A role for ownership and authorship in the analysis of thought insertion
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 8 (2):205-224 (2009)
| Abstract | Philosophers are interested in the phenomenon of thought insertion because it challenges the common assumption that one can ascribe to oneself the thoughts that one can access first-personally. In the standard philosophical analysis of thought insertion, the subject owns the ‘inserted’ thought but lacks a sense of agency towards it. In this paper we want to provide an alternative analysis of the condition, according to which subjects typically lack both ownership and authorship of the ‘inserted’ thoughts. We argue that by appealing to a failure of ownership and authorship we can describe more accurately the phenomenology of thought insertion, and distinguish it from that of non-delusional beliefs that have not been deliberated about, and of other delusions of passivity. We can also start developing a more psychologically realistic account of the relation between intentionality, rationality and self knowledge in normal and abnormal cognition. | |||||||||
| Keywords | ownership authorship thought insertion | |||||||||
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Annalisa Coliva (2002). Thought Insertion and Immunity to Error Through Misidentification. Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 9 (1):27-34.
George Graham (2004). Self-Ascription: Thought Insertion. In Jennifer Radden (ed.), The Philosophy of Psychiatry: A Companion. Oxford University Press.
Christoph Hoerl (2001). On Thought Insertion. Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 8 (2-3):189-200.
Paulo Sousa & Lauren Swiney (forthcoming). Thought Insertion: Abnormal Sense of Thought Agency or Thought Endorsement? Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.
Peter Langland-Hassan (2008). Fractured Phenomenologies: Thought Insertion, Inner Speech, and the Puzzle of Extraneity. Mind and Language 23 (4):369-401.
Jordi Fernández (2010). Thought Insertion and Self-Knowledge. Mind and Language 25 (1):66-88.
Alexandre Billon (2011). Does Consciousness Entail Subjectivity? The Puzzle of Thought Insertion. Philosophical Psychology 26 (2):291 - 314.
Garry Young (2006). Kant and the Phenomenon of Inserted Thoughts. Philosophical Psychology 19 (6):823-837.
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