17th January
Philosophy and Schizophrenia Workshop
2.30 pm
ROOM 0.07 ID BUILDING
The workshop highlights recent work on the philosophical consideration of schizophrenia, especially phenomenological approaches to schizophrenia and the Ipseity Disturbance Hypothesis (Nelson, Parnas, & Sass, 2014; Sass, Parnas, & Zahavi, 2011) (see also recent seminar).
All articles are to appear in the forthcoming volume: Hípolito, I., Gonçalves, J., & Pereira, J. (Eds.). (Forthcoming). Schizophrenia and Common Sense: Springer.
Philosophy and Schizophrenia Workshop
2.30 pm
ROOM 0.07 ID BUILDING
The workshop highlights recent work on the philosophical consideration of schizophrenia, especially phenomenological approaches to schizophrenia and the Ipseity Disturbance Hypothesis (Nelson, Parnas, & Sass, 2014; Sass, Parnas, & Zahavi, 2011) (see also recent seminar).
All articles are to appear in the forthcoming volume: Hípolito, I., Gonçalves, J., & Pereira, J. (Eds.). (Forthcoming). Schizophrenia and Common Sense: Springer.
Abstracts
Klaus Gartner
Conscious Experience and Experience Externalization
According to Sass&Parnas, schizophrenia is essentially a self-disorder. It is characterized by hyperreflexivity and diminished self-affection. While the former refers to an exaggerated reflexivity, the latter refers to a weakened sense of existence as a vital and self-coinciding root of consciousness and action. Together they lead to an externalization or alienation of experience. In this paper, I will reflect on Sass&Parnas's idea about schizophrenia and access the question of how their view may contribute to a general view about conscious experience.
The main characteristic of conscious experience is its phenomenology. Recent interpretations claim that the phenomenal character involves two kinds of features, qualitative and subjective ones. Some think that what is essential to phenomenal consciousness are the latter. This goes hand in hand with the Neo-Phenomenologist claim that conscious experience necessarily involves a form of pre-reflective self-consciousness. Here, I will defend a naturalized view of conscious experience that straight forwardly fits Sass&Parnas's interpretation of schizophrenia.
Robert Clowes
The Ipseity Disturbance Theory of Schizophrenia and Predictive Processing
In this paper, I consider one of the most developed compelling approaches to schizophrenia namely the Ipseity Disturbance Hypothesis (IDH). Using the EASE scale and checklist for the exploration of anomalies of subject experience (Parnas et al., 2005) I explore the explanatory power of the IDH.
First I examine the claim that prodromal schizophrenia should be understood as a disturbance or disorder of pre-reflexive self-experience, or what is sometimes taken as a synonym, the minimal self (Nelson, Parnas, & Sass, 2014) paying attention to the different ways the term is used and the different aspects of prodromal schizophrenic phenomenology the notion is used to explain. Second I examine whether prodromal schizophrenia might not be better seen as a disturbance of the structure of presence more generally rather than focusing on its “self-pole” ipseity. In arguing the case I introduce a comparison with depersonalization disorder (Radovic & Radovic, 2002; Sierra & David, 2011) especially focusing on its investigation with EASE instrument (Sass, Pienkos, Nelson, & Medford, 2013). Third, based on some recent expositions (Borda & Sass, 2015; Sass & Borda, 2015) I argue that as standardly interpreted the ipseity approach offers only quite weak explanation of why prodromal schizophrenia should develop into its psychotic phases along with the characteristic symptoms of hallucination and delusion.
In the final part of the paper however I argue that new resources offered by the framework of predictive processing (Clark, 2015; Hohwy, 2013) can add new explanatory resources to the IDH explanatory framework. By linking prodromal disturbances of presence (Seth & Critchley, 2013; Seth, Suzuki, & Critchley, 2011) with the development of hallucination and delusion (Fletcher & Frith, 2009) I find that the predictive processing provides exactly the explanatory links needed by IDH to provide a more convincing explanation of schizophrenic disorders. In addition, a deeper and more unified neurocomputational explanation can be offered of what ipseity disorders are. Thus, I find the ipseity hypothesis can be greatly enhanced and rendered more theoretically productive in the light of the predictive processing framework.
