian interpretation we seem to be wanting to attribute a straightforwardly contradictory or self defeating belief to the subject. Both of these interpretations run into difficulties with respect to making sense of the delusional subjects utterance. They reinforce the idea that delusional subjects are irrational and that delusional utterances are not amenable to rational or intentional analysis
There are two things that I wish to note at this point. Firstly I want to reiterate what I said near the start that we do not have direct access to the delusional subject’s beliefs. While delusions are typically considered beliefs, and irrational and radically false beliefs at that it is worth laboring the point that all we have direct access to is the delusional subjects utterance ‘I am dead’. To figure out the content of the delusional utterance we need to engage in translation. What we have seen so far is that the term ‘death’ may be ambiguous. According to Sass the subject may be using it to refer to their state of emotional death, or numbness. In the Biological model the subject is using it to refer to their state of biological death. In the Cartesian model the subject is considered to be attempting to use it to refer to their own inexistence as a thinking, or experiencing thing. So we have three distinct readings of what the content of the delusional utterance might be. What I wish to do now is to turn to considering two different things that the subject may be attempting to do in making their delusional utterance.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:543149
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20050807/msgs/543282.html