Posted by alexandra_k on August 22, 2005, at 19:16:34
In reply to Re: The Cartesian Model of Delusion » alexandra_k, posted by Damos on August 22, 2005, at 18:13:08
Maher, Davies et al., and the APA definition of delusion are similar with respect to what they construe the delusional subject as doing in making their delusional utterance. They concur that in making the claim ‘I am dead’ the subject draws a false conclusion from their experience to what is the case in the world. They thus similarly consider delusional subjects to be expressing a belief about external reality – or the world beyond the subjects experience. So if this is the case then what are we to make of the subjects claim that they are dead? It might be natural to think that the subject goes from the experience of emotional death that Sass talked about to making a claim about their biological death. Whether the claim that the subject is biologically dead is true or false is mind independent in the sense that the subject can have false beliefs about the way things really are outside of their minds. It is typically granted that the claim ‘I am biologically dead’ is a false belief.
On this analysis of what the delusional subject is attempting to do in making their utterance there may be a problem with respect to consistency within the subjects belief network. Normal subjects are also not perfectly rational, however. Sometimes we discover that we do have contradictory beliefs in our belief network. While holding contradictory beliefs may not be so very abnormal we do expect people to be able to see that they are in fact endorsing a contradiction once the logic has been pointed out to them. While I am not so sure that the contradiction has been pointed out explicitly to the delusional subject it may be hard to see what sense we could make of them retaining their beliefs if it was.
This might be motivation enough for concluding that delusions are intractable from the intentional level and so one would be better off abandoning intentional explanation in favor of a neurophysiological account of the various kinds of brain damage that might result in delusion. In another more recent paper Davies et al., modify their two-factor account of delusions so that the first factor is no longer the anomalous experience that was talked about by Maher. Instead, they maintain that the first factor is neurophysiological deficit and that further research is needed to determine whether the anomalous experience features early, late, or not at all in the production of delusion. As such, they too seem to have abandoned the attempt to offer an intentional explanation of delusion. Instead they maintain that delusion should be explained by the presence of neurophysiological anomaly despite the point that the precise nature of the neurophysiological anomaly seems to be fairly idiosyncratic to particular individuals. Before we are tempted to give up on intentional explanation altogether, it might be worth considering another account that I shall offer of what the delusional subject might be attempting to do in making the claim ‘I am dead’.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:543149
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20050807/msgs/545315.html