Abstract
This article adopts the hypothesis that language impairment in schizophrenia is more a sign of an interactional deficit than of a central disorder at the semantic level. Our aim is to better understand the rationality of the patient by significantly modifying how we conceptualize the mind, and to revisit the concept of belief. Our aim is to elucidate the degree to which this health dysfunction constitutes a mental disorder. We will do this by adopting an anthropological holism of the mental (of mind) such as the view Wittgenstein defended with his concept of language-games. This theory enables us to reconcile the two concepts of disordered language and ‘form of life’, with the particular form of life being schizophrenia. We center our argument on Robert Brandom’s expressivist, rationalist-pragmatist conception of mind and language.
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Notes
- 1.
The form of life concept is a set of practices that give particular characteristics to the community, symptomatic of beliefs, and ways of acting.
- 2.
A pertinent question is whether schizophrenia in and of itself can be characterized as a particular form of life, given that those of us who do not suffer from schizophrenia can experience dissonance in moments throughout our ordinary lives (normal forms of life), particularly in our relationships with other people. But these moments do not last. Schizophrenia, however, by its nature forces us to do what we are not able to do naturally. Indeed, according to Conant (1990): “Trying to deviate from one’s life form is not, (…), a task for which one is obviously adapted. We might as well consider leaving the human race and trying to get rid of the natural reactions and propensities that we have in common with others and that allow us to live with others.”
- 3.
This is how E. Anscombe defines intentional action (1957, §47).
- 4.
Our intention is not to describe a causal relationship but a logical one. Similarly, the hypothesis we support is this: we can partially describe schizophrenia as the result of a mixture of categories (error). It is not a causal relationship between the disease and the mixture, it is a logical link. What we are trying to do in this article is to show that there is an interest in establishing a description of schizophrenia as logically related to a language game and a mixture of language categories. The neurologist, on the other hand, will be interested in cause-and-effect relationships. Our purpose is to provide a philosophical framework for a non-causal approach to schizophrenia, by specifying how we can conceive of problems of schizophrenic interactions.
- 5.
“Here the term ‘language–game’ is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life” (Wittgenstein 2009, §45).
- 6.
Delusion (DSM III-R) and DSM IV-TR (2000): “Personal belief based on false induction of external reality”.
- 7.
Les institutions du sens, Paris: Editions de minuit, 1996, p. 333.
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Louis, F. (2021). Incoherent Discourse in Schizophrenia: An Anthropological Approach to the Mind. In: Amblard, M., Musiol, M., Rebuschi, M. (eds) (In)coherence of Discourse. Language, Cognition, and Mind, vol 10. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71434-5_8
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