Borda, J. P., & Sass, L. A. (2015). Phenomenology and neurobiology of self disorder in schizophrenia: Primary factors. Schizophrenia Research, 169(1), 464-473.
Clark, A. (2015). Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind: Oxford University Press.
Fletcher, P. C., & Frith, C. D. (2009). Perceiving is believing: a Bayesian approach to explaining the positive symptoms of schizophrenia. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(1), 48-58.
Hohwy, J. (2013). The predictive mind: Oxford University Press.
Nelson, B., Parnas, J., & Sass, L. A. (2014). Disturbance of minimal self (ipseity) in schizophrenia: clarification and current status. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 40(3), 479-482.
Parnas, J., Møller, P., Kircher, T., Thalbitzer, J., Jansson, L., Handest, P., & Zahavi, D. (2005). EASE: examination of anomalous self-experience. Psychopathology, 38(5), 236-258.
Radovic, F., & Radovic, S. (2002). Feelings of unreality: A conceptual and phenomenological analysis of the language of depersonalization. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 9(3), 271-279.
Sass, L. A., & Borda, J. P. (2015). Phenomenology and neurobiology of self disorder in schizophrenia: Secondary factors. Schizophrenia Research, 169(1), 474-482.
Sass, L. A., Pienkos, E., Nelson, B., & Medford, N. (2013). Anomalous self-experience in depersonalization and schizophrenia: A comparative investigation. Consciousness and Cognition, 22(2), 430-441.
Seth, A. K., & Critchley, H. D. (2013). Extending predictive processing to the body: emotion as interoceptive inference. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36(03), 227-228.
Seth, A. K., Suzuki, K., & Critchley, H. D. (2011). An Interoceptive Predictive Coding Model of Conscious Presence. Frontiers in Psychology, 2.
Sierra, M., & David, A. S. (2011). Depersonalization: a selective impairment of self-awareness. Consciousness and Cognition, 20(1), 99-108.
Inês Hipólito & Jorge Martins
Phenomenology and molecular biology: a second-person model to anomalous experience
First-person reports made by schizophrenic patients evidence how fragmented and anomalous their experience is. This may be related to the fact that disembodiment experience inhibits the possibility to intersubjective experience, and concordantly, common sense. We ask how can we investigate the anomalous experience both from qualitative and quantitative viewpoints. To our knowledge, few studies have focused on a clinical combination of both first- phenomenological assessment and third-person biological methods, especially for Schizophrenia, or ASD therapeutics and diagnosis. We will claim qualities of perception and kinaesthetic phenomena are central features when considering human experience in general, and anomalous experience in particular. We will thus attempt to bring forward a potential second-person scientific design, accounting for both the first-person enactive experience, and respective third-person neurobiological correlates. From this proposal, we further explore the consequences to clinical and research practice.
Jorge Gonçalves
Why are delusions pathological?
The aim of this article is to identify a characteristic of delusions: what makes them pathological. It may appear at first a bit strange because one believes that delusions are just a pathological alteration of the mind. However, some authors have shown that although pathological delusions are the most studied, not all delusions have necessarily harmful consequences for the delirious subject or for others. Hence it seems pertinent to question about what makes delusions a pathological state.
Dina Mendonça
What can Schizophrenia teaches us about emotions?
Schizophrenia changes emotional life (Sass 2004). People who encounter schizophrenics recognize that it is hard to have a complete emotional understanding and rapport with people who suffer from it (Sass 2007, 352). This chapter aims to look at the schizophrenic in all of us and take this awkwardness as insightful regarding emotional experience. As Louis Sass explains the description of emotions in schizophrenia is contradictory (Sass 2007, 2004): on one hand schizophrenics have a kind of flatness of emotional expression that is taken to mean that they have less emotional responses; on the other hand they can also be described as having excessive emotional responses (Sass 2007, 351-352). After describing the way in which emotion in schizophrenics can appear contradictory (Sass 2007, 2004), I show how such similar contradiction can appear as the reasonable thing to do and argue that, at least in some moments, it may be useful to adopt the schizophrenic stance regarding emotions and that sometimes we do. Then, building upon Matthew Ratcliffe’s suggestion of thinking of schizophrenia in relational terms rather than simply as a disorder of the individual, I show that emotional experience requires an ongoing connection with others. Finally I argue that the previous descriptions highlights certain features of our emotional world that are often ignored or treated lightly by emotion theorists, namely that emotions also appear in layers and that each emotional experience requires time to unfold. I conclude the chapter by showing how emotion theory could gain a more complete understanding of emotions by incorporating the insights given by schizophrenic emotional experience. Ultimately, the hope is that if emotion theorists adopt these insights it will be much easier to understand emotional experience of schizophrenic patients and design ways to help them cope with their condition and the world around them.
