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Higher-Order Thought, Self-Identification, and Delusions of Disownership

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Abstract

David Rosenthal’s higher-order thought (HOT) theory says that for a mental state to be conscious, it must be accompanied by a higher-order thought about that state. One objection to Rosenthal’s account is that HOTs do not secure what Sydney Shoemaker has called ‘immunity to error through misidentification’ (IEM). I will argue that Rosenthal’s discussion of dissociative identity order fails to salvage his account from this objection and that his thin immunity principle is in tension with cases of somatoparaphrenia. Rather than showing that self-awareness consists in identification, an examination of the delusions of disownership found in dissociative identity disorder and somatoparaphrenia lends support to IEM and highlights an important distinction between perspectival ownership and personal ownership.

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Notes

  1. For a discussion of the inner-sense model, or what some theorists have called the higher-order perception (HOP) account of consciousness, see David Armstrong, (1980), The Nature of Mind. Rosenthal has argued repeatedly that the HOT account is superior to Armstrong’s HOP account. However, a discussion of this debate is beyond the scope of this paper.

  2. This minimal self-concept need not specify what sort of thing the self is, nor that it has some sort of unity or be transparent to itself, nor even that it has mental properties.

  3. The truth value of this proposition in any possible world w depends solely on whether or not s is F in w.

  4. http://www.npr.org/2011/10/20/141514464/real-sybil-admits-multiple-personalities-were-fake

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Emmanuel College, 400 The Fenway, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    Michelle Maiese

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  1. Michelle Maiese
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Correspondence to Michelle Maiese.

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Maiese, M. Higher-Order Thought, Self-Identification, and Delusions of Disownership. Rev.Phil.Psych. 10, 281–298 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-017-0369-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-017-0369-9

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