Abstract
A group of philosophers suggests that a sense of mineness intrinsically contained in the phenomenal structure of all conscious experiences is a necessary condition for a subject to become aware of himself as the subject of his experiences i.e. self-awareness. On this view, consciousness necessarily entails phenomenal self-awareness. This paper argues that cases of delusions of thought insertion undermine this claim and that such a phenomenal feature plays little role in accounting for the most minimal type of self-awareness entailed by phenomenal consciousness. First, I clarify the main view endorsing this claim i.e. the Self-Presentational View of Consciousness and formulate the challenge from thought insertion. After, I offer a systematic evaluation of all the strategies used by the advocates of this view to deal with this challenge. Finally, I conclude that most of these strategies are unsatisfactory for they rest in unwarranted premises, imprecisions about the agentive nature of cognitive experiences, and especially, lack of distinction between the different ways in which subjects can become aware of their own thoughts.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
It is important to note that a number of authors have disputed this idea (Dainton 2004; Schear 2009; López-Silva 2014; Lane 2015; Howell and Thompson 2017; Guillot 2017). A further issue here has to do with the question about whether cognitive states such as beliefs and thoughts enjoy phenomenal character at all (Bayne and Montague 2011). In this paper, I will assume that cognitive states enjoy some form of phenomenal character.
For a helpful summary of this debate, see Howell and Thompson (2017).
The term ‘intrinsic’ is explicitly meant to distinguish Zahavi’s view from higher-order theories of self-consciousness (Zahavi 2011, p. 57, note 1).
By the SPV, I refer to the view defended by Dan Zahavi and summarized in ‘Subjectivity and Selfhood’ (2005a). Other subjectivity theories are ‘higher-order theories of consciousness’ (Rosenthal 1997; Flanagan 1992), and Kriegel’s (2009) ‘Self-Representational Theory’. A careful examination of the SPV view seems fairly justified in light of its current influence in disciplines such as psychopathology and psychiatric diagnosis (Parnas et al. 2005), philosophy of mind and cognitive sciences (Gallagher and Zahavi 2008), and developmental psychology research (Zahavi 2005a), just to name a few. It is important to note that no systematic evaluation of all the strategies used by the advocates of the SPV to deal with the challenge from thought insertion is found in current literature. Some authors have treated this issue tangentially and in less specific ways always as a part of broader discussions about the nature of phenomenal consciousness.
Block (1995) formulates the concept of phenomenal consciousness as follows: ‘P-consciousness [phenomenal consciousness] is experience. P-conscious properties are experiential properties. P-conscious states are experiential, that is, a state is P-conscious if it has experiential properties’ (1995, p. 230).
First, it is important to note that the authors use the terms ‘self-consciousness’ and ‘self-awareness’ interchangeably. Second, as the discussion goes on, I will show that such a view is populated by a number of conceptual and phenomenological confusions.
It might be suggested that TI is a challenge for all subjectivity theories of consciousness. Although I agree with this claim, for the sake of specificity and clarity, here I shall examine only the way in which this phenomenon undermines Zahavi’s argumentation.
The authors attribute this idea to Campbell’s (Campbell 1999a, b) proposal. However, the idea of mineness defended by Campbell does not seem to be consistent with the one defended by the self-presentational approach. In fact, Campbell (1999a, b) claims something quite different: ‘What makes my occurrent thoughts mine is not just that they show up in my stream of consciousness. What makes them mine is, in addition, the fact that they are product of my long-standing beliefs and desires, and that the occurrent thinking can affect the underlying state’ (621).
It is important to note that no-direct-access does not imply no-access at all.
Independent evidence against the main claims of the SPV comes from the phenomenology of Cotard’s syndrome and depersonalization. These symptoms can be explained as experiences that retain for-me-ness but lack subjectivity and sense of mineness. For reasons of extension I cannot deal in depth with these cases, for a more specific treatment see: Billon (2016), and Guillot (2017).