Klaus Gartner
Conscious Experience and Experience Externalization
According to Sass&Parnas, schizophrenia is essentially a self-disorder. It is characterized by hyperreflexivity and diminished self-affection. While the former refers to an exaggerated reflexivity, the latter refers to a weakened sense of existence as a vital and self-coinciding root of consciousness and action. Together they lead to an externalization or alienation of experience. In this paper, I will reflect on Sass&Parnas's idea about schizophrenia and access the question of how their view may contribute to a general view about conscious experience.
The main characteristic of conscious experience is its phenomenology. Recent interpretations claim that the phenomenal character involves two kinds of features, qualitative and subjective ones. Some think that what is essential to phenomenal consciousness are the latter. This goes hand in hand with the Neo-Phenomenologist claim that conscious experience necessarily involves a form of pre-reflective self-consciousness. Here, I will defend a naturalized view of conscious experience that straight forwardly fits Sass&Parnas's interpretation of schizophrenia.
Robert Clowes
The Ipseity Disturbance Theory of Schizophrenia and Predictive Processing
In this paper, I consider one of the most developed compelling approaches to schizophrenia namely the Ipseity Disturbance Hypothesis (IDH). Using the EASE scale and checklist for the exploration of anomalies of subject experience (Parnas et al., 2005) I explore the explanatory power of the IDH.
First I examine the claim that prodromal schizophrenia should be understood as a disturbance or disorder of pre-reflexive self-experience, or what is sometimes taken as a synonym, the minimal self (Nelson, Parnas, & Sass, 2014) paying attention to the different ways the term is used and the different aspects of prodromal schizophrenic phenomenology the notion is used to explain. Second I examine whether prodromal schizophrenia might not be better seen as a disturbance of the structure of presence more generally rather than focusing on its “self-pole” ipseity. In arguing the case I introduce a comparison with depersonalization disorder (Radovic & Radovic, 2002; Sierra & David, 2011) especially focusing on its investigation with EASE instrument (Sass, Pienkos, Nelson, & Medford, 2013). Third, based on some recent expositions (Borda & Sass, 2015; Sass & Borda, 2015) I argue that as standardly interpreted the ipseity approach offers only quite weak explanation of why prodromal schizophrenia should develop into its psychotic phases along with the characteristic symptoms of hallucination and delusion.
In the final part of the paper however I argue that new resources offered by the framework of predictive processing (Clark, 2015; Hohwy, 2013) can add new explanatory resources to the IDH explanatory framework. By linking prodromal disturbances of presence (Seth & Critchley, 2013; Seth, Suzuki, & Critchley, 2011) with the development of hallucination and delusion (Fletcher & Frith, 2009) I find that the predictive processing provides exactly the explanatory links needed by IDH to provide a more convincing explanation of schizophrenic disorders. In addition, a deeper and more unified neurocomputational explanation can be offered of what ipseity disorders are. Thus, I find the ipseity hypothesis can be greatly enhanced and rendered more theoretically productive in the light of the predictive processing framework.
Borda, J. P., & Sass, L. A. (2015). Phenomenology and neurobiology of self disorder in schizophrenia: Primary factors. Schizophrenia Research, 169(1), 464-473.
Clark, A. (2015). Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind: Oxford University Press.
Fletcher, P. C., & Frith, C. D. (2009). Perceiving is believing: a Bayesian approach to explaining the positive symptoms of schizophrenia. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(1), 48-58.
Hohwy, J. (2013). The predictive mind: Oxford University Press.
Nelson, B., Parnas, J., & Sass, L. A. (2014). Disturbance of minimal self (ipseity) in schizophrenia: clarification and current status. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 40(3), 479-482.
