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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 4 of 4. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by alexandra_k on December 21, 2004, at 18:02:58
The Nature of Anomalous Experience.
Maher is primarily interested in enumerating the kinds of anomalous experience that are relevant to the explanation of schizophrenic delusions, rather than explaining the delusions of misidentification that typically arise from cerebral trauma that are the focus of Davies et al.’s battery. He does, however, state that:
>[D]elusional interpretations of circumscribed anomalies of experience arising from psychopathology are not confined to schizophrenia. . . .[T]he model of delusion formation . . . posits that the basic origin lies in the anomalous experience, regardless of how that anomaly arose (Maher 1999, p.566).
As such, we should expect that his account would be capable of explaining each of the delusions presented in Davies et al’s battery. Maher explicitly considers six kinds of schizophrenic anomalous experience while acknowledging that there might be others. The one that would seem most relevant to an explanation of the Capgras delusion is considered to be ‘feelings of non-recognition’ which consists in ‘unrecognized defects in the sensory system… or the endogenous activation or inhibition of the central neural representations of sensory input’ (Maher, 1999 pp. 553-554). Maher does not explicitly consider Ellis and Young’s model of face recognition, and the possible implications of the physiological findings for the nature of the experience of subjects who develop the Capgras delusion in response to cerebral trauma, though to be fair he is more focused on accounting for schizophrenic delusions. Davies et al. (2002, p. 143) firstly consider that the nature of the relevant anomalous experience may be an ‘unusual experience of faces or a sense that “something is different” as a result of flattened affective responses’. This line may be seen as being similar to Maher’s, though more explicit.It may be the case that if the specification of the content of the anomalous experience is as general as the above accounts then there is indeed a difficulty in getting from such a vague or general experience to the sorts of utterances that are characteristic of the Capgras and Frégoli delusions. There does not seem to be anything intrinsic to the nature of the anomalous experience to determine that the subject must develop a delusion in the face of such an experience. As such Davies et al. would seem to be correct in considering that a second factor must be required in addition to the anomalous experience to account for why some subjects develop delusions in the face of such an experience while others do not.
Maher considers that the crucial difference between delusional and non-delusional subjects is that while a non-delusional subject may have fleeting or transitory anomalous experiences these are comparatively shallow compared with the intensity and duration of the delusional subject’s anomalous experience. Maher’s appeal to intensity and duration has come under fire by theorists who maintain that there is no independent way in which to cash out the intensity and duration clause without reference to whether the subject is delusional or not. Whether this is able to be cashed out or not would seem to be an empirical matter, however, and we may consider skin galvanization response to be such an independent measure (though see Breen et al. (2000) for a criticism of the significance of these findings). What I wish to consider here is that once the nature of the anomalous experience is suitably refined the nature of the experience may turn out to be more significant for the production of delusion than intensity and duration.
Posted by smokeymadison on December 21, 2004, at 21:05:02
In reply to 1.5, posted by alexandra_k on December 21, 2004, at 18:02:58
i am a bit confused to what you consider an experience. could you give some examples please? i mean, is it internal (emotion/thought) or external (someone who believes that they are being followed by the FBI catches someone looking at them from a neighboring window)
Posted by alexandra_k on December 22, 2004, at 17:06:42
In reply to Re: 1.5, posted by smokeymadison on December 21, 2004, at 21:05:02
> i am a bit confused to what you consider an experience. could you give some examples please? i mean, is it internal (emotion/thought) or external (someone who believes that they are being followed by the FBI catches someone looking at them from a neighboring window)
Ouch, that gets to the heart of it! Within this context:
Screwey Emotional Response (or the experience of)
Screwey Affective Response (or the experience of)
Screwey Skin Galvanisation Response (or the experience of)
Screwey Perceptial experience (e.g. of visual illusion)Will the real nature of the anomalous experience relevant to the production of various kinds of delusion please stand up???
That is what my paper is about really. Davies et al consider the relevant kind of anomalous experience for the production of delusion to be an 'erroneous perceptual experience' and hence they are led straight into the problem of the unwanted prediction. I reckon I can solve that little problem for them, it is easy: an erroneous perceptual experience is irrelevant for the production of delusion.
But then I need an account of what the relevant anomalous experience for the production of delusion is.
Onward, ho.
Lets see if appealing to evolution can assist...
Posted by alexandra_k on December 22, 2004, at 18:10:40
In reply to Re: 1.5, posted by smokeymadison on December 21, 2004, at 21:05:02
Ok. So far the proposed candidates for the content of the anomalous experience that is relevant to the production of the Capgras delusion are:
‘feelings of non-recognition’ which consists in ‘unrecognized defects in the sensory system… or the endogenous activation or inhibition of the central neural representations of sensory input’ (Maher)
‘unusual experience of faces or a sense that “something is different” as a result of flattened affective responses’ (Davies et al's first attempt)
>The content of the experience of subjects with the Capgras delusion might be a general feeling that something is different, as Maher maintains and as Davies et al. firstly consider, though in this case we would seem to need something of a story as to why the delusion is focused solely on the replacement of certain individuals. The way in which we spell out the content of the delusional utterance and the way in which we spell out the content of the anomalous experience affects how big the step is between the content of the experience and the content of the belief. If the content of the experience is a vague or general experience of dissonance then it would indeed seem that a second factor would be required to determine that the subject arrives at a delusional belief.
When I talk about the 'content of the experience' think or read: what the experience is TELLING or INFORMING the subject. e.g., the experience of fear TELLS or INFORMS that something is fearful. If the subject says 'that is scairey' then this utterance is understandable (in the sense that they have simply come to believe what their experience is telling them).
The content of the belief is just what the subject believes that prompts their utterance. We need to translate a little between what people say and what they believe, though in general utterances are thought to EXPRESS beliefs.
In the way that if I say 'I am going to the bank' I could believe I am going to the river bank or I could believe that I am going to the money bank. ALL utterances need to be 'translated' to unearth the belief that they are expressions of, however. As Quine says: translation begins at home.
This is the end of the thread.
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