References
Bayne, T. 2010. The Unity of consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bayne, T., and D. Chalmers. 2003. What is the unity of consciousness? In The Unity of consciousness: Binding, integration and dissociation, ed. A. Cleeremans. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bayne, T., and M. Montague. 2011. Cognitive phenomenology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bermúdez, J.L. 1998. The paradox of self-consciousness. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Billon, A. 2013. Does consciousness entail subjectivity? The puzzle of thought insertion. Philosophical Psychology 26 (2): 291–314.
Billon, A. 2016. Making sense of the Cotard syndrome: Insights from the study of depersonalisation. Mind & Language 31 (3): 256–391.
Block, N. 1995. On a confusion about a function of consciousness. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18: 227–247.
Bortolotti, L., and M. Broome. 2009. A role for ownership and authorship in the analysis of thought insertion. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 8: 205–224.
Cahill, C., and C.D. Frith. 1996. A cognitive basis for the signs and symptoms of schizophrenia. In Schizophrenia: A neuropsychological perspective, ed. C. Pantelis, H.E. Nelson, and T. Barnes. New York: Wiley.
Campbell, J. 1999a. Schizophrenia, the space of reasons, and thinking as a motor process. The Monist: 609–625.
Campbell, J. 1999b. Schizophrenia, the space of reasons, and thinking as motor process. The Monist 84: 609–625.
Cermolacce, M., J. Naudin, and J. Parnas. 2007. The “minimal self ” in psychopathology: Re-examining the self-disorders in the schizophrenia spectrum. Consciousness and Cognition 16: 703–714.
Dainton, B. 2004. The self and the phenomenal. Ratio 17 (4): 365–389.
De Haan, S., and L. De Bruin. 2010. Reconstructing the minimal self, or how to make sense of agency and ownership. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 9: 373–396.
Flanagan, O. 1992. Consciousness reconsidered. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Frankfurt, H. 1976. Identification and externality. In The identities of persons, ed. A.O. Rorty, 239–251. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Frith, C.D. 1992. The cognitive neuropsychology of schizophrenia. Hoeve: Lawrennce Erlbaum Associates.
Gallagher, S. 2004. Neurocognitive models of schizophrenia. A neurophenomenological critique. Psychopathology 37: 8–19.
Gallagher, S. 2012. Phenomenology. U.K.: Macmillan.
Gallagher, S. 2014. Relations between agency and ownserhip in the case of schizophrenic thought insertion and delusions of control. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 6 (4): 865–879.
Gallagher, S., and D. Zahavi. 2008. The phenomenological mind. London: Routledge.
Gallagher, S., and Zahavi, D. 2014. Phenomenological approaches to self-Consciousness. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. From http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/self-consciousness-phenomenological/.
Gibbs, P. 2000. Thought insertion and the inseparability thesis. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 7 (3): 195–202.
Greyson, B. 1977. Telepathy in mental illness. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 165 (3): 184–200.
Grünbaum, T., and D. Zahavi. 2013. Varieties of self-awareness. In The Oxford handbook of philosophy and psychiatry, ed. K. Fulford, M. Davies, R. Gipps, G. Graham, J. Sadler, G. Stanghellini, and T. Thornton, 221–239. Oxford: OUP.
Guillot, M. 2017. I me mine: On a confusion concerning the subjective character of experience. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 8 (1): 23–53.
Howell, R., and B. Thompson. 2017. Phenomenally mine: In search of the subjective character of consciousness. The Review of Philosophy and Psychology 8 (1): 103–127.
Jaspers, K. 1963. General psychopathology. 7th ed. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Koehler, K. 1979. First rank symptoms of schizophrenia: Questions concerning clinical boundaries. British Journal of Psychiatry 134: 236–248.
Kriegel, U. 2009. Subjective consciousness. Oxford: OUP.
Lane, T. 2015. Self, belonging, and conscious experience: A critique of subjectivity theories of consciousness. In Disturbed consciousness, ed. R. Gennaro. USA: MIT Press.
Levine, J. 2001. Purple haze: The puzzle of consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
López-Silva, P. 2014. La relevancia filosófica del estudio de la esquizofrenia. Cuestiones metodológicas y conceptuales. Revista Colombiana de Psiquiatría 43 (3): 168–174.