Parnas, J., Møller, P., Kircher, T., Thalbitzer, J., Jansson, L., Handest, P., & Zahavi, D. (2005). EASE: examination of anomalous self-experience. Psychopathology, 38(5), 236-258.
Radovic, F., & Radovic, S. (2002). Feelings of unreality: A conceptual and phenomenological analysis of the language of depersonalization. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 9(3), 271-279.
Sass, L. A., & Borda, J. P. (2015). Phenomenology and neurobiology of self disorder in schizophrenia: Secondary factors. Schizophrenia Research, 169(1), 474-482.
Sass, L. A., Pienkos, E., Nelson, B., & Medford, N. (2013). Anomalous self-experience in depersonalization and schizophrenia: A comparative investigation. Consciousness and Cognition, 22(2), 430-441.
Seth, A. K., & Critchley, H. D. (2013). Extending predictive processing to the body: emotion as interoceptive inference. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36(03), 227-228.
Seth, A. K., Suzuki, K., & Critchley, H. D. (2011). An Interoceptive Predictive Coding Model of Conscious Presence. Frontiers in Psychology, 2.
Sierra, M., & David, A. S. (2011). Depersonalization: a selective impairment of self-awareness. Consciousness and Cognition, 20(1), 99-108.
Inês Hipólito & Jorge Martins
Phenomenology and molecular biology: a second-person model to anomalous experience
First-person reports made by schizophrenic patients evidence how fragmented and anomalous their experience is. This may be related to the fact that disembodiment experience inhibits the possibility to intersubjective experience, and concordantly, common sense. We ask how can we investigate the anomalous experience both from qualitative and quantitative viewpoints. To our knowledge, few studies have focused on a clinical combination of both first- phenomenological assessment and third-person biological methods, especially for Schizophrenia, or ASD therapeutics and diagnosis. We will claim qualities of perception and kinaesthetic phenomena are central features when considering human experience in general, and anomalous experience in particular. We will thus attempt to bring forward a potential second-person scientific design, accounting for both the first-person enactive experience, and respective third-person neurobiological correlates. From this proposal, we further explore the consequences to clinical and research practice.
Jorge Gonçalves
Why are delusions pathological?
The aim of this article is to identify a characteristic of delusions: what makes them pathological. It may appear at first a bit strange because one believes that delusions are just a pathological alteration of the mind. However, some authors have shown that although pathological delusions are the most studied, not all delusions have necessarily harmful consequences for the delirious subject or for others. Hence it seems pertinent to question about what makes delusions a pathological state.
Dina Mendonça
What can Schizophrenia teaches us about emotions?
Schizophrenia changes emotional life (Sass 2004). People who encounter schizophrenics recognize that it is hard to have a complete emotional understanding and rapport with people who suffer from it (Sass 2007, 352). This chapter aims to look at the schizophrenic in all of us and take this awkwardness as insightful regarding emotional experience. As Louis Sass explains the description of emotions in schizophrenia is contradictory (Sass 2007, 2004): on one hand schizophrenics have a kind of flatness of emotional expression that is taken to mean that they have less emotional responses; on the other hand they can also be described as having excessive emotional responses (Sass 2007, 351-352). After describing the way in which emotion in schizophrenics can appear contradictory (Sass 2007, 2004), I show how such similar contradiction can appear as the reasonable thing to do and argue that, at least in some moments, it may be useful to adopt the schizophrenic stance regarding emotions and that sometimes we do. Then, building upon Matthew Ratcliffe’s suggestion of thinking of schizophrenia in relational terms rather than simply as a disorder of the individual, I show that emotional experience requires an ongoing connection with others. Finally I argue that the previous descriptions highlights certain features of our emotional world that are often ignored or treated lightly by emotion theorists, namely that emotions also appear in layers and that each emotional experience requires time to unfold. I conclude the chapter by showing how emotion theory could gain a more complete understanding of emotions by incorporating the insights given by schizophrenic emotional experience. Ultimately, the hope is that if emotion theorists adopt these insights it will be much easier to understand emotional experience of schizophrenic patients and design ways to help them cope with their condition and the world around them.
