Abstract
This paper provides a concise description and discussion of bottom–up and top–down approaches to misattribution of agency in schizophrenia. It explores if first-person accounts of passivity phenomena can provide support for one of these approaches. The focus is on excerpts in which the writers specifically examine their experiences of external influence. None of the accounts provides arguments that fit easily with only one of the possible approaches, which is in line with current attempts to theoretical integration.
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Notes
Wittgenstein (1958) already noted that it is nonsensical to ask whether someone can be wrong in identifying the person referred to with “I” in statements like “I try to lift my arm.” Shoemaker (1968) called this immunity to error through misidentification relative to the first-person pronoun and Campbell (1999) argued that reports of passivity phenomena directly challenge this principle. For a discussion of whether these reports really challenge the immunity principle see Gallagher (2000) and Zahavi (1999, p. 153–156).
A phenomenological approach informed by neuroscience, see Gallagher and Varela (2003).
On a closer look, Frith’s theory can be considered a hybrid one since it also involves the failure of sub-personal (neuronal, bottom-up) processes which give rise to the unusual experience of passivity of one’s own actions (Gallagher 2004b, p.13).
In a similar vein, Campbell (2002) has argued that both an empiricist and a rationalist account of the Capgras and Cotard delusions can possibly be rejected in favour of another common cause (depression) of both the delusional belief and the affectless perception.
Carman (2005, p.50) writes: “Merleau-Ponty’s interconnected critiques of empiricism and intellectualism run like a double helix through the pages of Phenomenology of Perception. … As a result, although the current state of play in the philosophy of mind for us today differs widely from what it was for Merleau-Ponty in the middle of the last century, neither would he find it altogether unrecognizable.”
Note that what O’Brien describes seems to be the opposite from a hyper-rational attitude that Sass suggests to be important in schizophrenic experience. She actually claims not to be able to perform any intellectual work on her own; and what she does do, she ascribes to Something. Stephens and Graham suggest that a hyper-rational attitude can be a factor that plays a role in making it difficult for a person to keep track of her own intentions. Taking a hyper-rational attitude, they suggest, can make the idea one has of oneself elusive and less transparent.
The selection of accounts is similarly biased as all writers had ‘literary qualities’ and were able to write in a nuanced way about their experience.
Schreber (1903/2000, p.55) talks about compulsive thinking (which he in his text does attribute to the rays), Kandinsky (1881, p.457) writes about the first phase of his illness where there were no hallucinations yet, but “a richness of thoughts, their fast and simultaneously irregular paths, delusions and compulsive ideas.”
Both Schreber (1903/2000, p.83) and Kandinsky (see discussion of his fragment) admit that there probably is something wrong with their nervous system. This does not seem to stop them from developing floridly delusional accounts. Lack of insight in psychosis is a well known and important feature of the disorder (Amador and David, 1998).
The sincerity of these reports of psychotic experience is usually not doubted, see Davies and Coltheart (2000, p.1).
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Maes, J.P.M.A., Van Gool, A.R. Misattribution of agency in schizophrenia: An exploration of historical first-person accounts. Phenom Cogn Sci 7, 191–202 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-007-9082-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-007-9082-y