López-Silva, P. 2015. Schizophrenia and the place of egodystonic states in the aetiology of thought insertion. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 7 (3): 577–594.
López-Silva, P. 2016. The Unity of consciousness in pre-psychotic states. A phenomenological analysis. Studies in Psychology 37: 1–34.
Marwaha, S. Broome, M., Bebbington, P., Kuipers, E. & Freeman, D. (2014). Mood Instability and Psychosis: Analyses of British National Survey Data. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 40(2), 269-277.
Mellor, C.S. 1970. First rank symptoms of schizophrenia. The British Journal of Psychiatry 117: 15–23.
Metzinger, T. 2003. Being no one. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Metzinger, T. 2006. Reply to Zahavi: The value of historical scholarship. Psyche 12 (2): 1–4.
Mullins, S., and S. Spence. 2003. Re-examining thought insertion. British Journal of Psychiatry 182: 293–298.
Nagel, T. 1974. What is it like to be a bat? Philosophical Review 83 (4): 435–450.
Parnas, J., P. Møller, T. Kircher, J. Thalbitzer, L. Jansson, P. Handest, and D. Zahavi. 2005. EASE: Examination of anomalous self-experience. Psychopathology 38: 236–258.
Pawar, V.A., and S.A. Spence. 2003. Defining thought broadcast, semi-structured literature review. British Journal of Psychiatry 183: 287–291.
Payne, E. 2013. Speaking to my madness. USA: CreateSpace.
Rosenthal, D.M. 1997. A theory of consciousness. In The Nature of Consciousness, ed. N. Block, O. Flanagan, and G. Güzeldere, 729–753. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Schear, J.K. 2009. Experience and self-consciousness. Philosophical Studies 144: 95–105.
Schneider, K. 1959. Clinical Psychopathology (trans. By M.W. Hamilton). New York: Grune & Stratton.
Stephens, G.L., and G. Graham. 2000. When self-consciousness breaks. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Tye, M. 1995. Ten problems of consciousness. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Vosgerau, G., and M. Voss. 2014. Authorship and control over thoughts. Mind & Language 29 (5): 534–565.
Wing, J.K., J.E. Cooper, and N. Sartorius. 1974. Measurement and classification of psychiatric symptoms. 9th ed. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Zahavi, D. 1999. Self-awareness and alterity: A phenomenological investigation. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Zahavi, D. 2005a. Subjectivity and selfhood: Investigating the first-person perspective. Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Zahavi, D. 2005b. Being someone. Psyche 11 (5): 1–20.
Zahavi, D. 2011. The experiential self: Objections and clarifications. In Self, No Self? ed. M. Siderits, E. Thompson, and D. Zahavi, 56–78. Oxford: OUP.
Zahavi, D., and U. Kriegel. 2015. For-me-ness. In Philosophy of mind and phenomenology: Conceptual and empirical approaches, ed. D.O. Dahlstrom, A. Elpidorou, and W. Hopp. London: Routledge.
Zahavi, D., and D. Parnas. 1998. Phenomenal consciousness and self-awareness: A phenomenological critique of representational theory. Journal of Consciousness Studies 5 (5–6): 687–705.
Acknowledgments
For helpful discussions, I’m very grateful to Rob Knowles, Leo Tarasov, Thomas Fuchs, Elisabeth Pacherie, Thomas Uebel, and Mauricio Otaíza. For all the time dedicated to improve my ideas, I especially thank to Joel Smith, Tim Bayne, and Tom McClelland. Preliminary versions of this paper were presented at the Universidad de Chile, University of Manchester, University of Salzburg, VU University of Amsterdam, and the New University of Lisbon. The title of this paper is inspired by the lyrics of the song Alone/With You by Daughter.
Funding
The final writing of this work was funded by the Project FONDECYT N° 11,160,544 ‘The Agentive Architecture of Human Thought’ granted by the National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICYT) of the Government of Chile.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
López-Silva, P. Me and I Are Not Friends, Just Acquaintances: on Thought Insertion and Self-Awareness. Rev.Phil.Psych. 10, 319–335 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-017-0366-z
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-017-0366-z